This is very soon going to turn into 2 people having more merit than everyone else combined “scratching each other’s backs” all day.

And regarding the mechanic, alliances and whatnot are cool, and I’m all for mechanics that support them, but having everyone vote on giving other people VPs is still a broken mechanic IMHO.

1) This game should not be a popularity contest and
2) The mechanic should be implemented such that rational players (rational from a game theoretic perspective) would actually use it

(If anyone can cite a successful use of this mechanic in an actual published game, I would love to see it)

There are 8 players, so in order to get a majority for two to dominate like that, one of them would need four quota and the other three so I really don’t think its as much of a threat as your making it out to be.

why shouldn’t the game be a popularity contest? We are working as a group to fix the machine. Then as a group, we should decide who helped the most as opposed to the players who say, only made moves that specifically improved their recorded game state.

There aren’t 8 active players. There are 4. Any 2 of you could already be doing this.

The only way to improve personal gamestate right now is *fixing machines* (Achieving Muffin doesn’t count yet because operating is so hard). Why not just let the merit speak for itself.

Because merits promote selfish behavior instead of working as a team.