MU Tournament Ho-hum

Day 2,072, 02:24 • Published in Australia USA • by Majester


Plato has launched a new MU Tournament to act as a springboard for new MU features.

Big reward, no effect
If you recall, the top MU received their very own National Organisation the last tournament. This was a dismal failure because they failed to understand just how badly organisations have been broken. National Organisations are only good for laundering Gold because they do not have the 10G limit citizens face. The are restricted in every other way:
- a maximum of 1,000 storage
- cannot buy a newspaper
- no manager work
The MW we can live without (annoying as it is), but the inability to upgrade storage is a deal breaker. The newspaper rule is just stupid as it actively works against the communal nature of MU.



Newspapers
MU need to communicate in more than 180 characters. Plato is saying, "Why on earth would a MU want to officially coordinate, set common orders and, gosh, recruit new members inside of eRepublik?" Anti-community policy in a social network game. Think about it a bit.

Storage
Plato also seems unprepared to make the small storage change necessary to actually make organisations useful. Most MU run communes and share goods. Governments and MU need to store items in stockpiles for wars and efficient Quarter Mastering. We are forced into using personal storage and doing games gymnastics to ensure we have enough stock spread out in multiple citizen accounts in the hopes that one person offline doesn't make MUs grind to a damage halt. It does not have to be so.

New Tournament
The new tournament does away with the philosophically troublesome National Orgs and instead launches Combat Orders and unrestricted Daily Orders.

Unrestricted Daily Orders
The top 50 Military Units in the global ranking will be considered Elite Units and will be able to set the daily order without MPP or Military Unit citizenship restrictions. Currently MU cannot set a battle unless your country has an MPP. This restriction does not apply to Battle Priorities system where you can set fighting for any nation or against anyone as long as there is no MPP.

The system is back to front and inefficient. Firstly, all Resistance Wars except your own are eliminated as valid orders. The point of the Battle Priority system is to set default orders when your Commander is sleeping. Somehow you can fight for any random country as a default action, but not as a deliberate order? Really?
The new elite unit reward will go some way to fix this for the chosen 50, but they will still not be able to set battle to RW. Baby steps I suppose.

Combat Orders
When Battle Orders were launched, it was promised that we would be able to set something other than Kill 25 enemies as an order. Its seems to finally have arrived... sort of. The military unit will be able to use currency as a reward for Combat Orders. I am reading cash for damage or kills. Heaven forbid actually rewarding fights the only real measure all the national MU use. That would be useful and we cannot have that since Plato is determined to tell us how we actually play. This is a cunning way to by-pass the item storage limit of National Orgs while actively undermining the ability of MU to supply items directly to their soldiers. We can work with it.



What has not been done
1. Military units still cannot tell how many fights a soldier has done. This is the most basic measure of activity and probably the fairest, but we are forced to use 3rd party software and websites to access this most basic information. Nobody cares how many kills you did. Its a meaningless random statistic good for missions and daily orders. Tell us fights, damage, and battle fought in.

2. We still only have one person who can set orders. This means the Commander has to either share their login, swop Commander status in shifts, or trust the random Battle Priority system. Anti-player mechanics at its best. This is easily fixed by allowing 2nd COmmanders to set Daily Orders too. Not a huge code change that will make the world of difference to our communities and eliminate 90% of the complaints a MU Commander gets.

3. Allow us to set orders by Division or allow us to restrict membership to our MU by Division. The current system deliberately ignores how battles actually work. It actively undermines our ability to organise efficiently. Why? What purpose does it serve? It certainly doesn't make the game any more fun.

Coupe de Grace
The top 50 Military Units in the world and top 3 MU in hte nation are determined by damage dealt. Battles are won on country points earned. Each division contributes points. Division I naturally does less damage than Division II than Division III than Division IV. They all contribute points. You can actually win a war with a clever mix of victories and doing less total damage.

Once again Plato fails to understand his own game and opts for simplicity over player rewards. The entire competition assumes only division IV exists by rewarding total damage. The people who actually play the game understand that Div IV is one aspect of winning wars. So here we have a reward for MU with lots of Div IV players blissfully ignoring Div I, Div II and Div III. Anti-player thinking.

This ignorance extends to how orders are set in MU, how damage is reported in MU and how MU are rewarded. Why not just remove Divisions I - III and admit that you still think Version I where Strength is über alles.

Conclusion
I am curious about the new mechanics and if they will ever filter into the mass game. I am severely disappointed at the lack of thinking that goes into this planning. Why are the rewards not split by Divisions? The entire team's mindset seems to center on rewarding older players and wondering why new players drop out like flies. Learn to play your own game and experience it from the other side.

Just saying,

Survivor of Australia

TL😉R The gulf between what they know and what they do speaks volumes.