I don't believe it's fixable. All the potential fixes I can think of would involve what many would feel as punishment to them. There is only one normal cluster, many have characters in multiple realms due to the downsizing of the game. It just doesn't seem right to say, "you can't play that character and if you do you won't get a bonus".

People have gotten used to playing all three realms. The box has been opened and you can't close it now.

I dont believe its fixable as a whole however there are players who do just play one realm and dont jump ship the second the realm loses relics.

I think these players who stay and play in only one realm should be rewarded. I think there should be a timer on every players account that is about a week long. If a player stays in the same realm and does not log into the other 2 realms that player should be granted a loyalty bonus which gives the player XP,BP,RP and coin bonus. This doesnt mean that the player would be unable to log into the other 2 realms to play but if they did the bonus would be lost and the timer would reset again to a week.

With this loyalty bonus there would be an incentive for players to stick around one realm and play there regardless of how well the realm is doing and it would not punish those players who want to play the other 2 realms whenever they want. a 1 Week timer would be long enough to prevent players from abusing this bonus but short enough to benefit those players who just play in a single realm. It would also be a good incentive for new guilds to form in any specific realm allowing them to have an added advantage in starting a new characters,leveling to 50 and contributing to RVR in the realm.


Also maybe even add a Realm specific custom title to allow players who just play one realm to show it in game. Like for instance "Defender of Hibernia" "Hero of Albion" or "Avenger of Midgard"


You can force realm pride but you can add incentives to players to encourage it.

Realm pride happened for a number of reasons and most of them just can't be recreated at this stage.

What they could do and what I've been advocating for years is to focus on Guilds and let a collection of guilds move up toward functioning Alliances which is more meaningful and a way cooler concept than the stupid idea that just because you clicked red/blue/green that you are somehow part of the team.

Guilds should be a tangibly valuable thing. I used to try to explain it by saying if you could sell your toon/account for 1k you should be able to sell your guild for as much or more than that. The tools to acquire and manage guild resources are sorely sorely lacking and underdeveloped.

Giving guild masters/officers more tools to help people into the guild with carrots and sticks. A big thing thing was just knowing who was active in the guild. Again, much easier when people had 1 character and it took weeks/months to level AND you needed help to just level through normal play. (Powerleveling/twinking is really really bad for that.. even more so than buffbots) Now you have people with a dozen or more characters.

Simple example, as a GM what are you to do if you let someone put 6 characters in your guild and then on one of them he rips off people or rips off the guild. If the bad actor had 1 character and you booted it and people blacklisted the person and they had to start over and it took weeks/months to get back to where you can establish enough trust to rip people off that helps build, insulate and protect a community. If you are out 24-48 hours time and virtually anonymous because there is no community then ripping people off is easier.

In RvR terms there's no benefit to RvRing as a guild. People can leech along and actually do better in terms of rps and effort and just about any cost/benefit analysis that you care to run.

 

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There are too many problems with trying to lock players out of their toons in a particular realm for long periods of time when they want to switch. Instead Mythic should use bonuses to encourage players to stick with one realm. For instance:

- relic bonuses only affect your characters if you have been playing that realm for at least 24 hours
- rp, bp, and xp bonuses only affect your characters if you have been playing that realm for at least 24 hours
- add an additional 1% rp/bp/xp bonus per day you play a realm with a cap at, say, 50%
- buff npcs will give an additional 5 points per stat if you have been playing in a realm for at least 24 hours

 

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I don't think you can bring back realm pride by any mechanical means. Locking people out of the other realms via a long timer might address some of the abuses that are taking place, but actually having loyalty to one realm shouldn't require any changes at all. What we have now is simply a different mindset from the early years. Nothing will change that, we have a different type of player out there now and they don't give a damn about the realm they are in, they just want to beat other players as badly as possible. They will go wherever they can get the most advantage and make the fight as uneven as possible whenever possible. They are there for the "win", and what toon they are playing, what realm its in, what class it is, doesn't matter. Given that Mythic has made it so easy to level up a new character, and given that people have salted away so much cash, people are willing to spend a few hours to level up and equip a new toon whenever one class gets an advantage that can be exploited. If one realm gets all the relics, people will flock to that realm rather than organizing their side and retaking the relics.

Oh sure some people play only 1 realm. I only play in Midgard for instance, but those people are not the bulk of the population I expect.

In the old days, the enemy would flood across the frontiers and players would suicide their characters from wherever they were PvEing and go rush to the frontiers to oppose the foe. Alliance chat would resound with people announcing they were on the way, losing exps on their characters for sake of defense. Fighting the enemy and defeating them as a realm meant something to most of the population. Nowadays, hardly anyone is PvEing (since you can level a character to 50 in mere hours), everyone is already on the frontiers if they aren't crafting or something, and the focus is on getting your group or 8 man into fights to get the most RPs for your group. People deliberately don't announce the enemy presence if they feel they can exploit it so that they don't lose the RPs. People get pissed because some other group attacked their target group - calling it A**jamming and the like when really they are all supposed to be fighting the same foe. I dunno how many times I have been dead and had fellow realm mates run by me without rezzing me (even pausing right on top of me so their healer can buff someone in the group, then moving on). Requests for rezzes go ignored. In short players care more about Rps than they do about fighting for their realm or helping their realm mates. People get pissed because someone else isn't opening up DF for them, instead of going out to help make that happen.

With NF you can always see where things are happening, which only facilitates the "RPS or death!" mentality. The frontier is no longer a mystery where armies can move about hiding from the enemy to surprise them in the same way as in OF. Its been made too easy because players were unwilling or unable to deal with having to get organized, or having to spend time to find the enemy. I recall watching the Mile Gates it got pretty dull at times, but the fact that we could get people to stand guard duty meant we were building realm pride at the same time. Nothing forced those folks to go there but they did because they cared. Nothing can make someone care, it has to come from them. Those days are gone sadly.

So yeah, raise the timer to a longer period. I would think 4-8 hours would be sufficient to reduce abuses but it won't bring back pride. That takes a change in players and I don't see modern players bothering to care enough about something like this for anything to change. They are simply too self focused.

 

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strongly agree with jhonto ^^

Any millionaires out there who can buy the game and some programmers, set the game back the way it was? make it free to play? Ill sell my soul right about now for that.

This is the best way to handle it, with a carrot rather than a stick. Reward realm loyalty. Make the rewards tangible enough that people will think twice about logging out of one realm and into another. This way no-one can complain that their choice to play multiple realms is restricted, but those who choose to be loyal to a realm are rewarded.

It won't bring back the old school realm pride, the game has evolved too far for that. But if people are rewarded for realm loyalty perhaps a better sense of realm community might develop again.

I also think the Frontiers need a reworking so that players feel more engaged with their realm and the defence of it. NF is too large for the current player base and has clunky transport mechanics (especially the boats). I'd like to see a smaller Frontier map that combines the best of OF with the best of NF and caters for all types of gameplay - zerg, 8-man, small group and solo.

Sigh

I only play hib, so there's at least 2 of us.

 

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make realm timer 30 days, check IP addresses to prevent 2 realms being played from one address.

You could try a different strategy like actually rewarding loyalty.


You could offer unique armor/weapons/fluff to players that played a single realm consistently. Beyond weapons and armor you could offer all sorts of stuff like increased rps, bounty points, cheaper housing, unique horses etc.


And regarding people playing multiple accounts you can't do anything about that so it's not even worth worrying about.

 

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