Why multirealming is bad

[Kitsuni]

Pardon the thread title.

Over time I've spoke to many multirealmers, and the large majority that I have known do not realize that they are doing anything wrong by multirealming. They have absolutely no concept of how it harms the game, and believe that they are only having fun by playing the most active realm at any given time. So I've made a little list of reasons why it is harmful, to help educate those who do not quite understand the issues that it presents.

1) Multirealmers tend to join the winning side, not the losing side.
They just want to have fun, afterall, its a game. But this tilts an already unwinnable batle further in the favor of the enemy. In many cases, this can make a critical difference, now that the game has moved from holding multiple forts for a set period of time, to holding only one fort at a time. This makes it easy for just a few more players to heavily influence the outcome.

2) Multirealmers tend to switch sides to kill the noble during invasion.
Who can honestly resist all those warmaster coins? Its not uncommon for people to switch to the winning realm to get noble kills. The problem here is that the invading realm almost always tends to have the advantage, due to how the game is designed, in a way that gives all advantages to the realm that is already advantaged (positive feedback loops). Again, this puts the losing realm at a further disadvantage, not having that player to help defend.

3) Multirealmers cannot be realistically trusted.
Someone who plays multiple realms is a logical intelligence risk and cannot be trusted not to share information. Many people see this as minor; what harm could something like telilng the other realm what fort is going to be attacked? Until a force of only five people get there to find it camped by ten enemies. Those who I have known over the years see this as "creating action", but in reality, its an action-killer, because it tilts balance to the defensive side.

4) It is hard to consider a multirealmer to be an ally.
Many chose not to support multis because they have a tendancy to switch whenever it is convenient for them, not when it is convenient for the realm. This can lead to things like getting killed by a friend and then switching to kill them in return. It creates mistrust between players.

In short... multirealming does have a significant effect on the game. In the old days, it wasn't as common as it was now, as there were no boosts and grinding a char in another realm was very difficult. Now with the introduction of boosts, more premium items, merged accounts, etc. it has become much more common, with many players thinking its just way to enjoy the game better, without realizing that they are making the game worse for everyone else, including their own friends.

I realize that realm pride doesn't mean anything to some people, but it is a very nice concept that can help your realm overcome the odds.

[Gabburtjuh]

I multirealmed (even perma changed) to the at that moment underpop realm, and alot of people did exactly thesame as I noticed while talking to other grinders.

Multirealming, even though I dont like it either, doesnt hurt balance that bad, its just that the total playerbase for the english server sucks. That's all I'm gonna bother saying about it.

[Cuchulainn]

Originally Posted by Kitsuni

Pardon the thread title.

Over time I've spoke to many multirealmers, and the large majority that I have known do not realize that they are doing anything wrong by multirealming. They have absolutely no concept of how it harms the game, and believe that they are only having fun by playing the most active realm at any given time. So I've made a little list of reasons why it is harmful, to help educate those who do not quite understand the issues that it presents.

[...]

the statements from the points 1) and 2) would be more convincing, if you could give us a list of these multirealmers who prefer to play in the overpopulated realm.

I personally prefer to help those in the underpopulated realm (I'm not a very active player though). My chars in Ignis Cuchulainn, Lamfada; in Alsius: Fenric, Alwin, in Syrtis: Parzival (Raven) who was almost never on after the merge, and since a few weeks when Syrtis started to become underpopulated Adalwin.

IMHO multirealming in not necessarily bad in general. It just depends on how it is done.

[VandaMan]

I know of more who multirealm to join the underpopulated realm, although I admit this could be just a result of them being less ashamed to admit it in that case

[Kitsuni]

By the way ,this thread isn't to rustle anyone's feathers, just to get people thinking a bit.

Originally Posted by Gabburtjuh

Multirealming, even though I dont like it either, doesnt hurt balance that bad, its just that the total playerbase for the english server sucks. That's all I'm gonna bother saying about it.

I can agree with this point. Some of it has alot to do with population, although I have encountered this problem on RA too.

Originally Posted by Carn

Multirealming isn't bad, people are.

I don't honestly think that everyone is innately bad or selfish. However if someone is tempted they will be more likely to partake.

Originally Posted by Cuchulainn

the statements from the points 1) and 2) would be more convincing, if you could give us a list of these multirealmers who prefer to play in the overpopulated realm.

I personally prefer to help those in the underpopulated realm (I'm not a very active player though). My chars in Ignis Cuchulainn, Lamfada; in Alsius: Fenric, Alwin, in Syrtis: Parzival (Raven) who was almost never on after the merge, and since a few weeks when Syrtis started to become underpopulated Adalwin.

IMHO multirealming in not necessarily bad in general. It just depends on how it is done.

I actually agree with your points, and I didn't intend to be "convincing", merely "informational". I still think that the majority of multirealming is done simply for the enjoyment of the game, and that those people do not truely understand its effects, as i outlined in the original post.

Originally Posted by VandaMan

I know of more who multirealm to join the underpopulated realm, although I admit this could be just a result of them being less ashamed to admit it in that case

I think that this truely used to be the case. But lately I see many more cases of people who just want to have fun/win/etc. I wonder why?

It can't simply be the introduction of Steam, as that was too recent.

Originally Posted by Groark

There are even more reasons why multirealming sucks but the most important are the ones Kitsuni wrote. Problem is: what to do about it?
As I understand multirealming is continuosly switching from one realm to another for your own benefit. Switching for a large period of time I dont consider multirealming.

What to do about it? Well, NGD could provide positive incentives to stick to a single realm, or to help the underpopulated realm(s).

[Aries202]

I don't mind it, the way this game works there's always one dominating realm.

What I despise is people who log in the other realm to sabotage what the realm is trying to do. Hint Aquaboxio Hint.

When I left to Alsius it was because of a new server, I don't think I could change realms just because Ignis is in the bottom of the food chain.

Some other people leave a realm just because they're fed up of their current realm.

In reality there's only a handful of people that change realms that do an impact and it only shows at night, sometimes realm A has 30 people than realm A loses 20 people and realm B magically has 20 more people.

[Krungle]

There is a difference between switching realms and even making a toon to explore another realm's inner. There was a green hunter in Goat inner the other day who seemed to be too familiar with the topography not to have a toon at least at some point that had a blue pigmentation. IMHO, that is perfectly okay, all of that.

However, when someone is carrying a Relic and logs out or hands a gem to another realm, then that is far from ok. As Aries pointed out, I too have seen this and it is bad to see. If people were to play one realm only in RvR then multirealming can be ignored but when people switch realms to counter the balance, either for or against any other realm, that is bad.

I have not posted anything in my post I have not seen with my own eyes. These things happen all the time and are immoral.

[bois]

I beg to differ. Multirealming is not a great thing but, it is not as bad as people make it out to be either in and of itself. Multi realming combined with a group of other factors, makes things appear bad.

Population , or rather lack thereof is a serious problem especially on Haven. We simply do not have enough to withstand even minor fluctuation in players.
Let us not even talk about multi realming, just a simple thing like players logging off to get some sleep could tip the balance. This has always been a problem, it still is.
Multi realming simply puts the spotlight on the root problem which is chronically low population.

The rest of the items are a bit subjective. There are many people that can probably attest to both sides of the discussion and without some hard data this is just here-say.

But let us assume (ass-u-me) that this is generally correct. The post will not help much because rightly put, players go where the fun is.
Therefore, logically speaking, the game lacks enough fun in one place to convince a fair amount of people to stay loyal? Am I right?

So far I see no solutions . The reality is this. The game does not have any end content or extension worthwhile of holding players to a realm. You get 60, then you get 5 more for each class then you get RP then invade , kill a few super bosses then what ? You want to play but there is simply nothing left. So you go somewhere else to start it all over again.

NGD is not hurting, in fact they may be extending their revenue stream by actually allowing players to have 18 characters without adding one iota of content (6 for each realm). So their motivation to do anything is zero.

So this opening post, while informative, is still merely a fluff piece that provides no solutions, no roadmap or even reaches the majority of the player base who probably never reads the forum anyway.

The solutions must start at viable, reusable content for spending time in one realm. Expansions should mean new real estate to explore, harder bosses, and achievements that are difficult to attain but gives the ones who get it , fame and notoriety. This is why I suggested a while back that the achievement system could be used as a tool .
In addition to that, in my thoughts on warmasters, they should have added a trait system , contingent on acts of war or other PvE tasks to get them.

That way, NGD could have stretched the content like a rubber band, have a modular platform to add stuff one by one and at the same time, reduce the need to multi realm. In fact , it would have been an outright disincentive because if you played jack -of-all-realms, you would be left behind. You would have had to specialise to be the best. And, it would have been fair because you could not easily buy your way to the top. You had to go out there and put in some sweat equity.

Regards

[Kyrottimus]

I agree with Artec. The crux of the problem is population imbalance (or simply lack of population), no matter how you slice it.

I've been both on the underpopulated and overpopulated side of war in RO. And while the overpopulated side of it can be fun (for the first 10 minutes) it gets old fast and gets really tiresome as well.

I would submit to anyone who cared that there have been a myriad of ideas and concepts over the years here in the suggestions sub-forum (both via gameplay mechanics and through incentivization) that could help keep war fresh and relatively balanced for all realms involved.

This would require some creative programming, involving a system that automatically adjusts to even the odds.

Think of it this way, before the relic invasion system was implemented, the defending realm would have a certain number of NPC guards spawned as a "balancing" countermeasure vs. the number of invading realm players. This was useless, however, as first the NPC guards were woefully ineffective and second could be bypassed by the invading realm all logging off before the yellow timer turned to the orange timer and logging back in after.

Now it's reversed, the invading realm gaining a gate-camping dragon. Reversing the implied intent of balancing things out.

While it certainly adds a new dynamic to invasions (along with capturable gates), it does not address the issue.

My point with all this is that if there were some mechanism to enact some self-scaling game mechanics to counter drastic population imbalance, I think the type of multi-realmers that Kitsunie is referencing would find no more "benefit" to pick the winning side if the playing field were somehow leveled. Even if we're talking of only 10-12 people here.

It's not an easy task, I'm just saying I don't have a problem with multirealming if done under the right circumstances. Removing all the wrong reasons for someone to multirealm via scalable game mechanics would be an elegant sollution (however not an easy one, as again would take some very creative brainstorming and coding).

[Carn]

Multirealming isn't bad, people are.