I see your point, but will a realm that doesn't have a good and active ruler be interesting to a new player anyway?
That depends on what else is happening in the realm, and quite a few other things, too. If the other leaders in the realm are competent, and the realm has
A Plan, then the ruler is essentially a figurehead.
One of the best examples of this is Jenred he is a great leader and because of that he is becoming an emperor. We will have to see how this turns out, but i doubt any would argue that the reason it is even possible is something other than the leadership.
Leadership alone is not enough. To do what happened in Arcaea, you have to a lot of good players willing to work together to build something. Matt deserves a lot of credit for it. But so do all the
other players in Arcaea. So, yeah, I would argue that leadership
alone is not enough. You have to start with a core of good players, then add leadership on top of that.
Simply stated we cannot change the game externally to get rid of bad leaders, that is something we just have to deal with in game. However, we can empower leaders to increase new player retention by giving them the ability to appoint good mentors. And I don't think even a bad leader would want new nobles leaving all the time, so it seems that even the inactive and boring leaders have some motivation to appoint good mentors.
I wouldn't object to ruler-appointed mentors. But I would say that you also have to remove the Mentor as a sub-class. And if you're going to do ruler-appointed, I wonder if it might be prudent to also get rid of mentor goodies as well.
