How about simply trying to instill in the playerbase the idea,
"I will favor the newer, more active player unless an older player actively does a better job of convincing me and the realm they should have it"
The issue isn't one that can be enforced with rules or game mechanics. It needs a change in the way players think. "Trusting older players they've known a long time" has gone way, way, way overboard, to the point where new players just say "!@#$ it" and quit after a few months.
I've ran campaigns where almost all letters were sent in private. Sometimes, it's best to have targeted speeches.
When you've been in a realm and go about and send a nice long campaign message about all the nice things you've done, it really looks a lot like bragging to a lot of people. Feels like it to when sending it.
Oftentimes, I've also seen new players sink themselves with their campaigning. They could have limited themselves to one short message to announce their candidacy and won, but instead tried too hard, and thus failed.
Some players run their campaigns behind the scene, without declaring publicly, they talk privately to people who are voting. And if they win, who are we to declare them to be cheating in elections?
Not to mention, Gloria character election where both candidates failed to declared anything in the realm; so the voters here have to rely on their own to analyze and evaluate the candidates. Both candidates had a close vote running, with the victor(Gloria character) winning by a slim margin vote. I do not see anything fishy with that, maybe Gloria character has more supporters by a slim margin
There is a fundamental difference when a "family member" is the same player. IRL a family member is an independent individual, and while cronyism exists, it does not compare at all to knowing that you are appointing the same actual person to a position. Therefore, OOC criticisms are inevitable and, to some extent, legitimate.
Quite true. I agree. I try to avoid appoint my own family member to positions, unless there is really no other choice, like for example, nobody interested to pick up the positions. I even appointed other player character only to find out he gone inactive and paused after that. Leaving me with no choice but to appoint my own character, as every character is rejecting the appointment by virtue of them ticking "No" to being appointed as ABC position. I even attempted throughout my playing life to give and spread out the power as much as possible. Any players who played with me can attest to that.
This. Seriously.
First of all, "unreliable" and "new" are hardly the same. There's not much a single character can to completely disrupt a realm. Those things you CAN do take players who are experienced in the intricacies of the game, and have built up relationships. Not new players.
New players might be tempted to click on some of those shiny buttons, but they'll soon find out that the realm has ways to retaliate and protect itself.
In the meantime, "disruption" means something interesting is actually going on. So new players are seeing some "history" made first hand, instead of sitting in a dead realm & leaving out of boredom.
There is a lot of region lordships vacancies lying around in Nivemus realm recently, lot of elections. I personally will encourage you to see and try region lordships for yourself to grasp first hand the issue. It is not the new players not given opportunities, it is just they are too quiet and no campaign. Some of the players are trying out how to make the realm lively again and not too quiet. My character even started the Roleplay and messaged other character to participated together.
For reasons including those I stated above, I think that the Duke position is currently the worst in the game. I wouldn't be surprised if this entire thread originated from someone complaining about a Duke appointment. The power:effort ratio of the position is like an order of magnitude higher than any other.
I understand your feeling on this. This thread originate from a region lord election, not duke election or duke appointment. My character is a Duke of the vacant lordship region in question here(Poitiers), but my character did not do any appointment. Sound like if my character does the appointment, there will be even more protests here afterwards. Maybe I should avoid forum altogether to avoid myself being influenced.
