2. Positions. After playing the game for several years and watching what happens in various realms, I'm convinced that it's not so much position turnover (though having some is of course required) as position (and influence) availability that draws people. I'm pretty confident in saying that Arcaea's one Lordship/Council seat per family rule has been the single biggest reason for its success, closely followed by more luck than I can shake a stick at and the general policy of just accepting that spies exist and telling people stuff anyway. All else being equal, the realms I've been in with position restrictions have had a much more happy and involved playerbase than those that haven't.
Very true. Though I would argue that turnover is a (major) factor in availability. But, position availability would probably be determined by:
1. Frequency and "success rate" of territorial wars; maybe "rate of creative destruction" of realms?
2. Viability of colony attempts
3. Turnover rates
4. Position restriction rules
5. Benevolence by high-ups
Anything else that could be determinant of position availability?
We should presumably, then, expect high involvement by new players in continents with wars that meaningfully alter power blocs, have viable colonial activity, have restrictions on family position accumulation, and high exposure to wounding and imprisonment.
Sounds like Dwilight, and it basically does exhibit high new player involvement (see earlier post and about dukes below), though not tons better than FEI; but FEI has fairly regular power shakeups.
For the curious, some more data, this time not rulers, but dukes:
FEI: 20016 average, 8925 standard deviation; minimum of 1607, maximum of 30856
Dwilight: 21256 average, 7205 standard deviation; minimum of 7434, maximum of 31456
Beluaterra: 16603 average, 10708 standard deviation; minimum of 383, maximum of 30497
