I agree with the general thrust of that; however, I think that would likely not have moved enough people (even if everyone there had moved, rather than leaving).
Unfortunately, the geography of Dwilight overall is not well-suited to significant swings in player population without a strong, positive, and immediate incentive to cluster—which the game as a whole currently lacks.
Combined with the current approach it could have had a more interesting result. But that's all hypothesizing and what's done is done, I concede.
I get that with the decline of the player base a method was sought to nudge realms closer together; west part was closed off, large increase of monster spawns, sea travel, etc.
Well, ever since those days I have seen the realm player base drop from 30+ to 15+, definitely not increasing continent wide.
It's all fine and dandy to shout generics as 'attract more players' and 'just relocate' but that is not the issue at hand. The 'solution' is not generating the desired effect and is actually driving more players off than keeping them.
As I stated earlier, most players that up and leave that I spoke to simply state they get no enjoyment from the PvE environment that is now prominent on the continent.
As for the statement 'stop expanding', begs the question 'when is it too much?'. Not too long ago we were at 2 nobles per region ratio and still had rogue units combined over 40.000 combat strength ravaging the regions. If limitation of regions is the aim ( per realm based upon amount of nobles, for example ) then surely another solution can be found.
As for this thread, my aim is mainly to signal the devs and get some discussion started. I understand that per realm and per person the experience might differ, but I felt it necessary to report the signals I have received these last few months (year or so?).
And yes, you might disagree, but no, that is no excuse to be an ass about it. =)
Explicitely naming your realm would help place it in context.
Also keep in mind that the monster code was bugged. For a long time, they no longer spawned, rallied, or moved. All while the realms kept spreading thinner, and thinner, and thinner. Then, the floodgates were opened. So the last invasion was not purely the density-triggered spawns, but also just the general accumulation from all that unintended peace time that was had.
Then, well... there comes a point where it's up to players to adapt to challenges brought before them. Westgard, which has a mobile army oscillating between 5000 and 20000 CS, was pro-active in this regard. When we realized that the monsters were bugged, we rushed to kill as many of them as we could. We killed the tens of thousands of CS in our realm, and then moved into rogue regions nearby, to kill tens of thousands more. We knew that as soon as the bug was fixed, they'd head for us, so we tried to lessen the load. Then, when the bug was announced to be fixed, we immediately rushed to finish our refit, move to Sabadell, and dig in. There, we stood strong, and faced about 20k of rogues every single turn, with our army of about half that, and we killed... gee, 80k CS? More? Until equipment wear wore us down to about 5k and a new 30k horde started coming in, at which point we pulled back, made more stands in Gelene Outskirts, rinse and repeat.
Point is, had we lazily just settled for taking easy regions, and then sit on our asses, we'd have lost most of our regions in this last invasion. But we made bold strategic decisions, made the right tactical calls, and with luck on our side, we came out with minimal territorial losses and an incredible military performance. So if southern realms are losing a lot of ground to the monsters, it's worth asking: why? Is it because they are facing forces that are too great? Or because they aren't making the right calls. Because for the latter, well, people deserve the consequences of their own (in)action. Because if Westgard, that has virtually no fortified location, no choke point, and is alone out in the middle of the rogue lands between a lot of the spawns and their destinations, if that realm can make it with minimal losses, why can't everyone else? Astrum did fine too. Avernus did mostly, but then again they had decided to send their army to loot rogue regions back when they hadn't even retaken all of their lands back yet. Arnor had almost died the previous time, and they came out fine. Same with Luria.
I mean, really, nobody really lost much this time around, despite the issue with the bug. Madina seems to have lost the most, but still didn't lose THAT much.
And it again returns to my original counter-argument: what else would those realms do, anyways? Back then, when the west was removed, those realms were doing a ton of things. The Moot had somewhat imploded with Terran breaking up and D'Hara annexing most of it, the north was ablaze as well, and western cities also contributed to balance with the eastern ones (the loss of the western cities seriously crippled D'Hara, for example, making Lurian hegemony greater). But none of that applies to the far-South. Madina was only dynamic during the early settlers phase. It then quickly ceased to ever be relevant again. Same for Fissoa, though that realm had a very slightly greater involvement in international politics. No matter how far back you go, up to basically a decade ago, Madina isn't relevant. Even if we go as little back as possible, before the rogue code was changed to make the rogues target low-density realms more, what was Madina doing? PVE! Madina was, wholly on its own initiative, trying to expand West as much as it could, against increasingly impossible odds. So what's the difference? Back when Madina wasn't targeted, it was going out seeking PvE. Now that it's targeted for being too sparsely populated, it's doing PvE. The code changed nothing, other than placing the equilibrium at Madina no longer holding its whole islands anymore. Which in my book is fine, the more a realm is spread, the harder it is for it to be dynamic. Lower incentives do undertake projects due to everyone having titles, increased risk-aversion (for the same reason), decrease capacity to project power abroad, etc.
