Like I said if 15 does prove to be too high, no doubt the devs will revisit it. I have no idea about the background, I don't particularly care. The constant knee jerk reactions from any change the devs make has seen me pause all but one of my characters, and all he does is sit around and count gold. To me there is a distinct lack of constructive feedback to the devs and an abundance of emotive criticism. It is why I quit the game and being a dev several years ago, and why I did not put my hand up to return to the dev team when I rejoined.
Many of these arguments are disingenuous. Colonies rarely rely on players only from 1 realm, or even 1 continent. ToL is a great example of this. People came to Dwilight to see the colony realised. I am not so sold on having a limit or such a high limit on Duchy succession, depending on circumstance they are self limiting anyway, particularly with recent militia changes.
I remember the "Grand Old Days" back when we could have two characters on a continent when Tara had 30 to 40 people and were rolling from one war to another. Things were active. Lots of talking. It was fun.
Now I'm a member of three different realms hovering around the 20 character number and it really does feel like we have the minimum number to maintain just basic operations. I honestly don't know how realms with 5 or 10 people even operate.
On the one hand, I'm against taking away player options through arbitrary rules.
On the other hand, I understand the idea behind this rule and what it is trying to achieve.
It may not be the RIGHT way to do it in my opinion, but I don't know WHAT the right way to do it IS. It sucks for people who were planning to create new realms. It really does. But does it suck for the GAME as a whole?
The grand old days had realms of 120 characters and a socialist tax system
