Lockout system, loyalty & the realm

[wonshot]

Hello,

With the recent patch changing the behavior of the lockout I think it highlighted both player's true behavior up against the fantasy. But also underlined some issues we can still improve on to find the most "fair" lockout system for the server. It will likely never be fully perfect due to how many different situations it can affect. Below ill try to mention the different situations involved in when a lockout is affecting players in picking a side, just so we are on the same page in the debate:

- Both sides have even AAO or realm-population as shown on the frontpage (I personally like AAO better as a metric)
- One realm has slightly more numbers advantage in the rvr lakes but the fighting is even due to more organization on the other side
- Both realms are fully even in numbers and organization
- One side is so massively ahead in numbers and/or organization that the losing realm's players are logging out.

This is where we might not all agree in which direction lockouts should work, because we come from different playstyles and levels of succes.
Personally I think the lockout should attempt to fix for example if EU primetime is happening and the guilds are not communicating which side they will build on, and we end up with 3 organized guild warbands on one side, against just one on the other side because some warband has just disbanded or w/e.
This could be fixed by the players communicating, but lets be honest, its not happening.
If in that example a guild is willing to swap over from a 3v1 situation to make it a 2v2 then I think that should be encouraged even though that might create a stalemate in the campaign as organized keep defences are very difficult to defeat and the incentive is not enough for warbands to tryhard for that atm (campaigh issue and isolated issue)
However on the other end of the spectrum, having a steamrolling warband that "farms" so hard one side that they run out of canonfodder should probably not (?) be allowed to freely farm first one side, and then log over and farm the other. Again some of this could be solved with a campaign making said strong guild staying on their side and keep pushing the campaign instead of just chasing kills on both sides.

My suggestion to find a sorta balanced middleground would be the following:
- Current lockout system but with the penalty removed whenever you swap over to a 5% population imballance or fight in an 40% or higher AAO zone. (aao can technically be manipulated by going into pve and letting aao change, so im not sure if server pop is a better metric)
- Lockouts dont count in T1 and Scenarios.
- Realm-lock starts when you earn renown from playerkills. Not from objective ticks and especially not from logging in to an offline zonelock reward. They do not refresh and only start a 90min timer after the first pvp rp reward.

Lotalty:
- A new command added /loyal
You sign up as a loyal soldier to your realm. And all objective rewards are increased by 1% per month you stay loyal to your realm. Including orvr inf, warcrest and rp from objectives only upto 10%. If you sign off not being loyal anymore with the /notloyal a 7 day timer before you can declare your loyalty to either realm again and it resets your current loyalty procentages.

T4 chat
Is now restricted to crownusers or guild assigned "guild-captain" like it was on Live.

Final words and goal:
I hope those that do enjoy realmpride would enjoy the extra reward incentive and lean more into social bounding for succes and building guilds and communities to overcome hardtimes, while those that are both-realmcabable can enjoy AAO and help balance out the action with this version. The loyalty system can be expanded on or made differently but I feel its a good counter system to lockouts and crossrealming (logging the otherside to balance. Not winnerjoining where someone is on the losing realm and logs the other side to easymode.) Winnerjoining needs to be more restricted than crossrealming imo. Not everone will agree with that, and thats fine. My own version of crossrealming is playing sessions on a "main" realm. Last 3 weeks ive been destro only. Some weekends i play one armor potion at a time on either side during Weekend warfronts. But I never really swap realm during a zone-lifespan. We all crossrealm differently, I think thats fine but winnerjoining is both a lame excause and the target for my suggestion for a lockout system, granted it will allow more for the hardcarries who only goes for rvr kill stacking to be more free to balance out the action and stall the campaign. But again thats an issue the campaign should fix to be more appealing than farming kills.