X-Realming Counter

[HelgardZA]

This is quite the issue we have here, namely:

We cannot, as Azarael makes clear, have a system which relies on identifying cross-realmers as such. This means that whatever is implemented will have to be server-wide, to all characters.

Something caught my attention in Azarael's post:

"You cannot build a system with rewards or progression such that a player's team association can change before all of the consequences of the system have been applied. "

So any solution will have to create an incentive for participating for the duration of the battle, or minimise the incentive to join a battle already in progress. The latter can be especially problematic to apply, since drop-in combat is part of the appeal of RvR. It would seem that the only way to avoid RvR crossrealming would unfortunately involve some compromise on the general player base's side. However, since I believe most of us would prefer battles in RvR to be both enjoyable and fair, I think a lot of us would not mind a slight compromise if crossrealming could be dealt with. With this in mind, I have one (imperfect) idea.

My suggestion, which is heavy on compromise, is having what could be called a 'battle preparation' time when a character logs in. This would be a debuff applied on login for a e.g. 15 minute period where the player cannot be flagged for RvR or receive any RvR rewards. This would be applied on certain conditions, two of which I would suggest to be:

1. First login on faction by account on a certain day
2. Switching of factions on same account within 30 minutes.

This sounds harsh for non crossrealmers (it is), but I believe 15 minutes is long enough to discourage hopping factions, while being short enough to not inconvenience regular players too much. If you stick to one faction the whole day, you'll only have to endure it once (use the time to get some crafting or gathering done or something). If you log into another realm or account however, you would have to sit and wait 15 minutes (hopefully missing most of the action you wanted to switch to).

This system can be overcome by logging into an account (to remove the initial daily debuff), logging into another account, and then logging back into the initial account later to crossrealm. One way to avoid this would be to have the debuff reset after an hour (we could even swap the daily login for an hourly login), which would allow for relogs after DCs and other common problems, while making it difficult to hop from account to account.

Basically, this is meant to force players to invest more than 15 minutes or an hour in a realm before being able to reap RvR rewards. It's a pain, but it could lead to better organised warbands with dedicated players, while making it just difficult enough to crossrealm that it isn't worth the effort to most players.

It's not perfect and can be worked around, but we aren't going to find a flawless solution to this issue.

[saupreusse]

We need Client Control. Just wait for it.