No More Multiclient

[SHA2048]

I made a separate thread because i changed my opinion on the subject.
I think multiclienting should be completely banned, it only causes abuse. Buff mules, leeching, Solo PQs, Boosted rewards from zak prequest, HP mules for healing leech, Boss / 94th camping, FM hogging, unauthentic playercount.

Most common usage of multiclient is buff mules, even though i personally used an HB mule in the past I now think it should be completely banned, You gain an unfair advantage from it, you shouldn't be able to have a char in your party who's sole purpose is to make you stronger and get nothing in return, if you want HB then you need to party with a spearman, if you need HS you need to party with a priest. No actual priest playing player will give you HS and then go to cashshop to not leech your exp, by having a buff mule you basically have that kind of player (which you wouldn't be able to get in any other way) in your party.

"But what about the time people spent on the mules?" Yes people spent a lot of time on mules, but to be honest the rules do not strictly allow multiclienting, "Anything that is used to help gain an advantage" I would argue that this rule banes multiclienting, as multiclienting is getting around the restriction of 1 game open at a time, you are using a 3rd party software to get around a game restriction to gain an advantage. But I do agree that it's unfortunate that players spent a lot of time on those mules which aren't going to be valuable after the ban, So, I suggest giving a compensation of some sort, people with buff mules would apply for the compensation, and it will be given on a player per player basis. Or maybe Arnah can figure a way to give the compensation automatically to those using multiclienting.

"But how will we enforce that? People will just get around that!" I suggest the rule itself to be 1 Character at a time per person, and the way to enforce it would be 1 Connection per IP at the same time. Yes people can get around that, but people can get around most of the rules, our purpose is to make it hard for them so they can't abuse. This will also solve the problem of people using another PC to launch a client, since both PCs would likely have the same IP.

"But it will hurt the community! People won't play without multiclienting" We shouldn't compromise our ideals to please the crowds, If we just wanted to please the crowds phoenix would be v100+ and 10x rates. We could, however,  make the server more appealing to players with other stuff, like regular events, every 2nd friday there's 2x exp for 3 hours for example, ofc the numbers here could be changed, not too OP or unfair, just a cool thing for the community.

Edit:
Another thing someone pointed out to me, is that the people who spent time on mules actually already gained more by having the mules than they would've gained by not making mules, So even if multiclienting was banned, they didn't actually "lose" from it.

Edited July 2, 2020 by SHA2048

[Corona]

Yes it should be banned.

[Bobbrik]

Without a doubt.

[Tusk]

Yes, it should be banned.

 

[dumbz]

replace multiclient with link skills

 

[WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW]

46 minutes ago, SHA2048 said:

"Anything that is used to help gain an advantage" I would argue that this rule banes(sic) multiclienting, as multiclienting is getting around the restriction of 1 game open at a time, you are using a 3rd party software to get around a game restriction to gain an advantage." 

Should J2K be banned too?

[SHA2048]

2 minutes ago, WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW said:

Should J2K be banned too?

If it's used to gain an advantage then yes, otherwise no. Seems like a quality of life more than anything, some people like to play with controller.

Edited July 2, 2020 by SHA2048
rephrase

[WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW]

yes, it can be used to gain an advantage. 

How should we handle households with multiple maplers? 
Would Arnah have to manually allow those guys through the IP block?
How can someone prove, even if they have a real family member/friend playing, that it is still them playing the entire time?

[SHA2048]

5 minutes ago, WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW said:

yes, it can be used to gain an advantage. 

How should we handle households with multiple maplers? 
Would Arnah have to manually allow those guys through the IP block?
How can someone prove, even if they have a real family member/friend playing, that it is still them playing the entire time?

If you macro using j2k then you should be banned for macro, it's not different from other macro software.
Arnah would have to manually add people though IP blocks although the cases are very very uncommon, I actually don't know of players who play from the same household.
Probably at first let them play with 2 accs and then see if they just use 1 acc as buff mule.
Same with accshare, how do we prove it's 2 different people? we look at their actions.

[Pdogg]

BAN!

[Bellocringe]

Definitely moved to the side of the fence that multiclient is against the spirit of the game entirely. It promotes efficientstory too much which I think hampers the simplicity of the old ms experience. I think the fm used to be a legitimate reason to allow it, but now that we have merchant stores that isn't really the case anymore. I don't think any particular compensation should be issued, either, as this was already almost a rule when Arnah last appended them. I don't think anyone has a reason to worry about the player count either, as with these mules the numbers are quite inaccurate as it stands. No multiclient means harder to hog up bosses, ideal training spots, no more "playing another pc with your feet for an hour accidentally healing a dead mule at squids". I don't see much of a downside at this point.

[manfroy]

imagine arnah having time to add regular server events

[Dusteh]

"You gain an unfair advantage from it..." - Everyone can do it

"You are using a 3rd party software to get around a game restriction to gain an advantage." -You could just use 2 PCs like people did in GMS. This does violate any rules. Again, everyone has the opportunity to do this.  Just say you don't want multiclient. Don't try to incorrectly use rules to make your point.

"If you want HB then you need to party with a spearman, if you need HS you need to party with a priest." - There are not enough players at end game to make this feasible. If this was a server with even 500 players, then there would not be a need for buff mules. Most people using buff mules are supplementing the lack of actual players. I'm sure everyone at end game would rather have actual players to play with rather than using a buff mules.

I'd also like to add that most people commenting so far are not deep enough into the game to fully understand the concept of playing without buff mules. The game was balanced around having skills like HB and HS in the game, and the population of GMS made sure that those skills were always available. In addition, there will be impacts on the economy. There will certainly be much less 10% scrolls available due to lack of croggers, and probably 60%s due to people not making mules to LPQ with. LPQ/KPQ will also suffer because you won't have as many people making alts; most PQs have at least 1-2 mules in them.

Everyone is arguing that buff mules make the game easier, but I would argue that it makes the game playable. This server simply does not have the population to sustain itself without buff mules.

Edited July 2, 2020 by Dusteh

[dumbz]

30 minutes ago, Dusteh said:

"You gain an unfair advantage from it..." - Everyone can do it

"You are using a 3rd party software to get around a game restriction to gain an advantage." -You could just use 2 PCs like people did in GMS. This does violate any rules. Again, everyone has the opportunity to do this.  Just say you don't want multiclient. Don't try to incorrectly use rules to make your point.

"If you want HB then you need to party with a spearman, if you need HS you need to party with a priest." - There are not enough players at end game to make this feasible. If this was a server with even 500 players, then there would not be a need for buff mules. Most people using buff mules are supplementing the lack of actual players. I'm sure everyone at end game would rather have actual players to play with rather than using a buff mules.

I'd also like to add that most people commenting so far are not deep enough into the game to fully understand the concept of playing without buff mules. The game was balanced around having skills like HB and HS in the game, and the population of GMS made sure that those skills were always available. In addition, there will be impacts on the economy. There will certainly be much less 10% scrolls available due to lack of croggers, and probably 60%s due to people not making mules to LPQ with. LPQ/KPQ will also suffer because you won't have as many people making alts; most PQs have at least 1-2 mules in them.

Everyone is arguing that buff mules make the game easier, but I would argue that it makes the game playable. This server simply does not have the population to sustain itself without buff mules.

I totally agree.

[WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW]

yea dusteh... we dont understand the concept of maplestory.... lol

[SHA2048]

"Everyone can do it" - Everyone can macro too, but it's still against the rules. Im saying it's exploiting the way the game was supposed to be played, and should be prohibited.
 "You could just use 2 PCs like people did in GMS" Yes, but again that's just trying to get around the issue, The game doesn't let you to open 2 clients so you buy another PC for it, doesn't it seem like trying to get around it?
"There are not enough players at end game to make this feasible" Correct, Therefore you shouldn't have those buffs, you're playing a server with 120 players, why should you get exp like there are 5000 people? HS is not required to play the game, people who play with priests have an advantage, that's the point of priest, if everyone has a personal priest then what's the point.
I don't think the game is balanced around buffs, sure they're nice, but they're not essential. They're nice to have and in some situations they're very good, but people like quit have been soloing for the longest time without any mules.

[Kradia]

I agree with basically everything Dusteh said.

2 hours ago, Dusteh said:

 You could just use 2 PCs like people did in GMS. 

Already using a second PC for all my mules. I have several old laptops available and I could use all my laptops for mules if I wanted to. I just see using 3rd party software as a much easier solution to this, than powering up and being surrounded with multiple laptops. It's not necessary to make things more annoying and tedious for people. That's why such 3rd party software should be acceptable.

2 hours ago, Dusteh said:

"If you want HB then you need to party with a spearman, if you need HS you need to party with a priest."

I'm sure everyone at end game would rather have actual players to play with rather than using a buff mules.

+1. SHA should know this firsthand. 

2 hours ago, Dusteh said:

In addition, there will be impacts on the economy. There will certainly be much less 10% scrolls available due to lack of croggers, and probably 60%s due to people not making mules to LPQ with. LPQ/KPQ will also suffer because you won't have as many people making alts; most PQs have at least 1-2 mules in them.

+1. The market is already limited and low in supply as is. This will only results in hurting the economy and market.

2 hours ago, Dusteh said:

Everyone is arguing that buff mules make the game easier, but I would argue that it makes the game playable. This server simply does not have the population to sustain itself without buff mules.

+1. The playerbase is low as it is. Mules make the server seem a little more busy. Do you really wanna go back to Phoenix being a ghost town with barely 30-40 people online? Without a doubt in my mind, I would quit all together if this were to be implemented. I can only imagine there are others with the same mindset.

Spending MONTHS and HUNDREDS of HOURS of your time making your mules, which by the way was a thing, just like GMS/EMS or any other official server.. only just for all that effort to be taken away so abruptly? No thanks.

This is something that should've been dealt with pre-launch. Not during a server's peak. I was around during CBT sharing my very same views on the issues of buff mules. Everyone was saying it'd be absurd to make buff mules on 1x. Well, here we are 2 years in. Because it wasn't dealt with, first thing I made was a HS mule, then HB and finally rage. Now people are tagging along making their own.

Finally, buff mules promote party-play. If nobody has a priest around, chances are, that most of the time, you wouldn't party up in a 2-3 man party because of the shitty party system. Personally, I find party-play fun. Idk about you

If multiclienting gets banned there will barely be people to party so hf with that 

In addition:

My mules took approx 4 months to make where it varied a lot how many hours I played. But let's just low-ball it here and say I spent 4 hours every day for the entirety of 4 months, meaning 120 days.

That results in 20 FULL DAYS of play time just for my mules. That's just low-balling it. For the people who wanna take that effort away from me, fuck you all and fucking do it yourselves

Edited July 2, 2020 by Kradia

[dumbz]

I am in favour of a yes, but only with a server wipe

 

[CattleRage]

I'm on the fence.  That's mostly because I'm against it on principle.  You shouldn't need more than one client to have the optimal experience in the cast of buff mules and I don't like the boss camping I've been seeing more of recently.

That said, I'd be a hypocrite if I said FoG/Coolies wasn't made much better with a HS mule.  I've also noticed FM being very sparse in general and I would imagine that would be made worse by a lack of mules.  With that in mind and also not wanting to punish those who've made mules, I can't say I'm wholeheartedly for or against.