General Feedback Thread: Mules and Multi Client

- Do you have mules? If so, How many and what do you use them for?
I have mostly storage mules (something like 12) but I also have an AM and a HS mule I use almost exclusively to leech my (eventual) 30k sair side fun project. I don't sell leech or really use them otherwise.

- Do you think multi-client gameplay has contributed positively or negatively to your experience playing MapleRoyals?
Both. I think it's nice to be able to have a shop (the old fashion stand in kind) on one account, and an account you're grinding on at the same time, and I'm all for "snowflake" fun like my 30k sair. I think the places it hurts the game is how it pushes people to just make mules instead of inviting more people to a boss run and/or afk farming.

- What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game?
Options is always nice, but it's pretty clear the way people are doing things is affecting other players/the wider game which is when it becomes a problem.

 

I'm struggling to understand why this is even a discussion or change being considered. Multiclient play is one of, if not the sole reason that has allowed Royals the longevity it has had to date.

Let's consider these points raised above, in terms of how removal of multiclienting / mulestory would change the status quo:

• Contribution to alienation and an exclusive, solo-oriented atmosphere
• High barrier of entry for new players, specifically for Bossing

These are really two sides of the same argument - increased multiclienting and muling reduces the diversity and ability for increased collaborative play. However, limiting the amount of clients an individual can contribute does not translate to less exclusivity or a lower bar of entry for new players. The basis for mules are to optimize playtime. In most scenarios, why would any player choose to run less efficiently with weaker players than to optimize their playtime?

Without the ability to run multiple characters at once for maximum efficiency, range checks will more than likely become the norm. If I have to fill slots with a separate SE / Paladin player, I would either choose from someone within my friend circle, or the strongest players available for the fastest runs. How does this reduce player exclusivity and barrier of entry? All this will do is reduce the possibility of pure "solo" boss runs for HT / Auf, which at best is an accomplishment milestone, than a regularly optimized occurrence.

• Multi-client to sell leech or boss is not something that is fun or provides happiness

This is purely your own opinion. Each players' happiness is defined differently - some find socializing the best aspect, others enjoy farming for godly drops, some may enjoy practicing and mastering leech rotations, and some enjoy farming for the strongest gear.

In terms of the questions posed for discussion:

Do you have mules? If so, How many and what do you use them for?
Numerous farming / storage/ skill mules, predominately used for farming

Do you think multi-client gameplay has contributed positively or negatively to your experience playing MapleRoyals?
Only positive. Multi-client gameplay provides numerous options to extend gameplay for players in different lifecycles. If anything, single client game play is stale and not fun. There is no skill in one-key story, pressing spacebar / control to hammer down a boss. There IS skill and a sense of accomplishment being able to manage multiple characters to successfully down a boss.

There is also more fairness for players regardless of when they started their journey on MapleRoyals. New players have limitless opportunities to bridge the gap with older / veteran players based on their willingness and effort. They can choose to develop attractive multi-clienting skills and reap benefits across farming and building their items / wealth, unique attacker and skill mule set ups to increase attractiveness and efficiency across bosses.

Veteran players can reap the benefits of their invested play time across the characters they have built, and identify new metas and play styles. There is a continued sense of progression which extends the playability of this almost 20 year old MMORPG

What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game?

Positive. As the game stands today, there is zero barrier to entry and players can choose to enjoy the game as they wish. Players who do not enjoy multi-clienting can surely find other players that share these same perspectives. Players who enjoy min-maxing the game and optimizing for efficiency can do so to any extent they enjoy. We should not be forcing any group of players into a new normal where play style is limited to confirm to a minority.

 

Personally I see a lot of the multiclient problems more as symptoms of poor game design than the root cause. The use of multiclienting are really separated into two parts, farming and bossing.

On farming, there’s one reason multiclienting is really common and that’s because the fastest ways of making money don’t require any real investment beyond hitting 4th job. There are really three ways to make money, active farming, stopper farming, and leech selling.
For active farming, the fastest meso making areas can be farmed with a naked 130 with a wand for ulu 1 and a naked 120 for ice valley 2 and don't need to move for 2 mages to clear the whole map. For leech, it’s now duku where you require little investment and don't need to move. If value was shifted from these areas to more high level areas such as tot, and if higher level areas that were released had more meso making opportunity as opposed to the pittance you can make from neo tokyo which was the only end game boss area released, multiclienting would go down since you would need to actually gear up every one of your mages to be successful in terms of farming. What real sense does it make in game design terms that the best farming comes from lower level areas? Lower the returns at places like Ulu and Ice Valley and make it so you can get similar returns at ToT and Neo tokyo instead and multiclienting will largely take care of itself. Hackers also play a big role in making the raw meso generation of ulu 1 and ice valley 2 attractive since if there are any farmable non meso items that are worth anything, they crash the price by going there.

The best way to disincentivize stopper farming is to make it so that actively playing can get you more money.

If you really want to nerf multi clienting earning potential, do the thing where each computer/ip address can only hold 1 map at a time like was requested during the height of Lyka drama, so people can only effectively squeeze mesos out of one map.

On bossing, I've found that buff mules aren't that bad since every buff mule you add takes the place of a real attacker so it's a real trade off, unless it's an easy boss like Krex, where restricting multiclineting will just end up causing those who play characters with buffs to do their duo/trio whatever while everyone else has to wave their range around to get into a party or just suck it up. However, there is one mechanic that is royals exclusive that I believe is the most damaging change to the boss community. That is total crash. At face value, total crash seems like a great addition since it gives value to paladins, helps make runs faster, and helps cleave attackers such as heroes, dark knights, and shadowers find value since you never have a situation where both hands are low and the heads are cancelled so you can't do anything to sit around. However, the implementation was absolutely asinine and makes no sense. Slapping a 4 minute cooldown on total crash seems like a good idea to encourage more paladins to be taken on runs, but in practice it only effectively serves as a mechanic that incentivizes more mules. Total crash is the only commonly requested mule that requires more than one and even with a full party (or even two full parties!) of attackers and bishop and sed target, people will want 3 crash for their zak/ht. It's caused the requested mule count for a 6 person party for HT and Zak to go from 0 to 3! To lower the mule requirement for a boss like HT which is the gateway to the endgame, I would remove or reduce the cooldown on total crash so one white knight/paladin can always have one head off cancel. The only real downside is that people can more easily trio/quad or less zak/HT since they require fewer mules and clients, but those people were largely doing that anyways.

tl;dr
Don't touch multiclienting. If you want to disincentivize it then do the following:
Nerf mesos from low level areas while significantly buffing them at higher level areas
Possibly change mapowner to be computer or ip based instead of character based
Remove or reduce cooldown on total crash so people just ask for 1 crash mule instead of 3 for zak/ht.

 

- Do you have mules? If so, How many and what do you use them for?
MM+Bucc for SE+SI, Bishop for farm/HS, I/L for farm, Priest for non-leech HS, and bunch of other accounts for storage
- Do you think multi-client gameplay has contributed positively or negatively to your experience playing MapleRoyals?
Positive
- What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game?
I enjoyed improving my own and other party member's DPS by having SE and SI buffs for boss runs, and provide extra HS when needed incase a bishop is absent.
With that said, there were some situations in my opinion that went too far.
- One player multiclienting and taking several channels, avoiding others from using the map.
- The idea of requiring to bring a mule to join boss runs seemed irritating. But if you host runs, then your rules.
While I personally want to see some nerf in regards to bringing mule in boss runs, it is entirely up to the community afterall. No need for any changes if majority of people are happy the way it is right now.

 

This is an interesting topic and I hope my experience can help provide some perspective on whatever concern you guys are having.
Also, I appreciate that you guys are being considerate of our opinion by having an open discussion!




Do you have mules? If so, How many and what do you use them for?
I have a crash mule:
-I use him for Horntailing and speeding up Zak runs where we help players get free helms
-I use both my crash mule and bishop to help new bishops finish their HTPQ part of the Genesis quest

My bishop mule (which used to be my main):
-I mostly bring her along to be an extra res during the aforementioned Zak runs with low HP helmers
-She's also my APQ character preference because teleport and AOE
-I sometimes HS my guildies at Shao when finding a bishop is difficult
-I sometimes HS myself at Shao for experiments

I have an extra haste mule for APQ
-For the moments where someone R>3 runs instead of 4.

Do you think multi-client gameplay has contributed positively or negatively to your experience playing MapleRoyals?
It's definitely contributed positively to my personal experience and what I see in my guild community.

What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game? We are interested in hearing your opinions on mules so feel free to share thoughts and ideas beyond your answers to the questions above!
The long timers in our guild pride ourselves in being able to assist new players. Usually that means making in game content more accessible for lower HP and less geared characters. Perks like hyper body and extra bishops, crash mules make it much more possible. Let me explain.

In the free helm Zak runs for example, the players looting are usually low HP, we can either provide hyper body from a mule plus HP gear or if that's not enough, we aim to finish the run within 20 minutes, that way if they die immediately upon Zak's summoning, we can res, have their ghost float for almost 10 minutes, either time leap and res again, or have an extra bishop res when it is safe and ready to loot. Crash mules also help to take significant time out of the run.

If we didn't have an HB mule, I'd have to look for a DK to swap in and out of the attacker and looting party. If we didn't have an extra bishop, we'd have to look for a Bucc for TL. If I didn't have a bishop mule, I'd have to look for an active bishop player, which is totally cool except now we're looking at possibly 3/6 players who would have to be okay with not profiting off of the helms. Sure, if they are okay with that (some people are), they have to also be okay with the rest of the attackers being lower level (and often we have about 2-3). A lot of people go on boss runs for profit or speedy exp, so naturally they would look for parties with high DPS players, and that's just not how we enjoy the game.

My next example is Shao. Other than holding a button down with a partner that is sure safe to pull off the run with you, and letting the bishop take all the loot, there isn't much to it. That's just not very interesting to me. I enjoy experimenting with different attack pots, different party comps (so that I can go with classes that struggle a bit more), trying to beat my solo record. I've failed so many Shao runs, but they were fun because they were different and challenging. Most players prefer to succeed than to experiment so, I know better than to recruit an active bishop LOL

My point is that not everyone enjoys the game in the same way. The ability to multi-client and mule is not good nor bad, it's how we use them and how we interact with the community in general. If the concern is that no one plays bishops and paladins or that there is less desire to be inclusive/interactive (taking a stab in the dark here), then the problem is not in mules, it's in personal preference which is not really a "problem". Forcing that incentive to be particularly interactive just makes the game experience less of our own and less organic.

I know that in my own experience, and in my guild, multi-clienting and mules make for more inclusive/interactive boss runs but it may not be like that in the bigger picture from where you guys can see. I'm really curious what sparked your interests in this topic and if we're just living in our own bubble. I do have strong beliefs but I'm also very open to my mind being changed

 

- Do you have mules? If so, How many and what do you use them for?
HB, HS, Storage Mules, SE & I/L in the making

HB - Obviously to allow my attacker (or friends ) to survive certain bosses (Only Toad right now requires me to HB)
HS - For future archmage
Storage Mules - I hold equipment scrolls on 1 mule and weapon attack scrolls on another
SE - To boost my damage even tho I'd rather take an actual BM/MM on the run 100% of the time
I/L - To sell leech and fund myself (only because bishop became too high level and it's hard to find buyers)

Do you think multi-client gameplay has contributed positively or negatively to your experience playing MapleRoyals?
Both. Positive because being able to leech my 2nd character with bishop was a lifesaver as I wouldn't be able to afford leech or it would force me to sell my gear in order to fund. Other positives are transfering items to mule characters when your inventory starts blowing up and assisting in boss runs when crucial party skills are unavailable at the moment (SE, HS.)

Negative: I came back after over 30 months break (quit early 2018 because hackers/RWTers weren't being taken care of and I saw no point in trying to catch up as a fair player), however due to pandemic situation I decided to give it another try. Upon returning on day 1 what caught my attention were the smegas about bossing expeditions and I quickly found out that the game changed and went in the wrong direction. I used to be a proud member of Garbaggio HT runs and I gotta admit that was the most fun I've had in this game so thanks to everyone who participated at that time. Since my return early this year I tried to find HT/CWK party every single day as 180x NL and guess what? Nothing.
Every single message was either ignored or responded "You have cr?". Even tho I offered to multi-client on my bishop it wasn't enough. Every single host asked for either cr or pirate/warrior/archer signs for CWKPQ. After over month of rejection I started to create my own mules and it's horrible. I hate every single minute I have to level up characters I know for a fact I won't ever play just to fullfil those dumb requirements.

What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game? We are interested in hearing your opinions on mules so feel free to share thoughts and ideas beyond your answers to the questions above!

My opinion probably isn't popular but I'd like to see multi client reduced to 1 per person (2 characters total at the same time). It is ridiculous to see 9 out of 20 Voodoo maps taken by same person with 5 bowmans and 4 mages or Ulu maps being farmed by 4 archmages standing still and spamming AoE skills. If it can't be done, then I'd like to see reduction in the amount of mules in boss expeditions.

CR should be changed. As much as we all dislike weapon attack cancel on bosses, it's a part of the game. There are other ways to buff Paladin and if you really needed CR to be a thing, could atleast make it 150+ 4th job skill that requires to complete a proper questline. Also with cooldown nerfed.

Crucial skills like SE and HS can be provided by actual party members, but this whole CR thing completely pushed the meta in wrong direction and did not help Paladin mains one bit.


Just my two cents. Peace.

 

- Do you have mules? If so, How many and what do you use them for?
HS mule and CR mule.

- Do you think multi-client gameplay has contributed positively or negatively to your experience playing MapleRoyals?
Positively, I think @Jooon pretty much covered the ideas. It brings up a lot variety in terms of gameplay and some fun limit testing.


- What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game?
Correct me if I'm wrong. I feel like the main reasons people support forbidding multi-clienting in bossing are:

1. Lower the standards to join a run.
2. Encouraging expeditioning with more active players.

Honestly, I don't think banning MC solves anything here. The standards will simply be switched to another attribute: RANGE. If you are trying to force people to run with more active players by banning MC, I believe most will just go back to the tradional squad with most effiency, which is 1 SE 1BS multiples NLs. In fact, MC is actually what makes the server gradually changing from NLStory to more varieties, and it also let new players bridge the range gap with mules. Unless you want to argue that getting higher range is easier then making a bloodwash mule.

TLDR: Banning MC will do little from stop players from playing for effciency.

 

Only saw 1 with no mule. Would be nice to hear more opinions from those without!

 

- Do you have mules? If so, How many and what do you use them for?
Yes, SE/CR/SED/SI. Use all for bossing

- Do you think multi-client gameplay has contributed positively or negatively to your experience playing MapleRoyals?
Personally it keeps the game more interesting for me, it's more of a challenge to run multiple clients and do bossing rather than doing a single client
Nothing against people that do single clients but I think there's a place for both type of players

- What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game?
I love the use of mules, I probably wouldn't be playing royals without the use of mules. That keeps thing challenging but like it's fair to let everyone decide how to play the game and go from there.
It's also hard not to multiclient when you want to be bossing but possibly leeching on another character or even afking in FM

 

- Do you have mules? If so, How many and what do you use them for?
I have 5 mules, 5 archer mules that I used to summon farm stoppers.

- Do you think multi-client gameplay has contributed positively or negatively to your experience playing MapleRoyals?
In my experience it was positive. The archer mules allowed me to gain mesos without having to deal with selling leech. I could just log in and farm ulu2 while summon farming on my archers and get similar mesos per hr as someone selling leech. However, I get to play at my pace and not have to worry about efficiently killing monsters and giving good eph to the buyers.

Basically, they enabled me to progress on my bishop at the same speed as someone selling leech, without the stress of selling leech.

- What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game?
Overall, I think mules are healthy and good for the game and keeps it interesting. The use of mules allow people to think outside of the box and innovate new strategies which keeps the meta constantly evolving. This is much more interesting than a stale game that does not change.

That being said, I think that they have a negative impact on the culture of the game that makes things less "friendly" to new / non mule players. However, I don't know if this is the fault of "mules" or the fault of "players".

One thing that could help make the culture more friendly is to change game / boss design such that mules are not needed to provide such an enormous advantage.

Example: Reduce cwkpq start condition from 2 of each class to 1 of each class, reduce cooldown on total crash so that 1 is enough, etc.

 

They say multi client is bad for server, that it will exclude new players from boss run.

From what I see it, it is those billion meso items excluding new players from boss run.
Let me ask you, would you take a 3k range NL with HS+SE+CR mule, or a 12k range NL with nothing else?

(HP Washing is another heavy topic for new players. For now, let's just put it aside)

Instead of limiting multi mule, maybe we should put a cap on attack gears.
glove <= 15 att
cape <= 12 att
shoe <= 8 att
(whatever attack you / I have right now, you know what I mean)

Or, hell yay, give everyone same range and HP, regardless of level and gear,
now everyone is equal, everyone get to join boss equally,
everyone should and must enjoy the game now, right?

If anyone needs 'nostalgia', just set their exp/drop rate to 1, and APR/Gacha/Teleport/FastTravel/NX costs their RP.
Good for server too.

"I don't like it, so you can't have it"
"Some of us are vegan, so none of you can eat meat"
"How about a server wipe, since I didn't play in the past few years. I think it's fair for everyone to start equally."

 

These days i mostly play ironman, so i rarely have more than one client open (unless theres an event with a boss or something).
So instead of these days, ill talk about my experiences before i joined ironman.
Back then, i had a hero, an IL mage, a bish, SE SI and HS mules, and before the nerf to spawn farming i was in the process of making heartstopper mules. I also use a lot of storage mules cause im quite the hoarder.
I used to use the hs mule for my IL when i was doing self leeching, and i used my bish for low lvl self leeching and for hard bosses that need HS (ex: shaolin, toad, etc).
I brought SI and SE as needed in certain runs, and used my SI to enter as 2 in cwkpq.

Positives:
I liked playing on my IL, so having an HS mule and not relying on lazy priests that looked for free leeching was a big help.
Also, back then, buccs were pre-buff, so finding a bucc for a run was near impossible, that meant that an si mule was the only consistent way to have si in a run.
Having mules also made it easier to fill in spots in boss runs.

Negatives:
I absolutely hated every minute of making my mules, working so hard to self leech them just for having one sad skill to cast in bosses felt like such a waste of time by the time i was done.
Muling in general made bossing more clunky. When i started a run i usually opted to just get an actual character in the run (for everything except hs). But when i joined someone else's run i felt like i had to bring the mules.
I disliked this meta that pushed others to get mules to get the luxury of being in a run, that together with other factors (hackers, rwters, my guild breaking up, etc etc) led me to quit to ironman in the first place.


I personally feel like multiclienting is a part of royals' dna, and is too late to modify. people here have many accounts each because of how multiclienting works, so unless there will be a way to merge accounts, a change to multiclienting would be catastrophic.
But in terms of muling, specifically in bossing, theres a lot of room to talk about improvements so that we'd see more real players in runs instead of 1 man armies dominating endgame content.

 

What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game?

• Boss Runs: Makes it easier for some players while making it difficult for others

Increases how frequent and easily boss runs can be done for those playing mulestory. Such players can easily stay within their cliques without recruiting openly for boss runs.

This adversely affects players without mules in two ways.

Firstly, they are less attractive to recruit since they might contribute less. This is not always true and an experienced player could contribute in other useful ways for sure, but the recruiter can only quickly evaluate a person joining by their number of mules and their approximate damage contribution (range).

Secondly, players with mules and the right connections/friends no longer participate in the 'public market' -- that is recruiting/joining runs with smega. This makes it more difficult to get a public run going as well as making the quality of public runs poorer.​

• Equality? Meritocracy?

I've seen some relatively new players get well-funded quickly. Mulestory allows players to put in as much effort as they want into the game and in the process, be rewarded. However, this means that players who aren't into mulestory get left behind.​

• Extension of royals career?

Mulestory makes it rewarding to train multiple characters. For example, my level 200 shadower is infinitely more useful than a bloodwashed smoke/sed mule since it has way avoid and can do damage when I use it as a duo attacker. I planning to train a marksman as a possible duo attacker while providing SE too.
​

There are costs to bringing mules along boss or farming with mules. We need to spend time moving the mules, use more potions, train them to specific levels, do prequests on them, etcetera... But these costs are small when considering the reward -- more efficient and profitable boss runs. If we want to encourage muleless-story, then muleless-story needs to be more appealing than mulestory. Some suggestions I can think at the top of my head are:

Make it less rewarding for muling

1. Design boss fights to be complex and remove safe spots.
2. Simply set a limit to maximum mules that can be brought into a run?

If this limit was 1, there would be lots of angry players who have already commited to different kinds of mules. If this limit was 2-3, it would be easier to swallow for many players, but it wouldn't change the mulestory dynamic much since I believe players typically bring 1-2 mules in addition to their attacker.​

Make it more rewarding for not muling

1. Increase droprate multipliers if entire party is muleless

But could be abused by users on laptops? Though can just make that a bannable offence?
​

2. Scale the difficulty of a boss (add a multiplier to boss hp) to the number of characters participating.

This might be a tough pill to swallow for most players as it would reduce the profitability of runs vs just leeching. It would be interesting if it was a gentle scaling that only makes it slightly worse though. A potential negative effect could be emphasis on range though.
​

Hoping somebody comes up with something better.

Also, I hope if any changes are made, it would be done as an experiment. It might be difficult to predict what happens with certain changes and it would be best to re-evaluate with the community after everybody gets a chance to test any changes.

 

- Do you have mules? If so, How many and what do you use them for?

SE, HS, SI, SED, afk summon mule and zakum door mule + retired lvl 200s used as mules. I used them for all sorts of things - bossing, farming, dooring etc.

- Do you think multi-client gameplay has contributed positively or negatively to your experience playing MapleRoyals?

Overall positive. Using mules with multi clients allowed me to maximize the profits from farming and bossing.

- What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game?

It's a double-edged sword but more tilted to the negative side. Most of the players who were serious enough to invest their time in mules, including me, will say it had a positive effect on their gameplay. However, these are individual, self-centered perspectives. Mules and multi clients please the players and provide convenience above all things. The downside is that players are given the freedom to exploit the extremities of this privilege. In a capitalistic server, time is money. Mules & Multicilents in summary reduce the time one has to spend to reach the same goal. As players become stagnant and climb to higher tier positions in the end game scene, they inevitably prioritize the maximization of profits above social aspects. The size of bossing squads is reduced and mules are brought to fill in the replaceable roles. The gap between newbies and veterans becomes wider until newbies are implicitly forced to follow the same footstep.

Then comes the obvious question. If the pace of the gameplay speeds up in general, is it better or worse for the server?

Royals already has excessive equip drop rate (now around 12x ?) and channels. Any invested player with mules can farm/slay bosses at their desired moment. More bosses are slain and more Mesos are harvested from mobs as players limitlessly explore the benefits of mule/multi clients. This, along with hack/RWT, is responsible for the accelerating power creep in the server. It will please the individuals who reap direct benefits from their effort but in the bigger picture, the server is aging at an uncontrollable speed. More op equips are produced on daily basis and they lose their uniqueness over time.

If muling is disabled in bosses, new players WILL get more chances to participate in boss runs. Many objected that veterans will just pick members from their friend circle instead of recruiting a weak newbie. This may be true but the numbers ultimately have to fill in to make boss runs happen. Even if the profits are reduced due to the absence of mules, players still need to run bosses to gain exp and essential drops (Zhelm, krex ring, HTP, Mon). Despite the desire to run with strong peeps, there's only a limited number of them. If a middle-tier character smegas for Zak attackers and no high ranged character contacts the recruiter, is he just going to ditch the run when he needs the drops and exp? The recruiter will most likely work with what's available - the newbies who pmed. Without mules, this phenomenon will occur much more frequently and the extra recruits will cascade down to the newbies. Even if people refuse to run with weak/new players at first, the increasing demand of boss drops, due to the reduced number of runs, will force them to adapt to the change. People may begin to reduce the size of the bossing squads for more profit but they wouldn't want to spend hours against a single boss. They'll eventually find a relative equilibrium where the substantial number of participants balances with the profit.

At the moment, royals feels like Autobahn but with soft ground. Everyone is free to pace at an extreme speed but this momentum damages the road. Latecomers are forced to drive at a similar speed to fit the traffic. Drivers barely get to socialize because everyone is too busy trying to pace past each other or keep up their speed. If a speed limit is introduced, wouldn't ppl find this road more newbie-friendly?

Providing extra convenience is a great attraction factor compared to other servers but a limit seems necessary to stop the boundless exploitation of its benefits. Hence I stick to the 2 clients limitation suggestion.

 

For me multiclienting has mostly positive sides, i mostly use mine to do area bosses and im rewarded with more xp and faster kills.

That being said ive got one issue with a particular mule that imo shouldnt be a mule or Even a thing. What that is? Cr!

As player who used to boss before cr was a thing i had no problem with multiclienting.

Now id like to think that my 6.8k range nl is enough for ht but i rarely get accepted to ht runs for my lack of cr mule. I feel that for most people having a mandatory cr mule to get accepted to ht runs IS just wrong and makes the game less rewarding. Atleast having si/se mules takes some effort and you actually have to get past 4th job for those.

My suggestion is to make such a game changing skill to take effort to get and its original intention to Buff paladins to take place on a way you actually have to play The paladin for The skill to work. An attack counter that resets cr would do the trick right? Maybe 100 attacks between crashes?

 

- Do you have mules? If so, How many and what do you use them for?

I have a few. (2 mages that I use for stopper farming mostly when I feel up to it). My F/P mage initially, I wanted to leech on. But I scraped that idea when I ended up getting better for my bishop. When I was attempting that, I made a HS mule that I no longer use lol. (Bishop&FP on the same account). Sometimes, I consider my bishop a mule (depends on what I'm currently doing), even though it is the character I play the most. Characters that aren't even mules for me under normal circumstances (ex: my NL that i'm watching) can serve mule-like purposes. An example of this would be, when I'm leeching myself and at a busy map (like ulu2 because it's kind of a bias for me), feeling like dooring even if I'm fast is still a bit tense so instead of that, I just drop my inventory worth of equips I've gotten from the mobs to my leeching character and boom, can stay longer without risking someone possibly trying to snipe my map.

To kind of add onto that, I'm working on a crash mule. Slowly :joy:

- Do you think multi-client gameplay has contributed positively or negatively to your experience playing MapleRoyals?

Positively imo. It's comfy and I've gotten used to it. I might be biased though, because through playing other MMOs recently that have similar vibes of catering to what your party or friend group needs at the time, is a playstyle I've grown fond of.

- What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game?

If you put in the effort to go through the hassle of leveling up several characters for whatever purpose they serve (which, the more you do it, becomes kind of a drag) you should be able to do whatever you want with them, no limits.

 

Do you have mules? If so, How many and what do you use them for? I have sedmus crashmus and ulumus. bringing a total of 5 (including mages for uwu farming)
Do you think multi-client gameplay has contributed positively or negatively to your experience playing MapleRoyals? Welppppppp....If multi-clienting never existed, I'd probably be going to HT daily as my main source of income. So with that being said, it definitely brings a positive vibe.
What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game? Probably the reason why people can solo HT (I've seen dry solo runs before).
Peace Out Habibis I'm out <3

 

Let me share my story before answering the questions.

I started being active in MapleRoyals in March 2020 due to the Coronavirus lockdown. I started creating a bishop and my plan at that time was definitely to get to 1291 TMA as quickly as possible to sell skele leech. I pretty much sell leech in the whole year of 2020. However, in December 2020, the new meta of Duku leech became popular and it was trending. I did not manage to find any skele leech buyers for the whole month of December 2020. I felt frustrated and sad. However, instead of complaining, I started creating another 3 mages and started quad mage farming. It took me quite a while to have them all up to lvl 130 and I started quad mage farming one week before the Lunar New Year event this year. I kept practicing and improving myself that whole week. However, on the launching of the Lunar New Year event and the new patch/update, mages' skills were nerfed and consequently, disabled the ability to use a macro for skills: Dragon Roar, Genesis, Meteor Shower and Blizzard (Update 70). This caused a big problem and a huge headache for me as I created mules for multi-client farming for the sole purpose of accepting the very fact that I needed to change and get out of my comfort zone from single-client selling leech to multi-client farming or selling leech. Of course, it has been a month this has been implemented and I believe most multi-client farmers or leechers out there are used to the new nerf/update. This nerf, along with the reduction of drops/mesos in certain farming maps and reduction of drops of red envelopes in the recent event, has already punished a lot of legit multi-client farmers and leech sellers. I believe this move is sufficient enough to balance the gameplay for the rest and there is no absolute need to remove multi-client or mules entirely.

I sincerely hope that MapleRoyals team does not take out and remove this multi-client feature and the concept of mules from the game.


1. Do you have mules?
Yes

2. If so, How many and what do you use them for?
Farming: 4 Mages
Storage: Plenty
I was also planning to make mules for bossing purposes in the future. Due to this thread, I'm currently in a dilemma.

3. Do you think multi-client gameplay has contributed positively or negatively to your experience playing MapleRoyals?
Yes. Multi-client gameplay is what makes MapleRoyals different from others. This is also one of the main reasons I played MapleRoyals - being able to create multiple accounts and multi-client on one computer without the need of buying a few computers/laptops.
It basically makes my life so much easier. I can leech my own character without the fear of getting scammed, getting low quality leech or difficulty in finding sellers. I never have to be worried about insufficient storage in my inventory.
In conclusion, multi-client gameplay has contributed POSITIVELY to my experience in playing MapleRoyals.

4. What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game?
I feel that the positive effect of mules on the game is higher than that of the negative effect.

 

- Do you have mules? If so, How many and what do you use them for?
Bishop was my first character and am making a cr mule and soon ot be main corsair! Bs would be how i earn mesos to fund my corsair and cr mule....is cr mule.

- Do you think multi-client gameplay has contributed positively or negatively to your experience playing MapleRoyals?
Havent reached end game yet but definitely reduces the ease of gathering parties as its much easier to get certain essential/qol buffs like SE or HS e.g.

Cutting down waiting time and getting to actually play the game more is a big big plus

- What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game?
Keep it? I really dont see how it would be a negative seeing as royals will always have the same 'endgame' even after years and making mules is a way of exploring new classes and prolonging game time

 

Do you have mules? If so, How many and what do you use them for?
-I currently own: SED /2x BS /3x FP/ 2x SE / 3x CR / HB / and a handful of storage mules
-I use them for bossing and multimage farming

Do you think multi-client gameplay has contributed positively or negatively to your experience playing MapleRoyals?
-Without a doubt it has positively impacted my experience on the server
-The use and normalcy of multiclienting on a server like Royals allows it to stand out from the other private servers that have previously pulled the ability to launch and play on multiple clients at once.
-For end game players it gives another dimension to playing this game as "player skill" is put into play and distinguishes players from each other in this regard.
-Allows players to achieve things they normally couldn't achieve despite the amount of work they put in. ie: soloing ht, soloing auf, putting 100 mules in FM
-Gives newer players easier transition into mid/end game content through muling, offering crash/se/sed/2x attackers
-More active gameplay and removes the no brain afk hold Triple throw to win NLstory to a certain extent. More clients = more work to do

What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game?
I believe muling should be here to stay as it allows an incredible amount of different things to be achieved while making Royals stand out and be special among the other private servers. The depth that multiclienting provides us can be easily seen from our player base as each have their own "style" of multiclienting allowing us to distinguish each player on how they each play the game as well as allow us to push to new heights. For a 2D mushroom game, this "mechanic" has given us new ways to experience an otherwise stale 2003 game with only so many updates to be had.