General Feedback Thread: Mules and Multi Client

SO...................Which more effect players?

1. Solo BOSS with 3+ clients? or 2clients?(shadower+bs)
2. one person hold a lot of channel mapowner ? such as stopper maps/ulu maps/area boss channels

I thought ppl complain multi-clients buz they dont' have map to grind/farm? Guess I am wrong, ppl care boss run more

come on ~~~tell me who daily solo boss with a lot of clients? LOL how many players u can name them?

I can't list 10+ ppl .... 10/2000 player base = 0.5%

Why we change game playing method after so many years and just effect very few ppl?



Even limit clients
still have problems

1. Limit in boss run only?
what about hold a lot of maps? and let u can't farm/grind when u want ?

2. Limit to 1 or 2 or 3 clients?
I don't think limit to 2~3 clients can solve all problems (map yes but boss?
Just go see ALL smega in game R>boss
ppl just ask u Bring 1 mule , NO ONE ASK 2+, UNLESS PLAYER SELF WANT (2clients still )
SO...........what's the difference if limit to 2 or 3clients ?

If serious want limit ,
I suggest Each person can only 1 client max , and only allow 1 pc to play

Spoiler: Don't look at this

nothing here u got trolled

 

Hello Vincent, thank you for always reaching out to the community and for listening to what we have to say.

On canceling buffs when the character is no longer in the party, I don’t know how this would encourage party play / discourage one from bringing mules. I believe many players have discussed at length in this thread that the most common mules are HS, SE and Crash. For SE mules, many SE mules are blood-washed (lv131~lv143), they are not meant to leech EXP from the boss due to the high leech level threshold of the boss. Even if it could leech, say a lvl200 BM used as SE mule, it doesn’t hurt the party to kick the BM mule one minute before the boss dies.

For HS mules, most players if not all would prefer not to have Bishops leech EXP from Krex or Shao. I would imagine that if HS is no longer possible by forcing Bishops to stay in the party and leech, it is still really easy to bring a priest as HS mule, or a low level Bishop that cannot leech any EXP from these bosses. For HT, a lv154 blood washed bishops might even be the next new meta for the veterans since it can't leech HT.

I think a better direction of change would be to buff the commonly muled classes (which in my opinion are BM and MMs) to incentivize players to run bosses with an active BM/MM and to no longer see them as SE mules. Bishop as HS mules have been around way before the muling meta as far as I could remember, so I don’t see it as part of the problem. (Though recently I am shocked to see megaphones recruiting specifically an SE with BS mule for HT). I think crash mules have contributed largely to the muling meta, what if we removed the cooldown for total crash? My view is that players no longer need to bring an army of crash mules into HT. Currently, in a 6 man HT, 3/6 people are expected to bring crash mules, which also means no one without a mule would be welcomed to join the run. By reducing the number of relevant mules for HT & Zak, it should take away the requirement that every member needs to contribute equally to the party by bringing a mule.

 

We are interested in hearing different ideas from the community. If this is what you wanted, I will make a note of that too

 

Now instead of trying to "nerf" this meta, why not just accept that with your next update and label these as mid game content at this point?
Lets us look at the bosses that mules are highly in demand for.
Horntail (Lv80) & CWKPQ (Lv90)

You can't bring a flimsy lvl129 BM into auf lets be real here, and that is something we can learn from
if we plan to limit multi-clienting, the right move is to make players to actually need to spend a good amount of effort to make it to lvl146 and wash the SE mule for auf's example. Not something that can be done in just 2-3 days of buying leech.
Top if off with a 2-3hour worth of prequest to unlock the boss.

Spoiler

Putting up a speed limit on boss runs will not solve the main issue on hand and it will just revert to range requirement.
I won't be surprised if we start to see veterans moving towards duo attacking
- 1x BS 1x SED
- 1x BM 1x NL
- 2x Paladin.

Players would probably finish Horntail in 1hour easily with the above mentioned party, and you will still be expecting similar problems with a side backlash from the community.

I'd recommend the staff team, be it Admins , developers, GMs or interns. to focus their free time on pushing out new content & bug testing , instead of discussing with players in game with a intention to change something that will eventually make your own player's effort feel wasted, or what they enjoy limited/nerfed.
I shared above somewhere in the first page, due to croosade's poor staff decision, look at how that server population had severely declined by dropping limitations.
Yes MapleLegends is a thing, its not too far behind royals now, and what i'm seeing here is something reaally dangerous.

-----
A "hard mode" boss run.
Pink bean.
include potion lock in that boss, damage reflect and of course our all time favorite game mechanic, a high base HP requirement. (yeah lets go back to the days where we complain about HP washing shall we?)

Horntail

Total HP: 2,730,000,000​

Pink Bean

Total HP : 7,650,000,000​

With the skill "damage resistance" from pink bean (Yes your 70k TT hits around 40k) , that forces players to build Boss % damage & Ignore enemy defense OR play with a large party.
New or veteran will be adjusted to recruit dps & active bishops as much as possible.

• MMs will finally be a competitive choice against BMs.
• Counters the staff's concern about "party play"
• Adjust the economy & with a new gear set.
• Increases the difficulty to mule unless player understands pink bean's animation & heavily washed characters.
• Mules level requirement will be significantly higher instead of lvl80

and for gods sake improve or implement the autoban.
The economy is nice and poor now which i believe thats what the staff team wants.
Yet CS/WS remains at 510mil.
cmon.

 

Just giving my 50 cent here.
So basically i agree multi-clienting isnt the "main problem", but it is a problem still.
It causes bigger gap between "pros" and "veteran + new players" or just made new comer quit this server.
IMO, pros dont equal to veterans. I considerd myself am a veteran , who stay at this server around 5 years . And even me and my friends (1 main bucc 1 who wanna main MM but forced to play nl and leech like dog ), were forced to made mules to recruit a boss runs.We wouldnt make mules if there's ppl main drk or bm to hb/se us while giving dps . Then it comes to why there's few drk or bm main in the server? Guess most of u would say its becuz NLstory or NL too op or whatever. But its just not true. Multi-clienting + leech with the hp washing system literally made NLstory.
Firstly , 3.2x exp made ppl ezily lv200 and ezily to make mules . Well many of u say "making mules takes a lot of times. " Define "a lot " here plz , i don think leech for some hours are a lot and sometimes u just buy leech , so wdym a lot of times ?
Secondly , the hp washing system let many of u can just get NL to 16k+ or even 20k+ hp , which let u can tank every boss . After it becomes NLstory , u guys saying nl too op bla bla bla . It is not OP if u cant make blood se mule or just str8 leech to 135 with full int gear. It got shitty dmg w/o SE and its hard to grind itself. Now u would say u need a lot of mesos to leech . No u dont, u just made a BS / mage to self leech aint u ?
Idk if u pros are aware that there are literally no new bloods in this server these days.
And no new bloods means less income for u guys , cuz basically the most income are come from those who are noobs than u .
Those who said "I would quit long time ago if there's no multi-clienting " are just delusional , becuz everyone don even have multi chars at the beginning, u guys just made a bishop or mage + hs to leech like a dog then get fund to make attackers , and now u want others who just come the server to feel the pain u got before or gtfo ? Does anyone really think about why ht books (especially tt30) drops like shit? Because literally every new players who wanna main a NL join the server and they found out they have to make mage/bs to leech like dog to get fund for their nl main. And to reach the range to boss u need more leech more funds and now even more mules ? This is just an unfriendly server to new players while those pros still being unawareness and play with same group / upgrading same gear every day. I don really mind multi-client tbh , i am here to say that multi-clients would just kill the server if it keeps going w/o any limit.
But just stop saying let ppl play how they want to play, cuz even some of u were forced to play NLstory and mage meta aint u? Do you really having fun while leeching ? Or u are just being excited that u would get more fund for ur main's gear ?

Then the main problem besides hackers is vote abuse , lets supposed there are 3k human begin playing this server which is way more than it really is , how the fk the vote got 2 times + than the population? (correct me if i am wrong ) ? Maybe Matt buy the robots to vote to make royal being top1 ?
And i am always wonder why u can vote w/o even login for a second ? People who arent playing at all can save their wealth as much as they want?

Another two problem i believe is 3.2x exp rate and new contents updating . So 3.2x exp makes pros can make a lv200 in 2 months or less if u got nolife , it also made making mules so ez for veterans + pros , don tell me that make mule to auf is hard , its not hard if u got hb mule, u just need to afk safe zone.

This server has been run for 7 years and yet it still have no pink bean, or new attack gear. Having new content can extend server's life i believe.
The new content here i am talking about is not something like neo-tokyo which doesnt bring big different. The only new item which is matter that neo-tokyo bring is Auf Circlet. But only few can achieve the ws goal then it ends up bringing nothing really new to this server.
So what i am thinking here is not just lv120 weapon which would come along with PB. I feel we need some new attack gear or scrolls .
We are stuck in shoes: fs/rs , glove: scg / bwg , cape: bfc / pgc with endless CS/WS scrolling .
New attack gears means pros would have to update their gear , then they would sell their equips to veterans with lower price compare to now , veterans can sell their avg. equips to newbies with lower price too. And make new scrolls can drop in PQ or farmable in low level area with low drop rate so that newbies have chance to get some profit from pros not let pros rip em off all the time . In this way it can gernerate the market, bringing new bloods cuz they find out that getting attack gear is cheaper. So u don have to leech like dog to fund urself, u can simply train/PQ with others at low level and get profit at the same time.

I think the most fun in this game is playing with others rather than just upgrading gears or max profit on everything . After all , if there's no others exist , who u gonna flex ur gear/achievenment to ?

 

Nerf auto hp/mp in the right manner and only the truly passionate will be able to multi-client at popular spots. I don't think being able to use the restroom during a Zakum run without dying is very good for gameplay, let alone doing it on 5 characters with ease.

 

I've got news for you buddy. Mutliclienting won't change this regardless.

 

1 mule is ok, more than 2 ? I feel like im still working after come back from work~

 

- Do you have mules? If so, How many and what do you use them for?
Yes. My bishop main turned into HS mule, my Bowmaster dps main turned into SE & Echo mule. I even created a TL mule but very rarely use it before I stopped playing. Mainly use them for Zakum and Krexel, occasionally Horntail.

- Do you think multi-client gameplay has contributed positively or negatively to your experience playing MapleRoyals?
Negatively. It drained my gaming experience as I needed to focus on a lot of things at once, eg making sure my bishop has MG on, positioning them, and sometimes it frustrated me to no end that I clicked the wrong client to rebuff myself.

- What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game?
For an MMORPG game I think having too many mules in the game is not great. It makes players become less party orientated. You could see new players especially of archers and bishop class shouting in megaphones trying to get into a party but they were never recruited, because mules have replaced them. What's the point of playing an online MMORPG if you want to try and limit your active party member?

 

- Do you have mules? If so, How many and what do you use them for?
In the span of my first ~8 months since joining the server, I've made:

• Bloodwashed SE mule - SE my NL main in bosses & sign CWK & be a mule for people if they can't find an active BM for their bosses either
• Bishop - HS mule and/or active BS in all bosses if people don't have/don't want to BS mule
• HS mule - door mule/HS mule for friends who don't have a bishop
  
• CR mule - crash in zak/ht for myself or for guild/friend runs
• I/L - farmer/leecher
• Bucc - soonTM TL/SI mule/secondary attacker
• 2 CPQ1 mules - carry my washing/bloodwashing chars without disadvantaging others or needing to buy leech. Messed up one so made another
• 2 CPQ2 mules - same as CPQ1 mules; one is level 56 and other is 64.

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

Overall positively:

• Making up for lack of gear - I started royals as an I/L mage and I was lucky enough to join a guild early on that helped me get started in Royals (free leech at Ulu/BF to help me level up to 4th job, bring me as solo mage client to CWK for bon, etc.). During that time, I'd never felt direct pressure to create mules other than personally feeling like I was a burden on others for relying on them to help me level up or bringing me along with little to no contribution as only an I/L mage. So, I started making mules to bring value to runs and make up for my lack of damage/gear. I recognize this does takes time and other players may not have a means to leech mules.
• Investing in functionality/options during bosses - As a whole, I've always been more of a casual player when it comes to obtaining money and upgraded gear. I chose to invest most of my money back into characters (e.g. washed BS) instead of gear upgrades because I value functionality of characters over gear. Since then, I've been able to offer my mules in my own boss runs when we couldn't find an active char with the needed skills. I recognize that this does take away from actual players joining bosses, but I use it as a last resort.
• Makes bosses interesting - Once I roughly learned a boss's mechanics, it got very stale/boring for me to run those bosses with a single client. With the ability to bring a range of mules into a boss, it added a layer of complexity to the boss that I value so much in keeping myself engaged in the boss. The most engaging/semi stressful was my first time BS muling HT while attacking on NL + CR muling. I live for these stressful moments , but I recognize most players may not enjoy this type of game play.
• Helping new players/friends - I enjoy helping others via my mules in boss runs for my friends and/or newer players who need a BS/BM/CWK signs to help alleviate that bottleneck in boss runs. Similarly to above, I recognize this takes a slot away from a player.

- What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game?
There's no single opinion I have on mules because it varies wildly on the goals of the player and what they want to get out of Royals. Aside from using mules to bring value as a new player and to new players as mentioned above, my main qualm with mules is when players are focused on profit.

As others have mentioned earlier in this discussion, players will always try to maximize their profits by bringing mules and reducing player count. This is not unique to Royals and will always exist regardless of what's changed. And, I won't be the first to admit that I've been guilty of doing this whilst working to achieve my own goals that needed money.

Overall, as others have mentioned, I think it's best to let people choose what type of play style they want out of Royals because any change will inevitably make one type of player happy, but possibly piss off another group. For starters, please get rid of the need for 3 crash mules by eliminating/reducing the cooldown This will help newer players, who likely have time but little funds, bring a value add to bosses for the older players, who have/want funds, but don't want/have time to invest in leveling a mule.

 

The worst part is letting those who don't actually play the game be the controller of the upcoming changes.

There will always be one class that out range the others, instead of making the other classes more interesting & practical, your solutions being, HEY let's nerf NL, still too good? K, let's force players to play unwanted classes!

How about that.

 

The worst part is letting those who don't actually play the game be the controller of the upcoming changes.

instead of nerfing or adding anything can we focus on :
Autoban when ?
RWT issue ?
Vote abuse ?
Class balance?

 

The purpose of this thread is to gather inputs from the players to shape a collaborative strategic plan. We want to improve the overall gaming experiences for the players.

In addition, the staff team is ACTIVELY focusing on every aspect of the game right now.

Yes, we're working hard on the autoban.
Yes, we're working hard on investigating the RWT/vote abuse.
Yes, we're working hard on the class balance.

While we appreciate the constructive feedback and criticism on the gameplay changes, please try to focus on the objective of this thread as much as possible. Feel free to use a separate feedback thread as appropriate to share your thoughts for other further adjustments.

 

HAI MORI

I recently came back to royals after a 3 year break (with no intention of coming back...so I gave away all my funds). Although SE and HS mules were a thing, crash muling and duo/trio/quad mage farming is news to me. I only have 2 real characters - a 16x bishop that I used to sell leech/fund my 19x nl. I wouldn't exactly call my bishop a mule since I had every intention to main it until I realized the advantages of playing a washed nl.

Fast forward to now: I was lucky enough to reunite with some of my friends who played with me 3 years ago. Now the problem is, I didn't have a cr/sed/se mule and my bishop wasn't washed to make it easy to multi in HT. Is it harder to find a party without mules? Yes. Does it make me want to quit the game again? No. It actually gave me new motivation to play the game since now I have something else to do instead of HT and afk in fm. Who would have thought that our favorite pastime hasn't changed in 3 years? I agree that muling is a positive thing and makes Mapleroyals unique. I am pretty sure it is also safe to say that if multi-clienting and muling was NOT a thing, people who I've played with 3 years ago would not still be here today playing the same game.

 

Do you have mules?
No, i just started few weeks ago.

Do you think multi-client gameplay has contributed positively or negatively to your experience playing MapleRoyals?
As a new player, it's clearly negative, but it is a two sided coin and removing it at this point is not an option, but maybe limiting it.

What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game?
Positive:
- possible boss runs & PQ, because of mules
- easier Mesos farming (duku leech & bossing as an example)
- long term playing reasons for people who accomplished everything on 1 character

Negative:
- new players find hardly a group for boss runs due to lack of mules, gear (dps), hp wash
- fake activity (~75% of all online players if not more are just mules)
- Mesos inflating (if you're not muling yourself, you won't ever have enough money to buy endgame scrolled gear)

If you didn't start as mage your best income are gold teeth, heartstoppers & daily voting nx. but someone who has 3 damage dealing accounts, will make in 1 hour through bossing more money(nx alone), than a new player in 3 hours of teeth farming. This creates an ever-increasing wealth gap and heavily inflates equipement prices which go beyond the basic 30% scrolling.
In my conclusion, it has gotten to an identity of this server, but it makes new players unable to EVER catch up to old players. Other servers have like random chaos or white scroll drops (1/7777) to help close this gap. This would promote grinding and not only leeching.
But as it is now, I and likely many of the new players will leave the server again, it's fun for nostalgia reasons, but why play a game where you will always be looked at as inferior to others just because you don't want to play on 5+ accounts.

In one sentence: As a new player there is 0 reasons to stay on this server, after they did everything they wanted from nostalgia, since catching up is impossible due to multi client inflating the market and this fake activity is frustrating.

Edit:
I forgot to add boss hugging with ~mapowner on mules to the negative list...

 

Do you have mules?
No, - I am also a newer player/returning player that forgot my old login credentials.

Do you think multi-client gameplay has contributed positively or negatively to your experience playing MapleRoyals?
Overall negatively, but I can see some positives such as leveling your own alt by leeching off one of your AoE classes+HS.

What's your opinion on the effect of mules on the game?
After researching on the 'end-game' of mapleroyals, I see a lot of people suggest HP/MP washing, and having multiple mules.

I am fine with the aspect of HP/MP washing, or leveling your own alt that's going through HP/MP washing through multi-clients using HS/AoE class+leecher, but having to multi-client on bossing runs is not fun from my perspective.
The thought of having to bring a mule with SE/HB/Seducer/CR etc, to bossing while playing your main character does not sound fun as a new player.

I also looked into how to make meso quick, as APR are expensive and HP/MP washing is also expensive, the meta right now seems to be selling leech.
I came across this video which instantly deterred me. I don't mind grinding but alt-tabbing to click 1 button on 3 clients, no thank you.

Going through some of these responses it looks like the people that created this multi-client muling environment are the ones that speak so positively about it, which is why I decided to create an account and provide my own opinions as someone who loved pre-BB MS.

In conclusion: once I learned about the effect multi-clients/mules had on the end game regarding bossing/economy, I decided to uninstall instantly as I didn't want to invest my time after work, to work some more playing multi-client-story/mule-story.
I am interested to see what the server does to address this.

 

Mules for bossing perspective:

If you look at people who say that mules positively impact their gameplay, almost every one of those posts are people who have a lot of mules. This is because mules are convenient and increase the individual rewards that these players want. And this is the mentality that veterans have because it simply makes sense. They want higher rewards for the time they put into the game. Why bother finding another player or a less optimal DPS class when you can just crash mule, SI mule and HS mule? And to be honest, I don't think mules can be removed at this point as they are already a major part of MapleRoyals.

My vision of mules is the ability to increase efficiency at the cost of attention and energy. Playing two accounts at once! But currently, I think it is way too accessible and easy for players to mule. Literally everyone can make a mule, take it to a boss fight, and leave it in the background until they want a free buff/crash. It's too easy. There's no danger. There's no drawback. And because it's so good, nobody even considers to do the alternative: recruit other players. And this is where a lot of players say "mules make veterans recruit less". Well, of course. Why wouldn't they. It's convenient. You get more EXP. You get more items. You get more Mesos. It's braindead.

The thing I want to change is the last element. I want to remove the braindead element but preserve the min-maxing essence of mules: better rewards in exchange for increased attention and energy requirement of the player.
And how we can do that is increase the difficulty of mule usage. To balance the advantages with mechanical disadvantages.

The first example of a smart fix I've heard is the removal of macros for mage ultimates. You want to 6x mage farm for more rewards? Well now you have to actually bust your fingers and micromanage faster. You need to individually press the ultimate skill button on each of your mage mules manually. Mechanical skill check. (I think this was already implemented? I don't play mages so I'm not too sure.)

Another possible suggestion is to remove the availability of safe "mule parking spots" on boss maps and/or to limit automatic HP potting item in boss maps to one account per person. If mules are threatened and mule owners actually have to pay more attention than regular players normally do, then I think the benefits are balanced. It makes sense, anyways. If you play more than one account, you should be expected to spend a proportional amount of attention and energy. Leechers/buyers shouldn't be affected because they would have their own auto-pot.
And this change isn't super hard to implement. Just a few changes to the boss maps here and there and the addition of the limitation as seen in event maps.
So what this looks like: 1-HP spell or attack from boss --> your main character auto-pots, you have to manually alt-tab to pot your mule. Washing your mule will let you worry less about your mule so people who have washed their mules will not have done so in vain.

"This is so bad for mules, why would anyone bring a mule then?"
High risk, high reward. The risk is the possibility of your mule dying and losing the benefits that the mule was supposed to bring. The reward is the convenience of not having to find another player with that class along with higher reward splits (less party members). So no, your mule won't become obsolete with this change because sometimes you simply can't find someone with SE or SI (during less populated server hours) or you want higher rewards. You just need to pay more attention to the game.

For the vast majority of times, players can decide between three options:
1) Actively playing to min-max DPS and rewards? Bring the mule(s)
2) Lazy and want to autopilot? Have someone else mule or find another player with that class buff
3) Lazy AND greedy? Then just don't recruit anyone and have a slower clear time

Chances are that the majority of players will just recruit someone because some skills like SE and SI and crash can significantly change the time spent for bosses and time is valuable! SE and SI classes are already sought out for but this change may increase the number of live paladin players in bossing.

tl;dr:
Mules allow people to minimize party size (and thus, decrease potential social interactions) because mules are beyond god-tier and give lasting rewards for little investment and risk. Allow mules to exist in the server but increase the risk such that players need to invest additional attention when using their mules. This will let the players decide themselves whether they want to invest more energy for better rewards (min-maxing) or autopilot and recruit someone else.

Whatever staff decides to do, just don't limit the number of clients to 1. It's a terrible idea.

 

The only way I see this working at all is if Duey is implemented and it's free to send items. I can get behind making it hard to boss/leech by yourself as integrity changes- but until there'sa safe way to transfer items between characters or they VERY substantially increase the inventory space of characters or amount of characters per account, any restrictions on clients would be a no from me, or I'm breaking out sandboxie/a VPN + laptop.