Is banning a multi-client stupid?

[Sairek Ceareste]

Despite being who/what I am, I've never used multi clients to farm outside of having a warp slave/endow because it's highly inefficient and slow. I laugh my donkey off at the people who do it on origins too since flying around even without buffs yields more. I literally tested it against myself and then competed against a guildmember who swore by it. It's not good.

It doesn't put you at a disadvantage at all! The real party will beat the guy multiclienting at an MVP. Multiclient farming unless you're a pure warp slave multiclient literally slows you down. Link slaves? Just get a friend who is playing XIV or something to log a linker and hit you with it every 5 mins. People constantly talk about these advantages but I'm yet to have them spelled out to me. Just vague examples of "farming with more clients" - when my own experience tells me multiclient trains are bad, slow and frustrating.

The only issue I have ever considered with it, is the one guy who runs a bard/dancer in 6 parties at once. That's pretty stupid. Actually it is very stupid.

The rest of the time I just use it as a workaround for odd timezone shenanigans (hence the preference for warp fly spam farming). It's hard to find consistent parties if you don't have a consistent schedule.

So, in good faith, (aside of the bard/dancer in 67 parties) what is the advantage? Give me examples, do you have comparisons? Have you done the science?

It depends on the server, but for some servers that have party bonuses, most definitely. You get more total exp just for the people you have in the party in those servers, even if the difference is only 5% more per member or something like that.

I usually don't do it for long, but for servers that require marriage and have no adoption NPC, I would have instances of making 12 character parties to help farm zeny fast and level them all up to 70+ so I could splurge all the money to have them marry just so I can make my baby characters that I actually wanted to play, lmao.

Usually my farming method is to have one party farm zeny in Amatsu dungeon while another one is leveling using auto attack build with an archer on geographers or something for other toons to double-dip killing things for exp, then shift one party to Amatsu dungeon to farm Apple of Archers, Firelock cards, iron, star crumbs and white herbs to sell/use for later. Once both parties are easily sustainable, both parties shift into Amatsu dungeon for farming zeny. Once the merchant becomes an alchemist and gets a homunculus, they're pretty much off AFKing on their own for future brewing needs, and I only need to touch them to feed the homonculus or nudge them if there's an AFK timer.


It costs 14 million zeny just to make six baby characters (including costs of the marriage materials, wedding rings, etc) and twelve level 70+ characters to get married. It's rough.

It is a grind I'd love to skip, but sadly spending literally days begging in town just to get one character adopted with random couples, much less multiple adoptions, is even slower than just farming the zeny and character levels to make babies most of the time when multi-clienting is a thing. With how difficult and expensive it is to have the option to copulate, I'm surprised that the Rune Midgard population hasn't gone extinct yet.


I'm not sure if there's a more efficient way to farm (there probably definitely is), but I'm not interested in doing that. My way is to "speed run" getting married couples and the zeny for them as soon as possible so I can finally play my smols. Praise to any server that puts in an adoption NPC.

[OldPoring]

I agree that it is farming with a train of slaves that is inefficient. The best strategy has always been kill+wing+kill+wing. No need to exaggerate that everyone necessarily drives trains on servers with a permitted multiclient. Only long self-casts are effective, like blessing agi, sagе enchant, linker spirit and warps/heals.

I don't know if it was 400~500 people. Combined with vendors, and the fact I saw some people using at least 2 people, usually 3 or more though (at a minimum, their "main, a priest, and then a soul linker -- sometimes a bard on top of all that), and I'd wager the actual population was around the 250ish area. I was guilty of having up to 5 characters on at a time in Origins myself (the 5th character being another character I was leeching).

No, no, no. On Origins there was a section = players + auto vendors. The maximum that I remember was about 1100 players (with slaves) and 2000 auto vendors.
And I think, and no one will argue with this, the two most populated and popular servers of recent years were Origins and Talon - both with a permitted multiclient. So about what is more in demand among most players, may to draw a conclusion in the direction of the multi client

if it is a server rule you take it or leave it. It makes no sense to argue about it. Maybe it will work out for this server to get and mantain a decent playerbase with such an approach.
I wouldn't even think about joining such a server for several reasons not even mentioned in this topic. It is very easy to accomplish several accounts on different IP's, it's 2022 meanwhile. Then even if they could detect and ban it succesfull. It still would mean one or two very good organized groups will own the server completely. There is no way a single player can beat such a group ever with multiclient. Sure, some efforts can be reached and that is exactly where the fun is for lone wolfs. Though without multiclient they are doomed and it would be stupid to waste your time on such a server. Partyplay you can encourage because it will bring fun to play it like that but I doubt you can make this entertaiment happen by force. Many players couldn't even effort depend on partyplay because they are limited in time and don't want to be a depending 24/7 slave for partyplay. Most just want to have fun playing a game. That's what it is, just a game to have fun, not religion or something like that.

Then again, this server does give it a try in this one client only direction, so give them a shot. If it will work for a majority, that will be oke for me.

Very well said. I just want to say again why I began this topic. My argument is that it cannot be executed. As I have already given examples: a Priest is sitting in the town or on location with an original IP. And another player runs by and starts pestering "Why are you sitting here? Why are you buff/heal/warp him?". To which the logical answer will follow "It's none of your business!"

I'm already an old Poring and I don't want permanent "fellowship" from RO. Moreover, as I said, English is not my native language. I just love gameplay of RO, and by and large, I only need a good economy from the community - this requires a large population.
But at the same time, I would like all players to have equal opportunities. Forbidening a multiclient will not achieve this, it is simply impossible to control, especially with a large population.

[Holy Acolyte Kikuri]

The private server community has always been about different ideologies clashing and coexisting with each other. The beauty of RO is how well servers can be a reflection of their owner(s)'s personal preferences. Of course, if someone doesn't agree with the type of gameplay experience one server provides, it's extremely easy to try your hand at another one. Or, in some cases, find the effort and motivation to build your own server.

All this to say, I don't see what calling multiclient stupid does for anyone. Servers that want to disallow a gameplay system have every right to do so. There is a significant playerbase that enjoys multi-client being banned, and that is why the no multi-client servers have been successful. In the same vein, historically servers that allowed multi-client have been very successful as well. There are people who play RO for lots of different reasons. Some people are very strong minded about a particular feature and that is make or break for them - and others seem to be totally indifferent about it.

On the topic of multi-client moderation being imperfect, therefore it's stupid to enforce: this doesn't make any logical sense. To use an analogy, Windows isn't perfect at catching viruses. Does this mean that their efforts to make operating systems resilient to viruses is in vain? Of course not, it means they have to keep improving their code and whatnot. A server that bans multi-clienters may not be perfect, but I'm sure as competent moderation staff accumulate more and more skill at detecting users violating rules, they'll grow more adept at dealing with them.

Progress takes time and effort. I can't speak on all private servers, but Oath does, in my opinion, have some of the most professional staff I've ever experienced on any private server. I don't play there much personally ^{(I like 3x - 10x rates)}, but If there was any staff I'd trust to enforce their own rules proficiently and impartially, it would absolutely be them.

So no, banning multi-client isn't stupid. It's the flavor of RO that some servers want to provide, and it happens to be a tasty flavor to a lot of players currently. The owners should be praised for sticking to their vision and working hard to uphold the standards of their server. If enough people disagree with the trends of the most populated servers of the low rates, then now is the perfect time to rally dissenting opinions into action and make a new server that bucks those trends.

[OrdLordDaddy]

I personally like the idea of having only 1 client allowed but at the same time I always want to have a pure forger on the servers I play, and almost all of them never implement the Mercenary system to be able to level the character up and always come up with the excuse of "bUt It's a GuIlD EfFoRt To lEvEl sUcH ChArAcTeRs", which is nothing but utter s*** along the lines of "if you're homeless, just buy a house".

So for me having Dual Client enabled solely to have my merchant / pure forger is very important.
That's Dual Client = 2 clients.
Not infinite clients.

[Prussian]

I want to try to play on one server, now it has a hundred plus players, but there is such a ban. But I do not believe that people there do not circumvent this ban, so if I play by its rules, I will be in a disadvantaged position with cheaters. And cheaters are definitely there.

So your argument for cheating is that... other people might be doing it?

Shouldn't rules be followed regardless, and not ignored and invalidated when you suspect an infractor might be getting an edge on you?