Link Skills

Alright this one's bound to be controversial but hear me out. Recent times have shown an interest in the staff and players of the server to create a valid alternative to the nuisance that is HP washing. There's a clear understanding that mechanics shouldn't simply be left alone to preserve oldschooly-ness, but should be modified as needed to create a more welcoming environment for players. That's why I think it's maybe time to open discussion about dealing with the other big problem plaguing old school maple servers: multi-clienting.

The Problem

Multi-clienting can be done to leech, get better farming map coverage, provide utility or extra damage in party play, and provide buffs. In the past, staff has made changes to multi-client farming or expedition play since they thought it was too powerful and needed to be kept in check. These changes have been meant to address gameplay becoming too easy rather than adjusting for quality of life improvements, but I think there's opportunity for that here as well.

Multi-clienting for buffs is a nuisance. The mechanics of having to run multiple clients and rebuff your main every 3 minutes doesn't make for good gameplay and lowers the accessibility of the game. It create a gameplay element around one's ability to manage windows and their system's ability to manage them, things which are completely disconnected from the game itself. In the case of multi-clienting for farming or bossing, there's an argument to make that one's ability to manage these things is a form of skill expression which can enhance the gameplay experience. However, in the case of buffing, there is no active component, your simply parking alts on a safe spot or in the fm and pressing a button every 3 minutes.

The Solution

That's why I suggest link skills. Link skills would work much like they do in the main game, except instead of providing a random buff or passive, they would provide any party buffs which the class has levelled. These link skill buffs would be self-only.

With these link skills, instead of having to level an alt on a separate account and then multi-client in order to access something like holy symbol, you could just level a priest on the same account, then get it for all the other characters on that account through a link skill.

Let's take the following account as an example:

• Page Lv. 40
• Priest Lv. 71 (Max bless, 1 HS)
• Night Lord Lv. 120 (Max Haste & Meso Up)

Here our page would have access to max level bless, haste and meso up, along with level one holy symbol through link skills. Now instead of having to multi-client these buffs, the player can just utilize them from the character they're actively playing.

Concerns

Now, this evidently creates concerns for game balance in expeditions or pqs. Normally slots are limited in such environments and buffs can greatly influence the classes which you choose to bring in. Obviously then link skills will not be available inside of expeditions and pqs to avoid destroying class diversity in these contexts.

There's also a concern for population being lowered. While anyone whose already playing on the server would know why the active population might be reduced due to such a change, new players wouldn't and would only see a lower player count over other possible servers.

That's all I can think of, but I'm sure there's other possible issues that could arise with such a system, not to mention the complexity of developing such a thing. I encourage anyone to give any feedback or thoughts they have on this.

Thanks for reading.