Why is Account Sharing Bad?

someone could get to lvl 200 with 5 different people on 5 different timezones. 24/7 leeching. on a ranking perspective thats bullshit and unfair, but also why do you want to account share? if you dont have an HB mule or HS mule. then make your own and dual client like everyone else. its that simple.

 

The argument for ''dual-clienting, self-leeching and self-buffing" is permissible because everyone can do it; since everyone has the opportunity to exercise that right, it is okay.

The argument for "account sharing" could be argued similarly, if someone gets an online friend, a real-life friend or a sibling.

The argument for "hacking, ..." could not be argued similarly, because (a) people are not exercising that opportunity due to limited knowledge and skills and (b) it is putting the outcome before the means, thereby reducing the pleasure or reward sensation from self-achievement which (c) promotes server population and retention - since infinite anything, renders everything meaningless unless it is a sandbox server, but it is not. Server player retention comes from good stability, good community, functional features and a reason to play (namely, grinding/bossing to obtain/achieve/explore & interaction with other players to relax/exchange information/gossip/gain social prestige).

The argument if (1a) people do not have the ability to exercise an opportunity, then the activity should be disallowed - because it renders some level of unequal outcomes between individuals due to personal circumstances is not a good argument for rendering activities to be disallowed by the following consequences

(a) some people have better internet, some people have worse internet
~ this affects things like bossing, getting loot, disconnecting, xp/hr
- those who have good internet, get to X faster [level, class, job]

(b) some people have better monitors
~ this affects things like perception (refresh rate, colouration)
- those who have good monitors can react faster

(c) some people have more free time
~ self-sufficiency of financial dependence, economic dependence on others, out-of-school, vacation, no-work demographic
- those who have more free time, get to X faster, provided they value doing Y to get to X more than other activities

The counterargument to this, is that most of these circumstances are controllable for most people who play games like MapleStory, and that these are a part of an accepted range of circumstances which universally apply to everyone and we don't become 'envious' or 'hate' people for having more free time, better internet, better monitors, faster computers, better chairs (allowing them to sit more often), more washrooms (non-communal, allowing them to use it in-between grinding as opposed to scheduling), and various other miscellaneous first-world living standard factors which are taken for granted.

The argument (1a) can also be made to say that unequal outcomes don't really matter if it resulted from limitations of personal circumstances, since we accept this in daily life already. People who have more volition, or value certain things more, will play more and reach their intended goals more than someone who does not. The server is composed of many individuals of varying goals and people have varying levels of satisfaction about their outcomes (DPS, level) from their actions (grinding). Nobody argues against monotonically increasing outcomes from increased actions or efficiency of actions, as this is a given. Nobody argues for a maximum-time limiting system or energy-system to level the 'playing field' of working adults or studious students with freeloaders - therefore we should not argue against account sharing as the advantage in 'levels, scrolls' or any of the like results is quite similar from having more time - that is to say, we should not be selective in our discretion with our judgement in disallowing similar activities which lead to similar outcomes when the means are not any significantly different. The equivalence can be stated as such; a friend votes, a friend gives you NX. A friend leeches you for free. You leveled up your own character, you leeched yourself. You paid for leech in mesos. You paid your sibling in favours to level up.

Everything costs time, everything costs resources. Relationships requires maintenance. Doing favours and getting good repertoire for "Friend" perks also costs time & energy.
Therefore, whether you hired a chinese power-leveler, paid mesos for grinding, or got your sibling to do it for favours via account sharing - none are all the more "more" causing of a disadvantage to other players within the "competitive community" of players. Competitive players by their own nature will use every advantage that is possible to them, to a certain standard or adherent set of principles - and this set of principles are usually in line with things which can be done by anyone - while also preserving the integrity of said achievement (not based on bots, hacking or AI which scales nonlinearly with time). Competitive players are concerned with the relative differences between players within leagues that are obtainable. Nobody compares themselves to the Queen of England in terms of wealth because is not a comparable relative difference in the same way that nobody compares high school league players to professional seasonal television players because they do not overlap in ability, skill, aptitude or league. Speaking from this, it stands to reason that account sharing should be allowed since it does not significantly deviate from any other operations of time-use in ratio to damage/-level-output. Although, one can say that paying money for a trophy diminishes the inherent value of an achievement, and yet for some conspicuous reason, paid leeching is still permitted and the rankings do not ascertain as to who does and does not benefit from such activities, making pay2win arguments meaningless, and also renders "I can buy skill books" vs "hard-core iron mode mentality" meaningless.

If anything, a feature of separate league systems for differing conditions and restrictions would be more amenable and plausible for the competitive scene. However, I believe very few players are competitive in MapleStory, except those nearing the end of the level 200 trail - and even so, this spirit of competitiveness diminishes the community aspect instead of accentuating in the original MapleStory (solo + cube + ... inventions) by making everyone pursue the most-efficient means method of getting to X and ignoring everything else about the game. Although, it can be said to augment the community in other ways like bossing together, where these activities have to be communal to enter.


Sharing accounts is not a difficult activity. Buying leech is not difficult. Merchanting is not difficult. Grinding is not difficult. If anything, some players might not even care about rankings and would rather just share their account to access more MapleStory content or do more productive activities that are considered "fun".

The argument against sharing accounts is that it gives "GMs" headaches with regards to claims about hacking, whos whos responsible for what when something goes wrong, etc. However, when handling down the rule of law or set of rules - there will always be "gray" areas and "zones" about what counts as, and what is not, and what is an exception based on each individual case simply because no blanket rule works - in real life we say age 18 for consensual matters, legal matters, etc - but in reality we acknowledge that some alleged physical adults can be mental children, and some gifted children can be 2 - 3x their age in maturity. Therefore, it is moot in that sense of the argument; although one can argue it increases the workload of "investigative duties" potentially as to ascertain the integrity of the case of such matters - thereby decreasing the time granted to the server owner/ administrative team from doing more important things. Although this is also rendered moot if you simply say "you are responsible for all actions on your account - if you share, you break a rule, all are banned". This simplifies things, although simple zero-tolerance rules can also be the bane of many when it comes to more complex cases, however accepting responsibility for your own "sharing" of things is a common practice in the real world and nobody really argues against this as people "care" more for their own belongings than other people's belongings.

In an attempt to appease to the crowd and make the server more "tight-knit", most rules are made to reduce community tensions, like no scamming - and a plethora of other activities which detract from the experience, account sharing technically doesn't cause this on its own - but rather the individuals who pursue their self-interest while account sharing who "vote abuse", who "steal via social engineering" are the issue here.

However, one is to ask the cause and not the symptom of things. Why is vote abuse prelevant, why is X prelevant, etc. Maybe people want more NX items for cheaper, maybe people want to make mesos to buy potions - although usually it is more to "gain a one-leg up" on the competitor in goods like epic weapons, so distinguishing non-harmful from harmful consequential spending/exchange of NX is impossible, thereby a blanket rule is instantiated.

With regards to the case of additional issues caused by account sharing like stealing items via social engineering, this is simply the nature of human beings. No matter how many holes or patches you attempt to illegitimize the behavior, and attempts to denounce it, it will happen - that is not to say that it is futile itself to prohibit it. However, prohibiting activities can and does often cause "curious" people to do it more often. Now, why is account sharing a socially accepted behaviour - because it is quite non-consequential to most people. Even if one makes the argument that these individuals "access" things faster and "decreases" the supply of the market and "rankings" up high - that is not the majority of the server. For every level 200, there are probably 50 below level 150s, and 100 below level 100s. Even so, with the arguments I made above, technically it is really no different in the other legitimate means - buying leech, doing favours, etc.

After the analysis of this topic, I have come to the conclusion that account sharing by its inherent nature does not have any residual effects that are withstanding in prominence to cause lasting damage, and any damage is merely perceptual (in the sense of "competitiveness scene" of which - a communal-orientated server of mutual aid is unlikely to foster, even more so for an anti-cubing, anti-p2win doctrine, yet paid leech permissibility) . Even if most account sharers - are abusers [exclusive of the offence of sharing], that does mean the former precedes the latter - it merely means that abusers themselves [exploiting glitches, vote abuse, account stealers] simply show their most exploitative behaviours through the easiest means obtainable possible [not hacking, not modifying server values]. 1-Account usage involves a human being (which does work at a 1 to 1 ratio, not like botting), and multiple users using it is also a detriment to themselves. You do not get your own "character", you do have to use the same pool of NX, only one person can play at a time, and it has many other detractors as well.

Speaking as a level 22 mage, no, I do not feel my value is diminished if X, Y, Z got to level 200 first. I do not feel my value diminished if X, Y, Z got more friends, got more siblings, got more mesos because they got more time, because they cared more about relationships and thus shared, leeched than me. No, I do not care if they got 20 voters - that simply means I can get the NX I want cheaper. No, I do not care if they got godly weapons, etc. I don't login to check their "inventory" everyday. Even people who have godly weapons, as long as they don't PQ with me, "my integrity" for my "own" achievements are protected. You are only lying to yourself, and nobody else if you hacked your way to level 200 and deem yourself great. Some people really like the social prestige of "being first" or the "best". So in one respect, "vote abuse" and "hacking" and other more socially detrimental activities can be said to decrease the supply of "social prestige" on this server. Furthermore, people who get to their destination "Fast" are usually "bored" people in need of a quick instant gratification - so these people actually quit the server faster in my view - after they get their dose of social prestige or infamy from "insert, 24/7 leeching, 24/7 hacking (causes irreparable "easy inflation damage if duping"), 24/7 vote abusing, 24/7 account sharing" or what not have you.

And even if they got "Godly" weapons quicker because they "did X, Y, Z" like account sharing, and they did party/PQ me, this is really no different than a higher level 1 HKO mobs, or 2 HKO mobs, or someone who played Legends for 3 years on and off or someone scoring a lucky "epic scroll" and selling it for 1 billion mesos. Being 2 minutes faster in a PQ or boss killing as a result of association with said player does not affect anyone to a degree which can be said to require account sharing itself to be illegitimate.

 

Write my thesis for me thx

 

Definitely spoke my mind, well written. On the side note, here the admins are advocating a non p2w server which disallows real world trading but yet you can easily google and find individuals selling stuff from legends in the form of chaos & ws for euros. The irony comes in that admins are cracking down harder on harmless account sharing instead of cash transactions.

Perhaps i wouldnt even be half surprised if all these strict rules were just to create a pseudo monopoly for certain group of people to generate revenue through the game. The group who shall not be named.

 

Equipment sharing works in games like Ragnarok because you have the @protect command. Protected items can't be broken, traded, upgraded, etc. You give your protected item to someone else, and they can either use it or trade it back. The only thing that staff does, is give the items back to the owner if the borrower is not willing to give them back. I don't really know if this is possible to do in ML, but is a way to make it more safe.

In regards to acc. sharing, I think it's way too powerful with multi clienting. Having a HS mule whos used by many, many people deletes the necessity to create one yourself. In Ragnarok (I use it as a example, because they are close in age) multi clienting is like HP wash, there are things you can't do without it. Acc. Sharing makes it stronger because instead of creating 4 characters to multi client with, you only create your "main" and borrow the rest. There are a lot of things involved, and that's why they decide to just leave it as it is.

If I seem retarded is because I'm on my phone, sorry xP

 

tldr?

 

Too much drama involved with acc sharing. You're lucky native multi clienting is allowed it use to be frowned upon and you'd have to do it via VM. suck it up and make your own mules tbh.

 

hi