Oh right you're right about space brake.

You weren't paying attention then. MCing was done by virtually all high tier players back then, and as stated before concussions are relatively new. The space brake was completely unnecessary then because no concussions. And no collision code actually made it much easier to stay on target. As for monks, app ward monks could power and do decent HPS (especially under the old augmenter math) easily.

Final nail in the coffin? That is how I got most of my skills back then. Other players MCed them for me. Everyone is acting like MCing is new, it's not. The only difference is a ton of people quit and gave their accounts away so now to fill the gap people MC full squads instead of 2-3.

Space Brakes.... You really needed space breaks. Collision code or not, certain AIs or even players used physical weapons which back then still had the effect of pushing you. And, depending on what ship you were in and the amount of thrust, it was kind of difficult to sit still at less than 5 speed. You had to correct yourself in order to stop from flying off.

Mate, it's as Hober Mallow says: MCing didn't kick off till only a few years back. To MC when there weren't any space brakes would have been hell to DG with since you would have to constantly move after clearing a dg (It's not like dgs took forever to clear, even solo.) and even in uber content you would have to spend far more time than you do now trying to get your ship to sit still.

"Virtually all high tier players"? Hardly... we had a larger player base back then, enough to where there wasn't much of a need to MC aside for base slots.

But anyways, at this point it would be best to just embrace MCing. EVE has done the same by making it's launcher allow multiple clients to be launched. As much as it sucks you just can't remove or even try to kill off MCing for a variety of very good reasons.

So it's best to just see how you can improve things and work around it. Case closed.

Physical didn't have knockback at the time. And Shawn is actually right. I am sure I remember monks being mced before space break.

Hober, you're selectively reading... I specifically stated that 2-3 was common back then, and it got worse. So, no it wasn't as bad, however it was as common. Though most people shared accounts back then, vice owning their own fleets. 2-3 was very common, I don't know about 2004, but when I first came to SS in 2006 it was happening.

Higaran, you're wrong. Physical knock back is actually fairly new. Came along in '08 or '09 as I recall. I remember, because it fucking ruined catapults.

I mced a monk and sniper in 08 i think. The monk was a merc team monk....

Look at my account date, i have been off and on for awhile and yes there was Mcing but it was more of for base related things or healing after death not before. the only worry was tractors in terms of pushing you but thats not the point it was kinda frowned upon before and now its a must have. I like using a single client and doing my own thing and its soooooooo hard to do that now i swear after this last "patch" i almost feel like they want people to quit

SaP and Hiigaphiix too butthurt xD. And then they called me stupid when I complained and got ignored for when they fucked with bases. Seems like another ninja base patch made it in xD.

Just adding in that multi-clienting as in using two accounts or more to do content wasn't really a thing back then. Only for base slots or as a second shield monkey for the team to use.

We had a few team accounts on Toxic, like Polydectes which was used as a ShM for runs.

Earliest I saw of multi-accounting was 2005 where Octo used a ShM to heal his F2P, but I don't count that because he only had the F2P as his second account to harass other F2P.
Then again in 2006 on TFC, in which again they were only used for the extra base slots and secondary skills like EE or CA, prior to that the universe wasn't really large enough to warrant additional accounts for base building.

I don't think anyone here is saying "MC never existed before C2!". No, what we are saying is "Yes MC was there before, but it was never in such an abundance as it is now. You could once look at any random player and not have to even question if that was an MC/2nd account under the ownership of the same person."

I did say that regardless of knock back or not, it was still difficult to set your ship to a near halted speed and take into the account the direction of which you'd want to float too.

But maybe it was just me not being efficient at stopping. But then again, I came in 2007, around the time you say that knock back started to come in. Even throughout those years, you hardly saw someone being MCed.

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Anyhow, I'd rather not debate more on when or how MC was viable or not, it doesn't matter at all right now. What does matter is that MCing is very big in SS now. And I believe we can all agree that removing MCing is improbable lest we put SS to the grave the moment it is seriously considered.

What we should be debating is on how we can improve the player experience for those that do not MC and for those that do.

IMO you might as well start embracing MCing. Only way it could have been prevented is if SS had restricted loggins via IPs since the start. But the gates have long been open. EVE embraces it and I'm not sure what other games do, but I'm sure there are. And imo, there's probably not much you can do, content wise, to balance MCing.

If you try to balance it to where it's a challenge for MCers, then that will most likely mean making content more difficult to do which will in turn make content even more difficult on a solo player. Unless its content that needs you to be really active on a single client, you might as well continue to improve the experience around the solo player.

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TL;DR - Let's stop bickering about when or how MCing was viable. Killing off MCing would be like SS committing suicide. We should embrace it as some others have since it's going no where soon and debate on how to improve player experience around the solo player.

The main weakness of the MCer is the shifting battlefield. That is how Eve shuts down large scale MCing, and how MCing never arose on traditional fantasy MMOs. The player cannot react to the battlefield fast enough to keep swapping clients and power through.

One player with two accounts will almost always lose to two players with one account each because the two players react so much faster. This is why you never ever see people MCing SDs or Seers, and rarely see people MCing multiple Snipers and Zerks at the same time. It's always multiple FCs or ShMs, or a single active character backed by mostly non-responsive support characters. Only a small number of MCers have the reaction to swap between multiple non-FC active clients.

PVE is a completely different story. For most of the game, PVE is very slow. The first few times will be rough, but once you get the fight down, it's actually pretty relaxing. Relaxing enough for a MCer to reliably (client stability notwithstanding) MC 5-6 characters and do content far above their actual station in the game. Thermal reputably did Olympus in low end T20 setups when the same fluidity required high end T20/mostly T21 players. This is because the pac of the battlefield was relaxing enough for him to know exactly what needed to happen and execute that when it needed to happen.