IDEAS FOR RYZOM

MAGIC STANZAS:

1) "Drain Sap", "Drain Stamina". Offensive affliction spells, directly draining sap or stamina of target.

2) "Drain Intellegence", "Drain Strength". Defensive afflictions, reducing given parameters of target and thus cutting off its pools of sap and stamina.

it's not that easy to add new stanzas into gameplay. one such stanza can dramatically change and destroy balancing of all other stanzas.

Not sure why you made 3 posts about all this, seems a bit silly when they could have been one or at the very least in the same thread (if you were not willing to work out of game to post). But to the point of my reply :)

Some of the stanza's you describe are in game and done by creatures. After doing every rite possible at this time, I believe that we were meant to get those through the encyclopedia system (bawaab rite comes to mind) and we would have then gained those skills (java disarming skill, frippos sap drain, etc.). Perhaps a completion of those would be a good first step toward new actions/weapons/plans.

Peace, luv & cookies,
Inifuss

Yes, my bad. I've been writing it in the middle of night after quite a busy day and had some serious lack of brain power. I was looking for a CSR to ask him or her to merge threads, but unfortunately none of them were online.

Example? Let's put aside general statements. Could you describe how exactly drain energy spells would destroy the balance? I suggest to implement them as afflictions. Hence they would appear as link spells, with all their benefits and drawbacks. They would do ticks, pretty much as DoT spells do, and not making opponent's energy pools dry within one second. And i see nothing wrong about drain characteristic spells. If there is already an ability to boost them with flowers, why there couldn't be debuffing spells?

And if your post was related to all three threads with suggestions for stanzas that i have created (i messed up those a bit, as i explained in my previous post), then you have to notice, everything i suggested is supposed to be balanced out in one or another way. Believe me or not, i care about balance as much as you do.

There's a simple way to implement new skill in a non-balance destroying way; simply implement them so weak that they can't change much, then over a course of months make them a little more powerful each patch, and observe how much they are used. Stop when you observe that they are useful enough to be used regularly, but not so much as to make other skills useless.

Even if you flunk it, the worst case scenario is that you get 'flavor of the month' strategies. But even then, isn't discovering a new strategy every month far more fun than using the same one for years on end?

It shouldn't be an argument against introducing new skills, imo.

Sure, this argument is ridicilous. Better get something new, than getting nothing due to fear of changes. Stagnation leads to death, you know. This law of the nature can be easily implemeted to any other environment. MMO game, for example.