Improvements for Afflictions

What's wrong with them?

Afflictions are a nice tree of magic. They hinder and make fights easier, but they can be rather niche. While being niche isn't necessarily an issue, having to sacrifice an entire homin's focus simply to hinder is more often than not deemed a waste; Better to have more dps or healing than to hold a madness link which would ultimately be broken after tapping W on your keyboard to get out of an enemy launcher's radius, or away from a melee ambush. Death is the best crowd control and is achieved easily by choosing more damage over afflicting an enemy with a piss poor form of crowd control, especially the more powerful forms like stun which are highly resisted, especially in PvP.

Functionality aside, a lot of afflictions are also currently very useless, particularly in the Offensive Affliction side.

What do I propose?

.: Changes to Link Behavior

To be blunt, I propose that the restrictions for maintaining a link be loosened. A lot. Not without some compromise, of course, but as it is right now, afflictions and drain magic don't generally last longer than 1-2 combat rounds before being broken.

To be specific, I think afflictions and drains would gain more traction if homins were able to act like any other homin could. With the exception of casting another affliction or drain spell, homins should be able to attack, cast spells, move, or generally taking any action without breaking the link.

.: The Counterbalance

Now, I know this is a major change, but I have a solution that I like to affectionately call the "Dungeons and Dragons Solution."

I call it that because D&D has spells that have a similar behavior: spells with "Concentration." These spells are spells you cast and concentrate on. You can move, cast other non-concentration spells and attack without breaking concentration. It is only broken by taking enough damage and failing a saving throw, casting another concentration spell, the enemy finally resisting your spell (if allowed by the rules), or by dropping the spell. Spells can sometimes also be resisted outright.

Currently, Ryzom has four of these things. Willingly dropping a link, casting another affliction or drain spell, the enemy resisting it completely or partially, and the enemy resisting it and breaking the link after it stuck. Willingly dropping a link and casting another spell that links aren't really a big factor, so we can ignore them, despite them only ensuring a sungle link can be maintained. The latter two, however, are the ones that matter.

Resisting upon cast and resisting while afflicted are good checks. They ensure not every hindering spell is successful, and give a chance to resist ongoing effects so it isnt overwhelming.

However, with the proposed changes, I recommend adding a saving throw, or check, to see if a link is broken upon taking damage. It might seem counterintuitive, now that you'd be able to throw out damage while linked and thus receive more in return, but it does add a layer of complexity and encourage teamplay. Additionally, you could break a link upon being stunned or slept or other disabling effects.

To give a few examples, Afflictionists would need to position themselves so that they aren't taking too much damage so they can maintain a link while also being able to heal or deal damage. If an ally is stunned, you'd be able to help by hurting the afflictor and breaking the link prematurely without needing to outright kill them, which can be very hard if they have attentive healers.

To put it into simple perspective, here's how ryzom seems to currently handles link behavior. (Excluding Stuns and sleeps)

Step 1, Initial Casting: Resistance check by enemy upon getting hit with an affliction to see if link is partial, full, or if the spell is resisted
Step 2, linked magic resist check: Resistance check by the eneny at end of each combat round or tick to see if link is broken
Step 3: Repeat step 2 until link is broken, then end.

What I am proposing is to add this:

Step 1, Initial Cast: Resistance check by enemy upon getting hit with an affliction to see if link is partial, full, or if the spell is resisted
Step 2, Damage Concentration check: ANYTIME the homin holding the link takes damage, make a concentration check to see if link is broken
Step 3, linked magic resist check: Resistance check by the eneny at end of each combat round or tick to see if link is broken
Step 4: Repeat step 3, go to step 2 whenever necessary, until link is broken, then end.

.: Changes to Offensive Affliction Effects

With the above changes aside, we also need to talk about the currently terrible lineup of effects OA offers. Currently, Madness is the best of the bunch, and Root has a some use if not being a little redundant with the existence of Stun and Sleep. The others, however, are really bad.

Blind.
It reduces your accuracy and causes you to miss more. It's currently a worse madness, causing a miss instead of hitting yourself.

I suggest changing it to a *major* penalty to range. Magic and ranged weapons wouldn't be able to shoot as far, potentially forcing close range engagements.

Slow Attack.
Lowering attack speed, it can lower dps but it doesn't seem to be enough. I can't really see a saving grace for this spell except increase the potency of it.

Slow Movement
Why does this exist? You have three whole spells that cancel movement. It's a skill point sink, nothing more. It'd be better off being replaced by something else.

How does this affect combat?

With a major change in behavior like this, it's surprisingly more of a quality of life change, and less of a sweeping change like adding new magic damage types would bring.

With the proposed changes, links have the potential to last longer in combat and work their magic more. You wouldn't be as restricted, but are more prone to having your spell broken.

With the proposed changes above, you could see an increase of only single target dps. Being able to attack or cast spells while maintaining a drain spell gives your dps an extra output bonus, but leaves AoE bombing relatively unchanged.

With the proposed affliction effect changes, you have new counters to mitigate magic and gun users with Blind. Slow Attack could be used to give yourself an edge in damage output with a higher potency.


Please let me know your comments and criticisms.

Why not just remove link breakage from casting / moving and leaving everything else as is?

Allow players to put 10 links on target if they want.

There is numerous reasons why OP request is a really bad change.

For this to work, you need to remove PvP from the game OR do a separation between the two game modes.

Please elaborate. Im always open for discussing details; it is only suggestions and nothing is final.

Why would you need to remove pvp all of the sudden now that you can move and attack with an active link? Links would be broken through damage, and how lenient that damage threshold or check is will be the ultimate decider on how well the new link behavior ultimately works.

I'm with Wirroy here. Please give some detail. At a glance, it sounds like you're simply afraid of change.

Sure, having links broken by damage but not movement would change the meta to one where kiting (whether ele or ranged) is more important than it currently is, but is that really a bad thing? I'm sorry, but I find the "affie, melee, heal your teammate" meta a bit stale after so many years. The only real change has been that item groups have made ele a bit less useful since it's so easy for your opponent to swap jewels once you find the holes that it's almost not worth using magic.

I'm not afraid of change, I don't play nor contribute anymore so do whatever with that game.
But you are warned at least :)

Once again separating PvP mechanic and PvE should be the prio if you want to touch the core of the game.

The idea against kitens seem good, not against players unfortunately, and if you don't see why; that mean you do not PvP (which is alright and totally fine).

What is considered "the core of the game" is a whole can of worms that we don't need to open here. For the moment, lets just say that there is no consensus, and the last few years have made it blatantly obvious that there are some irreconcilable differences in that regard that have geographical correlations strong enough that it's provably cultural instead of coincidental.

Separate mechanics would cause the sort of problems with design and implementation that would indeed require removal of PvP. However, finding mechanics that would work in both modes is more of a possibility than you think. But it's only possible if you do more than troll. If you can't offer constructive criticism then there is no need to pay any mind to your opinions and thus no reason to not change it no matter what it does to PvP.
That is precisely why we need discussion. As is stands, your position of complete, total, and utter dismissal of any sort of change gives the impression that you have no willingness to do anything other than demean those want the future to be anything other than a slavish repetition of the past.

Now, if you offered a more detailed rebuttal than "I think your idea is bad and I'm just going to laugh at you for even thinking it" then sure. But until I see you either spell it out or admit that you are simply trolling for the sake of trolling, I stand by my statement that you are afraid of change.