I heard that an imm said he was happy with the invoker class and didn't see any reason to change it. Now who am I to disagree with the imms? Noone. But I do...

From an RP perspective within the game, I would say 'magic' is something that should be continually studied, explored and improved. New spells should be a constant goal of every mage.

From an OOC perspective, when I play this game I like to think about 'cool' spells I wish a class had. Adding new things to the game keeps veterans interested. A goal, like researching a new spell, can give otherwise bored players something to do. Creating a new spell would make anyone feel like CF is their game. Players might also think of some interesting spells the staff might not.

These are the positives. But the big negative is that it could take a bit of time away from implementor coding a new spell. There would also be more bad ideas than good, so many ideas would be shot down. This might offend some players.

Currently, the way players can suggest something new is OOC. It has been rumored that to suggest a personal reward in game is a way to insure you never receive it. I'm suggesting that the imms turn this policy around. I suggest that if a player wants to commit 100+ hours to a new spell the imms should give it some consideration.

This would be a monumental undertaking. Something that a mage, if he was lucky, could do once in his lifetime. And whether or not it would be successful might be decided by an imm liking the idea. And any new spell would probably be more dangerous to the caster and weaker on his foes than the creator had hoped. Such would be the peril of dabbling with untried magics.

So the question I have is, would the imms consider allowing players to create new abilities within the game?

I'd like to say this does happen to some degree. The spell may not be personally made but the imms do go out of their way to code special spells/tats/skills for great rp and longevity. Typically this is closer to the 300+hr range in my experience but it still occurs.

As for the player wanting to create a new ability, I would just suggest rp such a thing as much as you can for as long as you can and maybe you'll get lucky.