Dynamic Environments in Raids: What Would You Like to See?

Xeph

🌙 As we look forward to the upcoming Ashes of Creation raid showcase, let’s talk about dynamic environments!

Imagine a raid where the environment changes as you progress—collapsing bridges, shifting terrain, or even weather that impacts the fight.

What kind of dynamic environmental features would you like to see in Ashes of Creation raids?
How could these elements make the experience more challenging and immersive?

Share your ideas and let’s discuss how the world of Verra could come to life during these epic encounters!

Rippley

Pardon my ignorance, but I am curious to know. Is the current plan for raid encounters to be open world or instanced?

Because that is going to affect my answer.

Ludullu

Rippley wrote: »

Pardon my ignorance, but I am curious to know. Is the current plan for raid encounters to be open world or instanced?

Majority will be open world. Potentially absolute majority of anything that's refarmable or has even semi-good loot.

Primarch001

I'd like to see one procedurally generated instanced raid.

For open world bosses I would like to see destructible environments. For example, if a pack of ranged dps are stood on top of a house and a Dragon nukes them with a fireball it would be great if that house exploded and the rdps went flying. Another example would be a large rock/tree getting tail swiped into the raid.

For raids on the open seas I would like to see severe weather that can damage yourself and your ship. Spouts and massive waves caused by a Leviathan or some such. Maelstroms than can suck you down to underwater realms, scattering your raid, which could get very interesting considering its an open pvp area.

Czeris

Changing terrain is always fun, like having pillars that can be knocked down or destroyed, opening up (or closing off) new avenues of attack. Elements of puzzle solving can be applied to the encounter this way. Bonus points if class specific roles can be integrated (like having a Rogue) pick a gate lock during a fight).

I think they've already demonstrated global weather effects, but, more of that.

Reduced visibility effects can add quite a bit to the ambiance and complexity of an encounter.

Taerrik

Would be kind of cool if we are fighting some kind of ice dragon if the magic attacks the dragon does impacts the areas its cast on. Such as leaving ice and snow behind. (Or if a poison monster causes vegetation to die out).

These effects could persist until some other event causes them to diminish or go away, like raid putting out fires.

Arya_Yeshe

Thanks for openning the thread, I was thinking about the same thing:

• Falling/Destroyable Bridges: Bridges that you can destroy as you cross them, preventing other parties from following immediately. This would require the other parties to repair the bridge first, giving your party some time alone ahead of incomming parties (theres a thread about this called Gated Dungeons)
• Lava : Any type of lava is good lava, would be cool having a huge building sinking into lava and starting to catch fire and your party has to climb all floors and fight a boss on the roof and escape
• Controllable Doors: Doors that you can control to alter how other parties progress through the labyrinth. Could be those lever systems and pressure plates on the floors, etc, that triggers doors and secret passages changing the layout of the labyrith
• Fall pits, with spikes, with lava, with chambers that have champion level mobs (gotta fight and go back and try again)
• Player activated traps: trapdoors, swinging axes, arrows from the walls, etc, woud be cool having levers to activate such levers and have clear vision on the traps so you could see other players dying, then you would use the traps against opposing parties and try to avoid killing your own party
• Endless Waves: Endless waves of enemies with increasing difficulty
• Mobs travel to another dungeon: their original dungeon would be emptied and the mobs would go reinforce another dungeon for some hours

Trust me bro, if I was a PvE designer then PvE would finally be good

Apok

I wouldn't mind seeing dungeons open and close from multiple angles, maybe when a river freezes to allow access or play around with dynamic water levels in certain areas.

RocketFarmer

I’d just like to use trees in combat. Both for damage and then for control. Trap set a tree fall so than when enemies are in positions the forest falls and creates a zone of death.

TopWombat

I don't understand how that would work for an open world raid. Once a bridge collapses for the first raid group, won't it be collapsed forever?

Leonerdo

World event with a shroud of darkness/damage that surrounds and slowly chokes off a Node or POI (like a battle royale wall), which acts to both restrict movement more and more, and as a soft time limit for the event.

Not exactly a creative idea, but there's a good reason that it's a staple of the BR genre and a fairly common trope in other genres. What will you do when your back is against the wall, and darkness is closing in?

rollox

TopWombat wrote: »

I don't understand how that would work for an open world raid. Once a bridge collapses for the first raid group, won't it be collapsed forever?

The falling bridge would be interesting. And could be used in several ways. It could be players do not interact to repair it. It is just on a timer like five minutes or some until it rebuilds.

Maybe the monster destroys the bridge to stop to raiders from crossing. Now the raid has to wait, and fight off any challenges that come to this choke point waiting for the bridge to respawn.

Or it could be as mentioned. The raid party destroys the bridge to stop others from crossing. And in the meantime a wandering group of reinforcing monsters arrive at the bridge. Making waiting groups have to fight the adds or completely abandon the wait.

Or the boss escapes to the bridge and destroys it, leaving the raid trapped while waiting for it to rebuild. Giving the boss to get controlled by a competing raid, or to relocate to another spot.

Or the bridge is trapped and collapsed as the raid group crosses. Sending the group plummeting to the rocks below, to be swept down the river and have to reset and figure out how to get across that bridge to the boss, or find another way.

darthaden

More than the environment I'd like to see random mob types and locations. Make the players figure out which mobs are what based on their gear and actions rather than knowing the healer is the second from the left before you even walk into the room. Make us react more than plan

Kilion

One thing that I 100% advocate for is giving players in deeper parts of a dungeon the option to take risks to cut of groups in pursuit. Lets say for example we have an former fortress of the Dunir deep within a mountain and are approaching the last chambers of the fortress.
There could be a side passage to an optional boss with subpar loot, that guards a mechanism that either cuts off the passage to the inner chambers or vastly reduces progress speed to get there for groups in pursuit. Basically the risk-reward in that case is not "Risk to wipe on boss = good loot" but "Risk do wipe on boss = less PvP competition in the following boss fights".

In another comment (or dedicated post) I made regarding this topic, I mentioned that dungeon events would be great, triggered by the order in which certain bosses are killed or IF a boss was killed within a certain time limit while roaming through the dungeon.

For example: In an abandoned mine you can go and defeat an Earth Elemental, the Goblin horde leader that has taken over the mine or a circle of cultists that have managed to manipulate the Goblins into mining for them. If you pick up some dynamite to open a passage in the Goblin quaters that leads into ancient ruins, the Earth Elemental (if sill alive) will start to move towards the breach and will seal it if he reaches it (the dungeon event). If groups manage to kill the Elemental the ruins part of the dungeon will open up with additional enemies and bosses or the Elemental will seal off the entrance but will leave his resting ground unguarded which may lead to another part of the dungeon.

Rippley

Ludullu_(NiKr) wrote: »

Rippley wrote: »

Pardon my ignorance, but I am curious to know. Is the current plan for raid encounters to be open world or instanced?

Majority will be open world. Potentially absolute majority of anything that's refarmable or has even semi-good loot.

In that case I would like to see raid bosses move around the world instead of standing in one place. If we are fighting a giant dragon, it would be cool if the dragon flew away to a different zone or area and players had to follow it and re-engage. Also I think the obvious advantage of open world raid bosses is that they can attack/destroy the nodes that players have built up, thus giving players an incentive to work together to stop them.

Mechanically it would be cool if ALL players, even low level ones, could get the tag on the boss and a level appropriate reward. If you are level 13 and a dragon starts attacking the node you are working in, you should feel rewarded and incentivized for helping.

Ludullu

Rippley wrote: »

Mechanically it would be cool if ALL players, even low level ones, could get the tag on the boss and a level appropriate reward. If you are level 13 and a dragon starts attacking the node you are working in, you should feel rewarded and incentivized for helping.

Participation rewards is not something Ashes is going for, so I highly doubt this will be the case.

Lodrig

I think some basic 'Push your luck' mechanics would be good. Basically as you go deeper you have the choice to take a modest reward and exit, or to go deeper and risk going for the full prize. This will let the whole place be harder overall without being excessivly frustrating and let smaller/weaker groups bite off the amount they can actually handle.

Githal

I would like to see SURPRISES!
Like you enter X dungeon to fight some boss. You enter the boss area and instead some other boss shows up with completely different mechanics. Or you get double encounter of 2 bosses. Or you doing some world boss and you get invaded by a goblin army.

Or for example you walking in a dungeon, 1 of the players steps on a tile and falls on the lower floor that has no map of it, and you have no idea what you will encounter there. The rest of the group should decide if they will leave you there to die solo, or will they jump down to try and explore together with you

Aszkalon

Xeph wrote: »

Dynamic Environments in Raids: What Would You Like to See ?

You gave a few nice Examples yourself already in your Opening Comment.


For Example :

- Wouldn't it be awesome if a huge, powerful, "almost" colossal Worldboss - in the Icy-Mountains Area - can CAUSE AN AVALANCHE of Snow with a mighty, powerful Roar,

a Roar so powerful that it stuns/"hurts" us Players a little bit when we are closer to the Boss than a few hundred Meters away,

and then we hear the deep, scary "Crack(ing)" Sound in the Distance - and from One or several huge Mountain-Sides nearby -> come huge Amounts of Snow crashing down into our Direction ?


We must take Cover - use these "floating Walls"-Spells -> summon "HUGE" Summons or something to buckle behind for Cover and let them take the Brunt when the Avalanches hit,

try to flee into the Underground or something -> or TRY QUICKLY our very best to climb some near Hills, Rock Formations - whatever - trying to dodge the mighty, chaotic Amounts of Snow ?





Or we could have :

- A Dragon who takes off into the Air - inhales deeply -> and turns the whole Area around and between us into a gigantic Sea/Area of Fire with it's mighty Dragonbreath ?


- One or several, demonic Ancients -> turning the Area around us into a CORRUPTED ZONE - > creating a Miasma-like Effect that hurts and weakens us more and more, the longer we are inside it ? Better defeat them quickly or we might get wiped out.



An Ocean/Sea Worldboss could cause a Tsunami - if the Boss is just powerful enough -> and if dear Intrepid's very modern Unreal Engine can create it ... ... ...

BackgroundDust

rollox wrote: »

TopWombat wrote: »

I don't understand how that would work for an open world raid. Once a bridge collapses for the first raid group, won't it be collapsed forever?

The falling bridge would be interesting. And could be used in several ways. It could be players do not interact to repair it. It is just on a timer like five minutes or some until it rebuilds.

Maybe the monster destroys the bridge to stop to raiders from crossing. Now the raid has to wait, and fight off any challenges that come to this choke point waiting for the bridge to respawn.

Or it could be as mentioned. The raid party destroys the bridge to stop others from crossing. And in the meantime a wandering group of reinforcing monsters arrive at the bridge. Making waiting groups have to fight the adds or completely abandon the wait.

Or the boss escapes to the bridge and destroys it, leaving the raid trapped while waiting for it to rebuild. Giving the boss to get controlled by a competing raid, or to relocate to another spot.

Or the bridge is trapped and collapsed as the raid group crosses. Sending the group plummeting to the rocks below, to be swept down the river and have to reset and figure out how to get across that bridge to the boss, or find another way.

That sounds interesting! Make a territory of a raid boss - his trerritory - his layer, where you need to strategize and plan your attack.

To build a bit on that idea and maybe go a bit offtopic, it would be nice to have raid bosses to actively try to defend themselves instead of being a sheep standing there for slaughter.
It would be really cool to see raid boss to be 'smart' - punish if DDs grouped together or if someone has low health for too long - finish that attacker. I think some simple AI wouldn't hurt too.
If you need to plan and prepare (beyond watching 5 min youtube about 2 skills that boss can use and what secondary targets you need to attack) then not every raid will be successful and every win will be that much more enjoyable and worthy of telling about it.