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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Raid content ideas and desires
Mag7spy
Member, Alpha Two
Wanted to start up a new thread as plenty of people have different kinds of mmo experiences with raid content they have liked and disliked. I was curious what kinds of things people wanted to see in ashes of creation with it being a hybrid type combat systems. Or maybe ideas as well that might be cool for raids.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZfqaW5klpg0
Comments
Also, soft enrage! Usually games like to employ hard enrage i.e. hit a point and INSTA WIPE. It can be challenging for a group to make a boss progressively difficult without destroying the raid instantly. It also gives the raid more time to learn from their mistakes without making it a walk in the park.
I don't mind wipe mechs but I hate when everything can be wipe mechs if there is a single mistake. I like the chance for if there is a mistake a team still has a chance to win.
I love large scale raids.
I love working my way into a boss, not just loading into an instance and the boss is their sitting on a platform waiting to be killed (GW2).
I like having to spread out across the area and not having to stack for heals/buffs (GW2)
Raid wide mechanics are fun, the boss calling on minions is fun, splitting the raid for mechanics is fun.
I really enjoy engaging and challenging raids.
I think Rift did an amazing job on some of their raids. I loved being an aoe healer and having the raid spread out and get hit by an aoe dmg spell from the boss or environment and being able to heal everyone back up (with help).
I really dont like GW2 raids where its stack and slash, if youre not stacked then youre not getting heals or buffs and your DPS drops and or youre taking dmg and not getting healed or not getting dmg mitigation youre not getting "boons" as they call it.
But above all I love crawling my way to a boss, having to fight the "mini" bosses. For example a castle, working your way up to the throne room, having to kill generals, nobles, captains et cetera and finally getting there after weeks of learning the smaller bosses to get demolished by the King is just such a great experience.
I'm talking about more mechanics though, trying to have more discussion on what people kind of want, or just cool ideas.
Edit*
Let me think of something that might entice you a bit to be creative on it. What if it was like a raid battleground. Where you have one more more guilds fighting while also needing to kill a boss and deal the most dmg so you can get the loot, while having mechanics you need to deal with.
Here's a farm of one of the dragons with more pvp than farming. There's way less people than usually, but that's cause this was on a private server with big OE boosts and auto-buffer.
The mechanics are obviously very limited, because L2 just didn't concentrate on that in its design, but Intrepid can and that's what I want. Pretty much pvp around the boss' first stage and then you have either removed your enemies from the premises and can finish the super difficult 2nd/3rd stage of the boss or both sides wipe because boss goes crazy if there's that many people in his location during 2+ stage.
You dont dare to go further without calling up some friends to delve deeper. You get a group together and begin to work your way into the cave systems, hundreds of spiders, are attacking your group dropping poison clouds, the cleric is trying to cleanse, the tank is trying to pull all agro, the casters are trying to cc while the DPS are attemtping to slay as many spiders as they can. Theres a lull in the battle and theres a few more spiders to kill when a much larger spiders crawls out of a hole from above and spits a web at your tanks feet and engages the healers, tank is doing all he can to agro from afar while DPS is trying to maintain damage while not drawing agro. You slay the vile spider, but youve lost a healer...
From deeper in the cave system "Oh my favorite one has been slain! Challenge me and it will be in vain!"
Your group cautiously moves further into the cave fighting a few random mobs here and there when you come into a giant room with giant webs and all kinds of creatures spun up in the web systen. But theres no giant spider... Your group moves into the middle of the giant room and 4 very large spiders descend on your group. Larger than the previous "favored" spider. They begin attacking your group at will, taking out your top DPS, your healer has returned and does a combat rez, the tank is scrambling to get agro... what is the outcome of this group? Will they win? Will there be an encounter after these 4....??? Can you chop down the webs and search the bodies of the fallen if you succeed? Will you ever find out who was yelling? Did they retreat to give brith to more spiders?!?!? Do you have to go on an epic chase before they do?
This is the kind of experience I enjoy.
There should be bosses where you need to CC adds, and some where you don't need to.
There should be various bosses with soft, hard and no enrage timer.
There should be raids where PvP is a major factor, and raids where it isn't a factor.
Basically, if players can think of it, it should exist in at least one encounter - as well as many things we never thought of.
More to the point, what I want is enough raid content to enable the game to have an actual raiding scene, to attract raiders from other games to this game. If this happens, it will be a win for literally everyone. Those raiders get a new game to play, Intrepid gets income from them, PvP players get more high value targets, crafters get more high value work, and the rest of the player base get more top end gear/components ending up on the open market.
Players entering the hole and going down into the depths wondering what treasure they are going to find (almost akin to in elden ring when you go onto the elevator that feels like it goes on forever and you are just amazed at the environment). Eventually you make it and you enter into a massive room that seems circular with a hole at the center and upon looking down it you see some Colossal ancient Sand worm sleeping peacefully. In the room you are at the upper most part where it has 3 levels to it you can move down, though upon a player moving to the second level the worm wakes up and waste no time attacking. That not being the only thing with eggs around starting to hatch and small and large wormlings attacking the players.
Players needing to figure out what to do and where to go to attack and defeat it having a a set of mechanics and phases as well to it. Players having to be coordinated and scattered through the 3 levels with some hard dps on one level attacking and dodging skills thrown at them. One level fighting small and large adds to prevent them from moving down to protect the Mother worm where the dps are hitting apart of it. Another level Where players are worrying about mechanics and trying to stop sand from filling up as well as more eggs from hatching so the lower levels are not being further overwhelmed. Once that phase is over more sand fills up the area cause everyone to be one level 1 or 2. New mechanics pop up and its something that continues until phase three where everyone has to be on the top level. People beating the boss and the final mechanics and then getting that sweet loot lol.
Good mechanics , awesome fight, good coordination and memorable moments.
You would rather talk about RMT and p2w arguments not in the game, i can raise the dead as well lol.
Having to properly position the boss and battlefield positioning. Have to kill the small adds in the right place at the right time. The boss will enrage for a time and killing the proper adds drops a slow debuff. Pulling the boss through the pool on the floor slows him enough to get away and for the enrage to wear off. failing this he just starts wiping people one shotting some tanks.
More boss positioning and group team work. This raid boss was bugged at launch but later fixed. Last phase you have to position the boss under the pylon and the tank will take damage if they don't position properly.
I like battlefield control fights with lots of stuff gong on. With or with out CC and add control. Just a few of the one's I liked over time.