Discussing the raid and instanced content in Ashes of Creation while also touching on some of the ways Ashes can deliver a story and challenging large group content while instancing! Let’s get a move on now shall we?
What are raids traditionally in MMOs?
There are two forms, really. But first, let’s talk about the form that Ashes of Creation is taking on. A raid in Ashes of Creation is a 2-5 normal 18-man groups merged together. Which means the potential for group synergies are dramatically increased. Leading to a much higher potential damage healing and tanking thresholds. Intrepid’s role for a raid group goes for killing higher difficulty world bosses.
Competitive Environments
Instanced games are most important when it comes to players to engage in and having fights being held in a contained environment really helps it to keep things engaging and challenging across the lifespan of the game. Competitive guilds are reigning these instances and getting the fat loots within are what keeps the players wanting to progress as the competition breathes investment into the game.
The more competition there is in the game, the more the people are invested to either follow the competition or participate in it themselves.
Narrative Instances
It looks like Ashes of Creation is aiming for are narrative story chapters that appear. As you reach a certain part of a chapter, you are required to zone into a separate closed instance to play out a story to a much higher quality in a cinematic way without interference of any open world vents on players.
Note that these instances can be completed with 1 to 5 teams. However, they are balanced for solo making them faceroll, unfortunately. The final scene of the story may have a group option triggerable making the whole thing actually balanced for five people rewarding you with a special title and achievement for completing it.
Instanced World Bosses
When a node develops into a Metropolis, a legendary world boss will be spawning. As the boss spawns, the location is static, requiring the players to go out into his arena or see sieges the node from a far. When he is defeated, instead of being looted, he retreats back deep within the ocean creating a huge whirlpool in his wake and gives out a lot of loot in behalf of the players who defeated him. At the last phase of the fight, it takes place in a instanced raid located in the middle of the whirlpool.
The mechanics can have ramping difficulty depending on how fast the world boss was killed which is something that Intrepid is planning to cooperate anyway. Meaning, that the raid instanced version tiers up and is cooperated in the raid phase. This will motivate the server to actually prepare during the open world fight instead of just reaching for the loot.
Having these single boss raid encounters would really allow the space their in such as people and positional strategies being utilized to overcome the boss. These raids should have a one week lockout similar to other MMOs to encourage a different level of motivation to kill the world boss version throughout the week.
All the legendary bosses could have this mechanic and could have stated 15 world bosses at launch and could potentially mean 15 raid instances to be tackled throughout the week every week.
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VIDEO CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
01:46 What are Raids?
03:09 Competitive Environments
04:34 Narrative Instances
06:34 Instanced Boss Phases
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