The 17.10 update brings with it a new raid management and instancing system that will allow players to come together like never before and get a much better overview of their raid forces.

Raid Interface

The new raid interface will allow players to manage the teams and individuals within the new raid groups. Players will be able to use the following features:

-    Assign leaders for recruitment to the raid.
-    Switch and assign players between teams within the raid.
-    Each profession within the raid can be identified by profession icons next to their names.
-    Manage a maximum of six teams together as one raid. For raid instances the limit on the number of teams will vary playfield to playfield up to a maximum of six.
-    Use a specific raid channel for communication.
-    Move the players health and nano bars to appear anywhere you wish on the screen.
-    See how much health a player has lost both by their bar and through a numerical display over the bar showing how much health they have lost.
-    Assign different loot rules including a leader mode where the raid leader can assign loot rights to anyone in the raid.

Raid Instances

In addition to the new raid interface and systems, several of the existing playfields will be converted to raid instances. The raid playfields will be tied to a specific raid group allowing you to tackle the content on your own without interruptions or competition. It will also allow you to start the alien playfield raids on your own schedules.

The first playfields to get this treatment will be the original alien playfields, Sectors 13, 28 and 32.

The old timers will be gone and the raid force will be able to start whenever they like. However, the raids will have timers that lock you to that instance after it starts, but that lock will be specific to the character and doesn’t stop others trying the instance at the same time.

The new, instanced versions of the alien playfields will be set to allow four teams, although this may change through testing. Likewise we haven’t decided on the final lock-out timers for these playfields just yet, but it certainly won’t be any longer than the current set timer system.

This new instancing will allow us to tune content to the intended number of players in a much better way in the future. You will see raid instances in the future for a variety of different team limits in coming updates and content.

We will be releasing the new raid system update to the test dimension very shortly and we encourage players to take a trip to the test dimension and check out the changes. We will of course be listening to the players’ feedback on this functionality as it’s put through its paces on test. This after all is a tool for all of you to manage your raid situations better as well as a tool for us to provide even better content that is tuned for raid groups of specific sizes. We are really looking forward to seeing what will be possible with the new system and seeing it help players find and organize raids much better.