Agent White

Actually, there is a 'help' option under the Menu, they could probably overhaul that and add in a lot more to it. I've tried to use it as reference a couple times and it's just lacking (Though i forget what I was trying to look up).

more often than not I just go look up info on one of the wikis, but an in game reference would be nice.

Well originally, before the new Galaxy City intro, your origin would determine your initial heroside contact, like Magic origin characters always got sent to Azuria in MAGI. That's what that whole branch in City Hall under "new Hero Assignment" used to be for, which is now pretty much useless, except the portal for Recluse's Victory (I think).

But yeah, outside of that, it makes no difference except what Origins enhancements you can use. And there's absolutely nothing in Praetoria about origin and I don't think Villainside cared either.

I started the game up a month ago and mostly played with Praetorians, checking out Resistance and Loyalist sides. Before Freedom launched I made a Hero to check out the start content since a friend told me that they were going to change it up post-Freedom.

I'll toss my hat into the 'non-plussed' crowd now that I've played through it with a couple characters and have seen the previous stuff.

It's kind of cool and flashy, certainly, I liked the mini comic and that they gave you time to read it, and it's pretty exciting starting in the rubble and seeing all the chaos.

But it is short. I agree you just get kind of pushed through. I kind of like the moral choice that sets you as either hero or villain, but then at the same time I have to wonder, what is a fledgling villain doing in the heart of Paragon city? So that part didn't make a *ton* of sense to me. I mean unless the concept is that you're just average joe and this is how you gain your powers but then... that's a bit silly that basically all powered players 'spawn' from Blue Spectrum.

The fight with the Giant Shivan is certainly cinematic, but I also feel it's kind of misleading because it really doesn't teach you how dangerous giant monsters are and kind of sets a standard for giant monsters, where so far, they're really not that common and you really only want to even attempt them with a team.

it is a lot quicker and a lot less text heavy, but I think they kind of shove you through the door a little too fast. I mean the only real value of the intro as it stands is to start you out at level 2.

I haven't played through the Twinshot arc yet on my new Defender, but I did just recently finish Dr. Graves with a dominator.

I agree the Contact tutorials are too clunky and drawn out, teaching stuff that you should already know by the time you reach it. For one I think there's just too many characters, giving a mission for each character makes it plod along a lot slower. I liked the concept for the tournament, but having 4 different characters each with their own missions to go through kind of makes it drag, and I'm already doing other missions in the mean time where I'm learning about a lot of things it's trying to teach. I did kind of like one of the early missions, where the villains are all setting up for their own heists as a way to introduce you to some things like day jobs and certain functions like the hospital and market, though demonstrations would've been nicer instead of 'yeah here's this thing, it does this'.

The difficulty in some of them is kind of awkward too. I mean I am a new player so I'm sure someone more experience breezed through a lot of them, but like the mission where Crosscut is messing with the Snakes kind of chumpblocked me from the start because here I have a Dominator (very squishy) and I'm immediately jumped by 2 Boss monsters that really tear you up in melee. Or Omnicore's test where it's just 3 bosses consecutively. Or Zephyr's mission where he's invulnerable and the very first thing you run into (Though that might've just been bad luck on my part where he spawned, but still. And of course you're really meant to *run past him*).

Then you compare it to the Praetorian tutorial. It sets you up with how to target, how to fight, enhancements, missions, inspirations, dialogue, then you get the Aligment choice, quick boss battle, level up, and right out the door they drop you in front of a very friendly area with a trainer, dispatcher, day jobs info, merit vendor info, and enhancement vendor. It's all pretty quick, fairly tightly written and nicely informative and you can get going and play as you please.

The other thing that kind of bothers me about the whole destroyed Galaxy City as a major plot point is that you get tossed into this crisis, you get out of it and if you're villainside, it's promptly forgotten and you just go about until the killing game when it's all pretty calmed down and resembles something like Faultline or The Hollows. Heroside, the first few missions deal with the fallout from the crisis, having to deal with gangs trying to cause trouble in Atlas etc, but once you get going that dies down an things kinda continue on as normal. It just seems kind of clunky because most of the 'crisis' about galaxy city is contained pretty much in Atlas Park, outside of it paragon city is pretty much 'business as usual'.

Just hit the point where I can change/affirm alignments with some of my characters, changed a praetorian turned villain into a rogue and re-affirmed a hero, kind of working on what I want to do with others.

I wouldn't distinctly call it an imbalance, but after poking about the system, it does kind of seem like things are favored a bit more toward the pure alignments. Someone else said that the grey alignments feel like stepping stones onto transitioning to the other side and, ya, that assessment feels kind of valid.

Playing tourist really doesn't seem like much of an incentive. I mean, I turned the guy into a Rogue more on in-character reasons, cuz I just don't see him as that bad a guy (Even if he was essentially a Resistance Crusader) and he's a Blaster so I wasn't that concerned about any of the alignment powers. My dominator on the other hand, you can bet dollars to donuts I'm re-affirming him as a villain.

Alignment merits seem kind of nice, though not the 'end all be all' of rewards, but it does seem neat that heroes/villains get something they can work toward *for being heroes/villains* and staying those alignments now that we've got tips & signatures to acrue merits with. Rogues/Vigilantes, on the other hand, it seems more like all the rewards come for just changing into the alignments. Really, after that, Rogues and Vigilantes have no major reason to continue doing tip missions except to change, or if you *really* want to farm merit rewards solo but, at least on hero side, they hand out merits like candy anyway.

I think it'd just be kind of nice if there were some alignment exclusive contacts for Greys, or something exclusive to do for 'tourism' beyond TF/SF (Which, btw, is only if you're a team player. What incentive is there for Solo play?) Or even if some of the standard arcs had 'grey' choice options like Praetorian arcs do when you're playing Spy (Not that those *really* make any difference in the end [that I could tell], but it was still nice at least for RP purposes).

Though really, is it adversely affecting gameplay? No. The game isn't ruined or anything if nothing changes as everything is now. Would it be nice though? Sure. It seems like fresh ground for the developers to use and play with the potential.

Yeah, I'll echo some of the previous comments and reactions in the thread.

Ok first thing, I've only run it twice, once redside with a plant/fire dominator and once blueside with a ill/rad controller.

I ran into it first getting the ping from Alastor when I hit the right level. Ok, new contact, neat. I'd seen him before on the mini map and the name made sense now.

Now the first nitpick came when I *met* Alastor. I'd read that Task/Strike forces will override all other missions, you can't do anything while you're on one. However, I didn't know you couldn't cancel out of one. I checked him out, poked at what was up, didn't mean to accept then was slightly miffed to find I couldn't back out and decide to do it later. A slight warning would've been nice, but I am just a newbie and a solo player so maybe someone else would've known better. It was also made better by the fact that the arc is only 3 relatively short missions instead of the 7 I was expecting at first XD

Ok so First mission, yeah, it goes smoothly up until you meet the Circle of Thorns dude you talk to and suddenly you're mobbed and have a timer and you're not really told what to do. I completely missed the 2nd exit and it left me kind of flustered, to the point I took a break for the night after finishing it (So, first run took 15 hours unintentionally).

Things went *much* smoother with the controller, once the cave in started I just hit my superior invisibility and scurried past all the mobs. I found the entrance to the alt exit, but I guess I took a wrong branch because I never did get the actual exit, I hit a dead end and by then time ran out. Is there any extra reward or anything for getting out in time? It didn't seem to make a difference, I just got auto ejected out and all that.

Second mission was better, though my dominator died a couple times when I had to run through all the mobs to get Alastor to teleport the MASSIVE mob of PPD (Lack of Seeds of confusion, that'll help next run >>). Controller had little problem, though it was the mission I learned that clicking on glowies will blow your invisibility XD Still, no deaths that time, just a bit of scuffing.

Third mission, I had agreed to help the Circle member so he tagged along with my dominator. Helped out considerably, though there were plenty of minions to get my Domination up, so he was more just icing, I just breezed through it and got all the nice rewards etc. On the other hand, facing an elite boss with a squishy controller with no immobilize... muuuuch harder, I died nearly half a dozen times, just running in, throwing everything I could, hosp, stock up on insps and back. Course popping up a full level regardless of all the debt was well worth it. I plan to run it again now he's a considerably higher level and he'll have Phantom Army >>

overall it's not bad, for a first try it's pretty interesting and I like the story well enough, it's a decent hook and has me curious for how it's going to evolve. The third mission map is *gorgeous* and a pretty suitably epic battleground.

Problems are pretty much as cited. First mission is probably the worst offender, once you hit the cave-in start you just hit panic mode and it really does not tell you what to do properly. had I known beating up pumicites would've extended the timer I would've probably felt better about it. A marker for the 2nd entrance wouldn't hurt either.

Second mission is pretty ok, the big mob villainside is a bit annoying but eh, if you know to expect it its not that bad.

Third mission is fairly solid, though I can see it being a bit of a brick wall for newer players trying to take down the elite, especially hero side where there's no help solo and, again, you can't back out of the arc at all. Really, first time through is probably just the 'scariest' because you've no idea what you should really be prepared for, after you know what to expect it's not so bad. In retrospect, like my Controller, I'd have waited til I hit 18 to have a better power set to deal with it all, so that's more on me, not the arc itself. Honestly same with my Dominator, though to a lesser extent, because I'd have had more group mitigation powers for those big mobs in mission 2. Really I don't see experienced players having any major problems with any of these.

So yeah, I guess overall I'd rank it like a B in general for both sides. It's got it's kinks, but in general, looking back, it's pretty fun and interesting and I'm looking forward to running it more with my other characters and trying again with the first two and bringing a friend along, and I'm looking forward to the next 6 installments.

Kind of parroting what others have said.

But basically, the Fame meter is your gauge as to how many more missions you can do to accrue alignment points. Every alignment mission earns you 1 piece of fame and 1 alignment point. The trick is that you cannot earn alignment points if you have a maxed fame meter (5). You have to wait for the fame to fade before you can earn more, which, as said, takes 20 hours per fame point. So assuming you do 5 in a row you still have to wait a full day to do the remaining 5 and then you'll need 1 more tip to do the Morality mission.

The system goes in a cycle too. Hero -> Vigilante -> Villain -> Rogue -> Hero ad naseum. You can't go backwards either, You can never go from Hero to Rogue or from Villain to Vigilante directly.

Just read up on this last night actually, working to re-affirm one Hero and move a fresh Praetorian Villain over to Rogue.


I will have to say it does seem like there could be a few extra goodies or content for doing the 'inbetween' alignments. Maybe some alignment only contacts or something. It just seems kind of odd there don't really seem to be any 'inbetween' factions either, everyone is pretty squarely divided up between hero/villain lines besides the couple co-op groups.

I guess they figure it's a matter of quantity vs quality, but it still seems like they could toss in some more incentives.

yeah, I just got another one, so I'm sitting on 2 atm

Actually I'm not sure the cap for the final arcs in Neutropolis is 20. Everything I've seen *says* 20, but with my Mastermind I was able to run through everything in the Power and Responsibility arcs (including the 2 final alignment choices in each) and I never overleveled any of the contacts, by the time I was done I was level 22 and hit up First Ward.

Both Calvin Scott and Provost Marchand (loyalist 'head' contact) will encourage you to play along and switch sides so you can go deep undercover and do missions for the 'extremist' sects of each side, where you'll get options to call them up and turn things in the other side's favor. Going through all the Nova Praetoria Warden contacts will present you with a similar moral choice and similar advice. Otherwise you can only access the Moderate contacts for the opposing side. Especially Resistance, because you can't even meet Crusader contacts without being considered Resistance aligned. Some Power contacts can be found hanging outside, but they won't talk to you.

Honestly, the only thing alignment *really* does is restrict which Sewer Access and 'Faction only' areas you can access (like the loyalist lounge and every Resistance HQ) and whether or not you can be introduced to Power/Crusader contacts.

In the end, it really doesn't seem to matter much who you side with or if you spy. As far as I can tell it doesn't seem to change rewards or overall story outcomes, and I've played a few characters through Praetoria.

(Though, I'm not *positive* on that. Cleopatra's Moral Choice involves Chief Interrogator Washington, who has an important role later on, so I'm not sure if it changes anything to kill him).

Yeah, villainside gives you some good chuckles, tho a couple missions are more irritating than fun, though it might be different running through on a different toon.

Yeah, just start a new character, you get a lil narrative and see the action as it happens.

It's really really short, honestly. They've compressed a lot of things from the old tutorial, and drawn out other elements into the 'newbie hero/villain' arc with Twinshot/Dr. Graves.

Just got hit with this bug too. Hopefully it'll be fixed soon, though if they can't it seems like the most logical step would be just that Widows get free Super Tailor access, if they can localize it like that.

Yeah I'm only a month or so old newbie, but the arc is definitely solo'able. I did it first with my plant/fire dominator. The Circle NPC helps a *lot* on villain side, though so does Domination >>

My hero controller, on the other hand, took more than a few hospital trips to take down the boss. Though now I've leveled him a bit and have Phantom Army I'm going to go back and try it again at some point.

but yes, you can do it. It just might take a bit

It's 1 of 7 because there are going to be 6 follow up arcs, as separate episodes. This arc is only 3 missions, not 7.

Hi there,

Sorta new player. I've had the game about a month and I've been playing around pretty much in Praetoria. Kind of waiting for Issue 21 to roll in before I jump into the Hero/villain stuff.

Anyway, I'm mostly a solo player, and I kind of curious about all the different archtypes. I know some ATs solo better than others, and its technically possible to solo with anything given enough patience. In fact of my 4 current characters I've had the least trouble running around with my Mastermind over my corruptor and blaster. I'm having fun playing around and experimenting, kind of going with stuff that seems like it would be helpful for solo builds. But at the same time, I don't want to get stuck in power sets that are just ok starting out and then crap out or just plain aren't that great.

So! The bottomline question is:

What powersets would you guys recommend for each AT for a solo build? You don't have to give me *every* archtype if you don't want to, if you just want to talk about your experiences running X or Y builds with whatever, that's fine. Just kind of fishing for suggestions and opinions.

Thanks!