jfp2004

ITF is one of my favorites, and probably the one I run the most frequently.

I love Hess, which isn't run as frequently.

The LGTF is fun, but I don't like running it too often.

I really enjoy Apex/Tin Mage, excluding the final fight from Apex.

The revamped Yin is a lot of fun.

Admiral Sutter's TF is fun.

And Kahn is also one of my favorites.

Citadel feels lazy, but I still hate Synapse more. At least Citadel has the advantage of letting you use more abilities. Synapse is lower level AND boring.

I don't think any of the upcoming Incarnate abilities should be something that's not directly useful for the character, whether it's passively or actively effecting you in some way.

I do think it would be cool to add mini-powers or something though. More things along the line of Incarnate costumes. Incarnate versions of travel powers would be cool too. Maximum speed run, fly, jump, or long-range teleport or your own personal TUNNEL system, etc. That would be an interesting addition, add some flavor to being an Incarnate, and not be a part of the 'main tree'.

I think having a mini-event of an apocalypse of some kind with a CoH slant on it (something a bit campy) would be amusing, but yeah, any religion mixed in with an MMO like this would be a bad idea.

I loved Red Robin. It was a great book I thought. Tim Drake is one of those characters that I've been following ever since I first started getting into comics in the 90's.

I miss him having his own book. I tried out the new Teen Titans, but it just didn't have the same vibe that it used to (but to be fair, that was kinda true even before the reboot).

But yeah, I am not a fan of the Nu52 at all. I'm not really reading any DC comics at all right now, and considering how much time I spent getting to know the Universe, that's kind of sad.

I just miss Stephanie Brown as Batgirl, or Booster Gold's whole metamorphosis as a character. I miss how Superman used to be - the newer stuff just seems to be too...off for what I was used to.

Considering I was only able to get one of the three packs before they went away, it would definitely be nice to have another chance to get them in the future.

I don't think the issue was entirely about visiting the contacts. Didn't he also say something about how the phasing technology makes it hard to do? I also don't see how they'd manage to achieve side-switching in a flashback format.

Don't get me wrong though, I'd love to see a Praetorian flashback system of some kind eventually. I just don't think it'd be as easy as making them call-only.

I'd say Mother Mayhem. That mission where you experience the memories of that one Seer in First Ward was hard to take. She's totally insane.

This has likely been requested before, but I'd love to get some of the hair-styles that come with the hats without the hat. The hairstyle from the firefighter and now the tri-corner hat, for one, would be nice to have, and there's others I'm forgetting as well. They look good, but the hats don't always work with my costumes.

At 5 PM, I should be available to join. I can't promise anything, however.

I also don't know if my character would quality or be of much use.

@Scitenik, Scitenik, Warworks T4, Rebirth T3 (+Regen), Melee T3.

Since I'm a Kin/WP Brute, my damage output isn't the greatest to begin with. Currently I have vigor slotted, but I have a T4 musculature I can slot as well. And I believe I have a T3 Assault Hybrid I can slot, though I'm not sure if it's T3 or T2. I'm working on getting a T4 interface but I need a VR and I haven't been running many trials lately - too many alts.

So, if you have others that are more useful/able to help more on the team, don't hesitate to take them over me, and like I said, I might not be able to make it. It's my main toon and my main badger, but she's not the best thing to take on trials unfortunately. Scitenik is also the only toon I have that even qualifies to run the Magisterium.

ETA: I know the trial fairly well, but I'm also prone to getting stressed out. I think I've messed up a few times on other trials. Nothing that jeopardized a badge run or anything though.

I like four person teams, and I like eight person teams. Most of the time I don't like it when content is based around a certain amount of people (for task forces, I understand why, but for things like holiday trials, I wish they would both lower the minimum and increase the maximum).

One of the things I didn't like about a certain other MMO that I played for a few months (which I wish I hadn't, since I missed out on the loyalty rewards and buying the Pocket D pack - boo!) was the fact that everything was based around the four-team max. That meant that for a lot of the content, you HAD to have a tank, you HAD to have a healer, and you HAD to have two DPS. I never got to do the higher-end content that let you have more than 4, because I lost interest before that point, but it was still annoying.

I like in CoH that you can pretty much team with whoever and whatever you want. Depending on the skill level involved, you can even do weird pairings and challenges. Like an all-blaster TF or an all melee TF or whatever. You don't NEED something, unless a mission or TF is specifically designed for having multiple AT's (like fighting Hami in the LGTF) or you're going for badges and want reliable roles to fill.

Agreed with most of the posts in here.

Praetoria is it's own unique universe with a different/divergent history, not all of which has been revealed. That's kinda what makes it fun. You can pretty much make up whatever you want.

Shoot, even in Paragon City/The Rogue Isles, you can come up with any concept you want. Alien from another planet? Sure, why not. Someone from another dimension outside of Praetoria? The more the merrier! Time travel? Sure thing. A clone of someone/something? An inanimate object turned human? Someone who just likes shooting lasers? That's the fun of a superhero universe. You can pretty much come up with anything. You can even disregard all of the lore in the game if you want and just make up your own history. I don't consider some of my characters Incarnates even though they've gone up most of the Incarnate trees. They're just really powerful heroes and those Incarnate abilities are manifestations of their own power (this is just in my head lore, of course).

And Praetoria is no different. Come up with whatever you want, play however you want. There's four different paths you can go down, or switch between them, or do them all.

I do agree about feeling trapped there though. They should just make Praetorians into a hybrid of Rogues/Vigilantes. Able to go to Primal Earth and go to any zone there, just not be able to initiate content outside of paper/radio missions. Still able to join task forces and all that, you just can't do normal mission arcs.

It does very well as a single-player game. All four of the storylines are well done, although some resonate with people more than others. The Resistance Warden and Loyalist Power arcs seem to be popular, and I like the Loyalty Responsibility arc as well. The only one I don't really care for is the Resistance Crusader arc.

But otherwise, like others have said, have a toon that you're comfortable enough with to face off against mobs that will be tougher than usual. For instance, Destroyer bosses (or if they're lieutenants via the difficulty slider) have mez protection, hurl, and footstomp. At a low level, that hurts.

The environments are beautiful and the story is supremely crafted.

It does kind of fall apart in First Ward and Night Ward though. Taking away the four paths and putting them on all the same track is disappointing. I mean, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed First Ward quite a bit, but I've yet to do Night Ward (working on that now). It's just not the same as the beginning Praetorian zones. There's a total shift in tone and even complexity.

It almost felt like a callback to the first Alpha mission, where you're unkillable and buffed to extreme levels. Just that this time, you're playing as someone else instead of yourself.

A depressing fate for what ended up being my favorite zones in the game. Oh well.

I was having this problem as well.

I was able to complete it though. You just have to be careful about using the AoE's, and you also have to wait a little bit when it says lost connection to mapserver. At least, that's what I had to do. Sometimes it'd freeze for ten or fifteen seconds, but then it'd resume. Very laggy, just like it was on beta. I hope that gets fixed soon enough.

On the one hand, I do think that the fight against Tyrant is annoyingly hard. It took us quite a few attempts on Pinnacle to do it, but now that it's been achieved once, it's happened a few more times.

I have to admit, the satisfaction I felt when the league I was on beat it (I think it was the first successful run on Pinnacle) was pretty high. That was a nice sense of achievement.

1) Like almost everyone has said, customization of the powers that we can't currently customize. I'd love to be able to turn off the effects for hasten. It doesn't always go with every toon's costume.

2) More hair options for both genders, as well as updates (while keeping the originals) of the older hairstyles to make them look better

3) More Praetorian zones

4) A total revamp of Peregrine Island, along with new content in the 41-50 range. There's a lot of stuff in the 1-30 range now, but the higher end content is pretty old and it shows in comparison to the new stuff.

5) A revamp of Boomtown

6) More Incarnate zones along the lines of Dark Astoria. Dark Astoria was very magic-oriented, which was cool, but I'd like Incarnate zones that sort of go with each of the origins, at least in regards to the enemies used and the overall tone of the arcs present there.

7) Praetorian ouroboros/flashback mission system

8) Bug-fixes, quality of life improvements, correcting typos...

There's a lot of cool discussion that made me think a bit about Praetoria and what could be done to make it more open to players/more popular in general.

But first, after what someone mentioned about how F2P has been used to "save" games and what might have happened to Tabula Rasa, I now regret that the model wasn't around when Earth & Beyond was getting canned. Ah well.

Anyways...

Like others have mentioned, Praetoria is too closed off. I kind of like that in some ways, but I acknowledge that it's an odd decision in an online game. I think it needs to be opened up to people in two ways:
1) It needs to let both heroes and villains enter the zone and initiate the storylines under the guise of being undercover/infiltraiting the regime. Sure, they can already go to Praetoria and assist in content at any levels, but they can't initiate anything aside from zone events on their own. Change that, and find a way to add them to some kind of flashback system for those that are too high for it, and I think a lot of characters outside of Praetoria would give the content a look.
2) It needs to let Praetorians leave Praetoria BEFORE level 20, without changing their alignment, and visit BOTH Paragon and the Rogue Isles. I think being a Praetorian should make it so you're the equivalent to a rogue/vigilante rolled into one. Not able to start most content on either side (except for news/radio missions, to help with missing out on those if you roll a Praetorian and participating in DFB or something) but able to explore the zones and team up with Primals for whatever you like.

I think with those two options, you'd enable a lot of crossover. Now Primals have a new starting option beyond what they already have by being able to run Praetorian content if they want without having to start there exclusively. You could have Praetorians go to Primal and run content there if they want.

I also acknowledge that the Praetorian enemies can be annoyingly difficult for their level range. Destroyers, for instance, are a huge pain to fight before you get some kind of protection against what they can do. Seers as well, with their constant knockback. Not to mention ghouls and their heal-death-aura. These are cool enemies to fight, and don't get me wrong - I like the challenge - but they might be better off saving some of those more advanced abilities for higher levels.

As for the FUTURE of Praetorian content, well - I believe that it's pretty much going to be over after i24, and that makes me sad, but oh well. But if they WERE going to continue to expand it, this is what I would like to see, and how I would like to see it done:

1) Getting a direct continuation of the resistance/loyalist arcs IN Praetoria proper seems like it's just not going to happen at this point, and so, I'm not really going to take that into consideration. It's a shame, but there's not much I can do about that. So...

I think what they need to do is add Resistance/Loyalist content to Primal Earth. It needs to establish a story of "you're new in Primal Earth, and now your job is to get support for the Resistance/Loyalists, and/or cause trouble for the villain groups here, or the hero groups here, or gain power for yourself to achieve X" and so on. Start out by establishing your character in Primal Earth, either in Paragon or the Rogue Isles. It can evolve from establishing yourself to trying to achieve certain goals or whatever - like, for instance, First Ward and Night Ward. Since the 'leave Praetoria' mission pretty much always takes place BEFORE First Ward, send a Praetorian to Primal Earth at 20, have them establish themselves, then say, hey, you're kind of needed in Praetoria again, go take care of that.

This should ALSO be open to heroes/villains to run as well - with slightly changed text to acknowledge that they are Primals seeking to help the Praetorian cause, and not vice versa. Once again, this will help make it open to everyone and not lead to the same problem of isolation and exclusion that we currently have.

2) At some point, I'd like to be able to go BACK to Praetoria. I know earlier I said that a direct continuation won't likely happen, but this is mostly just my wish list, so I'm going to include this anyway. Basically, at level 40 or 45, I'd like the ability for a character to go back to Praetoria and run new content there.

I'd also like for Heroes/Villains to be able to change their faction to Loyalist/Resistance as well, once again, treating them like a vigilante/rogue hybrid. (Also, and this is important, making them able to run all the TF's, SF's, and Incarnate Trials even if they are Praetorian).

They don't even need new zones for this. I'd be happy if they just included some new contacts in the three established city zones and added more storylines that included content that leads DIRECTLY to the trials that happen later in the game. (In a perfect world, I'd like to see a Praetorian perspective on the Maria Jenkins missions, where you either attempt to stop or aid the Praetors in their plots. I can't see that happening, though.)

Beyond that, I'd also like their to be some missions dealing with the aftermath of the trials. I think Dark Astoria has spoiled me in that regard, but I want story epilogues to open up after running the trials that lets you see and experience some of the aftermath, like Calvin Scott after the Minds of Mayhem trial and so on.

Apologies for the wall of text.

I sort of agree with what the article was saying.

I think Freedom was more of a back up idea, something that they had been considering/working on but didn't plan on resorting to if they didn't have to. If Going Rogue had really revitalized the game and brought in a lot of new people, the game might not have gone into a F2P model.

Their focus on endgame and early game content also kinda lends to the article's theory of what's happened since they went free. They're focusing on stuff that people who are around for the long haul will be playing a lot - the end game. And they're focusing on what new players will see for the first time - the early content. By adding a lot of new content in the 1-30 area, new players have a glut of content in that area to keep them interested enough to keep playing (but the lack of new 30-50 content is probably hurting them a little in some ways, but I bet the hope is that the person will want to stick around if they make it to 30.)

I don't think the game is in any danger of dying in the immediate sense. It's held on for eight years now, surviving a fair amount of competitors in the process. Some of the new content has been substantial enough that it doesn't seem like it'd be the kind of effort you'd put into a dying game.

Of course, we can only speculate, being on the outside looking in.

All I know is that I'm sorely disappointed Going Rogue didn't do what they hoped it would, and that Praetoria wasn't as popular as it might have been. Personally, it's my favorite content in the game, and since it kind of flopped, I doubt the story will expand beyond the 1-20 zones in which it currently exists. Yeah, there's First Ward and the upcoming Night Ward, but those kind of exist in their own little world, referencing events in Praetoria proper but open to all factions and existing within it's own area and with it's own lore. It doesn't have the same feel as the 1-20 content.