Time to Upgrade the Praetorians

They already have the homefield advantage in the current crop of missions, because we go there for the most part. There are only about three missions where they're on our turf.

The Praetorians do need a massive update. The arc, Hero's Hero, is ridiculously contrived. It starts out with "Where's Statesman?" (which a lot of players already answer with the sarcastic "In I.P., where he makes others do his dirty work, hur-hur...") and goes into a long series of "Fight this alternate version of this Trainer... Now this alternate version of this Trainer and his/her sidekick..." until you find yourself fighting Tyrant, who is a pushover compared not only to the rest of the Praetorians, but to Statesman, too!

I've fought the AV Tyrant. He went down faster than a puppet with the strings cut. Hero Statesman (a la Recluse SF and Mender Silos SF)? You can make the bleeding stop, but it requires a lot of crying and prayer. The same goes for the difference between Mother Mayhem and Sister Psyche. Psyche is one hot mama-jamma, but Mother Mayhem may as well be a generic AV with Mind Control powers.

One difference I think is nifty is the difference between Ms. Liberty (Martial Arts/Invulnerability Scrapper) and Dominatrix (Gravity/<something/maybe nothing> Controller).

The current Praetorians are hardly comparable to the capabilities of the characters they're supposed to be the opposites of. They look cool, don't get me wrong on that, and I like that their stories aren't just "WAUGH! I'm teh ebil version of that guy/gal!" and have some depth to them, but the arc itself has no depth (why am I fighting Battle Maiden in a cave in order to get dimension coordinates? Why is Tyrant's Throne Room ALSO in a cave!?). The characters are also madly schizophrenic (Diabolique: "I am an uber powerful super villainess! Bow before my ghostly, demonic might! Now! Watch me run away from you! Nyeh-nyeh! You can't catch me! WHEEEEEEEEE! I command the restless dea-WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!").

We don't have much reason to care about the adventure. *yawn* Statesman being captured is just like every other "Louis Watson" who's been abducted. Once we actually release him, he might clear the room of the remaining goons, but the fight we would have needed him for (fighting Tyrant) is long-since over.

Tyrant also runs away like a coward. How anti-climactic. Recluse at least fights you to the bitter end.

So... I'm in agreement that the Praetorian missions need a revamp. They don't necessarily need to be removed, but they certainly need an upgrade.

Shadow Hunter and the Woodsman have always had different powers. Shadow Hunter came first, which is why he's a Stone/Stone Brute. Woodsman was only put into the game once Villains launched, which is why he's...whatever weird and impossible combo he is. What does he have, Plant Control/Tuatha Summoning? When are we getting the Controlling Mastermind AT, devs?

I think side switching will be opened up around level 20 - you'll need to be heroic enough to fall, or evil enough to be redeemed, and it'd be weird if you could enter Atlas Park at level 1 and then start "falling".

The street thugs and the crazies just have excellent publicists.

What if you trip into Atlas Park?

By technical definition, that is falling.

I'm not sure how the accolade works exactly, but it could be that it awards an "invisible badge" for each Praetorian you defeat. If that's the case, then they could modify the badges so the new versions of the Praetorians count. Any Praetorian that you've defeated the old version of would still count, since you wouldn't lose the "invisible badge."

I imagine they will receive an upgrade, since they're wimps. People solo these guys for laughs. If they get an upgrade in the Going Rogue content, but remain their old pushover selves in the PI content, it would be massively immersion-breaking. It's not like the devs have never modified enemies before; Rikti all got clothes with the second invasion, and Requiem got squid powers at some point.

Not even that close. They haven't even posted a date to start sending invites for closed beta...and with the amount of content a paid expansion will bring? They'll be testing for months. A lot of months. I17, I18, and I bet even I19, at least, will be out before Going Rogue is live.

I wouldn't be surprised if they just ignored a lot of what is said in the PI storyline. See someone's comment about the 2nd Rikti Invasion above.

Cleaning up old content is not a priority

They were probably cannibalized to create Lord Recluse's elite bane army and the Fortunata seers trying to prognosticate destiny.

Tyrant was a big ol' weenie, but I remember he would occasionally pop off this one-shot punch or footstomp or something. It's been so long since I fought him I can't remember what it was, or if it got nerfed out. Funny the Tyrant isn't actually a requirement for that accolade but all the other praetorian AV/EBs are. Comic book logic can say he's weak in that scenario because he's too close to Statesman, and they're both Incarnates drinking from the same divine font meaning they can't hurt each other and weaken each other..

I doubt they'd make the accolade harder to get, anyway. Blueside gets favored with easy accolades, redsiders are the ones who have to do hours and hours of AFK damage badge farming and sit in Siren's Call picking your nose for 5 hours and do Recluse's freakin SF for a badge component for the Atlas Medallion...

I can't remember if Requiem appeared in any maps before the Council took over the Column or not. Remember he used to snag Warwolves from a dimension whose people were werewolves or something before they were retconned into being shadow fragment experiments, maybe he was in that arc I vaguely remember.

Reworking the arc is cool and all, but making it a TF messes with the symmetry in the souvenirs quite a bit. In CoH, in the 'final' story arc, you beat up Evil Statesman and get Statesman's helmet, and in the 'final' Task Force, you beat up Lord Recluse and get Recluse's helmet.

In CoV, in the 'final' story arc you beat up Lord Recluse and get his helmet, while in the 'final Strike Force, you beat up Statesman and get his helmet.

I just find that aesthetically pleasing. I just want half the helmet souvenirs to be gotten from story arcs and the other half from Task/Strike Forces. Beating up Evil Statesman in a story arc is kinda essential to that.

I'm not disputing this. I'm using it to illustrate a point I've made numerous times.

These canon adventures that we take our characters on, I don't believe they are our adventures. I think they're the adventures of the Hero and the Destined One, the two warriors in the world who help save it from falling apart (the fissure seems to begin in Paragon and the Rogue Isles), one because he/she feels he/she must, the other because it's an inadvertent side effect to keeping him/her alive.

Our characters going through them isn't so much our characters doing those things, it's us learning the "truth" of the situation, unlike what we read in the papers, see on the news or hear from the civilians extolling or condemning our efforts.

At least, that's how I accept the "neverchanging" method of MMO storytelling. It's not my adventure I'm going on, it's somebody else's.

My adventure? You can find that in the link in my Signature that says "My Stuff." It's so much more entertaining to develop a story for my characters that isn't farming for badges, influence, experience points, etc. or running the Imperious Task Force over and over and over again once I've cleared level 35.

Now, back to my point.

The old Praetorian content probably doesn't have to be changed. It's an "archive" of what's already happened. We may not understand the adventure now, but that was the adventure when it happened to "The Hero." We're just running through the motions with it in an attempt to understand what The Hero went through in order to save Statesman.

I still feel the Praetorian content needs to be upgraded, and not just through the Going Rogue expansion. I still feel the Praetorian arc needs to be updated. However... It's still a valid point that cleaning up old content distracts heavily from new content, so I'm not vehement in my demand.

Tyrant as an AV is a push over lol. I'd love to see them revamped and made more difficult.