Hows Your First Day in GR Going?

But they can

Can't decide, too busy spazzing out in Praetoria.

I'm so used to zones being barren except for the Atlas statue, and taking my time doing everything. That the 2000 players running around in Nova Praetora and the broadcast channel being the new trade chat, along with the feeling that Im going to have to leave this beautiful place at level 20 and I only have so much time left, and I shouldn't level to fast and enjoy the scenery that I'm too overwhelmed to let any of it sink in.

I managed to make three new Praetorians before the slots locked up. Elec/Psi dom, a DP/MM blaster named Thought Policeman whose character concept just screamed Praetorian Loyalist, and a homicidal Loyalist/Power Spines/Fire scrapper named Fyreshryke. I'm waiting for the slots to open again with great impatience. I also did some Tips to move my SS/Shield brute towards Rogue (and eventually Vigilante).

Praetoria looks great, the stories are well written, and I like the multiple choice aspects.

Wow thanks, I totally had that backwards.

This thread is one away from being about reducing a complex situation to a facile dichotomy.

Actually, given GG's fairly balanced explication above, I take that back - I leave the above as evidence of my foolishness in making assumptions.

Anyway, I'm liking Praetoria so far, though I haven't seen much. It seems that the developers are emphasizing quality over quantity in the Praetorian content, with relatively few highly polished mission arcs rather than the plentiful but unsophisticated early hero content. Thus far it's working for me, but once I've seen all there is to see in the Praetorian content I'll probably go back to rolling in Atlas or Mercy and doing my early levels in AE arcs. It sure is pretty, though.

I think it also helps that I chose my starting Praetorians carefully. Mindful of the beta testers' comments about heavy ambushes, I rolled a Traps/AR Defender, and between Caltrops, Acid Mortar, Force Field Generator and Triage Beacon I expect I'll manage all right. My Elec/Earth Dominator also seems to be doing well, combining multiple sources of soft and hard control. The Praetorian factions seem designed to particularly aggrieve specialists.

I'm looking forward to playing more, which is something I haven't felt about low-level characters in a while.

First day consisted of: spending about an hour and a half in the character creator getting my toons look just right, trying to find the right mix of new pieces and old; logged in, completed the tutorial, stood around for an hour in Nova Praetoria (I think that's where I was, anyway) RPing with a pal; logged onto my main and got some tips done. Sadly he won't be reinforcing his heroic alignment till tomorrow though because I air-headedly did 2 vigilante missions somehow, thinking they were hero missions, lol. Oh, and looked over the animations for KM while in the character creator...meh, I wasn't as wowed as I'd hoped I'd be. I'm not a big fan of melee types as is, and I wasn't impressed enough to roll a KM toon, not yet anyway. So I made a BS/WP stalker, cause my Brute's my only melee level 50, and I could use a few toons that aren't support-based. Overall, much fun was had 8) looking forward to more today.

Oh, and if the online store isn't open roll on another server with free slots, then just take advantage of the free server transfers when the store comes back up and bring them to your server of choice. Sucks to not be where your peeps are, but hey, the store's down for them too, take 'em with you. 8)

First day in Nova Praetoria?

I have to say this:
Dominatrix > Ms. Liberty

She looks better in black and red I tell ya.

Mixed feelings. First the good: the new content is great. It's thrilling, well written, and more interactive than previous stuff. The environment looks nice, and there are some new enemies that look impressive.

However, I'm not completely sure about this expansion. I say this not to despirit anyone, but because I think honest communication is better than walking away without explanation.

To put it simply, I find the level range of the new content very limiting. After 3 hours of playing a new alt, he is already level 10. This is the natural result of teaming. You can tell me I should "slow it down" or "not team" but my response to that is "or you could put the bulk of content in the level ranges where we spend most of our time." Kicking us out of the region at level 20 adds insult to injury on this count.

Morality missions are interesting, but I'm not sure I'm sold. Again, this is because I mostly team. The problem is, for teaming purposes, we've just split the player base again. Now if I'm looking for a team I have to worry the leader will pick a morality mission, and if I complete it my "points for the day" go toward whatever random alignment we just went with. The actual actions my character takes in missions of whatever morality are pretty much identical and split only by a dialog tree some other player clicked on. If I am mistaken on this point and the ability exists to "op out" of alignment fame then disregard.

The lack of a power proliferation hurts. The new power sets are still nice, but since we got two of them earlier and they can't back track to Praetoria it means if I want to try something new I have only two power set options, one of them a melee set and the other a low damage Control set.

I wish I could rave about new enhancements, costumes, interface improvements, etc, but I saw very little of that kind of thing. There were a few new costumes I noticed, and those did look good, but it really wasn't what I was expecting at all.

On the enemy groups, a few of them look really nice (Ghouls, Clockwork). The others register visually to me as visually identical in terms of costumes, though their powers look cool. This is a personal preference thing, in that I've always been more excited by the outlandish costume types (Carnies, those witches in Croatoa, etc) than other content.

The one thing I will come down hard on is the fact that APPs and PPPs are in some cases flat out broken. I could forgive this with a lot of game features, but since the only retreat from this situation is a sweeping nerf I'm afraid to even touch them.

Overall what I think about the expansion is that the content itself is overall good, but targeted in curious places. That may appeal to some people, but for me, who mainly teams and sticks to content between levels 25-50 it feels light. I don't regret buying the expansion, of course, but for selfish reasons wish it had been built differently.

When I quit it was because I felt my level 45 main would never reach 50, all I had to do was grind.

I no longer feel that way. Well on my way to 46 already. I wonder how high I can make it?

I installed GR this morning, and made a Tech Demon/Pain MM named Demonitronic. She's up to level 7 now, and heading down the Loyalist/Responsibility path. I didn't have any problems with the first two story arcs.

I started some tip missions last night, and I'll probably continue with that for a while now.

I thought I'd jump straight into Praetoria, but I ended up having more fun with my new Elec Controller in AP/KR and doing tips missions w/ my Bot MM.

I probably would've started even more alts if the slots had been freed up, so part of me is glad the store was down last night.

My first impressions from last night paid off much of my anticipation for the new expansion, from the spectacular setting to the expanded game mechanics (why hadn't I heard about Zowies?) I've taken my first Praetorian character, Perfect Gent (a KM/WP scrapper), through the first-rate tutorial and am looking forward to seeing how far I can make it down the Responsibility path before my habit of interrupting PPD arrests of innocent civilians sends me over to the Resistance.