Praetoria - A hard fight.

My level 11 elec/elec Dom hasn't had any issues to speak of. Died a couple of times, but I felt those were more due to bad rolls than anything else. I'm hardly the best player in the world, and I only remembered reading this thread just now that I could have been using my Sands of Mu vet power, which would have made things slightly easier still. I haven't taken either immobilise either.

That said, I haven't encountered any of the mega-ambushes that are being described here. Perhaps I'll change my tune when I do.

I am sorry, despite what experienced players may think - for players new to MMOs.... Praetoria may well be a problem. I know had CoV been anywhere near this hard when I came in, I would not be here chatting now.

Last night was in a mission with two other SG members. The only was we could get through the mission was to pull every single time. As a result this mission took forever; those were big rooms. It just struck me as tedious. I don't feel very "super" having to plink my way through maps one at a time when on a team; and that is when I see most of the problems, when on a team.

One of the three of us was so disgusted she was going to delete her character. We tried to talk her out of it, since it was level 18 and close to getting out.... I don't know what she will end up doing. Meanwhile I rolled a new Controller, and out she went into Paragon to chat with Miss Liberty. One thing I dislike about Praetoria is twenty missed levels of SG prestige. I understand why that has to happen, but still don't care for it.

Enjoying GR quite a bit, but sometimes I'm in the mood for to solo and depending which toon I play fights can get really tough then. My Tanker doesn't really get into trouble.
Especially sine the positioning of the mobs is quite buggy as I found.
Often enough two mob groups are so close that you end up having 6 +1 enemies in one big group. And if you have two Lieutenants in there it's really then your solo career ends there (even for my tanker it's tough then).
Quite frustrating really.

Is there actually a way to lower the difficulty like in CoH and CoV?

I have no objection to this level of difficulty being avaliable, if people want to crank it up; I just don't think that what we're seeing now should be the DEFAULT. Good gawd, one wonders what +4/x8 other players would be like.

I am one of those "lazy" people usually found on 1 player/x 0 other players. Praetoria feels to me like at least +4. I dislike this amount of trouble, whether on a team or solo. I feel that the minions are overpowered to the point of ridiculousness.

Another problem is that the tip missions feel like they are crafted in exactly the same way; my level 44 Brute ran one against nemesis the other day where she was fighting for her life against even-con minions. Bleh. Just.... bleh.

Mileage will vary, of course.

I don't think its massively difficult. It just manages to remove a lot of fun from the game and make it more grindy. Lifes bad enough before stamina then they remove our early temp travel powers (from safeguards). It appears that it's supposed to be an introductory zone, in which case the difficulty is completely incorrect imo.

(also other things spring to mind, by doing praetoria you 'skip' 3 safeguard/mayhem missions, currently there's no other way to pick them up than someone else getting them on a lowbie? maybe its time to add them to Ouro)

I have noticed that the difficulty is somewhat harder than CoH/CoV and have pondered on why that is.

Then someone in this thread (Cba to quote or search) mentioned about every mob, bar Clockwork and Seers, having decent ranged and melee attacks. This i think is the problem; Where Hellion minions have a mediocre ranged attack and an adequete melee attack, Resistance minions are given a somewhat good ranged and melee attack. This makes mobs balanced, but also rather difficult to approach, considering that most rush into melee as well as letting loose with ranged attacks.

Whilst personally, i would like this rectified somewhat (Like mobs staying at range and retaliating in melee only when engaged in melee) i do like the challenge, to an extent. Though, the one character i am soloing mostly with is a SS/Elec Brute, so he naturally chews mobs up, squisher characters have a harder time unless they can hover.

Of course, the easiest and most simple problem would be to add a Rep character in Praetoria. Because sometimes, the mobs annoy me to the point where i don't accept missions because i really don't feel like fighting for my life, time after time, so i switch to street sweeping.

It's really somehow an irony that the new starter zone is much harder and is also missing some of the improvements CoH/CoV got over the years (temp powers for example).

Sure some vets will love the challenge, but I still don't understand why they didn't include the difficulty setting in GR. Such a great tool.
People who want just a bit fun set things to easy, while others who want a challenge made the game harder for themselves.
In the end everyone is happy.

Doubt the hard difficulty will be any good for complete newbies to GR who never played CoX before.

New patch.

Seers have been toned down a bit, but no change to Destroyers yet.

Here's the thing about the difficulty...it's not the "Ah god I can't complete this mission!" like it was back in the days before they introduced EBs and you got AVs in your solo arc no matter what.

It's more the amount of resources and time that it takes to beat minions and normal lts. is increased so much that the need for insps and rest/recovery has slowed the game to a crawl. And named lts./bosses/EBs are still about the same as they were before: Standing all alone waiting for some guy in costume and all hopped up on inspirations to come and hand them their head.

So the things that I think we should be walking over are slow, boring, downtime inducing fights, and the things that should be interesting or difficult just aren't.

Almost all of my issues with the difficulty would be fixed by doing 2 things:

1. Make Rest instant recharge
2. Reducing the number of ambushes

One thing I've noticed that I like a LOT is that the maps in Praetoria are a lot smaller. My Praetorian is level 14, and by this time in Paragon City or the Isles, he would be wandering through five-story buildings or underground labs having to clear out a TON of enemies.

I think that one of the philosophies the devs had in designing these missions is that instead of having you run through miles of hallways and taking elevators out the wazoo, they would make the missions more compact and have the enemies come to you instead.

The thing is, even when I had ten ambushes, they never overlapped with me unless I took a lot of time in dispatching them. The difficulty isn't so much in defeating the enemies, though they are a bit tougher, it is in having to do it without messing around so much as you could in missions before.

All in all, like I said, I really do prefer it this way over the old way.

So far,

I'm still at the same opinion point. The mission difficulty isn't overall that bad...but there are a few missions that have some definite spawn placement issues. As well as some missions where ambushes wear on maybe one or two spawns pass what's necessary to get the point across.

There is one mission in Flores' arc where it seems like 3 separate spawns share the same aggro field. That needs to be fixed. I had to run 3 times...but then the rest of the mission was fine.

It's also quite possible that some of the vets complaining are so ingrained in their ways, that any adjustment feels like pulling a tooth. People are probably still building toons in ways that gimp them early on. Maybe too many pool powers taken etc. I don't know.

I'm playing 2 squishy toons and having a blast.

I definitely think that the Morality Missions for Praetoria will need to be toned down if you're going to want damage-light toons to be able to do them without tearing their hair out.

My Mind/Fire Dom is doing pretty well, but even he can die when the ambushes hit.