Praetoria's difficulty needs to be tuned down.

It makes little sense to me.

The graphics and plot is better, but gameplay-wise there's no real reason to force this requirement on new players.

Praetoria content is quite a bit harder than level 1-20 content in Paragon City or the Rogue Isles. It would actually make more sense to have players 'unlock' Praetoria by getting to level 20 as a Hero or Villain first. It seems like an 'advanced' newbie area, for people with experience in the game already.

There are some difficult mechanics at play in many Praetoria missions - packs of more than a half-dozen +1 minions, sometimes with a +2 lieutenant mixed in. Waves of enemies rushing in without a moment's pause, overwhelming the player. Missions that barely give players a chance to rest or go AFK for a bit, spawning minions that continually sneak up behind the player to bug him until he completes the mission.

I understand that new players only need to complete the brief tutorial to gain access to heroes and villains, but odds are they're going to remain in Praetoria for their newbie experience. They don't know the other newbie experiences are easier yet - they'll have to ask around to figure out that they'll have an easier time elsewhere. Is that really the newbie experience Paragon wants for new players?

Some people like the challenge of Praetoria. That's fine with me. But if the content is designed to be challenging, why strongly nudge newbies into starting their CoX experience with it? Either make it clear that Praetoria is for advanced players, or tone down the difficulty somehow. Put in a notoriety-changing NPC. It feels like an oversight that they don't exist in Praetoria - as though the developers have already made the choice for us, and told the NPC we want to fight enemies +2 to our level and that we're as good as 3 standard heroes.

Some of you are so pro that this doesn't bother you. Sincere congrats, I look up to people so skilled. But not all of us are that good, especially those of us who are just starting or coming back after a very long departure.

To us, Praetoria is just frustrating. I've already used the 3-day cooldown on mission-skipping twice, not because of bugs but because of extreme difficulty. I feel like I'm playing CoH on some sort of 'hard mode'. It reminds me of how it feels when you try to solo a group quest in other MMORPGs, except Praetoria is supposed to be completely soloable. Something just doesn't add up.

I'll continue banging my head against brick walls, but hopefully soon there's some sort of relief. Right now, my experience with Praetoria is akin to a tourist buying a travel package to a beach resort and being taken to a military boot camp instead.

Mmm.

Make sure Syndicate don't have spawns of nothing but Blade Adepts and take away the super-powered Brawl from Resistance under the level of five and you're golden.

/signed.


Preatoria is great, and GR is a huge success overall, IMO, but trying to introduce the game to new people over the last week has been...frustrating. The missions aren't just hard-fun, they're like those AE missions that someone made where they didn't think about balance, they just thought "My uber-tricked out Shields/electric tanker would love this!" Having massive, multiple waves of ambushes, sometimes stacking on top of each other is hard. Having minions who have firebombs of AoE damage, all stacking together, is just dumb. I was on a team running with an SR brute who had ice shields stacked on him and he was STILL biting it repeatedly because of those. Seriously. Ice shields and SR...he was sitting really high on AoE defense AND had fire resistance and the team still couldn't survive for more than five minutes at a time.

I wonder if the devs didn't do this on purpose because so many forumites call the regular CoH/V "easy mode." I can see that concern and why that would make you feel you need to notch things up a bit, but you also have to remeber three important things:

#1: Forumites are, inherent, your more dedicated, uber players. They will be, on average, twice as experienced and good as the common joe who picked up the boxed set at Best Buy. Easy Mode for them may, in fact, be perfectly balanced for the average player base CoH is trying to attract with GR.

#2: Most "easy mode" stuff comes in the late game, when your character and their teammates have a full array of powers. Early game can still be a challenge to most players.

#3: Balancing powers/missions/sets around "uber" players who trick out on IOs etc is a surefire way to cut down on a population. Look at what happened with PvP. More casual players get frustrated because they can't even get anywhere in the game, while your elite power players are now just playing the kind of challenge most players should experience. Let power players be power players, and balance the game around the casual player.

GR seems awesome, and I want to see it expanded, but it -IS- way too difficult right now. -I'M- enjoying it overall, but I know quite a few people who aren't.

It's also possible that the difficulty level is set high on purpose so that it can be gradually nerfed down. I think if they had gone the other way (making it a bit too easy), there wouldn't be such an out pouring of people making comments and it would be less likely that groups got buffed. Of course, some folks would complain if there was a setting so that CoH spat out money while you played... but that is beside the point.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fury Flechette Also, the game *is* balanced around SOs. I know of many players who successfully play all the way to 50 with just SOs.

You don't know me... but you just described me. I don't use IOs (with rare exception: like the -KB IOs or the +End Proc).

I do find "gold side" a little tougher than red or blue, but I like it that way.

Honestly, I haven't found it any harder than any other low-level missions, unless I'm playing a Melee character.

Why? The Primary damage type of most Praetorian enemies (PPD and Resistance) is Energy, rather than smashing/lethal.

If you're playing anything -but- a scrapper, brute, stalker, or tanker they're throwing off roughly normal damage compared to other NPC villains of similar level. But because it's an "Exotic" damage type the first tier defensive powers for Damage resistance or typed defenses are no protection against it.

Which means low-level melee characters can't stand up to the damage like they normally can, which leads to the anecdotal conclusion that everything is more difficult.

I will admit, though, that the ambushes can be a tad excessive without a control-character on the team.

For contrast, try playing a character with Vectored defense values (Shields/SR) and team with a vector-boosting ally (Bubbles) to see how shockingly easy the fighting becomes. Or try an Energy Aura brute and do a quick compare and contrast after you receive your energy defense toggle.

-Rachel-

I don't think it's the baddies that are more challenging so much as their arrangements. It seems like there are bigger groups and more ambushes launching more rapidly.

That being said, I would certainly balk at using the words "hard" or "difficult" to describe Praetoria. My wife and I have cruised through on a KM/FA x2 scrapper duo and the only mission (that I've done so far) that I would say was hard was the one with the "kill 100 destroyer" ambushes, and that only because the baddies didn't drop rewards (loves me my insps) .

Throwing in my observations, taken from a static 3-man team going through the Loyalist content:

1) Too many ambushes. Period. I know they're a good way of adding tension, but it's a little silly how many missions involve loads of ambushes, especially more than the usual 3 or 5 waves. Of note is one particular Syndicate mission that spawns ambushes right on your back multiple times without warning. Let's also keep in mind that due to how the ambush code works (AFAIK), they spawn locked onto a particular team member, which can be the squishy.

2) In an equal fight, the Resistance beats PPD every time. I know there's a vague in-story explanation for this, but that's really no excuse. The few times Loyalists have the opportunity to fight PPD, they're about what you'd expect from a 1-20 group, if a little easy. Whereas Resistance get to spray much more damage at you from range, and they debuff your defense too. Oh, and why the heck do they get to do good damage at both range and melee? I will say that by levels 16-20, they don't feel quite so rough anymore, but before that...

3) Destroyer issues:
a) Blast Masters need to be toned down. Their ability to spread lots of fire patches around stinks, even if the individual damage ticks aren't that strong. I think this is largely because they like to spawn three to a mob on teams.
b) Mad Dogs are immune to mez and knockdown/back. Really? Really...? An all-melee boss that's immune to control. Yeah. Sorry, but no.

4) Syndicate issue: Sword Masters are quite possibly one of the worst bosses ever designed. A boss-level enemy that can use a melee attack at range. That, many a time, would instantly drop my Dominator to 50% health. At range. No. And that's on top of their rather fast attack chain that piles on even more damage in melee.

Edit: And, just a small nitpick not directly related to difficulty - there's a touch too many Syndicate along the Loyalist arcs. In fact, I'm pretty sure you fight more Syndicate than you do Resistance.

I think the posters who feel the difficulty isn't so bad are probably primarily soloers or on very small teams. Soloing, I've had very littel problem with the praetoria missions.

However as teams get larger, the difficulty gets RIDICULOUSLY too high. I don't mean slightly too hard, I mean stupid hard. Going to the hospital after every other spawn (or countless ambush...)hard. I don't know why they went away from the difficulty slider mechanic, but I strongly suggest they go back to it.

I can imagine new players trying this and thinking its some kind of emergency room simulation.

Some players like hard, and thats fine, but hard was attainable by pumping up the difficulty slider. A lot of people like to feel powerful and not visit the hospital every five minutes, so the base difficulty should be easy. This way more people are happy becuase there are more options instead of the only option you have in praetoria, which most seem to agree, is too difficult, especially for toons that are such low level, with minimal powers and slotting.

Personally, I think it's not so bad. This running a pair of control characters as well as a Kin/SR brute (defenses not slotted yet.) Don't think I've died yet on that character - once at most - or more than I have in "classic" COH or COV.

It's not "harder" to me. It's new. I don't know what specific mobs do by heart yet. This could very well make it seem "harder." (Similarly, it "feels" like Acc is off - but running herostats still shows me at 87-94% overall, even on TOs.)

Now, there are a few things that need tweaking, yes. There's a spawn point *right* by one of the Resistance contacts/entrances that always seems to spawn a good size group of destroyers. That spawn point... well, simply needs to go away. I tend to zone quickly, but even then I've had a good third of my health gone by the time I've shown up (and mopped up the group so others coming out could get out of the way.) And the burn patches - they're easy enough to get out of, yes, but they're a PITA for Masterminds in the late teens-early 20s with Demolitionists. *Why* do we see them so much in the single digit levels? Almost seems like they had it out for MMs. (Haven't had an issue with them on anything else I've played so far, but for low levels... eh.)

Honestly, the most annoying things so far have been (a) having to turn off tips time and time again and (b) having to verify that, yes, I KNOW this is a resistance entrance and have to "enter my passcode" - twice - each time I go to the underground.

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I agree with the original post 100%.

Lewis

Mmm

Praetoria is beautiful, and so clean too. I love the manicured parks and the overall look of the zone. The plots are actually interesting, and for a change intelligently conceived; they actually make sense.

The use in excess of ambushes, reduced the enjoyment and immersion of the story basically to nothing. I made the error to try Praetoria for the first time with a Defender, it was death after death after death. The ambushes see through stealth, they never give up chasing you, their accuracy is terrific, and their ranged attacks made my snipe feel like a short ranged attack; I never been in a situation where we had so many complete team wipe outs; and my fellow players were all game veterans of many years. We knew, what we were doing. In one mission, we just gave up trying to do the mission, and simply waited at a distance from the door and chose to farm the ambushes as they came; we had little choice left to us; that turned out to work really well for us, we gained levels quickly and then were able to easily complete the mission. But somehow, I would believe, that is not the intent of the game or the developers :<)

What I believe made the Praetorian ambushes so lethal, is the lack of warning. In CoH or CoV, ambushes always had a warning, a leader would always say something, such as "get the itnruders" so if we are paying attention to NPC chat, we at least can somewhat prepare; Praetorian ambushes are totally quiet, no NPC chat. I also noticed that the ranged attacks of Praetorian ambushers can out-range snipe, for I was being struck by their attacks well beyond my snipe range; perhaps this should be looked at.

Also the ambushers chase us till dead or left mission, very persistent, which denied teams from retreating and reforming. This much, I do not object, I do consider it fair challenge.

I do believe these mobs are too tough for entry level characters, would love to see them though against our upper level alts. At low levels, we essentially have no significant defense, not much resistances, and preciously little endurance. Also at low levels there is not much IOg going on either, nor do we have high level alts being level lowered either.

I do like Praetoria, but the mobs need to be toned down, ambushes need to be re-looked at, perhaps even limited to no more than 3 waves, to avoid farming, and also to let the team do the mission with some level of enjoyment. I believe if the mobs themselves are toned down, the mob spawn numbers would not be so rough and perhaps the ambushes less ultra-lethal, also maybe looking at the spacing between mobs should also be considered; I believe they are too closely placed in many situations; yet not a major issue with the zone, if we pull with ranged attacks.

Hugs

Stormy

Personally, I LIKE the fact that it's hard as hell to get through in one piece.

I was on the verge of quitting because the game became "Press button = Gain xp"

Then Praetoria came along and it was "Holy crap! I actually have to pay attention again!"

And on the bright side, any new player who makes it through Praetoria is much less likely to become a level 50 perma-noob.