Difficulty Bar Raised - Your Thoughts?

So, with all the numerous reports of increased difficulty in Praetoria, along
with new foes added to the base game (Super Stunners, Sonic Nullifiers etc.),
it begs the question: "Has the balance in the game shifted?"

Historically, the game challenges have been balanced around SO's with
the market, IO's, and Sets being purely optional, and mostly for the
min-maxers who want every last percentage point of power performance for
their characters.

With GR/I18, are we seeing a shift more towards a need for the IO's (et al)
over traditional DO/SO's?

Your Thoughts?


Regards,
4


PS> I've been a Frankenslotting IO guy all along, and don't mind the
changes, but I'm curious to know if folks think this is a trend shift along
with their opinions on it (either way, shift or not).

Only for high end stuff like Cathedral of Pain.

The low-level stuff in Praetoria is tougher than street sweeping Hellions, but I'm still seeing pick-up groups going through it fairly briskly, with a few deaths from ambushes or purple bosses.

Still seems like the game is fairly easy, some tasks require coordination and a few tasks benefit from coordination + IOs.

I don't see the tie in to Praetoria difficulty to the Primal Earth additions like Super annoying electric stunner of control hell.

Since GR runs on a non slider function vs Primal and specific type of mobs there and map layouts..to me its like a alternate universe inside of COX.

All I know is I have done nothing but team play on many toons through GR. Without nitpicking all the stuff one may be able to do, I can say that in Praetoria one is more prone to working tighter as a team vs as loosely as we were in Primal Earth.

Seems that slightly leaning towards a more forced to teamwork + tactic leaning environment in the low levels there vs Mercy Island to me.

As for difficulty....I don't feel it is difficult at all. Just not played as loosely as the Primal earth 1-20 experience. A solid team that applies communication and tight team work will do fine.. this is usually later in levels in the past....its being introduced at younger levels it seems.

AS for IO,SO,DO ....I will leave that to the Number Crunching guys to evaluate and comment on.

I am not personally experiencing any more difficulty in the game, even in Praetoria. I just had to learn to adapt my style to the new types of enemies.

This is not to say ghouls and destroyers aren't more difficult than Hellions, Skulls and Council. They are. But they are not more difficult than Vahzilok, Longbow and Arachnos.

My experience is that the difficulty in Primal Earth has increased, at least in certain respects. My lvl 50 softcapped kat/wp scrapper had the Maria Jenkins' Siege mish that I previously ran repeatedly since it was relaxing to kill tons of mobs with no chance of dying. Post-GR I entered the "same" mish, but it was an entirely redone mission that I was barely able to survive and complete.

Considering that the content in Praetoria is playable, if difficult, with TOs and DOs, I don't think the game is being balanced against IOs.

Difficulty hasn't been raised.

Enemies in Praetoria may be harder than Hellions and Skulls, but they pale in comparisson to end-draining Clockwork in the pre-stamina levels, rech-flooring Vahzilok with toxic damage, chain-mezzing CoT mages before anyone has mez protection, tohit-debuffing Spectral Daemon Lords pre-SO's, and other hazardous mobs already present in Paragon City

IMO the problem isn't that the difficulty was raised in Praetoria, it the fact that far too many players have gotten into the habit of skipping the low level stuff in their rush to get to level 50 endgame content and they don't know how to play a character between the levels of 1-20.

I love the low level stuff so much that 98% of my characters are in this range and I haven't found the new content to be any more difficult than the old, and I welcome the changes to ambushes because it helps with my game immersion. I can't count the number of times prior to GR/I18 I'd see an NPC comment that I was in the building and yet I still had the freedom to move at will, no NPC's would come looking for me. Now I get the thrill of seeing them charge at me as if they were really concerned that I had discovered their nefarious plots and they were desperate to silence me.

Actually i'd like to see the ablility to set missions to +5 or even +6's...

For big teams of kitted out veterans, 54's can still be a little soft.

I know this doesn't effect Praetoria and until we are able to access it on a toon higher then 20 we won't know, but it's still something i'd like to see added as an option.

I think its more about the players have not yet figured out the path of least resistance in Pretoria yet.

I'm sure players will eventually take advantage of the numerous ambushes and farm them, or go back to the old sewer team runs.

Frankly, I've been liking the new missions in Pretoria even with no diff slider I still see teams wipeout constantly. I actually prefer to watch and see how players figure things out. Probably the most interesting part of the game.

I will note that powersets that are good early make a big difference on Pretoria teams vs some of the late blooming sets.

I play a lot of low level alts. I've been playing for a little over a year. I have only one level 50 character. I solo almost exclusively, except when I can get my wife to duo with me. All that said, I am among the ranks of those who don't see a dramatic difficulty increase in the Praetoria content. It seems a "little" harder, but nothing I can't handle on any of my 6 Praetorian characters (all level 10 to 14 currently). I sort of suspect if the people who posted above about veteran players not being used to the early game anymore are correct, given my relative newbie perspective. It's good to feel competent even though I can't compete with uber-players zooming through missions with big bumps to difficulty settings.