An easy suggestion: Have the Praetorian ambushes announce themselves

We all know by now that Praetorian story arcs are very, very ambush-happy. This, in itself, is not bad {subject to debate}.

There is also a number of active threads arguing that the Praetorian enemies are harder than Primal enemies of equivalent level. This, in itself, is not bad either {though also subject to debate}.


The problem is the combination of the two. Not because because of brutality of such ambushes - an average team will be able to fend an ambush off without too much trouble and recover in time for the next wave - but because of their stealth. In a stark contrast to CoH, nearly all ambushes in Praetoria are completely silent, making it impossible for any given team to know whether or not it's safe to engage the next room, or would that be risking a wipe as a second group piles in from the rear, steamrolling the squishies and the rest of the team as the attention is directed elsewhere. The uncertainty {and misplaced certainty} has been the cause of more ragequits than I can count, and oftentimes completely wrecks the pacing of the mission.

So, a simple suggestion - add a bit of NPC dialogue to each ambush {it's fine for the waves to repeat themselves}. Just something like "Get them!" "CWK(ATT(INT)))" or "This is the PPD!"; anything that will alert the players that they will soon have another fight on their hands. While I understand that not announcing your presence as you attack is a defining element of an ambush, from the gameplay perspective, it's just too damn frustrating for no evidently good reason.

An open letter to NCsoft

They wouldn't be ambushes if they announced themselves before attacking.

I've had a NPC text for most of the ambushes in GR I've encountered. I'm far from having done all the arcs but so far haven't noticed silent ambushes. What missions are you running?

Having run all of the Responsibility and Warden arcs, the Crusaders in Nova and Power in Nova and Imperial, I've seen blue [NPC] text in the chat window for more or less every ambush in GR, and in most cases if I spot the speech bubble that accompanies it, which I usually do, I know which direction they're coming from as well.

I honestly can't think of any that are silent.

In most of the GR missions, there is NPC text. It's just that you're usually too busy/waist or chest deep in mooks to see it. It's part of the spam, like the ambushes themselves.

Here's an idea: How about the ambushes lie in wait and when you see them, they yell out "DON'T ATTACK!" and then...THEY ATTACK!