Praetorians...They're kinda boring
By
AquaJAWS,
Posted on: 2011-02-28 16:37 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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And why does that bother you? |
Originally Posted by srmalloy
That's the thing that continues to bother me about Praetoria; the early levels give you the feeling of "well, maybe it is a benevolent dictatorship", but as you progress through the storylines, you get your nose rubbed harder and harder in "Cole is evil; Cole is only interested in power; Cole cares about his image because a popular uprising would be inconvenient; Cole's lieutenants are monomaniacal, crazy, or both" until you want to escape to Primal Earth before you catch the crazy, too.
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The whole point of the storyline is to expose Tyant's lies and get players onto the right side before the invasion starts.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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I would have LOVED this to actually be the case. Cole didn't win the fight against Hami, he got beaten down but bought Neuron or Anti-Matter enough time to construct the Sonic fence, shepard all the remaining surviours inside and flip it on.|
Originally Posted by Daemodand
Tyrant is dead and the Loyalist machine just keeps marching in the direction he last pointed it in, fueled by cult of personality.
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The people still needed a hero, a champion, so they created Cole, spun the whole schtick that he 'beat' the Hamidon and set about cloning him as best they could to make a figurehead, of course along the way their ideals of a utopia somewhat...changed (Communist Russia is a great example, a wonderful ideal corrupted by the one true falibility in any such idea of Utopia...people).
The Cole we've been seeing all this time, just another Cole clone...Have him be a real pushover since the clone hasn't inhereted the powers of the well and set up the true boss of the Incarnate stuff to be the Coming Storm or Rularuu the Ravager breaking free of his bonds to devour our universe, the well was preparing us for that, not Praetorian invasion force.
As mentioned I really don't like Tyrant being the uber-awesome that requires Incarnating. Heck the ONLY reason the Incarnate Taskforces require you to be an Incarnate is to avoid the level debuff...a purely game mechanic way of making the Alpha slot more useful than it is (they freely admitted this saying that 'since some characters could already reach that power level with Invention Origin sets'). Which frankly seems a bit crap in my opinion.
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This is sort of part of my fear as well. They're holding back Tyrant for some final big boss raid for 50 Omega-slotted Incarnates, or the like. But really...why? |
Originally Posted by Dr_Mechano
As mentioned I really don't like Tyrant being the uber-awesome that requires Incarnating. Heck the ONLY reason the Incarnate Taskforces require you to be an Incarnate is to avoid the level debuff...a purely game mechanic way of making the Alpha slot more useful than it is (they freely admitted this saying that 'since some characters could already reach that power level with Invention Origin sets'). Which frankly seems a bit crap in my opinion.
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Let's take Hro'Dtohz as an example. The big confrontation with him in the Lady Grey Task Force is the third time you encounter him in the story, and even when you beat him there, he escapes to fight another day. This doesn't diminish him, though, as still being the big bad leader of the Restructurists.
The Rikti aren't the only example. Is the final Kheldian arc any less epic because you had a skirmish with Arakhn back on Striga Isle? I say no. The finale is still great, but part of what makes it great is that she's not just some faceless behind-the-scenes mastermind. We meet her, we see her hand in things, we get to know her as an enemy.
I could go on. Requiem? Nemesis? Constant foes. Countess Crey? Doesn't appear until the end, but there are all sorts of little hints and teases. Vanessa DeVore? We rescue her in that little one-off mission in an early appearance. Little touches like that are what make these guys villains rather than bosses.
Now, if there really is a twist here with Neuron and Chimera being all Weekend at Bernie's with Cole, that could be neat, but even then, we need something compelling to tie us to that. As it is right now, if they dropped the "oh, and by the way, Tyrant's actually been dead all along"...who would really care?
I agree. The Praetorians, while their zones have nice graphics and interesting mission mechanics, aren't too interesting in and of themselves. The Praetorian content is pretty much a one-trick pony. I can only have IF YOU'RE NOT PART OF THE SOLUTION, YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM, SHEEP!!! shoved in my face so many times without getting annoyed by it.
I'd like to see the game get back a little more of the straight-up spandex-clad hero vs. strangely-powered villain (and no, dressing like Captain Steuben from The Love Boat and having your own pet government doesn't count as a "strange power"). It seems that with the Praetorians, the game became more about social commentary and philosophy than about having fun.
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Does seducing your granddaughter count?|
Originally Posted by Olantern
I'd like to see the game get back a little more of the straight-up spandex-clad hero vs. strangely-powered villain (and no, dressing like Captain Steuben from The Love Boat and having your own pet government doesn't count as a "strange power").
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| It seems that with the Praetorians, the game became more about social commentary and philosophy than about having fun. |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
They're only "boring" because the "newness" has worn off.
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Praetorians have been boring for years. Going Rogue's emphasis on lowbie content is fine (and Praetoria as a whole easily warrants a couple of zones), but shoehorning the same crew of palette-swapped misfits we've been facerolling for six years into new endgame content was a poor decision.|
Originally Posted by Lazarillo
So, in the end, it's been 1½ issues, and the Praetorians are already losing their shine.
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The Praetorian "threat" needs to be wrapped up neatly within an issue or two so we can move onto genuinely new content.
PenanceжTriage
If Tyrant is the apparent champion of the Well, then I think he and his loyalist thugs will be around for quite a few Issues yet
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
It seems likely to me that Cole took the "quick" path that's mentioned in the incarnate storyline.
I like the thread's seeming premise that praetorians are old hat before we've even fought most of them. The two TFs that we've done are meant to be the start of the whole 'praetorians invading primal earth' story arc, but some folks have already seen it and it's old news.
One wonders what 'new content' you're waiting for.
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I've tried to explain it several times but even if "Praetorians invading Primal Earth" is a new arc, as a concept, it's nothing we haven't seen other villain groups already do. We have fought most of them already though. Well, we have heroside, anyway. Villains have even less reason to care.|
Originally Posted by Silencer7
I like the thread's seeming premise that praetorians are old hat before we've even fought most of them. The two TFs that we've done are meant to be the start of the whole 'praetorians invading primal earth' story arc, but some folks have already seen it and it's old news.
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| One wonders what 'new content' you're waiting for. |
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It doesn't have to be new, it just has to be more interesting than "another evil Statesman and his jumped-up Stormtroopers." Someone mentioned they wouldn't mind beating up more 5th. I wouldn't mind beating up more 5th. I wouldn't want to do it five issues in a row, or even two, but the 5th are interesting enough for me not to mind revisiting every once in a while. Preatoria isn't that interesting, and they've already had two issues dedicated to them. I like the Rikti, but I wouldn't have wanted i11 to also be about them. People complained about the "all Arachnos, all Longbow, all the time" nature of CoV, what makes you think people won't complain about all Preatoria, all the time?
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Originally Posted by Silencer7
It seems likely to me that Cole took the "quick" path that's mentioned in the incarnate storyline.
I like the thread's seeming premise that praetorians are old hat before we've even fought most of them. The two TFs that we've done are meant to be the start of the whole 'praetorians invading primal earth' story arc, but some folks have already seen it and it's old news. One wonders what 'new content' you're waiting for. |
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That's kinda what bad guys do when they're at that level of power. Invade and conquer/destroy places. Then heroes stop em. The reason heroes care who the villains are (in any story) is because they're attempting to change the heroes' status quo through violence. If the Praetorians stayed in their home dimension, we likely *wouldn't* care about them at all.
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Originally Posted by Lazarillo
I've tried to explain it several times but even if "Praetorians invading Primal Earth" is a new arc, as a concept, it's nothing we haven't seen other villain groups already do. We have fought most of them already though. Well, we have heroside, anyway. Villains have even less reason to care.
Story content that explains why we should care about who these villains are. Right now there's not much to elicit other than a yawn since it's the same stuff we've seen with the Rikti, with Rularuu, with Axis Amerika, etc... |
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But any high level threat has to involve the world in danger in some way - some evil force has to threaten Primal Earth or another world, and we have to fight it - and as it's a combat based game, any evil force will be using things that we can defeat in combat, so that means invasion armies.|
Originally Posted by Lazarillo
I've tried to explain it several times but even if "Praetorians invading Primal Earth" is a new arc, as a concept, it's nothing we haven't seen other villain groups already do. We have fought most of them already though. Well, we have heroside, anyway. Villains have even less reason to care.
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Originally Posted by Furio
That's kinda what bad guys do when they're at that level of power. Invade and conquer/destroy places. Then heroes stop em. The reason heroes care who the villains are (in any story) is because they're attempting to change the heroes' status quo through violence. If the Praetorians stayed in their home dimension, we likely *wouldn't* care about them at all.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Oh, and this is another thing I'm getting tired of: the global threat that forces villains to help save the world so it'll still be there for them to take over later, whenever that is. While taking absolutely no steps to make this "later" come sooner.|
Originally Posted by Lazarillo
Villains have even less reason to care.
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Seriously, how hard would it be to add side "take Cole's stuff" or "take advantage of the distraction to take heroes' stuff" objectives to the Praetorian task forces? They could award badges, but completing them would summon enemy reinforcements, or buff some of the enemies, or otherwise make the main objective more difficult.
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I think Praetoria / GR was a flawed concept from the start. I'm completely uninterested in it, and only have GR because I was paid to buy it (I got the $10 deal from BestBuy with a month's sub, so in the end it netted me $5).
I realize the devs thought this was a good way to answer player calls for fresh 1-20 content, but it isn't, and for several reasons.
One, it's a different genre. While the regular game is the player acting heroic or villainous, in the GR mini-game it's a sci-fi empire/rebellion struggle. That's not the same at all, and it doesn't lead new players to anticipate what the rest of the game is like. GR is more like Star Wars than a superhero game. If no one else objected, I'd think marketing, at least, would have an issue with this.
Two, despite player complaints about being shoehorned into particular roles and motives as villains, GR / Praetoria is all about being shoehorned into making moral choices you might not normally make. To take an analogy from pictorial art, I'd say that player motive and morality is best drawn in negative space, not positive space.
Three, no matter how you try to frame it, Praetoria is clearly a goatee universe. It takes a lot of character detail provided in BOTH universes to make a goatee universe intriguing, and the game just isn't structured for that. So a goatee universe in CoH is bound to be superficial and boring. It was appropriate for the original version of the Praetorian conflict to take up just a couple of arcs. Expanding beyond that is overuse, and it makes it a tired theme.
There's so many good things that could be done in the development of the game. GR / Praetoria, in my mind, was a clear mistake, and one that should have been visible from the outset.
I'd still like to see a small dev team get assigned to revamp the existing content. There's so much potential there, and it's all low hanging fruit.
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Aye, but why do we care that it's the Praetorians? I'm not talking about why "we" as the heroes and villains fighting to keep them out care. It's obvious why the characters care, they don't want to be invaded. But why do we, the players, or more aptly, the readers care? What's the story behind it? What's the difference between a mission where Battle Maiden invades King's Row, and where the Axis Amerika version of Maestro invades King's Row?
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Originally Posted by Furio
That's kinda what bad guys do when they're at that level of power. Invade and conquer/destroy places. Then heroes stop em. The reason heroes care who the villains are (in any story) is because they're attempting to change the heroes' status quo through violence. If the Praetorians stayed in their home dimension, we likely *wouldn't* care about them at all.
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Absolutely!|
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Oh, and this is another thing I'm getting tired of: the global threat that forces villains to help save the world so it'll still be there for them to take over later, whenever that is. While taking absolutely no steps to make this "later" come sooner.
Seriously, how hard would it be to add side "take Cole's stuff" or "take advantage of the distraction to take heroes' stuff" objectives to the Praetorian task forces? They could award badges, but completing them would summon enemy reinforcements, or buff some of the enemies, or otherwise make the main objective more difficult. |
It's just redside getting shafted again, lol.
If the only game in town was Praetoria, it would be so much more interesting, as a villain who was intending to resist Cole, to steal objects and technologies and materials from him, to make alliances with the Syndicate, to create mayhem in Praetoria, and to find ways to divide the loyalists and play them against one another.
What we've got instead (and I've not played the new content) is probably something that makes Primal characters look dumb, and the Praetorians look more intelligent and powerful than they should be.
I'm okay with those playing heroes taking a more reactive role, but the villains should be proactive and imaginative.
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It's also a story based game, though, and in a story, you can't just say "the world's in danger". Well, you can, but it doesn't tend to make a good story. That's the distinction between a villain and a boss that I mentioned earlier. A boss is a something that has a buncha HP that I click on and then press the little numbers on my keyboard until I see that it doesn't have HP anymore. A villain is a character in a story against whom I feel like I want to click on the little numbers on my keyboard and make him or her not have HP anymore (or, alternatively, one that actually makes me sympathize and feel even a touch of regret for doing so).
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
But any high level threat has to involve the world in danger in some way - some evil force has to threaten Primal Earth or another world, and we have to fight it - and as it's a combat based game, any evil force will be using things that we can defeat in combat, so that means invasion armies.
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Well, you don't really have to save it to take over later - it's more a question of personal survival - if Tyrant and his loyalist stormtroopers are planning to wipe out any superpowered people on Primal Earth, then regardless of if you protect Paragon City or serves Recluse, you're going to be a target of the Praetorian invasion.|
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Oh, and this is another thing I'm getting tired of: the global threat that forces villains to help save the world so it'll still be there for them to take over later, whenever that is. While taking absolutely no steps to make this "later" come sooner.
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Content wise, it's much easier to create stuff for us if Heroes and Villains are both threatened by the same forces - that's why the devs made sure that Arachnos was lined up against Tyrant, rather than possibly forming an alliance with him to defeat Paragon City.
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Originally Posted by Lazarillo
Aye, but why do we care that it's the Praetorians? I'm not talking about why "we" as the heroes and villains fighting to keep them out care. It's obvious why the characters care, they don't want to be invaded. But why do we, the players, or more aptly, the readers care? What's the story behind it? What's the difference between a mission where Battle Maiden invades King's Row, and where the Axis Amerika version of Maestro invades King's Row?
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Originally Posted by Lazarillo
It's also a story based game, though, and in a story, you can't just say "the world's in danger". Well, you can, but it doesn't tend to make a good story. That's the distinction between a villain and a boss that I mentioned earlier. A boss is a something that has a buncha HP that I click on and then press the little numbers on my keyboard until I see that it doesn't have HP anymore. A villain is a character in a story against whom I feel like I want to click on the little numbers on my keyboard and make him or her not have HP anymore (or, alternatively, one that actually makes me sympathize and feel even a touch of regret for doing so).
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/gam..._overview.html
Well if you're bored by them you might end up skipping Issue 20.
Me, it sounds like fun.
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There are two types of "content" in my eyes. "Story" content and "Gameplay" content. i19 was great for the latter. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Apex was about the most fun I've had in the game in quite a while. i20 looks to be more of the same. So I suspect I'll enjoy it greatly to that extent (I haven't done the sneak preview raids because I'd rather experience the polished versions as my first impression). |
Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
Well if you're bored by them you might end up skipping Issue 20.
Me, it sounds like fun. |
However, without great "story" content to go with it, and without a compelling villain to inspire me, I suspect that, like the new TFs of i19, it will also elicit a great big whopping "who cares?" out of me when initial rush is over. Some may say that asking for both to be great is asking too much. I'll turn and point out that we have precedent of both being in place in this game already, and that it's a little disappointing to see the most epic "gameplay" content get completely shafted on the "story" side.
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How can an almost invincible man powered by an ultimate source of power and attempting to conquer the entire multiverse "for the greater good" not be an interesting Villain?|
Originally Posted by Lazarillo
and without a compelling villain to inspire me
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You make Tyrant sound like Hopkins in a fancier suit
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Power scale isn't what makes a villain an interesting character.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
How can an almost invincible man powered by an ultimate source of power and attempting to conquer the entire multiverse "for the greater good" not be an interesting Villain?
You make Tyrant sound like Hopkins in a fancier suit |
Well, I can add that one of my friends who recently tried out the Free Trial after several years of not playing (Since he forgot his account details) in Praetoria.
And you know what? He hated it. He found it boring. He'd already read everything he wanted to know about Praetoria and found the enemies lacking.
Now, I proceeded to show him the Shadow Shard a few days later. And I totally agreed with what he said: "They should do more of this." And that was just by looking at it.
In my opinion, let the Devs finish Issue 20, but for the love of deities above and below, don't make it all about the Praetorians. I mean, sure, smacking around a giant robot is a 'god-like' feat worthy of the notice of a sadistic mystical well, but so is defeating an aspect of a dimension devouring entity, or the leader of a large and powerful group of super-nazis or even hordes upon hordes of alien invaders.
So, whilst I do somewhat like Praetoria, i'm disappointed that the Devs current goal/vision seems to be shifted entirely to involving Praetoria given half the chance. I mean, there are other threats out there
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