Praetorians...They're kinda boring

At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, what do you want villains to do, if not try to take over the world? I don't think it'd be any better if the praetorians wanted to rob banks or whatever.

Also, Joker had a backstory, at least before the Heath Ledger rendition. And I suspect the Ledger Joker didn't need a backstory because people already "know" who the Joker is. He doesn't need to be explained.

I read the threads on this board sometimes and I wonder if you people ever even read comics. There's a long and distinguished history of writers finding contrived reasons for heroes and villains to work together.

I do think CoX sometimes does a bad job of making the cooperation seem appropriately tenuous, but that's a level of storytelling that is probably pretty tough to do outside of direct player input. I mean, my rogue blaster just got done breaking into city hall to free Reichsman, then she trucked off to save the world from the rikti. That seems silly and contrived until you realize that in a game like this, some of the onus is on the player to provide the story (or to get comfortable with relative lack thereof.)

With the exception of "get rich," all of those possible motivations collapse into "destroy the world" or "take over the world," or aren't actually villanous. Hell, Tyrant does want to control people's minds.

I find a lot of the recent updates kinda boring. We are just getting dumped on with Praetoria content. Too much. It isn't so exciting to begin with.

The game, in general, has too many non-epic feeling missions and arcs. There is very little epic in this game.

The developing story arcs take so long that people lose interest. Do some epic ones in one issue.

Yeah, I really hope the devs take a read of this. P-Town is kinda dull. I have a tough time taking a lowbie through there.

We're not beating up Hellions in the CoP

Praetoria and the praetorians have pretty art. They have cool designs, cool powers, and some memorable moments. This will sound weird, but the biggest thing for me that makes them not memorable?

Color. Greys, pale blues, a few audacious colors here and there make villains stand on their own. This is based on comic books, use bright colors. If the giant robots were bright red, they'd stand out more. You look at them in some of their maps and it all seems a mite bit greyish. This from a guy who's favorite color is grey. A variety of tones with a few standouts goes a long ways.

But anywise. I enjoy the game, and have since '04. That's a long time to spend on one game. The criticism I'd level at the writers is that they often fall into some flat villains. Cole seemed interesting as a foe of primal earth. It seemed he was the well-meaning dictator who did bad things out of paranoia for preservation. But if the praetorians are just another bland conquering force, that depth is gone. He wants to conquer. Why? Conquering is what villains do, I guess.

Devs, here's a hint: if you make an enemy that you'd like to ask a question before hitting them, you made a good enemy. If you don't care or can't tell who you're hitting, that's a bad sign. Unfortunately, many Praetorian foes fall into the latter.

I honestly couldn't care less about the villains we face or heroes for that matter. The PvE story is just a showcase for how awesome my Hero or Villain is. That may be why I feel like I'm fighting to have my characters be more important than the Praetorians. I don't care about Tyrant or his dumb plans I just want to look cool while I defeat them. It does seem as if the Canon characters are trying to steal the show from the player characters. I like the more vague story lines where I have to fill in the blanks on my characters motivations for doing things instead of having my moral options spoon fed to me by the arcs. IMHO a great many players are far more interested in their own creations than game canon. I'm more interested in player created characters than game canon.
Also when villains team with heroes they need an option to screw the heroes over for their own aims. It's a huge part of the genre and the villain usually aids the hero in order to further their own super secret plans.