Going Rogue - a year later

Only part of Going Rogue that I like was side switching and more new powers. New powers drives my enjoyment.

I do have to admit that Tips missions have added some longevity to the game, and I hope more are to come.

I'm largely happy with the endgame as is. Incarnate powers could stand to be less laughably trivial to get, and they ought to provide a nearly-constant benefit (e.g. interface) rather than only be available once in a long while (e.g. lore). But anything that makes my characters more powerful is a good thing, and it's nice to see developers encourage multipurpose, generalist builds by giving all characters abilities they don't normally get from their powersets.

[SUPER SNARK]

New ad campaign for Praetoria:

"And you thought the Rogue Isles were sparsely populated!"

[/SUPER SNARK]

Really just kidding - its nice having a solo option where I don't get pestered to team all the time (only took me a week to get out with my stalker, and that's because I was working on my Warshade/Widow/Dominator as well)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

I guess I am one of the few that really enjoys Preatoria. I believe that about 80% of my new characters have started in Preatoria. Although with the new stuff in Freedom, that balance will shift.

Is it perfect? No. Some enemies are quite difficult - not unlike the Vahz in low level Primal earth - and some times the missions are ambush heavy. BUT... the writing is amazing. I really enjoy how almost everyone you meet is a rotten individual with their own agenda. IMHO, Preatoria is a cesspool of evil. Not the tie-the-girl-to-the-railroad-tracks villany of Rogue Isles, but true psychogically warped and morally deficient evil. (Calvin Scott is probably the creepiest and nastiest of the lot.) I think it's really cool how contacts will disappear because they're DEAD....

Preatoria makes me play with a different mindset. Beta Freedom has really shown me this fact. When I play in Preatoria, I have no qualms about "killing" npcs. However, when I have been doing some of the new stuff in beta, I actually have a rough time when the decision is to explicitly hurt/kill an NPC. I can't do it... I always choose the option that causes the least pain. (Which makes it tough for me to choose villany in the tutorial - even though I like redside better.) I like the fact that Preatoria makes me play differently.

I do wish that mayhem's would be added to Ouro because I do miss thoses playing Preatoria.

I think some players dislike Praetoria because they've become so accustom to blowing by the lower levels red and blue side, not to mention getting the temp travel powers, that Praetoria seems unbearably slow.

Toss in not being instinctively aware of what each critter can do, which can make the game seem harder as you "learn" through pain. I would imagine after going through Praetoria 10 times you'll grasp what tactics you need to hone here to make handling such encounters second nature.

Also asking the player to choose a path in the overall story can actually be a turn off to some ("don't want to think, want to SMASH"). Not to mention that PUGs don't really care about content normally if just leveling. Tip mission is as good as AE is as good as someone's story arc is as good as a standard TF or trial.

I've already deleted every toon I made in Praetoria. I found the the whole 'feel' there to be desperately dull and uninspiring.

Praetoria was a good idea which was unfortunately not implemented quite the way it could have been.

I'm hanging on for the game to do something else apart from Preatorian based stuff.

It just leaves me cold, and I wish the whole Praetorian thing could be retconned back to what it was and the original Maria Jenkins arc could be reinstated.

It isn't going to happen, but I can wish anyways

The reason I love Praetoria is that unlike the other lowbie content, and indeed most of the other content in the game, it feels very much like a recent, well-made non-MMO RPG. You can't sleepwalk your way through it. It has a story that engages you mechanically as well as through the writing. The scripting is radically better than anything that came before it.

The difficult enemies are excellent because they mean you get some modicum of challenge even running on 0x1, which you should do because even on that setting you'll need to turn experience off to hit even half of the arcs playing entirely solo. It may bespeak a different sensibility than the legacy content's "quantity equals challenge" method, but keep in mind that the developers never intended that to be how the game worked. Emmert was committed to the end to the three minions = one hero concept. Was it ever true? Of course not, and due to player demand they grudgingly added the difficulty system and then finally expanded it to where you could opt to fight small armies by yourself. That doesn't mean that that should be the only way to get any challenge in the game.

My only complaint about Praetoria is that it's over so soon, but First Ward is a very large step in the right direction. I hope in issue 23 or 24 we see another expansion to 30-39. This would eject characters from Praetoria just in time to get into the high-gear primal content that culminates with the invasion itself.

The main thing I don't like about the Praetorian Content is the lack of once I leave Praetoria.

I've taken toons back to Praetoria and they aren't recognized by old contacts or trainers. Tina MacIntyre doesn't think to ask me what I know about Praetoria as a native or-- to my knowledge-- even recognize that's where I'm from.

What is need is more tips missions for heroes and villians who do not want to flip. Yeah I know there are alot more players playing grey but give us pure players some bones please.

If you don't like the challenge, you still have two other options for starting areas. Players who did want an interesting challenge had no options before Praetoria. The difficulty slider is a lame option because it admits that there is no challenge to the legacy groups and that the only recourse is more and more of them.

Tell us, what would you have had the devs do to come up with new lowbie groups for praetoria? Two pistol attacks and a brawl for every minion, and lieutenants with a submachine gun attack? I think they've well exhausted the possibilities of that strategy in the hero and villain content. A great way to make the expansion instantly unappealing would have been to simply port over existing lowbie groups with new skins on them! Instead they broadened the tools available to them and came up with some genuinely novel challenges that sadly do force you, the player, to use your noodle now and then. It's almost like they wanted there to be a credible threat of defeat and failure! Fitting for the overall atmosphere of Praetoria, no?

Edit: The only way to claim that the lowbie groups are clearly jury-rigged highbie groups is to have little experience fighting the high level IDF, clockwork, et cetera, by the way. They're radically, hugely stronger than their lower level stand-ins.

Oh, and on a point that was brought up earlier, I don't see how they could have made the plot much more accessible to novices. There's a difference between being able to follow the plot and being able to instantly know everything there is to know about the universe. Yes, it has a lot of references to primal earth stuff, but nothing that would keep a new player from being able to understand the subplots happening there.

Praetoria remains one of my favorite things about this game. Even if the mobs are more difficult to fight (sometimes annoyingly so...if you're a squishier toon, the mobs can be really annoying), I love the story there enough that I'm willing to put up with it.

The storyline there just wasn't something I expected from City of Heroes, and it was a refreshing change of pace. I liked the fact that there were hero/villain aspects to both loyalists and resistance, I loved the design of the world, the whole dystopian feel, the backstory for the mobs, the balance of power, etc. It's just so interesting to me. I admit, I'm a bit biased, because I LOVE alternate universe types of stories.

But there are a few things I don't like, which a lot of others have mentioned. The fact that it's only 1-20 content (well, 1-29 now I suppose, though First Ward doesn't have the same feel as the 1-20 content.) I really, REALLY wish that you could go from 1-50 in Praetoria. I wish the story had gone all of the way, or at least, picked back up again at some point so you could return there by the end of the game.

As others have mentioned, the fact that the story pretty much drops off once you get to Primal Earth is very disappointing. The new story arcs in the 20-29 range help a little bit in that regard, but even then, it's minimal, and most characters treat you like a hero that's always been there and people in Praetoria forget about you. It's like the story doesn't really matter past that point, save for the trials, which are already set in stone and pro-Resistance.

I wish that you could form SG's in Praetoria, and that you could go to Primal without having to become a hero or a villain. They could have just flagged Praetorians like they flag rogues and vigilantes, and make it so you can't start any content, but you can join teams or run newspaper missions or something.

I really hope they continue adding new content to Praetoria. But on the other hand, if it's all going to be like First Ward, I'm not sure how much I'll like it. As much as I like the feel and story of First Ward, the fact that it's pretty much the same, without any moral choice or side-switching, makes it feel less interesting than the 1-20 content that came before it. But I can understand why they did it that way - they wanted it to be accessible to people who left, as well as people who are still there, because of the fact that you are otherwise required to leave at 20.

That being said, I still love it. Even with Freedom, I only plan on making one toon that starts in Atlas. The rest, I'll continue to make in Praetoria. I love the story enough that it's my preferred starting area.

Yeah the design flaw with Praetoria is easy to see. Basically, it was designed with veteran players in mind, but it was also supposed to draw in new, novice players.