Going Rogue - a year later
By
Agent White,
Posted on: 2011-09-05 13:43 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Okay forgive me if I'm less than 100% thorough as I am replying to two giant posts. I'm quoting Venture more because I'm not aware of a good way to quote both at once, heh.
Quote:
I used the word "interesting" for a reason.
|
Originally Posted by Venture
A lame option is still an option, so you've managed to contradict yourself in the space of only two sentences.
|
Quote:
| The truth is the sub-SO game doesn't need a difficulty increase because it's the only part of the game that works ... I would not have made "lowbie groups" for Praetoria. Of course, I wouldn't have made Praetoria, either. |
Quote:
| The Hollows mobs Sam mentions had nothing on these guys. (I and others argued vehemently to keep them, actually.) |
Quote:
| Yes. There are standards for low-level enemies. |
Quote:
| Praetorian mobs are not some deep tactical challenge requiring the strategic acumen of Sun Tzu to overcome ... Praetorian mobs didn't challenge me, they annoyed me. |
Quote:
|
"Genuinely novel challenges" my ***. They stuck stats, status effects and debuffs on low-level characters and put in a lot of ambushes. Neither of those were novel. I've fought Malta before, I've fought Cimerorans before, I've fought Arachnos before. Nothing about the Praetorians is new, it's just the old stuff dumped into low-level enemies. All it does is skew the difficulty curve all over the place, and make the low-level game unnecessarily difficult. If you're looking for challenge in the low-level game, you're barking up the wrong tree. The existing low-level game is already plenty challenging. The weaker critters are offset by our weaker characters and by the fact that player power doesn't actually outstrip game balance until SOs and later on. The 1-20 game is and has always been soundly balanced because players simply never had the opportunity to break it. |
I simply disagree with the both of you: I find it fun and infinitely more interesting than the legacy content. There are missions in Praetoria that are annoying, but there are more missions in the old stuff that are annoying. Would you rather enter a mission and quickly encounter a difficult set of ambushes, or enter a mission and discover that it's a six layer lab tileset and the objective is kill all? I think I know what both of you would say to that and I reiterate my disagreement.
Quote:
| And at the end of the day, the devs abandoned the idea for F2P. The new starting experience is the old starting experience. Overpowered newbie mobs failed; you lose. |
Sam, I agree that there were weak points in the story lines that could have been improved, but surely on the whole you must agree that the writing is furlongs ahead of what City of Heroes and City of Villains shipped with.
A year on, Going Rogue is missing these things for me:
1: Rogue content in Paragon City + the Rogue Isles outside of tip/morality missions (conducting deals, making money, smuggling, keeping the law off your back as you chase the almighty dollar.)
2: Vigilante content in the Rogue Isles + Paragon City outside of tip/morality missions (Taking down crooks who the Zig is too good for, going to the Rogue Isles to hunt down someone who's crossed the line, fending off people wanting to bring you in for your brand of justice.)
3: An expansion to the selection of tip and morality missions across the level ranges they occur in. (We had some vigilante and rogue tips added, and 1 new 40-50 Morality mission to each side, but that's it.)
4: Praetorian content on Primal Earth (Primal-fled Resistance trying to take action on an ex-Loyalist, possibly suspecting espionage, Loyalists tracking down Crusader Resistance members for heinous crimes they committed, persecution from Primal residents, a Praetorian-on-Primal subculture, or even Primals wanting to go to Praetoria, thinking it a 'better way'.)
5: Incorporating morality choices and points into story arcs (the arc where you get a warrant put out against you by Crey would make a great point to go Vigilante, or maybe the heat of Arachnos convinces a villain that Paragon might be a safer place to operate.)
6: A chance for heroism in the isles/villainy in the city. More chances to do evil on your own terms, or go to the isles to try and do some good. Especially lacking on the latter.
Quote:
You can do multi-quotes by tagging posts you want to quote with the milti-quote button at the bottom of the most, next to the Quote and Quick Reply buttons. Tagged posts will be dumped as consecutive posts encased in quote tags in the order in which you tagged them, and this even persists between pages, surprisingly enough. When it comes to splitting a post down in separate pieces, though, the best way I've found is to do it manually - copy the full opening quote tag of the post you're quoting, then paste it at the start of every subsequent quote block.|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
I'm quoting Venture more because I'm not aware of a good way to quote both at once, heh.
|
Also - and please don't take this as a cheap shot - I would very much appreciate you leaving a couple of empty lines at the head and foot of your quotes. Your text came out looking good in your post, but when I hit Quote, it came out in one giant chunk. I suspect you may be using a forum skin mod or some such, but even so - when someone quotes you, quote boxes disappear and the forum software inserts absolutely nothing in there.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
If this is your premise then you should agree with me that Praetoria is an optional extra starting location for people who have tastes that are utterly different from your own.
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
Here alone we see completely different answers to the question of what makes a fitting low level enemy. Is it that there's an existing method that should be conformed to, or is it that creativity should be expressed but within certain limits of power?
|
This is high level content, pure and simple. The high levels are the time when player characters are strong enough to defeat their base difficulty handily, and when alternate means of challenging the player come into the picture. Debuffs to counter the buffs players use to make themselves strong, control effects to make certain enemies more dangerous, higher stats to counteract player stats, greater enemy numbers to tax a strong build an so forth. All of these are tools to counteract the player advantage, which doesn't really exist in the pre-20 game.
Furthermore, AT mods scale with level until level 20. At level 1, almost all ATs have almost the same mods for almost everything. Designing level 1 to level 5 content, therefore, isn't as much a magical science as most characters are basically the same. And even up to level 20, most characters don't have most of their powers, so they can't be expected to be very strong. The need for "challenge" comes towards the end of the game where specialists excel at what they specialise at, and then are able to excel at a few other fields, as well.
Designing harder low-level content as an answer to an easy game is akin to instituting a flat tax on the community because fifteen people are incredibly powerful. It is, as a point of fact, akin to the I4 boss buff. The result was that the people who could solo bosses could still solo bosses, just with a bit more difficulty and the people who couldn't solo bosses before were now completely and utterly ******. The low levels need to be designed as low levels where players are just now learning the ropes and getting to grips with the game.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
If I had to guess, which I do, I'd say their actual thought was more along the lines of "How can we introduce novel groups that don't repeat what has come before?"
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
If you look at the powers that Praetorian enemies actually have individually, they're not much better equipped than other low level NPCs. They still have three to five powers that are toned down in damage scale. The difference is that rather than simply giving them "lethal ranged attack, smashing melee attack, smashing melee attack, lethal ranged attack" in many cases they got something more like "psychic ranged attack, lethal melee attack, siphon power, temporary invulnerability."
|
That's one key problem with Praetorian NPCs - they have a zillion powers, and all of them nasty. Fight a bunch of Hellions or Skulls and note what they spend the majority of their time - nothing. They stand in place, waiting for their attacks to recharge. Now watch what a level 2 PPD minion will spend his time doing - he'll cycle between two or three different types of punches CONSTANTLY.
What you describe in the above quote are some of the worst, most dangerous high-level enemies, like Malta Gunslingers or Vanguard Lieutenants or, hell, Carnie Ring Mistresses. These have no business showing up in levels 1 to 5, or indeed showing up before level 30, if not 40. The Vahzilok, the low-level's single strongest enemies, are so strong specifically because their minions have THREE attacks. None of these attacks alone are all that strong, but when you get five zombies to spit at you, puke at you and backhand you in quick succession, your health takes a dive. The Vahzilok are notorious in the low-level hero game for being exceptionally difficult, and the only reason they're not notorious villain-side is because they show up in all of three missions post level 10.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
At the same time, it in no way makes them comparable to mid or high level factions, one of the hallmarks of which is long control powers and extreme damage attacks.
|
And, yes, this very much DOES make them perfectly comparable to high-level enemies. They are using the high-level critter design template. Praetorian critters are not some kind of breakthrough in enemy design or novel concept of the future as you seem to describe it. They're run-of-the-mill 40-50 critters with their levels dropped.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
Would you rather enter a mission and quickly encounter a difficult set of ambushes, or enter a mission and discover that it's a six layer lab tileset and the objective is kill all?
|
Ambushes are not an exception. They're just as annoying, since they feature less combat and more me exiting the map, resting on the side of the street and re-entering the map because I can't handle 10 waves of 5 enemies in a continuous fight at level 7.
The game worked just fine back in 2004 when entering an instance to kill everything you could target was all we could do, and these missions work just as much now. In fact, I'm having to go out of my way to search for them now, because apparently simple missions are no longer complex enough to qualify for being made. Why have a simple mission when you can have a gimmick mission? Why have a mission that plays to your strengths when you can have it fail if someone runs away, someone dies or a 5-minute timer counts down, if an objective breaks or doesn't break or just make it unwinnable because the sequence of events is so complex it never worked properly?
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
If I were you, I would have pointed out that recently they nerfed a couple powers on syndicate and clockwork enemies!
|
Also, if I had to make a guess, I'd expect that endurance drain + chain stun attack on Menders to have taken a hit, because that alone made the whole faction ten times worse than it had to be, making my low-level Scrappers feel like Blasters.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
Sam, I agree that there were weak points in the story lines that could have been improved, but surely on the whole you must agree that the writing is furlongs ahead of what City of Heroes and City of Villains shipped with.
|
And, really, if there's anything bad about the Going Rogue storyline, it's the iCrap stories, not the 1-20 Praetorian Earth ones. The world of Praetoria is a rich, nuanced place with a lot of hidden backstory, so it's a right shame that it's reduced to something even MORE of a parody with Incarnate content than what it was back in 2004 when it was first added. Praetoria suffers from a general disregard of story continuity that's epidemic to the entire game, not just endemic to that one alternate dimension.
At the end of the day, though, I'm not interested in conspiracy theories, invisible wars and politics. A lot of my characters are far too self-contained, or - in the case of a few children - far too basic for them to be politically active. And there's no way to play a character in Praetoria without it being politically active and taking sides. I can play a hero who's just out to do the right thing and I can play a villain who's only out for himself, but I can't do that in Praetoria because it's always Loyalists or Resistance. I didn't want to kowtow to Arachnos in I8 and I don't want to kowtow to the Resistance or the Loyalists in 18 and beyond. The Praetorian "morality" system isn't about morality at all, it's about faction politics and loyalty. I suppose with a system built around Resistance vs. Loyalists, they HAD to shoehorn them both regardless of the context of the decision, and indeed regardless of whether both sides were even involved in the story up to that point.
I like Praetoria's story as a story, and would probably watch a movie about it. However, it ties my hands behind my back when it comes to writing for my characters, and this I simply don't like. The thing is too hard to play through and too restrictive to write form. I'm glad I won't have to, in a couple of days.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
|
Quote:
Man, I'd love to see all these things.|
Originally Posted by Zortel
A year on, Going Rogue is missing these things for me:
1: Rogue content in Paragon City + the Rogue Isles outside of tip/morality missions (conducting deals, making money, smuggling, keeping the law off your back as you chase the almighty dollar.) 2: Vigilante content in the Rogue Isles + Paragon City outside of tip/morality missions (Taking down crooks who the Zig is too good for, going to the Rogue Isles to hunt down someone who's crossed the line, fending off people wanting to bring you in for your brand of justice.) 3: An expansion to the selection of tip and morality missions across the level ranges they occur in. (We had some vigilante and rogue tips added, and 1 new 40-50 Morality mission to each side, but that's it.) 4: Praetorian content on Primal Earth (Primal-fled Resistance trying to take action on an ex-Loyalist, possibly suspecting espionage, Loyalists tracking down Crusader Resistance members for heinous crimes they committed, persecution from Primal residents, a Praetorian-on-Primal subculture, or even Primals wanting to go to Praetoria, thinking it a 'better way'.) 5: Incorporating morality choices and points into story arcs (the arc where you get a warrant put out against you by Crey would make a great point to go Vigilante, or maybe the heat of Arachnos convinces a villain that Paragon might be a safer place to operate.) 6: A chance for heroism in the isles/villainy in the city. More chances to do evil on your own terms, or go to the isles to try and do some good. Especially lacking on the latter. |
Of course, the devs tend to release things "into the wild" and then never come back to them, so I can't really see it happening, but I agree with you that it would be awesome and add huge depth.
Good to know about multi-quote. I actually remove the spaces around quotes intentionally because I find it more aesthetically pleasing, it hadn't occurred to me that quoters had to look at it too. I'll try to avoid the giant blocks.
Quote:
Clearly we're not in agreement on this but I find that they balanced the challenge of Praetoria very well over the ten archetypes that can be exposed to it. There is no AT that can call Praetorian villains easy mode and neither is there an AT that cannot solo through it. It may well be too hard for some players but consider that the total novice who starts in Praetoria and decides it's too difficult for him can then immediately create a primal character, having already completed the requirement to start his first character there.| Furthermore, AT mods scale with level until level 20. At level 1, almost all ATs have almost the same mods for almost everything. Designing level 1 to level 5 content, therefore, isn't as much a magical science as most characters are basically the same. And even up to level 20, most characters don't have most of their powers, so they can't be expected to be very strong. The need for "challenge" comes towards the end of the game where specialists excel at what they specialise at, and then are able to excel at a few other fields, as well. |
I think we have a basic philosophical difference over the appropriateness of challenge in the game. I don't think it's something that should only arise at high level and I don't think it's a good thing, though it is inevitable, that specialization trivializes certain types of content, which specialists proceed to exclusively run. The game would benefit from players who sought ever-harder obstacles with no regard for the reward. This would require a fundamental alteration of human behavior, so it is unlikely to happen Soon.
Quote:
| Here, you are simple wrong. Aside from the Vahzilok, what low-level minions and, hell, what low-level lieutenants have "three to five attacks?" |
Quote:
| The game has a sum total of ONE "long" control power - the Stun Grenade that's shared between Malta TacOps and Knives of Artemis bosses, I forget they're called. Possibly the Chief Mesmerist sleep could count, but this is "long" in the sense that Mesmerists will chain-hold you, not that their controls are long on their own. |
My point is that Praetorians use neither numerous nor onerous status effects. I think that quite clearly sets them apart from high level enemies.
Quote:
| I love large maps, I love defeat all missions since that's what I do in my instances every time, and I love simple objective designs. |
It's also worth noting that this new approach to mission design is not at all confined to Praetoria. It's in the new lowbie content and it's in the new mid level content. Tips and morality missions are slightly more conventional but they too make use of the new scripting abilities to a significant degree. As I said earlier in the thread, this makes the new content actually stand out among MMORPGs as the rare example of gameplay that can compare in any way to their non-MMO cousins. I don't see how that could be a bad thing.
This post is really long.
Quote:
| At the end of the day, though, I'm not interested in conspiracy theories, invisible wars and politics. |
Quote:
| I like Praetoria's story as a story, and would probably watch a movie about it. However, it ties my hands behind my back when it comes to writing for my characters, and this I simply don't like. |
Quote:
Yeah, it's the biggest flaw of the Paragon Studios team IMO. Though that's someting I've been quite vocal on in the past (And will continue to be. A shiny new pair of boots and some nice jeans won't do much about rotting limbs underneath, and getting corpse juice on the shiny new things is never good.)|
Originally Posted by Feycat
Of course, the devs tend to release things "into the wild" and then never come back to them, so I can't really see it happening, but I agree with you that it would be awesome and add huge depth.
|
All I can do is hope that one day, my Rogues and Vigilantes will be able to do Rogue and Vigilante things outside of some repeatables one side and some repeatables the other that are actually you becoming a Hero/Villain.
Quote:
A lot of that would end up like First Ward, with a heavy bias towards Heros/Resistance - the closer Praetorian content gets to 50, the more it has to sync with the Incarnate storyline, where everyone's helping the Resistance.
|
Originally Posted by Zortel
4: Praetorian content on Primal Earth (Primal-fled Resistance trying to take action on an ex-Loyalist, possibly suspecting espionage, Loyalists tracking down Crusader Resistance members for heinous crimes they committed, persecution from Primal residents, a Praetorian-on-Primal subculture, or even Primals wanting to go to Praetoria, thinking it a 'better way'.)
|
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Quote:
And while it was an awesome addition to the Cohverse, it might also have put some people off.|
Originally Posted by jfp2004
The storyline there just wasn't something I expected from City of Heroes
|
As we've seen in other threads, the majority of players prefer to play heroes, not just in CoH, but in other superhero games too - and a lot of players will have certain expectations about what a comicbook game world should be like, which would also be one of the reasons that they'd pick up the game in the first place - and which is why they could quite easily find Praetoria to be a confusing turn-off - especially as they had to make their first avatar there, and it wasn't clearly explained that they could just log in then log out and then make a normal Hero or Villain as their next avatar.
Praetoria as first glance seems to ofer all the classic comicbook world requirements - it's a city, with parks, skyscrapers, backstreets, factories and even some slum areas - it has a police force, government departments and officals to interact with, civilians going about their business on the streets, and criminal gangs lurking in the shadows - the basic facade is identical to Paragon City, because that's the classic comicbook setting - but past the facade, the problems start for people looking for a normal comicbook environment.
In superhero comics, which are set in the real world, usually in America, there's a natural feeling that laws are mostly fair, that cops are mostly good people, and that the government is mostly working in the best interests of the people who elected it - so the heroes don't really have to worry about helping any of them in their work - when heroes arrest people, they're genuine criminals who'll be dealt with fairly by the authorities.
That clasisc comicbook set-up is reflected perfectly in the blue side content - we arrest criminals, assist the police and government agencies, and even work with the UN for some of the major threats - we sometimes run into rogue elements like Longbow agents who have become vigilantes, or corrupt PPD officers - but these are always presented as special cases, which is why we're called in to take them down.
At no point are Heroes ever given any kind of suggestion that helping the authorities might be a bad thing to do.
But Praetoria takes that classic comicbook set-up and twists it right round into something very dark and creepy - it has the classic superhero city setting to patrol and protect, but right from the tutorial, players are shown that there's something very, very wrong with the authorities that a comicbook hero would normally assist without a second thought - players who arrest people in Paragon City know that they're criminals they're arersting, and that they'll be put on trial, and sent to prison if they're found guilty - but players in Praetoria find out that the people that they arrest will be brainwashed, tortured or executed - and that unlike Paragon City and other normal comicbook settings, the people they're arresting mightn't even be guilty of any real crimes.
You can fight for truth, justice and the American way in Paragon City, but not in Praetoria - and that's one of the main reasons that Praetoria has a problem with attracting players to level up in it.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
I am boggled by this long, intelligent and thoughtful post from GG with no smilies in it.
Quote:
It's really not that big of a deal, it just makes it a tad harder to reply since your entire post blends into one wall of text when I hit quote |
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
Good to know about multi-quote. I actually remove the spaces around quotes intentionally because I find it more aesthetically pleasing, it hadn't occurred to me that quoters had to look at it too. I'll try to avoid the giant blocks.
|
Or did, anyway, this one is well spaced. I could kind of spot where line breaks used to be by where one sentence is jammed into the previous one, as you otherwise leave two spaces between them. Not a big deal, just something I wanted to mention.Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
I think we have a basic philosophical difference over the appropriateness of challenge in the game. I don't think it's something that should only arise at high level and I don't think it's a good thing, though it is inevitable, that specialization trivializes certain types of content, which specialists proceed to exclusively run.
|
I'm a firm believer of a game which should favour the player and make the player feel like the coolest, most awesome thing around. I just came out of a game session playing Space Marine and I'm considering replaying Darksiders immediately thereafter, so I have a pretty solid idea of just how awesome I want to be. Praetorian enemies really don't allow for that. For the most part, they're too tough to give any feeling of power to the player, something which Hellions and Skulls never had a problem with.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
The game would benefit from players who sought ever-harder obstacles with no regard for the reward. This would require a fundamental alteration of human behavior, so it is unlikely to happen Soon.
|
Expecting players to seek out "better" gaming which progresses them slower is counting on their good nature, and this is not something a development team can afford to do, any more so than a government can afford to disband law enforcement, counting on people's good nature that they wouldn't commit crimes and instead want to leave a peaceful, altruistic life. Any content which does not balance its reward to its speed of progression is badly designed content, especially if it's "not worth it." There will always be favourites, of course, but if content is kept within a certain narrow bracket, then people like me can pick what we like without feeling like dunces for doing so.
That's wholly separate from the issue that I just don't like fighting things in Praetoria. It's just not fun, AND it's less rewarding. I ain't doing that again.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
I didn't say attacks, I said powers. I also didn't say minions, I said enemies.
|
And even if you didn't mean attacks, many attacks is still what most Praetorian critters have. One of their greatest strengths is that they have significantly higher DPS than low-level critters in either Paragon City or the Rogue Isles. They don't so much "hit hard" a they hit very often, and that honestly IS overpowered.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
Of course, you mention trolls. You are aware that not only do troll bosses get status protection and powerful defense and resistance powers, but their lieutenants get integration?
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
Circle of Thorns have Dark Pit and Char, Longbow have an entire pinata full of dangerous mezzes but most comically Spectral Terror, Family have Consiglieres that cast Singularity, I could go on but you get the idea.
|
If we're speaking of status effects, the only ones you can really cite pre-20 are Lost Anathema, who are bosses and somewhat rare, and Tsoo Yellow Ink Men who spawn from 15 to 20 and SUUUCK! I hate the ******* and they were the bane of my existence when I played Blasters. One slip up and they'll keep you permaheld until you die, even if you have to die of old age. I honestly can't think of anything beyond that in the low levels.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
This isn't going to surprise you very much but my feelings are diametrically opposed to yours on this. I hate kill alls and love stealthing missions. Meeting Reese in the warehouse. Stealing information on the Syndicate before the security alarm goes off.
|
To my eyes, missions that have you leave within 2 minutes of entering them are a waste of my time. Let me give you a sideways example - when I'm given a hunt mission, people often offer to do the hunt against enemies 10-15 levels below me because it's faster. I always refuse and instead choose to do my hunt against even cons. Yes, it takes longer, but I'd rather spend longer having fun than spend a shorter amount of time not having fun. A mission which expressly instructs me to not fight things is, therefore, wasting my time with dead air. I came to this game because my old childhood action figures don't look all that good in action, whereas here they could kick *** AND look good doing it. The last thing I want to do is spend 15 minutes reading contact dialogue, then mission clues, then conversations, then more mission clues, then pop-up windows then a debriefing.
I like a good story as much as the next guy. Hell, I'm usually the one chastising people for not reading their mission briefings even when they've read them before. And even I'm going to tell you that I lose patience with Going Rogue bogging me down with non-combat activities. When I find myself saying things like "I don't care, just let me hit something!" then something is horribly wrong. I can easily deal with these things the first time around, but when I'm doing it for the fifth time, I vastly prefer a mission that's just briefing -> action -> debriefing. City of Heroes is not Mass Effect, and trying to be is just wasting my time.
I don't mean to come off as disrespectful to your preferences. If you like Going Rogue for doing this, then more power to you. I, however, don't, and I have no intention of going back there until at least a few of the things that bother me get fixed.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
It's also worth noting that this new approach to mission design is not at all confined to Praetoria.
|
At the end of the day, City of Heroes is not an interactive book. It is still a game that I want to play. Some balance must be struck between gameplay and narrative, and in Praetoria, the narrative outweighs the gameplay by quite a margin. I realised this after doing something like three filler mission back-to-back until I could get to one where I take the character I built against the game's enemies - the point of it all. Call me irreverent, but I care about what I made and wrote vastly more than about what the development team made and wrote, yet Praetoria constantly ropes me into its own story.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
Would you believe that this is one of the things I also quite enjoy?
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
This is true to some extent and it's why I don't start all of my characters in Praetoria. Some of them make sense there, some of them do not.
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
|
Quote:
In this, Praetoria is far more realistic. Blindly serving authority is written as a bad thing to do. Every time corruption is presented as a unique scenario, every time officers are presented as fundamentally just, every time the system is presented as something you have a moral obligation to obey they send the message that this is what the real-world counterparts (in this case, the US, because the game is set in a US with superpowered folks running around) are like. Considering the exact nature of reality, that isn't just inaccurate, it's an outright dangerous message to spread.|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
In superhero comics, which are set in the real world, usually in America, there's a natural feeling that laws are mostly fair, that cops are mostly good people, and that the government is mostly working in the best interests of the people who elected it - so the heroes don't really have to worry about helping any of them in their work - when heroes arrest people, they're genuine criminals who'll be dealt with fairly by the authorities.
That clasisc comicbook set-up is reflected perfectly in the blue side content - we arrest criminals, assist the police and government agencies, and even work with the UN for some of the major threats - we sometimes run into rogue elements like Longbow agents who have become vigilantes, or corrupt PPD officers - but these are always presented as special cases, which is why we're called in to take them down. At no point are Heroes ever given any kind of suggestion that helping the authorities might be a bad thing to do. |
Although, even in Praetoria there is mostly the sense that things would be better with nice people in charge instead of nasty people. Systemic flaws aren't mentioned much.
Well I'm happy do agree to disagree with you on most of this stuff, Sam. A fine discussion! I still haven't beaten Human Revolution after like 35+ hours because I have to know what every single dystopianly futuristic email says. Oh Jensen, you're the only kleptomaniac murderous detective with a place in my heart.
Quote:
You're spot on that it's more fun to come up with your own material out of whole cloth than try to place your character within the game lore. I think you can still do that in Praetoria. Sure, it's a little weird to imagine a character who grew up in a tiny, hyper-advanced slave city, but if you're willing to make comic book style fudges just about anything is possible. They don't necessarily have to care, maybe they just want to leave and always had a hunch that that guy the president doesn't like has been sitting on a portal to another dimension.
|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
To each their own here. For my part, NONE of my characters make sense to start in Praetoria, because to start there, they have to CARE about Praetoria, and they don't. They don't because I don't. I don't care about the in-game canon enough to write it in my own bios, because I like what I come up with far better. In Paragon City or the Rogue Isles, my past never comes up. I could be in it for the money, in it for the fame, in it for the evulz, in it to destroy all humans, in it to be a stooge for Arachnos or in it for reasons my characters can't comprehend and the game still works. If you're in Praetoria without actually caring enough to make decisions about Praetoria's future, though, you may as well not even be there in the first place.
|
Quote:
Yeah, this is something I have been talking about for a while: innovations and you provide some good ideas. |
Originally Posted by Zortel
A year on, Going Rogue is missing these things for me:
1: Rogue content in Paragon City + the Rogue Isles outside of tip/morality missions (conducting deals, making money, smuggling, keeping the law off your back as you chase the almighty dollar.) 2: Vigilante content in the Rogue Isles + Paragon City outside of tip/morality missions (Taking down crooks who the Zig is too good for, going to the Rogue Isles to hunt down someone who's crossed the line, fending off people wanting to bring you in for your brand of justice.) 3: An expansion to the selection of tip and morality missions across the level ranges they occur in. (We had some vigilante and rogue tips added, and 1 new 40-50 Morality mission to each side, but that's it.) 4: Praetorian content on Primal Earth (Primal-fled Resistance trying to take action on an ex-Loyalist, possibly suspecting espionage, Loyalists tracking down Crusader Resistance members for heinous crimes they committed, persecution from Primal residents, a Praetorian-on-Primal subculture, or even Primals wanting to go to Praetoria, thinking it a 'better way'.) 5: Incorporating morality choices and points into story arcs (the arc where you get a warrant put out against you by Crey would make a great point to go Vigilante, or maybe the heat of Arachnos convinces a villain that Paragon might be a safer place to operate.) 6: A chance for heroism in the isles/villainy in the city. More chances to do evil on your own terms, or go to the isles to try and do some good. Especially lacking on the latter. |
I can't remember where I posted it before but i will say it again....maybe it is time for some turnover in the dev team. The same old creative design team is bound to become stale and the ideas are not as fresh or exciting; it is human nature. Going Rogue had some decent ideas but it fizzled fast and hard for many, many players. You had to queue to get on to servers when it hit and the player population was booming. That did not last long at all. City or Repetition did it again.
Quote:
I can understand that, actually. It's not even evil like City of Villains is, either, which is also attractive for a lot of people. It's more sinister, in a way. I mean, in the Isles, you're brainwashing, torturing, and executing all the time, depending on your interpretation of how you do missions and what happens as a result, but there, it's against the law, or rather, in a generally lawless place. So it has more of a classic feel to it, whereas in Praetoria, it's the people in positions of authority that are doing the mostly evil actions, and in a way that's just cruel as opposed to wanting to get power/money. On the other hand, the Crusaders do outright evil actions as well, and they're not in a position of authority. It's like evil fighting evil. |
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
And while it was an awesome addition to the Cohverse, it might also have put some people off.
But Praetoria takes that classic comicbook set-up and twists it right round into something very dark and creepy - it has the classic superhero city setting to patrol and protect, but right from the tutorial, players are shown that there's something very, very wrong with the authorities that a comicbook hero would normally assist without a second thought - players who arrest people in Paragon City know that they're criminals they're arersting, and that they'll be put on trial, and sent to prison if they're found guilty - but players in Praetoria find out that the people that they arrest will be brainwashed, tortured or executed - and that unlike Paragon City and other normal comicbook settings, the people they're arresting mightn't even be guilty of any real crimes. You can fight for truth, justice and the American way in Paragon City, but not in Praetoria - and that's one of the main reasons that Praetoria has a problem with attracting players to level up in it. |
I have trouble playing the Crusader storyline. There's a lot of twisted material there. I did it once to see what it was like, but I doubt I'll do it again. I have trouble playing stuff that's really evil. I like playing villains, because you can interpret it however you like, but it's hard to have an alternative interpretation of the things that the Crusaders do. I can't even play evil storylines in a lot of the popular RPGs that are out, because it makes me feel guilty.
Anyway, I can understand why the tone of it turns a lot of people away. And while I don't like playing Crusader at all, everything else is just fascinating to me. But I guess it's not too surprising. As time goes on, I relate less with most of the comic books coming out, whereas I used to be really into them and all of the classic tropes. Now I'm more intrigued by things that take the classic formulas and situations and twist them around, and for me, Praetoria fits that perfectly.
Quote:
I think I'd love to see everything on this list incorporated! Even more than I want to see more Incarnate powers. Fleshing out the game that already exists would be awesome. I understand why the devs/NCSoft prefer to focus on creating newer content vs adding in/fleshing out content, but still.
|
Originally Posted by Zortel
A year on, Going Rogue is missing these things for me:
1: Rogue content in Paragon City + the Rogue Isles outside of tip/morality missions (conducting deals, making money, smuggling, keeping the law off your back as you chase the almighty dollar.) 2: Vigilante content in the Rogue Isles + Paragon City outside of tip/morality missions (Taking down crooks who the Zig is too good for, going to the Rogue Isles to hunt down someone who's crossed the line, fending off people wanting to bring you in for your brand of justice.) 3: An expansion to the selection of tip and morality missions across the level ranges they occur in. (We had some vigilante and rogue tips added, and 1 new 40-50 Morality mission to each side, but that's it.) 4: Praetorian content on Primal Earth (Primal-fled Resistance trying to take action on an ex-Loyalist, possibly suspecting espionage, Loyalists tracking down Crusader Resistance members for heinous crimes they committed, persecution from Primal residents, a Praetorian-on-Primal subculture, or even Primals wanting to go to Praetoria, thinking it a 'better way'.) 5: Incorporating morality choices and points into story arcs (the arc where you get a warrant put out against you by Crey would make a great point to go Vigilante, or maybe the heat of Arachnos convinces a villain that Paragon might be a safer place to operate.) 6: A chance for heroism in the isles/villainy in the city. More chances to do evil on your own terms, or go to the isles to try and do some good. Especially lacking on the latter. |
Quote:
It really comes down to degrees of motivation. I could come up with reasons for why an extra-dimensional elder god who chooses to manifest on the physical realm out of boredom cares so much about Praetoria, that much is true. Thing is... I don't want to, not when I have options much easier to write for. If I have to choose between having to write why said god would care about the political structure in a fascist state and not having to write said god interacting with someone else's political structure at all, I choose the latter.|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
You're spot on that it's more fun to come up with your own material out of whole cloth than try to place your character within the game lore. I think you can still do that in Praetoria. Sure, it's a little weird to imagine a character who grew up in a tiny, hyper-advanced slave city, but if you're willing to make comic book style fudges just about anything is possible. They don't necessarily have to care, maybe they just want to leave and always had a hunch that that guy the president doesn't like has been sitting on a portal to another dimension.
|
People always talk disparagingly about the original Launch content in City of Heroes, but to me, it is always the most liberating. All it assumes is that you're a hero and want to do "hero stuff." Beyond this, the game never tries to convince you that you WANT to do this or explain WHY you want to do it. Your contacts are just that - contacts. They offer you tips, tell you of things you could be doing and then end on "Wanna?" Neither CoV's nor GR's "contacts" are actually contacts. They're quest givers. They tell a static story where your role as "the protagonist" is set in stone. Sure, you get some choices, but since those themselves are hard-coded in the story progression tree, you still end up having less freedom.
Since the beginning of time, I've been asking for proper contacts in the most basic sense of the word. Watch any older cop movie and you'll see the cops speaking with people on the streets who give them bits of information, "but you didn't hear it from me." Contacts are people who provide information, not people who provide TASKS. I'm aware that in-game metagame systems require NPCs to set our tasks for us, but they should still act as though we're doing something on our own initiative and they're just providing us with the necessary information.
I don't want contacts to drive my story and I don't want canon to define me. City of Heroes, for all its faults, manages to achieve this where both City of Villains and Going Rogue fail by reinterpreting what contacts are.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
|
Quote:
The thing is though, all that -is- new content. New content relating to older systems, yes, but new content all the same. It's content, that is new to the game and the related systems.|
Originally Posted by jfp2004
I think I'd love to see everything on this list incorporated! Even more than I want to see more Incarnate powers. Fleshing out the game that already exists would be awesome. I understand why the devs/NCSoft prefer to focus on creating newer content vs adding in/fleshing out content, but still.
|
How on earth the writers can make jokes about Neuron's 'innovate, never renovate' mindset and continue blithely on that path I just don't know.
I cant agree with any of the OP's points about Praetoria. Not getting into the rest of GR...but I love the zones there. They all are recognisable as 'earthish' yet have their own flavour, while being sufficiently different to one another. Neutropolis at night time..how can you say that doesnt look awesome with the lights and stuff?
The content there I also really enjoyed. I wont even get into the maps apparently being similar. If you are going to make that argument, as a reason why GR fails, you may as well say CoV fails, since it also has the same maps as CoH. Hell, you may as well say all content hero side beyond level 10 fails, because, you know..it is largely the same maps.
I liked the cosmetic updates to the Prae mission maps. To me, it provides a link with our primal earth locations, while being different enough to be interesting. On a lot of the maps, I caught myself standing around looking, thinking, geee thats cool!
The content itself? Also fun. Nearly every arc there (since I havent done them all) is far and away superior to most of the content blue side. Missions were hardly, if at all, of repeat types (multiple kill alls, multiple bosses ganks etc) and always kept my interest.
My biggest complaint is that the zones only went to 20. I would have happily stayed there to level if I could. Also, the badge requiring 5 moral choices seemed very hard to get. Having played 6 toons through Prae, and doing just about all contacts as I go, I still have not managed to get a toon with more than 3 moral choices done.
As to reasons why Prae never really took off like a rocket..I would say..the lag and performance issues. Yes, it is a pretty place, but just about everyone I knew lagged or had dc issues there. Also, the fact that once you made your toon..there was NO way to run off to ae/pi/gv and zap past lowbieville would be a big factor in a lot of peoples descision to play (or not play) there.
As a thought experiment, I decided to go ahead and look at what enemies we face in the 1-10 ranges in Praetoria vs. the rest of the game and what powers they have. I'm not looking to start a fight, but rather I don't want to play old characters within a day of Freedom, so I'm looking for other things to occupy myself with.
I'll only be looking at level 1-10 enemies, and only at minions and lieutenants
Paragon City
Hellions
Blood Brothers: 1 ranged attack (Revolver), 1 melee attack (Brawl or Fireman's Axe or Sledgehammer or Knife or Baseball bat) and 1 resistance power (strong against fire, weak against cold). They only use one of their attacks in a cycle at a time and their resistance isn't all that strong.
Fallen: 1 ranged attack (Shotgun or Submachine Gun), 1 resistance power, same as above.
Overall: These guys only ever cycle one attack at a time and spend a lot of their time waiting for it to recharge. They have resistances, but not very helpful ones.
Skulls
Gavediggers: 1 ranged attack (Revolver), 1 melee attack (Brawl or Fireman's Axe or Sledgehammer or Knife or Baseball bat) and 1 resistance power (strong against dark, weak against energy). They only use one of their attacks in a cycle at a time and their resistance isn't all that strong.
Death Heads: 1 ranged attack (Shotgun or Submachine Gun), 1 resistance power, same as above.
Overall: Identical to the Hellions.
Trolls
Trollkin: 1 ranged attack (Revolver), 1 melee attack (Brawl or Fighting -> Boxing or Sledgehammer) no resistance powers. They only use one of their attacks in a cycle at a time.
Jutal: 1 ranged attack (Submachine Gun), 1 melee attack (Super Strength -> Jab) no resistance powers. They only use one of their attacks in a cycle at a time.
Overall: These guys only ever cycle one attack at a time and spend a lot of their time waiting for it to recharge. They do have slightly stronger attacks and the Jutal lieutenants aren't as harmless as the Death Heads and the Fallen, but they're still basic.
Outcasts
Initiates: 1 ranged attack (Revolver), 1 melee attack (Fireman Axe or Sledgehammer or Knife or Baseball Bat) no resistance powers. They only use one of their attacks in a cycle at a time.
Skittles: 1 ranged attack (Submachine Gun or Shotgun), 1 melee attack (Stone Melee -> Stone Fists or Ice Manipulation -> Frozen Fists or Fire Manipulation -> Scorch or Electricity Manipulation -> Charged Brawl), no resistance powers. They only use one of their attacks in a cycle at a time.
Overall: Same as the Trolls, pretty much, though their elemental attacks are slightly more dangerous.
5th Column
Nebel Fist: 1 ranged attack (automatic pistol), 3 melee attacks (Martial Arts --> Thunder Kick and Crippling Axe Kick and Crane Kick), no resistance powers. They rarely use their pistols.
Nebel Rifle: 2 ranged attacks (Cryonic Rounds and Incendiary Rounds), 1 melee attack (brawl), no resistance attacks. These guys don't brawl and will almost always shoot from range.
Nebel Everything Else: 1 ranged area attack (Grenade Launcher or Flamethrower or Rocket Launcher), 1 melee attack (Brawl), no resistance powers. These will only use one attack at a time.
Nebel Unterofizzier: 2 ranged area attacks (Frag Grenade and 12 Gauge), 1 melee attack (Brawl), no resistance powers. These are ranged enemies for the most part.
Overall: The old 5th Column was and is NASTY, especially the Fist enemies. They have a lot of attacks and attack very frequently. Riflemen, as well, have many ranged ones and shoot a lot, but also debuff greatly, especially in large numbers. Be afraid!
*edit* Count the Elites of these same soldiers in with their regular counterparts. They have the same powers.
Council
Nebula Regulars: 1 ranged attack (Shotgun or Submachine Gun or Automatic pistol), 1 melee attack (Brawl), no resistance powers. These guys are essentially the same as the Trollkin.
Nebula Elite Marksman: Same as Nebel Rifle above.
Nebula Elites others: 1 ranged attack (Assault Rifle or Shotgun or Submachine gun), 1 melee attack (Brawl), no resistance powers. Same as the regulars, really.
Nebula Ajdutant + Elite such: 1 ranged attack (Adv. Submachine Gun or Assault Rifle), 1 melee attack (Brawl), no resitance powers. Same as the minions, but with more stats.
Penumbra Regulars: Most of those don't have powers listed for them on ParagonWiki, but I believe they have the same powers as the Nebula Elites, lieutenants included.
Conclusion: The council is a much easier version of the 5th Column in the lower levels, all told.
Vahzilok
Cadaver: 1 ranged attack (Projectile Vomit), 2 melee attacks (Zombie Brawl and Zombie Vomit), 1 resistance power (strong against Smashing, weak against Lethal). These guys don't seem to have a problem using all three of their attacks at all times.
Enbalmed Cadaver: 1 self-destruct attack (Kamikadze, ugh...), 1 resistance power same as above.
Reaper: 1 ranged debuff (Dart Gun), 2 melee cone attacks (Bone Saw and Cleaver), no resistance powers. These guys seem to use all their powers all the time.
Mortificator: 1 ranged debuff (Dart Gun), 1 melee cone attack (Bone Saw), one ally revive power (Resurrect Zombie), no resistance powers. Like the Reapers, no problem using all powers.
Conclusion: The Vahzilok are a nasty, nasty enemy group with strong damage, debufss and some AoE, plus the ability to resurrect each other. Their resistance power is also against a much more common damage type and by a much greater percentage. The Vahzilok are a serious enemy group.
Rogue Isles
In addition to what heroes face in Paragon City, villains in the Rogue Isles also face:
Longbow
Longbow Guardian: 1 ranged attack (Heavy Pistol), 1 melee attack (Brawl), 1 resistance power (Tech Armour, resisting smashing and lethal damage). These are basically Hellions with tech armour.
Longbow Nullifiers: 2 ranged attacks (Burst and Slug), 1 ranged area attack (M30 Grenade), 2 melee attacks (Rifle Butt and Brawl), 1 resistance power (Tech Armour, like above), but notably missing Sonic Grenade (level 40+) and Beanbag (level 30+) and possibly missing something else that ParagonWiki isn't listing.
Overall: Longbow are decidedly more difficult than regular enemy groups as they resist more things without having weaknesses and because their lieutenants are VERY nasty for the level range they show up in even absent their missing powers, and even absent powers they should be missing that I've listed anyway. Even so, they're not that out of proportion thanks to having weak minions.
Security Guards
*note* The Rogue Isles Police, Security Guards and Cage Consortium Guards are only model swaps of each other. They have identical powers otherwise, though both Rip and Cage seem to have a subsest of what Security Guards have, based on the levels they spawn at.
Private Security Guards: 1 ranged attack (Pistol or Heavy Pistol), 2 melee attacks (Brawl and Riot Baton, level 7+ only), no resistance powers. These are essentially slightly stronger Hellions.
Private Security Officers: 1 ranged attack (Submachine Gun or Single Shot), 1 melee attack (Brawl or Assault Rifle Butt), 1 support power (Tactics, ally + ACC, +PER). These are slightly stronger versions of Troll lieutenants, more or less.
Overall: The Rogue Isles Security Guards aren't all that much of a threat, and only become less so as you level up.
Snakes on a plane
Vipers: 1 ranged attack (Throwing Dagger), 1 melee attack (Bite or Swipe or Dagger), 2 auto powers (Resistance, strong against poison but weak against cold and Quickness, faster running speed). These are essentially Hellions with self buffs. They resist poison, but this is almost never used by players outside of Spines and their quickness doesn't make them attack faster, just run/slither faster.
Mamba: 1 ranged attack (Throwing Dagger), 1 melee attack (Bite or Swipe), 2 auto powers, same as above. Mambas are just bigger versions of Vipers.
Conclusion: Not all that much of a threat, about on the level of Outcasts or Trolls.
Arachnos, finally
Wolf Spider: 1 ranged attack (Pistol), 2 melee attacks (Pummel and Pulverise), no resistance powers.
Wolf Spider Enforcer: 1 ranged attack (Pistol), 1 melee attack (Brawl), no resistance powers. These guys are essentially Hellions.
Wolf Spider Tac Ops: 1 ranged attack (Mace Beam), 1 melee attack (Pulverise), no resistance powers. These guys are essentially Jutals.
Overall: Up to level 10, Arachnos soldiers are pushovers, essentially Hellions++. Easy as pie. And they are.
Mooks
Mook: 1 ranged attack (Revolver), 1 melee attack (Brawl). These guys are Trollkin, effectively.
Mook Hitman: 1 ranged attack (Automatic Pistol), 1 melee attack Heavy Brawl. That's pretty much a slightly stronger Mook.
Conclusion: The Mooks rally are mooks. These are easy enemies.
Overall, aside from the Vahzilok, the game's 1-10 enemies aren't really all that threatening. Let's compare them to the 1-10 Praetorian enemies and see if I'll have to eat my words.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
|
Other than being weak, Hellions and Skulls are super boring. The Gunner and Buckshot duties could easily be handed to minions while the Lts get some proper powers. Something that makes them interesting. The Trolls and the Outcasts could do with some sprucing up, too, but they at least have decent Lts and some variety of bosses.
Praetorian Earth
PPD
PPD Enforcer: 1 ranged debuff (Force Netting, slow), 2 melee attacks (Force Brawl and Force Maul), 1 resistance power (smashing, lethal, energy). These guys use all of their powers.
PPD Trooper: 1 ranged attack (Force Bold), 1 melee attack (Force Brawl), 1 resistance power, same as above.
PPD Suppressor: 1 ranged area attack (Force Burst), no melee attacks, 1 resistance power, same as above.
PPD Justicar: 1 ranged debuff (Force Netting), 1 area attack (Force Shockwave), 2 melee attacks (Force Brawl, Force Maul), 1 resistance power, same as above but stronger.
PPD Warrant Officer: 1 ranged attack (Force Blast), 1 melee attack (Force Brawl), 1 ranged status effect (Force Cage, foe sleep), 1 resistance power, same as a Justicar.
Concusion: By and large, these guys have more powers, their powers are more debilitating and all of their damage is heavily slated towards energy, something almost none of the other enemies I've described use. These guys are definitely tougher than regular 1-10 enemies, especially the lieutenants, though admittedly not by as much.
Resistance
Resistance Recruit: 1 ranged attack (Burst), 1 melee attack (Punch), no resistance powers. These guys can punch without putting their rifles away.
Resistance Veteran: 2 ranged attacks (Single Shot, Covering Fire), 1 ranged area attack (Heavy Burst), 1 melee attack (Punch), no resistance powers. Again, these use their punches mixed in with their ranged attacks.
Conclusion: The number of attacks on minions seems about even with older factions, but these minions use both of their attacks where old factions only use one. Also, the punch is a much stronger attack and their ranged attacks are meaningful, unlike Hellion pistols which may as well not even exist. Lieutenants, in turn, are far more dangerous, having many more powers, using more of them and because these powers re quite strong.
Destroyers
Blast Master: 2 area attacks (Dynamite and Molotov Cocktail, summons burn patch), 2 defensive powers (Resistance and Defence)
Crusher: 1 ranged attack (Throw), 2 melee attacks (Baseball Bat and Overhead slam), no resistance powers.
Rocket Girl: 1 area attack (Rocket Launcher), 1 melee attack (Fighting -> Boxing), no resistance powers.
Hombre: 1 ranged attack (Super Strnegth -> Hurl), 1 melee attack (Super Strength, Punch), 2 resistance powers (Resistance to smashing and lethal and Regeneration -> Integration).
Conclusion: While these don't have too many powers, what they have is NASTY. Lots of AoE, lots of strong attacks and these guys use their full assortment of powers at all times.
Syndicate
Kill Bill Initiates: 1 ranged attack (Burst or Dual Shot), 1 melee attack (Katana -> Gambler's Cut or Martial Arts -> Thunder Kick or Pistol Whip), 1 resistance power (psionics).
Strikers: 1 ranged attack (slug), one area ranged attack (Buckshot), 2 melee attacks (Super Strength --> Jab and Punch), 1 resistance power (psionics, smashing, lethal).
Conclusion: The minions may be Hellions in disguise, albeit with better powers who use all of their powers, but the lieutenants is where the real difficulty comes in. Hard to take down and possessing great offensive powers, Jutal Trolls these are not. Strikers are what causes problems for the Syndicate.
Praetorian Clockwork
I honestly don't know what to do here. The Wiki lists a LOT of powers for the Clockwork, but I'm pretty sure those aren't all available to them right from the word go. I don't want to list them since I'll probably make them out to be stronger than they are.
Seers
Scanner: 1 ranged attack (Psionic Assault -> Psionic Dart), no melee attacks, 1 resistance power (psychic resistance, melee and ranged defence).
Tracker: 2 ranged attacks (Psionic Assault -> Psionic Darts and Psychic Blast -> Telekinetic Blast), no melee attacks, 1 defensive power, same as above.
Viewer: 2 ranged attacks (Psionic Blast -> Mental Blast and Psychic Blast -> Will Domination), 1 summon power (Summon Reinforcements), 1 defensive power, much stronger than above but I can't read its stats.
Conclusion: The Seers are generally not that bad in terms of minions, but only when they're in small numbers. However, when you have to fight more than a few, their slows add up to almost a complete halt, and the Viewer's reinforcements tend to be very strong enemies. Perhaps not a horribly strong group, but not a weak one by any stretch.
Ghouls
Hunter: 1 ranged attack (Throw), 1 melee attack (Super Strength -> Jab), 1 resistance power (smashing and lethal), 1 post-death ally heal.
Painted One: 1 ranged attack (Throw), 2 melee attacks (Super Strength -> Jab, Flurry of Fists), 1 resistance power (same as above, but stronger), one post-death ally heal, 1 ranged taunt-on-target power.
Conclusion: These guys don't look too strong on paper, but they are still stronger than old-world critters who generally have only one attack and no meaningful resistances, their lieutenants are quite strong and the game seems to always throw multiple spawns of them on you at a time. By themselves, the Ghouls aren't too bad, but they're never by themselves.
Overall Conclusion
The 1-10 Praetorian enemies aren't terribad for a veteran player, as while they are markedly harder, they haven't yet developed their full cadre of nasty abilities. If that were all, it would be manageable to a new player, but Praetoria has a habit of tossing those stronger enemies at players in numbers much greater than those of the "old game."
Furthermore, the disparity in enemy strength is most striking in the lowest of levels. Where old-game enemies have one meaningful attack and one other that they either don't use or doesn't account for much, most Praetorian enemies have multiple attacks, plus debuffs and sometimes even status effects. As enemies that are supposed to introduce players into the game, these are just too nasty.
They aren't as bad as I expected to come out, however, largely because I left out bosses and later-level enemies where they develop their full scale of abilities. ParagonWiki doesn't have almost any critter level designations, however, so it's almost impossible to make a comprehensive list post level 10, and I don't think I have the patience to bother.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
|
Quote:
I disagree. Skulls and Hellions stop spawning past level 10 almost entirely, and the rest of the factions gain super powers at levels 11 and above. There's no reason that I can see to make the lowest of low-level enemies any more "interesting." These are the levels where people are first getting to grips with the controls, the powers system and the enemy AI. We shouldn't be throwing "interesting" enemies at them until they're ready to handle that.
|
Originally Posted by Kjell_NA
Other than being weak, Hellions and Skulls are super boring. The Gunner and Buckshot duties could easily be handed to minions while the Lts get some proper powers. Something that makes them interesting. The Trolls and the Outcasts could do with some sprucing up, too, but they at least have decent Lts and some variety of bosses.
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
|
I broke down the four storylines into their negative traits, since none of them are heroic in the traditional sense.
PPD Responsibility: Blind (You're blind to the corruption around you but are trying to help the people you meet, this is a fairly heroic path, you're the one good cop in a department of corrupt ones).
PPD Power: Selfish (You're not evil persay, you're just looking out for you, in some parts of the Power arc you are actually helping people as well, this is your Rogue path, out for personal gain but will usually have a base system of ethics).
Resistance Warden: Naive (You thoroughly think that you can change the world for the better but you have not planned beyond simply toppling Tyrant and you're willing to follow someone just as bad as Tyrant who actually cares very little for people of Praetoria, merely striking against Tyrant for bloody minded revenge, this is a heroic path nonetheless since you, as a character, are still trying to help people).
Resistance Crusader: Destructive (This is your axe crazy, let the world burn Joker path, there is no even mild heroic emphasis in this arc, this is where Calvin Scott fits in, while his motivation is different to the Joker, he's still willing to destroy the world over a lost loved one).
As GG mentioned, neither the Resistance NOR the PPD are heroic, like, at all. Praetoria was pretty much an 'evil vs evil' type setup, one the evil of Anarchy and Destruction, the other the evil of oppressive Dictatorship and Tyrannical rule.
I believe it was mentioned that they Loyalist path was added much later than the Resistance path, the intention originally was that everyone was Resistance, which explains the vast difference between Warden (the 'heroic' path) and Crusader (the 'villainous' path) and why the Loyalist arcs, atleast for the most part, remain inbetween those two, one selfish, the other blind.
It's a great shame the themes of Going Rogue weren't really expanded on and instead the devs got lazy and used Tyrant et al as bog standard muwahahaha bad guys.
Badge Earned: Wing Clipper
A real showstopper!
Quote:
That's semi-correct - Going Rogue was officialy announced around the middle of May 2009, and near the end of October 2009 we got the first major info on the Praetorian content at Hero Con - that's where we first heard about the 1-20 content range, the Resisatnce vs loyalist dynamic, the Seers, the PPD and so on - and a few days after, Positron had thes clarifications about the info given out at Hero Con:|
Originally Posted by Dr_MechanoEU
As GG mentioned, neither the Resistance NOR the PPD are heroic, like, at all. Praetoria was pretty much an 'evil vs evil' type setup, one the evil of Anarchy and Destruction, the other the evil of oppressive Dictatorship and Tyrannical rule.
I believe it was mentioned that they Loyalist path was added much later than the Resistance path, the intention originally was that everyone was Resistance, which explains the vast difference between Warden (the 'heroic' path) and Crusader (the 'villainous' path) and why the Loyalist arcs, atleast for the most part, remain inbetween those two, one selfish, the other blind. |
Quote:
|
Heroes can become Vigilantes which can then become Villains Villains can become Rogues which can then become Heroes Thus the circle is Hero->Vigilante->Villain->Rogue->Hero This system is usable by any character over X level (X is a number which has yet to be disclosed). It is not "just for Praetorians". A Hero can go all the way to Villain and then back to Hero again, if they put in enough effort. Praetorians do not use the normal GR system, but have points within their stories where they can choose "Loyalist (aka Villain)" or "Resistance (aka Hero)" When Praetorians leave Praetoria for Primal Earth, they choose if they want to be considered a Hero or a Villain, and are plopped into Paragon or the Rogue Isles. A Vigilante (Rogue) can travel to the Rogue Isles (Paragon City), and can team up with the Villains (Heroes) there. They can not use the markets while they are there however. They must be a full Villain (Hero) to use the markets. |
And as they work on several Issues at once, they would already be working on I19 and planning I20 while still completing GR - as can be seen with places like the BAF, Lambda Sector and the Keyes' Island reactors already being built into the 1-20 zones - so while the original set-up and meta-story was still focused everyone helping the Resistance to defeat Tyrant in the standard CoH style of heroic co-op content, the "late arrival" content like the Responsibility path was more for flavor rather than any long-term content plan - everyone was still going to have to fight agaisnt Tyrant and the loyalists - which is possibly why the responsibilty path has so many big cues for players to turn agaisnt Tyrant - from Inetrrogator Kang and the Seer network, through Mother Mayhem, discovering the invaison plans and finally meeting Tyrant himself and getting to hear just how insane he is.
Also, as an intersting follow-up for all the development process detectives, the Incarnate Trials were originally called "zone events" - which makes it sound like the idea was to run them like the Mothership raid, with players triggering them by doing something in the actual Praetorian zones - for example, taking down the Lambda sector turrets might have been the way to trigger the Lambda event - with possibly something similar for the BAF and its turrets.
At some point though, the devs decided to make them instanced events - possibly because there were issues with rewards/participiation if there weren't any fixed barriers to the area of the event, or that 50+ content in zones inteneded for 1-20s could cause problems for lower levels caught up in the events, or that there were simply lag issues similar to the ones that used to hit the RWZ zone event.
By keeping the locations and the stories, but putting them on instanced zone maps instead of in the actual zones, the devs would be able to help the 50s stay in the right place, give them more story-telling and info options with cut-scenes and captions, and avoid disrupting the players doing the non-Incanrate cotnent in the actual zones.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Furthermore, Praetoria is not an "option" for new players. Every person who bought Going Rogue as their first foray into City of Heroes has no option but to make a Praetorian before making anything else. Thrusting a brand new character still largely unfamiliar with the UI, terminology and basic setup, and quite possibly not familiar with MMOs in general like I was when I first got City of Heroes is just asking for disaster. Hell, seven year vets were having serious problems, so you have no leg to stand on here.
Exceptions exist, obviously - the Vahzilok have huge DPS thanks to the zombies having access to three attacks, as opposed to the one most minions have at the time, and the Morts and Reapers have debuffs on them. This is because the Vahzliok were originally intended to be an exceptionally difficult enemy faction that you were supposed to pull one by one, which is why zombie AI makes them so dumb and easy to pull. This also comes with a significant increase in rewards given upon defeat, something no Praetorian critters have.
Your claims are no excuse for bad design, because it's better to reuse old assets that worked than to use new assets which effectively break the game for new players.
If you're looking for challenge in the low-level game, you're barking up the wrong tree. The existing low-level game is already plenty challenging. The weaker critters are offset by our weaker characters and by the fact that player power doesn't actually outstrip game balance until SOs and later on. The 1-20 game is and has always been soundly balanced because players simply never had the opportunity to break it.
Nevertheless, the Praetorian critters are well comparable to high-level critters excluding iCrap cheapness. They're simply much lower level, which makes them worse, not easier, because low-level characters don't have the tools needed to fight that.
The story of Praetoria isn't bad in the slightest, that's the one point where the expansion really, really excels. However, because the City of Heroes development team have a compulsion towards adding reference and homages, the story ends up being less than what it could have been had we actually been given reason to care about these cameos, rather than relying on Primal Earth knowledge as a reason to care.