Going Rogue - a year later

Samuel, you are right that the Praetorian lowbies are tougher and meaner then the other starting points. However, with things like Sands of Mu and the trusty Nemesis Staff it is not so bad. Nowadays Hero side startup is pretty easy. Perhaps a bit to easy. Red side is a bit harder and Praetorian is the hardest place to start. But as a vet I don't mind a challenge. Especially as it does not involve 5 billiard influence builds.

I would hate to do it without those vet powers though.

Browsing the forums late night, this thread kind of caught my eye.

A friend got me into the game getting me the Going Rogue Complete Collection, so my first experiences with the game were exclusively praetoria. Especially since said friend told me the game was switching to free to play soon and the intro stuff for hero/villain side would be changing, so my first few characters are all praetorian.

The story is pretty fantastic. I really enjoyed the the depth that was put into the different faction paths and their characters, it is all pretty well done and you really get a feel for the characters and their roles. The Wardens and Responsibility crowd are generally pretty decent, the Power and Crusaders are generally pretty despicable. Missions flow really well and I really liked the alignment thing where you could play it 'pure' or go 'spy' and get different flavor options (Though I was a lil disappointed to find that it was just flavor, I'd have liked 'spying' to actually change outcomes to a stronger degree, like making alternate contact paths or alternate missions.) And each path has a particular alignment flair, though by the end yeah, being Loyalist seems pretty bad, in fact I had a Mastermind that ran through Power and Responsibility, getting the final moral choices in each. Power, I stayed loyalist. Responsibility... I had to choose Resistance. Then again, they kind of do the same with the Resistance choices, showing just what kind of psychotic Calvin Scott is.

The transfer to Prime is definitely jarring since I was so accustomed to the tight and progressive storyline of Praetoria and then... well it all kind of goes up in smoke. The Mastermind I mentioned above moved to First Ward which is a little better, he hasn't transferred to Prime so I'm seeing a continuation of the plot but at the expense of being more a spectator since I have no choice in how it unfolds, my alignment just doesn't matter. I've now got a corrupter and a blaster transferred over now and frankly I'm kind of at a loss with exactly what I want to do with them now.

Gameplay-wise... I've got to side with the folks that have been going on about the increased difficulty of Praetoria. Now that I've run a few characters through the normal blue and red sides, it really is a stark contrast. I run solo, because Praetoria is pretty quiet and still getting into the game, I only know my friend that got me into the game. But for most of my praetorian characters I've turned the difficulty down to -1/+0, just because otherwise I was getting my head handed to me on a lot of missions, especially Ghouls (SWARM D and Syndicate (90% of the spawn is +1 level. Pretty much whole missions of nearly all yellows), with some trouble with the nastier Clockwork and sometimes PPD. The only one I didn't have to change was my Mastermind, since playing one is like having your own team.

Compared to my hero and villain sides, I've rarely died or had that much trouble. Usually if I die it's in situations where it's just bad luck or a nasty boss I wasn't quite prepared to handle (Villainside, it's been usually throwing 2-3 Bosses at me at the dead start of the mission or 2-3 bosses in a row [lookin at *you* Graves arc]. Though, being a dominator does have that downside when you can't just whack them with domination right away). but that's also kind of my own masochism for fighting bosses solo. Praetoria though, it's usually just the general mobs I've got to take small steps at a time.

I will say though, I do actually like Praetoria as a starting area, to a degree. The introduction mission that teaches you the controls, enhancements, inspirations, dialogue and gives you your first alignment choice and then dumps you in front of a trainer and other important NPCs is pretty tight and I think I prefer it over the other intro areas/tutorials for a purely 'newbie friendly' area. It just teaches you a lot of the need to know basics pretty well and pretty quickly, unlike the Twinshot/Graves arcs. Really I think the only thing the Praetoria intro *really* drops the ball on is not telling you that contacts are only for a certain level range. I outleveled myself on a few toons through most of the initial and mid contacts for all 4 paths, which *really* kind of bothered me when I'm being told to go see person X and it's not telling me where on earth to find them, til I found out I'd overleveled to be introduced to them. Then again, as far as I can tell, maingame doesn't tell you that either. The only way to know what level range you should be at is taking the trams or in Prime earth meeting Field Report NPCs.

Anyway, just my two thoughts. Honestly, I probably am going to make more Prime Earth characters now that I've seen the majority of the 4 story paths. If anything, the Praetoria contents greatest flaw is that it's a one trick Pony. Ok, so like 4 trick pony, but once you've seen all the tricks, that's about it. There's not really a lot of incentive to keep making new characters like that unless you *really* like those missions, whereas I can go red/blue and get a lot more freedom of choice. I do kind of dig that First Ward is an extension of Praetoria and I think it'd be kind of cool if they make it possible to start someone in Praetoria and work all the way to end game without having to transfer to Prime, but I dunno how likely or *good* that'll be since, as said, First Ward does away with any of the 'alignment matters' stuff, which to me is kind of one of the biggest centerpieces of the 1-20 Praetorian content.

Yeah, entering the Rift is a fixed point that assumes you go into it right after finishing up the last of whatever 1-20 arcs you did. It just seems like now they've added this extension to the Praetorian content they should try to link it better.

I will say, I did like the touch that at the end they basically flat out say which paths matched to which alignments, Wardens support Paragon, Crusaders support Rogue Isles. It was also kind of cool getting to speak with most of the living contacts before leaving.

But yeah, I wouldn't mind an event trigger that finishing First Ward affects that scene or grants you a new scene.

In general, Praetoria is still my favorite starting point. It's definitely slower now compared to the Sewer-Riffic madness of the low level sewer trial, but I still prefer starting there than Atlas.

I actually haven't done the sewer trial on Live yet. I find this quite bizarre. I've been having some fun running the legacy content (I know, weird) after a discussion on another thread with Samuel Tow regarding the old mission styles compared to the new.

And I have to say that the legacy content, although clearly dated, seems better now that we have more choice. I've even 'enjoyed' for want of a better word the occasional hunt, although that's in part me knowing to avoid certain mob hunt missions at lower levels after a number of years playing, as opposed to thinking that Hunt Missions as a general concept are a really good idea .

That's not to say that I don't hope to see the very-gradual redesigning of older zones and an injection of new content for them, but I'm happy to have legacy co-exist alongside new shiny.

I was never a big fan of the old 1-5 missions in Atlas and Galaxy though. And I'm glad there's now one starting zone per side.

Praetoria - I haven't touched since i21 went Live. Because now I can roll the ATs I want to for each side and just pick the appropriate action in the tutorial. I enjoy the content there, and will go back to it once in a while, but after doing a couple of 'turn off xp and experience the full content' on two characters, as well as meticulously badge hunting (damn you River Rat and Resistance Plaque History Badge!) with Praetorian toons and a few of my non-Praetorian mains, I can leave it be for a while.

I think there's a slight flavour in the initial intro contact dialogue for First Ward depending on faction, but I may be wrong, and I too think it's a shame that alignment doesn't quite 'add up' when doing First Ward as a non-rift-enclosure'd Praetorian.

But First Ward is so full of win (and there's so much content in there) that I can waive that away for now.

You need a different computer or graphics card then - the new zones look awesome on mine

I like Praetoria stories, ability to switch sides and spy opposing side, look of new zones and I even like that enemies are harder then in Atlas/Mercy.
I like Praetoria missions more then new Atlas/Mercy missions, that to me feel like prolonged tutorial with lot of street hunting (which I never liked).
(DFB is fun, but not more then once, twice per alt)

Things that are bad about starting in Praetoria are:
- Missing first two bank missions (especially if you plan to go to red side where it is needed for accolade)
- Can't join 2 TF in level range on blue side and 1 SF on red side (but at least you can do them on higher levels)
- Can't join SG
- Too many ambushes in missions.

I like the ability to play Loyalist or Resistance, and the sub-factions within each of these. However, I learned early on that if you play Loyalist, you spend most of your time above ground, enjoying the sight of the beuatifully-rendered zones of Praetoria. if you play resistance, most of your 1-20 play experience will be underground in those nasty, claustrophobic tunnels, fighting Ghouls. I HATE the Ghouls!

I've taken many alts through Praetoria. Brutes and Scrappers are great, rarely dying. Controllers/Corruptors/Doms, though, are like pulling teeth. My Elec/Ice Dom never made it past level 15 before getting deleted out of utter frustration.

No matter the AT, leveling up is much slower than red or blue side. This COULD be okay, if the leveling up made you feel like you were accomplishing something worthwhile. Instead, it just feels harder and slower and more frustrating than red/blue side.

I'm currently running one alt (a former Praetorian Brute) through First Ward, and enjoying it very much. I have no idea how many story arcs are there, or if they all come together into a single story (I hope they do), but I'm getting several levels from brand new content, so I'm happy about that!

Dividing the playerbase further was just a bad idea.