Re-populating Praetoria.

I just want more Loyalist content. To continue working as an agent of Cole. The Power arc really didn't make it seem like I was defecting at the end, just checking out Primal Earth and, when the time came, I could still ally myself with Cole. If they want to shoe horn us into being a good guy at the end of the story, just start shifting the focus of the story onto you becoming a Praetor in the 45-50 range.

You could then see the other Praetors begin to go crazy from the Well first hand and personal. Then have Cole say he has different plans for the player character in case the whole Well business fails. He sends his Warworks and Olympian Guards after you to capture you and bring you in. His plan is to have Praetor Berry experiment on you, maybe fuse you with aspects of the Hamidon to create a horrible monster he can release into Primal Earth. That way, you have a pretty damn good reason to defect from Cole's regime, but it doesn't step all over your character.

Doubt it'll ever happen, though. 5% of people probably still play Loyalist, and 1% probably want more story out of it.

The day they allowed anyone to start at any AT in Primal was the day Praetoria lost all it's usefulness. It makes me wonder how many people would actually played as Praetorians for any significant amount of time, had the option to choose any AT in Primal, come out first?

Not to mention the other issues as others have; barren wasteland with barely any teaming, retarded level of ambushes for a LOW LEVEL zone, hard to find team mates, no point in continuing the storyline as it just cuts OFF at 20 and HAS NO BARING WHATSOEVER on whether you are a hero or villain (especially since we ALL get funneled into fighting against Tyrant at 50 anyway).

Just saying Praetoria pretty much pointless. I don't think anything they can do will ever change that now, with the direction the endgame (and the game overall) is going.

Personally they should just get rid of the whole Praetoria game side leave the story for Cole to try and kick the Primals butts but get rid of the player stuff. I tried to make a character there and level her up but I just deleted the character and remade her a normal Hero plus sense my computer is an older one I have problems with the maps and I Major Lag all the time.
Thats my 2 cents worth!

*facepalm* Why delete content that is already there? As an idea that is just silly. Revamp it, yeah, but deleting all that content and work is stupid.


I'm use to using DFB for fast levels and what Prae is for me is an example of what the devs can do.

Sure it is hard as hell, but the opportunity to solo without the temptation to go DFB to PL as fast as possible.

I would like to see more story though, and the Incarnate trials, and DA, and First Ward have given us more Prae story hooks, I think.

What is Duncan playing at? Now we know Scott is crazy, maybe we can rise up in the resistance or maybe it will break apart? Cole isn't such a bad guy, in the end, not evil, just possessed by the Well and trying to save both the Primal and the Prae world. Sure he is wrong and needs a smack down, but maybe post Tyrant trial we will be working with him to restore prae? Lots of options.

I don't go to Praetoria for a different reason than I've read here.
I do admit that the arcs are very well done. Great stories, and wonder job on the whole shades of grey.
So, it isn't that it is poorly done. It is just that I have no interest in that kind of story.
I like City of Heroes because there are no shades of grey. I like to play a tights and cape hero. That is what I like in this game. Because of this Praetoria has little interest to me.
I don't begrudge that anyone actually likes the zones. (Variety is the spice of life, and to each their own afterall.) Just putting in my 2 cents as to why I've no interst in going there.
I do have a couple characters there, both mid teens (so I did give it a chance).

My one other big complaint about Praetoria is the lack of Super Groups, I miss that. Hopefully with expanded content we will finally get them.

Personally, I remain convinced that eventually, the devs will have to get rid of "resistence" and "loyalist" as alignments and make them into factions in order to force players into the villain/rogue/hero/vigilante cycle immediately.

But I also think that one of the ways to really bring people back to Praetoria is the same I suggest for the Shadow Shard... unique recipes and salvage. Why would you earn Numina's Convalescence while running around Praetoria? What about Diabolique's Ambulation or something like that?

I think the best way to repopulate Praetoria is to create a new GM that randomly appears in Mercy Island and Atlas Park next the the Trainers and group teleports everyone in a 200ft radius to Nova Praetoria and randomly changes their alignments to either Resistance or Loyalist.

Mwahahaha!

You can't repopulate Praetoria. Like the Rogue Isles, it will always be a niche region because most people come to this game looking to play as a standard superhero. It was only popular when it first came out because it was the new shiny and it wasn't as drab as the existing starter content back then.

I think that once we've had the confrontation with Tyrant, we'll have a better idea of what future Praetorian content might be like.

I still play Praetoria because it's gorgeous, and I love the story lines. But all of the other problems mentioned throughout, including the fact that it's so hard to find another living (or undead) soul there, do keep me from doing that very often now that the shiny's worn off. I miss the mayhems, and they are just gone forever, no way to get them. I miss my sg. I miss all the day job choices. I even miss the ouro porter (and that's only been avail earlier for how long?). And I agree that there's an inherent problem in not being able to stay a Praetorian (or to make primals Praetorian, if we so desire).

Maybe that will all come later, but for now, I head for Praet when I want to solo (usually only MM's, who have zero problem with the mobs/ambushes), enjoy good narrative/writing, and kind of chill (no constant broadcasts for this or that, no tells to join this or that, no nothing--not that I mind all that, I actually like it. I guess my point is simply that in so many ways, Praetoria's almost so far removed from COH/V that it's like another game entirely, and I'm not sure that's a bad thing sometimes.).

Isn't Praetoria currently only available to VIP players and folks that purchase it? There's the biggest problem. Let freebies start there and you'll see at least a slight uptick. Honestly I think praetoria has a better tutorial than anything else in the game atm, you can totally skip it or let it guide you along and teach you all the basics you need in about 5-10 minutes rather than the overly long mega-arc tutorials and the 5 minute 'dump you into it and kick you to the curb' method in Galaxy City.

As it is, Praetoria stands as a monument to what the game could have been (but probably never will be), making the world a more natural feeling city and tying story arcs together much more closely.

Though, even so, as others have pointed out, Praetoria is really a lot of smoke and mirrors. Everything looks pretty neat and -seems- like it's important, but in the end none of it really means or affects anything of importance. Your actions don't mean anything in general, like playing a spy into the other faction, it's all just flufftext. One of the only decisions you can make that has some modicum of impact is killing or sparing Cleopatra. Which again, doesn't affect anything in the long run, it's just whether or not she's standing there doing nothing or phases out. It's all just dropped and ignored when you move into Primal Earth or skip into First Ward.

Honestly I can kind of see the logic. Really, they just can't produce more content that's Praetorian exclusive. It's a waste of resources putting out any story arcs that -only- Praetorians can run because they compose such a minor, niche portion of the population. It's still a shame, the run through Praetoria is pretty fun and such a different experience to the standard 1-30. I'm sure there'll be more Praetorian stuff, but I really don't foresee them making anything more that's Praetorian -only-. It would be kind of nice if they used the badge trick to offer some distinction to Praetorian characters running around in Prime Earth.

I'm not really sure what you could do to Praetoria to make it more popular though. It doesn't offer anything unique except fluff, which is only worthwhile for so long.

Actually, something I'd like to see is 'updating' Praetoria eventually where we can explore the Praetorian city zones in the 'present time' where the place is ruined and devastated once Cole is ousted and the Devouring Earth inevitably wreck up the place.

Also, tangent, but I -really really- want a Praetorian Devouring Earth Zone. The Underground has some awesome art assets showing what the Praetorian Hamidon can do with all the neat little freaky fungi and geigeresque architecture. I'd -love- to have a whole topside forest like that.

Anyway. Not really sure what could be done. Open it up to Freems for one. But otherwise... I really don't have a clue. It seems like it was an experiment intended to have potential and then the plans had to be subsequently abandoned.

I like praetoria, have run 6 chars through there myself, I'd say what keeps me from making it my default though is that in primal earth, we can assume that we generally know how things are, its our world, but with superheros, various countries are pretty much as they are now, and the culture isnt that different. conversely, praetoria is a kind of facade utopian world where huge swaths of the world are under control of a giant monster. I can make a primal from japan, does japan even exist in praetoria? I have a super strong football player, do they play american or european football? My character is an angel with fairly common touchstones to a specific religious belief, do people worship cole and most everything else is marginalized? there is a lot we simply dont know about praetoria that we cant just assume like we can with primal coh. praetorians have some of their story co-opted by the cole-resistance-hami thing out of the gate, and I tend to make my characters back stories in such a way that it would be intrusive on the concept.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

As a side note, question, thing:

How exactly are we defining popularity in this case? I only ask because I realize that our perception of what makes something popular might be slightly skewed due to the type of game we play. For instance, if we are defining popularity in the most scientific sense, where a population of some species (the players) occupies an area, Preatoria, then we'd be correct in stating that Preatoria is not very populated, especially if we compare it to something like Atlas Park, which is so densely populated it needs to break the laws of physics and exist in multiple instance to hold all the people who commonly occupy the area.

But if we where to describe popularity as the shared personal enjoyment of an area then I might start to make the case that Preatoria actually was rather popular in the same way I would describe a console game as being 'popular'. For example, I only played the most recent Batman games twice before I ran off to do something else. I'd still consider it a highly successful and widely popular game, even though very few people are probably still playing it.

My point then, is that it might not entirely be fair to describe Preatoria as unpopular, more that it has just run its' course. I'm likely just arguing semantics too, but I think the distinction is worth making.

I've enjoyed running the praetorian content. I don't think the difficulty was/is too high, at some points I was actually wishing I could turn it up the first few times running through. I'm currently running a DB/Will brute through who's 19 now, and she'll be going through 1st ward soon... it will be my first time going through that.

The one problem I've always had with praetoria is the LAG and rubber-banding... it gets horrendous at times and for no apparent reason, even without the zones full of players. that doesn't happen to me in the normal zones, even doing ITF I've not had as much lag trouble as in Praetoria zones.

Would like to see more people back in there, and it would be nice if there was some kind of SG ability there. not being able to earn prestige, start or join a group etc until level 20 is... unfortunate.

I've had fun when leveling in Praetoria. So far I've leveled two characters there, a dominator and a stalker, and am in the process of leveling a third. Aside from the blaster I'm leveling now (it burns through endurance really quickly), I haven't considered the content in the area to be overly difficult. The main reason I don't spend much time there is the way it was developed. I like the stories. I have fun on the missions. I think it's a great new alternative to playing a hero or villain. I just don't like the way it ends at level 20 and that from there on out, Praetoria is completely ignored with regards to any further content you do in the game. Even when you're leaving Praetoria, it kind of feels like nothing you did there matters because you can just pick and choose which side of the game you go to with no regard at all for the choices you made on various missons in Praetoria. If there was some acknowledgement of what you did in Praetoria while doing higher level content I'd be more inclined to play Praetorians. If there was enough content in Praetoria that you could actually level up to 50 there without exemplaring and playing the same arcs over and over, I'd make more Praetorians for sure.

Preatoria was ... interesting in a way...

The problem being that Cryptic made a little mistake in seperating the game / server populations when they separated out Villains. While the entire villain concept was great, the game itself is still essentially the same. go get this guy, got get this thing, go kill that guy, and so forth... Going rouge while trying to fix that for some, also split it again for others... They did merge the market databases, and made the currency basically universal. Yea its still called different stuff for each side but its just the amount $ you have now...

Now we have Praetoria goldside sitting out there and if you stay pure praetorian your only go to 30 with first ward. Future zones for 30-40 and 40-50 (Emperor Cole's Palace) will help bring people back to gold zones again to flesh out their characters. Having unique base options would ALSO bring people back to gold factions and have them stay there... BUT... all that being said, I doubt they want to split the population again into a 3rd major faction at end game. indeed the trend is to merge everyone into a single populace for end game content. I would have been very happy to have seen the trials forming in praetoria, and for a SHORT (very short) time they were. like days... lol then everyone just went to Pocket D instead cause it was quicker and everyone was able to go there...

ALSO its worth noting EVERYONE is able to go to Praetoria. blue red and middle. So it would be cool if there were a few missions came about that would take groups back there for one reason or another (well yes I know the Trials are there, thats not what I was meaning)... Unfortantly if your gold exclusive not much is left for you to do once you become lev 30. Some holiday events you may get to do to level up, OR do what we are suppose to do and abandon Earth, I mean Praetoria, and go to the red or blue sides...

There are a few unique badges associated with gold side so thats nice, but beyond that. No bases, no AE, no Ouro access... so for the most part beyond the novelty its not worth the bother, especially now that we can make whatever we want and go teh way we want from the beginning... (which was in high demand for ages)

There are a few good reason to go to Gold side for 50s..

All the exploration and kill badges there for badge hunters.

The Studio 55 respec agent. (like the Pocket D Tailor) its a quick zone to do it fast. lol
{I never remember where they are on blue side cause I dont play it often. haha}

The extra costume slot from Halloween salvage. yep thats the secret to getting the 6th costume slot for free.
(not sure if thats by design or a bug but its worked for me when I tried.)
(edit: this has bug been fixed.) Still works for 5th costume as it was designed to do but not the 6th...

The 3 Zone events for free temp powers, emotes, and merits.

And Hami Seed in First Ward to kill for badges...

So there are reasons to go there if you want too. but most just want to do the trials anymore on our server at least. getting groups together to do things in Praetoria is like taking candy from a 5 year old... Not easy, and a lot of Whining involved...


PS: A TF or 2 over there wouldnt hurt to attract some people back in those zones as well...