The future of Praetoria City?

Hi all.

I wanted to move away from the seemingly intractable arguments over story writing to touch on something that I recently came back to as I made a new alt.

As the title suggests, I made a Praetorian (as it works for a story of descent and redemption I had in mind) and set out to start playing the missions and arcs in the city.

And I honestly forgot how beautifully designed it is. Recognisable neighbourhoods. Parks. Business districts. In other words, a well-planned and gorgeous to look at city.

And so I wonder: what will happen to this place? Because as gorgeous as it is, as well designed as it is, it's also like a museum, empty and pristine. It obviously fulfills the brief, which is to introduce people to Praetoria and what goes on there, as well as the template for side-switching in the Morality Missions. But it's only twenty levels and whilst First Ward gives you another ten, it's disconnected in every sense to have a link to Praetoria City.

It strikes me that this should be an alive, vibrant place with tons of areas for social events, roleplaying events, lots and lots of stuff. But aside from this 'starting zone' experience, the city seems to be just now a backdrop setting for Trials, and I'd hate to think that's all the city gets reduced to, and the majority of people see and associate with.

I'd personally like to see it given a makeover post-Cole (in whatever form that takes, and assuming the city survives) as the springboard is built in to reform and rebuild, and even potentially trying to reclaim areas taken by the Devouring Earth, with an interesting and alternative 1-50 experience.

Or should it be left to be a museum? What do others think?



S.

I think it looks strong and pretty.

Yeah, that zone's being wasted, which is a shame. It's gorgeous.

I know that I still want to see Shroud City. I also think that now that the Praetorian conflict has started, we should finish it, truly finish it. I mean what WOULD happen post-Cole? Do the Praetorians start a democratic government? Does some Praetorian villain attempt to fill the power vacuum and try to become New Cole? And of course, when do we deal with Hamidon?

What I'd like to see in the future of Praetoria is a fleshing out of the story to allow you to level all the way to 50 and the ability for Praetorians to remain Praetorians all the way to 50 but visit Paragon City or the Isles.

In other words, I think there should be five alignments - Hero, Vigilante, Rogue, Villain and Praetorian with Praetorians being treated similarly to Rogues and Vigilantes.

IMO the reason Praetoria is dead these days is that it no loner serves its original purpose. You can now start as a Scrapper in Mercy Island or a Mastermind in Atlas Park, and you can run DFB and be level 20 in a mater of an hour or two. That's not an option in Praetoria, so only dedicated RPers, or masochists go there now.

And even though I'm only an occasional RPer, I don't like the idea that my character has to leave Praetoria for Primal Earth, rather than staying in Praetoria and taking the fight to Emperor Cole, or smashing the Resistance.

I'm highly doubtful any of this will ever come to pass though because other than the potential to jam in some more Incarnate content, the shine has probably worn off Praetoria as much for the Devs as it has for the player base.

While the coming storm seems to present an easy get out for the situation by forcing a truce in the war to fight the bigger threat, the more recent Trials have taken us into story territory that's harder to reverse.
With BAF and Lambda, Tyrant's power was weakened, but he still had a firm grip on the people of Praetoria - and even with Keyes there's a chance that his forces could recapture the reactors.
But the UGT-TPN-MoM sequence has resulted in the truth about his lies being revealed, the Hamidon breaking off its deal with him, and the Seer network falling apart.
His plan to have Mother Mayhem mindwash the entire planet was his last chance to keep up the "utopia" facade, and now that it's failed, he left with a population that knows the truth about the loyalist dictatorship, and no functioning thought police network to do anything about it.
That, along with the military blow suffered at Lambda Sector and the loss of control over the Keyes reactors, which prevents him from using the sonic fences as a weapon like he did when he tried to wipe out First Ward, means that he's only left with the option of openly brutal repression to try and regain control of his collapsing empire.
He can still count on the loyalty of his clone soldiers and warworks, but the PPD could easily split apart as they see the reality of the dictatorship they've been supporting - while Provost Marchand has shown himself to be prepared to work against Tyrant's plans, Neuron has his own schemes and power base, and even Dominatrix is preparing to betray her grandfather/lover - plus, there's the newly awakened Hamidon out to wipe out humanity once and for all - a creature that he can't defeat.

Letting the Well take him over in exchange for all its power might be the only path left to him

I just hope it doesn't go the way of Cimerora; a ton of wasted potential.

I would like to see them open Praetoria to Free players and its content expanded to 50; with content that criss-crosses to both the Isles and Paragon City (espionage, sabotage, recruiting, contraband, etc).

I would like to see PEATs and Praetorian specific EPPs that can only b[e] unlocked by doing Praetorian content.

Finally, I would like to see Praetorian versions of iTrials and content. So far, its been all Primal; all the way. Loyalist iTrials against targets on their home turf and on Primal should be allowed; to represent any minor victories they may have secured... even if it didn't win them the war. [It could even be set up as an 'archive' of sorts; accessible through Ouroborous type methods.]

Well, the other thing about leveling in Praetoria is that there's a bit too much of the ghouls going on. I did not love needing 4-6 melee hits to take down one ghoul minion with the level one damage procs in every attack while every fight leaves my melee characters at 1/3 health or so. Other enemy groups are nearly as bad, while the enemy groups in both Atlas and Mercy are less time-consuming and annoying to fight.

I really hate leveling in Praetoria.

Just to be clear, this isn't about difficulty, but about how tedious the process is.

Setup Praetoria with the ability to have a Primal go in undercover and I'd be right back in Praetoria.

Can even have the same basic missions it has now.

Give us another zone like Cimerora, only big and with actual story arcs to do stuff with. Make it the Praetorian Hamidon's 'Eden', let Praetorians and primals run around in it, give it a TF, and some Incarnate level content. Using the art assets from the Underground for the weirdly glowing fungal Praetorian Devouring Earth.

I dunno, first ward is one of the prettiest Praetorian places IMO and it's getting at least a little bit of use with the v-day deliveries haha (or not...)
but yeah would like to see more seed-of-hami forming, maybe? and it blew my mind when I saw the MoM area *in zone*
rambling, bleh

In my opinion...

Praetoria looks great and its storylines are far superior to anything they have added to the game since GR

but...

I hope they do absolutely nothing more with it. It is a complete disconnect from the rest of the game. I think it was a massive waste of resources to create it as another dimension and would continue to be a waste of resources to add to it.

Aside from the blow to immersion that Praetoria ultimately ends up being, we simply do not have the player population to support three separate factions. We need new content added to the "real" world far more than an expansion of what was a poorly thought out idea in the first place.

It would be nice to see more Praetorian zones. Hell, everyone knows the level 30+ game could use more content.

They need to do with Praetoria he same thing they need to do with the Rogue Isles: Connect them to Paragon City and turn them into hero zones.

The game doesn't have enough players to support 3 factions? Heck, it doesn't have enough to support 2. Let the villains continue to exist and have their alignment. Give people a PvP switch so they can fight in the streets if they want to. But take those ghost-zones and put them to proper use. All the work that goes into making new zones could be saved by repurposing those unused resources into something that the playre base will acutall be interested in.