Repraetoriapulation

Quick suggestion;

Premise:
Praetoria is visually beautiful and magnificently written.

Problem:
It's also a ghost town due to VIP-locks.

Solution proposal:
Open Praetoria to Freems and Preems. Limitation: The alignment choice is limited to the one chosen at first. Morality missions railroad the decision. Can only play arcs from their alignment - no Responsibility/Wardens overlap.

Expected result:
More players in Praetoria, giving VIPs a wider pool of teammates. Good writing provides a draw to experience more of it - with only two character slots, the only option to do so for Freems/Preems is to buy said stuff, resulting in money influx.


Thoughts?

An open letter to NCsoft

I'd vote for this....not that I ever spend any time in Praetoria now anyways...



But I don't think it'd be technically possible because it requires GR...and if they have "GR" access, then they probably have access to Incarnate powers when they shouldn't have access.


*shrugs*

I'm guessing that there could be a way to allow freems access to praet but probably "not worth the effort" at the moment.

Well, if it would {or looks like it would} bring in more money to PS, I'm pretty sure they'd make the effort.

An open letter to NCsoft

Or just let people start there normally, no restrictions. It's got a better introduction than the Galaxy City tutorial. There's no real reason to keep it restricted except as a carry over from being part of Going Rogue.

The only real problem is that while it contains a lot of good fundamentals and basics, it does have a number of key stuff missing, like Praetoria is kind of anti-team since it's waaay too easy to outlevel stuff.

Praetoria is, unfortunately, the new Rogue isles, only even smaller, emptier, and with less reason to start there. You go to Praetoria for the flavor experience, not really much else.

Of course the other problem is that First Ward continues off of Praetoria and isn't available to Freems without purchase. Can see that being a bit offputting to folks, whereas VIPs can go Praetorian from 1-29 without crossing over.

No restrictions: That means that freems starting in Praetoria would get access to a bunch of stuff non-Praetorians don't. I don't mind it, but it doesn't make much business sense, so I don't see it happening.

Outleveling: That pretty much applies to the whole game. Keep in mind, though, that not-so-recently the devs added radio missions to Praetoria in addition to arcs, so I don't think that outleveling is viewed as an issue. As a warning, though, they could add a message at Lv10 warning about possible outleveling, a pointer/option to turn your XP off and a short information blurb about arc ranges.

An open letter to NCsoft

What do Praets have access to that non-Praets don't? To me, Praetoria is way more restricted. No AE, no Supergroups, no taskforces, no trials, no co-op zones except Pocket D and First Ward, restricted to 4 zones (one of which requires purchase to do content in), and lacking a -ton- of day jobs.

As for the outleveling, it really just needs to be spelled out by someone like Praetor White or one of the introduction PCs. That's what really threw me off when I first played, I'd take a lot of different contacts and do a mission from each, then get confused when I'd get so far and they'd tell me "ok, you should see (Contact)" except since I'd outleveled them, it never gave me the actual 'meet new contact' prompt. Or even just introducing that contacts have level ranges (or even -listing them- in the contact window)

I have two big complaints with Praetoria.

It's a beautiful set of zones, with some brilliant content, and some awesome story.

...But there's an issue with it that's inherent to it being set in an Alternate Dimension. See, a huge part of the fun of this game lies in being able to hang out with friends, regardless of the level of content. If a friend is off running missions somewhere, I can go join them. Before Going Rogue, this was usually in the RWZ. Now I can go pretty much anywhere if I'm willing to restrict my Merit Rewards a bit.

Praetorians don't have that option. Before Level 20, they're cut off from Primal Earth almost completely. They can access Pocket D (through a portal tucked away in Studio 55), but that's it. If your friends are off running a task force, or doing a mothership raid, or engaging in HerpDerpPVP, you can't join them. You are isolated. In addition to this, you can't join Super Groups, you can't go into bases, you can't join Trials. (I'm not sure if you can join Holiday trials or not, but I know you can't join Death From Below and Drowning In Blood from Praetoria.)

The only way you can interact with your friends is if you either visit them in Pocket D, or if they come to Praetoria to join you, and there is only so much Praetorian content that rewards Primals for participating. Praetoria is (as many people have stated) more difficult than Primal Earth, and the only Non-First Ward content in Praetoria I can think of that rewards Primals for participating in a unique manner would be the Zone Events, which are on a timer and aren't exactly something you can hop on at will.

Once you get to First Ward, all of the sudden Primals can join you on missions with ease, and there are new Day Jobs and a huge Giant Monster for you to fight. But by that time, you're already level 20 and you probably declared a proper alignment anyway.

Praetoria basically feels like a huge, isolated starting area. When I make a new character, I want to be able to join my friends immediately. That's my issue, anyway.

To echo what Forbin said; they'd need to go back and actually BALANCE the damn low level Praet mobs before siccing them on the Freebs and Preems. Those things do not play nice. Ever.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

First off: worst portmanteau ever.

I don't see Praetorian population rising any higher than it is now, certainly not back up to "new shiny" levels. Praetoria as a starting zone served a three-fold purpose: to move the story forward (as a lead-up to the invasion/war), to give players a new setting to base characters on (concept/RP), and to provide a fresh and new intro gameplay experience (as opposed to playing fetch for Azuria and pest control on Mercy Island). The first one is no longer relevant as we've moved forward in the story since then, and the third one is no longer relevant because we have newer early-game content on both sides. That leaves creating Praetorians for concept/RP purposes, which is a small enough niche that the devs aren't likely to make great efforts to continue supporting it.

Also, it was a ghost town even before Freedom launched. Maybe you'd see a slight uptick in opening it to free/premiums, but it would fade just as it did when it was new and you still had to sub in order to play the game at all.

Change it from starter zones to lvl 20-40 zones bam problem solved and I would run most of my toons threw it. Making an expansion a newbie zone was one of the stupidest move I have even seen.

I think the main issues with Praetorian are, as people have mentioned, overleveling, OP'd mobs, and isolation. Another issue, from my point of view, is also that you can't play a praetorian 1-50. What about those who don't want to move to Primal Earth?

So the rev's could solve these problems by doing the following:

1) reducing the power and experience drops of Praetorian critters to solve the OP problem and alleviate some of the outleveling.

2) informing more players about turning off XP.

3) adding more Praetorian zones, all the way up to 50. Yes, I am aware that this would be colossal work which would take up an enormous amount of time and effort. So VIP/Point lock all but one basic story arc in each zone, so everyone with Praetorian access could still see these zones, but only those who are paying for it can fully enjoy ir, thus helping to justify the work put in with a payoff, while premiums would have their interest in these zones whetted by the basic arcs.

I don't think these are perfect solutions, nor can I speak to their feasibility, but these are just my thoughts.

It's a complicated issue thats for sure.
I'd love to spend more time in prat. But due to its low pop its harder then other places.

BUT!!! and this is where lot idiots don't think about or actually bother..If it's low pop and you wont go there, then ofc others wont..People moaning about it need to start going there more often and others will see more there and go there 2.
Takes one to start an army.

I personally like the challenge of tougher enemies there, while in prat im happy to run +1 +2 on my own- it gives me a challenge where in atlas n mercy i have to run +2 to start of with just for the challenge.

(Tho ambushes- are annoying in some missions- others their great for XP.)

Giving F2P people the chance to go there would be a ideal move in my view, shows them something different and more of the story line.
Lets face it most people play the DFB and move on from there, where as starting prat opens the story to much more people.

People say it was GT before F2P - fair enough and the reasons for it need to be sorted, if its dev side then they need to move them up the lists so people r happy to go back there again. if its just cos players say its dead- read bk up this post to find my answer to you moaning nature.

I look forward to prat being expanded and while i wait im happy to make toons there as well. as someone who likes the stories, sometimes being on my own gives me all the time i want to read and enjoy the arcs.

Maybe it is time for the Rikti to discover Praetoria and begin invading!

Ok maybe that was silly, but why not have Devouring Earth raids/invasions? And for that matter why not a Praetorian Epic ArcheType?

PEAT's might be derived from things like DE infected humans, self willed Clockworks, Olympians, Ghouls, PPD or PDF. Or maybe even an entirely new type of alien.

Add a Praetorian fortress and zone to the Shadow Shards. Maybe Black Swan's "Shadow Earth" really is just the Praetorian corner of the Shadow Shards.

All of these things might help contribute to zone repraetoriapulation.

They said last Friday that they're not done with Praetoria yet, so I think that we can expect more content there - which could mean a new 30+ zone.