Intriguing Massively Article

All this article did was make me realize that Massively is basically clueless when it comes to CoH. The line that sums up the article for me:
"Do I have any proof of all this? Of course not -- just a lot of hearsay, conjecture, and external observation. "

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

What having to drop a team cause a solo mission? Cause your wrong I have never had to drop a team cause of a solo mission red of blue side. Gold side just sucks and the fact it's deserted proves it.

Not one to nitpick, but that doesn't "prove" anything; especially that it sucks. What it COULD prove is that people prefer the content of blue side or red side over gold. What it COULD prove is that people do not like change in their lower level experience. It COULD prove a lot of things.

I do not play Gold side because...I did it a few times and it serves no benefit for me to run it more often. Back in the day it was an easy way to make a hero to a villain easily...or vice versa...now that we can start a hero AT as a villain...that took away one of the selling points for me.

I am not an anti-DFB person...disclaimer, but DFB is a huge draw to lowbie toons...I mean let's be real here...I have played for 7 years...I have no desire to run the same missions over and over and over...to get to 20 on ANY side. So now I can run a DFB...play some...run a DiB...and voila.. I am 20. In other words there are other attractants to blue/red aside from content which many people have grown tired of when they are rolling their 20,30, 100th alt. Personally I would love to be able to do a DFB on Gold side..then do some of the content...do a DiB..a lil more content then BOOM choose my side.

As an aside; the solo mission; which takes a whopping 3-5 minutes...is in no way a deterrent to Gold side for me....neither is having to run Captain Nolan's arc to get access to DA/DA Contacts.

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

I can't speak for your server, but I've never been alone in any of the Praetorian zones on Virtue. People are almost all soloing, but I never cross a city zone there, any time of day or night (and I play at a lot of odd times), without seeing at least two other people going this way or that on their way to their own missions.

Teaming in Praetoria is almost completely non-existent, as far as I can tell, and that makes for slow leveling, but there are people using it.

But where I don't disagree with the Massively blogger's speculation is this: from the revenue side, I am almost certain that Going Rogue was a horrific disappointment for NCsoft, and quite probably a money-loser.

Mother is watching you.

You're not from America, are you....

Redside had population problems well before the introduction of any of the various reward systems we take for granted these days.

People might use that for an excuse, but they didn't play redside even back when NOBODY was getting 'rewards'.

Zone, Zone, Zone, Zone.

The 'rogue isles' would've made a great CoH zone, but they made it a whole other game and players didn't like it.

Praetoria would've made a great CoH zone, but they made it a whole other game and the players didn't like it.

Yes, that's the game people enjoy the most, so it should be the game that gets resources allocated to it.

If you're going to reply to someone it helps to read their post first, as my original comment made all these points very clear.

Um, no? Not all 4 end with "OMG TYRANT IS A MONSTER". In fact the Power storyline ends, assuming you choose the loyalist ending, with you alerting Tyrant to the fact that Neuron is trying to continue his project against the Emperor's wishes and you get to meet Cole personally. He even thanks you for your service to the empire. Then you can skip along merrily into First Ward as a Loyalist. Where, of course, you're shunted into anti-Cole territory and dealing with dregs even the Resistance see as disposable assets with little possibility of aiding D.U.S.T. or the like. Which really is a shame because all it would've taken is -1- loyalist contact asking you to help out in First Ward then leading you into the regular contact chain to set it up.

And the same can be said for the Resistance. By the end of the GR content it's very firmly established what horrible monsters Scott and his Crusader goons are and the lengths they'll go to. But that's pretty clearly getting whitewashed out and forgotten since it's in the name of the greater good. At least Calvin gets exposed as a true lunatic.

Who needs mystery? There were plenty of ways to take the story post Invasion plan reveal. I'm just saying that it feels like whatever plans were set in motion with the release of Going Rogue, they didn't end up following through and instead we have what we've got now. It doesn't feel consistent looking at the whole.

And I didn't mean that Cole falling would be different, the way the iTrials have been set up that has always been the intended outcome. I mean I think they've changed gears and are wrapping up Praetoria -now-. I don't think that the Magisterium trial was supposed to come out now. But fans are tired of Praetoria so they're just rushing to wrap things up instead of letting it go on another issue or two. That is, whatever overarching sketch they decided on has been cut down to better get to upcoming storylines.

of course it's all opinion, but then so is yours. We don't have the devs design bible or whatever document they've been using to sketch out the future of the game. I'm just saying that whatever that document looked like back when they set up Going Rogue, it feels like plans changed considerably to get to where we are now and have even changed again fairly recently to cut to the chase and wrap up the story.

What other Trials are left? We've hunted down and takien out all the loyalist AVs, and there's only Tyrant and the Hamidon left as a challenge for Incarnates in Praetoria - the Magisterium Trial is happening now because we've run out of major loyalist threats to crush - this is the final mission of the dimensional war arc - we've fought our way through the city, up to the end boss - there's nothing else left to fight - we've smashed the loyalist thought police, destroyed their war robots, wiped out the IDF, taken control of Neutropolis, Imperial City, the TPN campus, and the Keyes Island reactors, and now we're advancing on Tyrant's bunker for the final part of our war of liberation.
We've dismantled the loyalist dictatoship bit by bit during the previous 6 Trials, and now it's time for Tyrant's last stand in the heart of his evil empire.

I'd love to see a smooth transition like that, and it wouldn't be hard to work it into FW's structure. At level 20 a Preaetorian would get two new contacts, one about the portal to Primal Earth and another asking for your help with First Ward: that one-off Praetorian contact would replace Mistress Eva's role for Primals in Talos Island. Either a Resistance contact tells you that the regime is hiding something in FW and they want you to find out what and try to stop it (pretty much exactly what the FW story is now), or a Loyalist contact tells you that Cole's not happy with the situation in FW but doesn't want anything traced back to him (for the public good, of course!), and so he's sending you deep undercover in First Ward to uncover the truth. That could also lend some fun dramatic irony and extra layers of meaning to some of the dialogue in First Ward, with the FW contacts not realizing that you're secretly there on Cole's behalf.

As a fan I am not tired of it, war takes a LONG time and I expected another year of Praetoria. I think it is a shame they are just moving past it. I think they should take some of the suggestions in this thread, and turn Praetoria into a full accessible from level 1 part of the game. At the end of the tutorial you are given three options. Hero, Villain, Inter-Dimensional Super Spy. If you take the gold option first thing you do is the Praetorian tutorial for full xp. Then you are contacted once in in each zone by your Primal handler, this contact gives radio missions, but the missions are designed around doing the spy job you have chosen.

Doing that would make Preatoria more playable, make us feel more invested in it, and allow them to do one last zone for 40-50 called The Wild. It would be like the eden zone in primal except larger and dialed up to 11. Contacts that allow you to run missions that set up the imprisoning/Destroying of Preatorian Hammi. They could also do the last bit of reveal about what that creature is, rather than us assuming it is just the Preatorian version of our own Dr. Hammidon.

That is my take on it any way. I want to see it finished, not left hanging like so many other things in this game...Power Customization....

At some point Paragon needs to actually finish something.

That still runs into the brick wall of the Praetorian war - the loyalists were the losing side even before GR launched, and the higher level the content, the closer it is to the start of the war, and the end of their empty hopes.

No, we've only run out of loyalists to fight because all of the remainder got crammed into the Magisterium trial (and even then we're still missing Infernal). Any of them could have had their own trial. One for each? Probably stretching it too far but I think any of the non-Cole AVs could have easily fit into their own trial, like Chimera trying to pull off a plan (which I think instead got turned into the Belladonna Arc) or something that developed Shadowhunter and Pendragon more (You have to admit they really feel like a last minute inclusion even with Night Ward in there). But there are a lot of elements that could have been used elsewhere. We didn't have to fight Tyrant on his own lawn. And maybe if things had gone longer Hamidon might have played a role.

I'm not arguing that we weren't running into the end of the line. But there are enough elements the devs could have put out another trial, possibly 2 before the capstone. Or even another zone/more arcs somewhere. They at least have reached a point where it makes sense to stop it, but again from comments they've made I think they had more in mind to build up to the finale but because of fan displeasure they're cutting it shorter than it would've been.

What brick wall? You can be a loyalist character at level 20. There's even a loyalist justification for going to Primal Earth. First Ward is level 20-29. Praetoria is intact all the way up to the Incarnate trial. For any character in First Ward's level range, the fall of Praetoria is a long way off.

But it's still closer than 20 - and if there was a loyalist option in Night Ward, that takes their dead end path to within 10 levels of needing a U-turn to join the right side.
The further away from the war the loyalist path ends, the gentler the transition to joining the right side.

Well her point is that there's no future for the loyalist alignment. There is room for them to expand, but the Praetorian alignments are, ultimately, pretty pointless because even though you can do 1-35 as a Resistance or Loyalist, by the time the iTrials come around every Incarnate is working for the Resistance to take down Cole. You're railroaded however you choose because every road eventually leads to Primal Earth and the iTrials. And once the Praetorian storyline is wrapped up and the game moves on the alignments will mean even less except as just a novelty left over from it.

So now we have destroyed their lives because we are going to either bring them all to primal and relocate them, or we are going to have to deal with Praetorian Hammi. There is more to do after Tyrant falls. I guess the res side character could just bail, but then they are missing a chance at being in on the ground floor of whatever corruption that takes hold. Heroes are going to stay because it is the right thing to do. We have destroyed what was protecting them, now we should protect them. I was a Loyalist/Responsibility Character, I however was loyal to the people of Praetoria, and could care less about the political power struggles. If I went after a resistance cell, it was because they were going to hurt citizens, not because they were disloyal to Cole. I came to Primal earth to make peace before Cole could attack, I told him so to his face. I failed in that. I will not fail to protect my people again.

See GG Some Loyalist were not evil.

Can't speak for everyone, but it's sure a factor in MY staying out of there.

The mere memory of my level 19? 'troller facing off against Vanessa DeVore and EIGHT copies of Vanessa.... uh, how about no.

Overall the mobs are absolutely brutal for squishies, and instead of facing three at once, solo players on +0 often faced swarms of seven or more - AT LOW LEVELS. And another wave will be comin' 'round the mountain in 5... 4... 3... 2...

Every now and then I run someone with shields through the First Wards arcs for giggles. But squishies? Hell to the no.

This kind of brutality is not how you win hearts and minds into sticking around in a zone.

You're a vain one, are you? I wasn't even replying to you, just making an observation. I could have skimmed through and quoted the other 2 posts that had a similar flavor but I don't think it's necessary (and you'd still feel attacked regardless).

All in all, it doesn't change what I'm observing. Cimerora? Shadow Shard? Yeah, those are 'zones' too and they're deserted, barely utilized and some people even dislike them. But the way you try and defend your statement doesn't make me feel you're any more reasonable, just more a whiny git that doesn't know what he wants.

It is hard for me to look at SLAM, BAF, DD, and KEYS as raids. They are either long missions, or short TFs. They are not what the rest of the MMO world would call a raid though.

TPN, MOM, and Magi are getting close but they are more like a TF.

The only one that really feels like a raid to me is UG. That is more because it is a pain in the butt than time.

The only thing in this game that I have ever done that felt like raids in other games is Old style Hammi. I have been told that new Hammi is still raid like, and the SG raid (sorry it is late) is very raid like.

Well, I guess we could call them raids because they require more than a full team, but then not all of them even fit that.

I think tradition is the only reason these are called raids at all. Shoot I am not sure some should even be called trials. The old respec trial puts some of them to shame when it comes to difficulty.