the problem with starting in Praetoria
By
Agent White,
Posted on: 2012-07-02 09:56 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Fun's subjective, dude. Honestly, you still need to do research on just about any of the areas as is. Paragon City is filled with it's own personal history, as are the Rogue Islands. Brass Monday or either of the Rikti Invasions didn't happen in the real world. The Rogue Islands don't even actually exist. Regardless of where you chose to go, you'd need to play for a bit and learn backstory if you're gonna be this over analyzing. Or surf Paragon Wiki and do tons of research.|
Originally Posted by dugfromthearth
tons of people create ss/fire brutes and level them in AE
that doesn't make it fun. It just means that tons of people do it. |
Praetoria is very open to all sorts of themes, anyway. A wide variety of characters can fit in easily. You just need to decide if they're a Loyalist to the government, or a Resistance member.
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And how did you know that when you first started playing the game?
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Originally Posted by dugfromthearth
because Paragon City generally exists in the real world
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Arc#314490: Zombie Ninja Pirates!
Defiant @Grouchybeast
Death is part of my attack chain.
Agreed with most of the posts in here.
Praetoria is it's own unique universe with a different/divergent history, not all of which has been revealed. That's kinda what makes it fun. You can pretty much make up whatever you want.
Shoot, even in Paragon City/The Rogue Isles, you can come up with any concept you want. Alien from another planet? Sure, why not. Someone from another dimension outside of Praetoria? The more the merrier! Time travel? Sure thing. A clone of someone/something? An inanimate object turned human? Someone who just likes shooting lasers? That's the fun of a superhero universe. You can pretty much come up with anything. You can even disregard all of the lore in the game if you want and just make up your own history. I don't consider some of my characters Incarnates even though they've gone up most of the Incarnate trees. They're just really powerful heroes and those Incarnate abilities are manifestations of their own power (this is just in my head lore, of course).
And Praetoria is no different. Come up with whatever you want, play however you want. There's four different paths you can go down, or switch between them, or do them all.
I do agree about feeling trapped there though. They should just make Praetorians into a hybrid of Rogues/Vigilantes. Able to go to Primal Earth and go to any zone there, just not be able to initiate content outside of paper/radio missions. Still able to join task forces and all that, you just can't do normal mission arcs.
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Oh, they're real - and they're spectacular |
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
I think "Sister Silicone" works just as well
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During the loyalist invasion event, a red name, via Bobcat, confirmed that MM was prety plastic - which suits the whole fake theme that the Praetorian "utopia" has going on |
Originally Posted by Zemblanity
Oh, they're real - and they're spectacular
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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...and, just like the Praetorian "utopia", many are willing to ignore the facts and just... believe the dream.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
During the loyalist invasion event, a red name, via Bobcat, confirmed that MM was prety plastic - which suits the whole fake theme that the Praetorian "utopia" has going on
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There are lots of super 'heros' When you run the power arc of the loyalists you get to see them all.. They remind me of Captain Amazing in Mystery men. I even rolled a character just to play through those missions, She had a overly fancy costume, capes etc really over the top hero looking. I just adore Praetoria and it's lore!
As far as being trapped there. I have not tested this yet but are you still? with the new portal in Imperial City. Or is that just for visiting Primals?
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Far be it from Bobcat to lie about someone who had anything bigger than her. Nope, not a spiteful bone in her body. I blame Mom's bust on Enriche.|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
During the loyalist invasion event, a red name, via Bobcat, confirmed that MM was prety plastic
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Don't worry too much about having to fit in 100% with the game world. The background police aren't going to show up to rewrite your history if it doesn't mesh fully.
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If... if that's true... didn't the resistance destroyed the Enriche plant?|
Originally Posted by _Tacitala_
... I blame Mom's bust on Enriche.
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:freezes, with a shocked look on his face as the gravity of the situation becomes apparent.
/em grief
You Maniacs! You blew it up!
Damn you!
God damn you all to hell!
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The Devoured One waits for this as well. I just need to come up with a good secondary...
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Originally Posted by Hqnk
Most of my favorite characters are from Praetoria. On two occassions, I rerolled the same archetype powerset combinations and too them to 50 again, because I preferred them as Praetorians.
I am looking forward to Bio Armor so I can make yet another Praetorian. |
@bpphantom
The Defenders of Paragon
KGB Special Section 8
<QR>
The problem with playing in Preatoria is that, now that the newness has worn off, you have to play mainly solo and frequently against HUGE ambushes.
Other than that, it is pretty and the stories are interesting.
50s: Inv/SS PB Emp/Dark Grav/FF DM/Regen TA/A Sonic/Elec MA/Regen Fire/Kin Sonic/Rad Ice/Kin Crab Fire/Cold NW Merc/Dark Emp/Sonic Rad/Psy Emp/Ice WP/DB FA/SM
Overlord of Dream Team and Nightmare Squad
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If I'm understanding you dug, you're saying you feel unable to build a deep character background consistent with the Praetorian world from the get-go.|
Originally Posted by dugfromthearth
tons of people create ss/fire brutes and level them in AE
that doesn't make it fun. It just means that tons of people do it. |
I think you're unnecessarily constraining your creativity
In my first session of DnD 4ed, I first sat down with no notice. I decided to roll a Half-Elf Paladin, and the only character attribute I had time to think of was his fresh-faced naivete. I even pulled his name off a random list.
Having just this rough outline allowed me to evolve the character by riffing off the other players, developing extremely vivid character tics as we went along. He ended up with serious confidence and mommy issues, and I fleshed out his backstory to suit. He ended up being my best rp experience ever.
Since then, I leave the character creator with just one line in my description. Maybe two, if I want to broadly explain how I got the powers. I let that guide my interactions with people, and the game world. By level 30ish, I've added names, places and events to explain how I've acted so far, and use those new details to guide how I act afterward.
You seem to believe that a character background set in stone from level 1 is the only way to properly role play. If you try something different, you may be pleasantly surprised.
Final Line: It's not Mozart, it's Coltrane.
- And where the 5th column brought WWII to our shores.
- And where Washington, DC was occupied by an enemy force
- And where the Rikti invasion notably scarred up major population centers around the world without ever telling you how widespread the damage is or how it may have changed things.
- And the United Nations as a bit more firepower at its disposal in Vanguard-- (how has that changed global politics? Is there any correlation to the notable lack of US Military Presence?)
- It was once stated that Paragon City supplanted NYC as a cultural and civic hub- even had NYC referred to as 'Empire City' once... then again, the UN HQ in NYC WAS hit during the rikti invasion, so the city rebounded to some degree.
Ages ago, this change was alluded to by Jack (can't find the link) as a resulting from a kind of "butterfly effect" - on Primal earth, oil discoveries in western PA came later, meaning whaling oil remained in very high demand, shifting influence to the whaling New England states at the cost of development along the industrialized rust belt. Not a HUGE change, but it came at a critical point that let Paragon nudge out NYC.
If that's the case, what other differences are there through the areas that would have developed over this time?
if you create a character who grew up in Iowa, you know Iowa exists.
Praetoria is MORE different, so there are fewer common references to go by.
This isn't too different than other games where you have to discover the lore as you play. Sure, you can pretend to be a 200-year-old generic Tolkien elf in Everquest 2's world, but until you play the game, you won't know much about what you'd encountered over the 200 years of cataclysmic events the world's supposed to have gone through. You learned the specifics of lore as you played.
if you create a character who is psychic, you don't find out that all psychic people are taken by the state and turned into seers.
All are supposed to be seers, sure, but then you have all the psychics in the syndicate that haven't joined the seers. Obviously, there's wiggle room for the "all"
Was there a World War II, Vietnam War, etc in Praetoria?
You pretty much cannot assume any background is valid in Praetoria.