Zone revamping - still in the plans?

Have any of you heard if the devs may still revamp some of the zones that are not used much, such as Boom Town and Astoria?
Along the lines of how they revamped Faultline.

Also, weren't they working on The Moon or another cool new zone a while back?
I was thinking of the construction site they added in the southwest corner of Steel Canyon a while back.

Thanks.

Im listening to the podcasts from Herocon today (http://www.cityofheroes.com/media_an.../podcasts.html).

A recurring comment so far has been a zone revamp done properly takes as much effort as a new zone.

The Devs lean towards adding new, rather than replacing.

They're focusing on GR right now, but I'm totally sure that revamping some of the less used zones are part of their future plans in some way.
The construction work for the rocket launch sites has been going on for a while now - I think that maybe the moon stuff was shuffled around once they were bought by NCSoft - it might have been the focus for a new Issue while they were still part of Cryptic, but once NCSoft invested a lot more into the game, they probably decided to do GR first instead.

"Futue plans in some way" covers that

Perhaps the terminology IS the problem and thus the disconnect. Most of us just want some contacts and/or a TF added as opposed to redesigning the terrain. Especially since some places like Dark Astoria are perfectly fine as they currently are other than being empty.

While the devs did say they prefer to make new zones rather than revamp zones, they did acknowledge that the overwhelming player response at HeroCon was for revamps (and said it surprised them that it was revamps over new zones). So don't completely discount that. Our devs really do like to listen to us sometimes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

One solution to the revamp-is-as-much-work problem is to clone the zone, and revamp the cloned zone leaving the original in place.

The revamped zone could then be from some other dimension. Or, the revamped zone could be the new Primal Earth zone, but the legacy version is accessible through a dimensional portal. This would allow the devs to create a hero and a villain version (a la Ouroboros) or a co-op version.

And so, no legacy assets would be lost but there could be new zones that complement the story of an existing zone.

There's no reason why we can't visit the old Faultline or Rikti Crash Site as they exist on another dimension.

There's no reason why the Shard can't be cloned and the cloned version accessible to villians (with FBZ a non-entry point).

After all, Peregrine Island was cloned so that villains would have access to Monster Island (and the rest of the city was walled off).

Man, I would love to see a revamp of Boomtown. Throw in some heavy fortifications manned by the Fifth Column, have them clean the Council out of there, and make it their headquarters.

heck, I'd love to see a mini-TF in Boomtown which has missions to assault the Fifth Column presence there... culminating with storming the gates of their secret underground bunkers.

One downside to creating new zones is that you further divide the player population, increasing the perception that the servers are empty.

They could have a player AE contest to generate a lot of the missions. Although that would really raise the ire of people who already feel like the AE is an excuse for the devs to foist their job off on the players. Wouldn't bother me, though!

Cloning zones is interesting. What if they cloned Dark Astoria and made the new version villain only. The "story" explanation would be that it's foggy, and you never see anyone from the other faction even though it is the same place. The fact that it's actually two different zones would be a mechanical thing, invisible to the characters, just like the characters aren't aware of the fact that stores are located underneath the zones they're located in.

If villains get too close to the hero entrance, the police drones could zap them back to the villain entrance or something. The villain entrance could be on the opposite side of the zone, hidden in a crypt, linked to a magical gateway or something.

Each version of Dark Astoria would be the same except for contacts which give out faction specific missions. Heroes try to save the world. Villains try to acquire ultimate power over the universe or something. Of course, that leads to a problem inherent in villain content. When heroes succeed, they maintain the status quo. When villains succeed, they change the world.

I say Dark Astoria should be turned into a PvP zone. Imagine how interesting that would be...

tl;dr: I vote for revamps. Adding new stuff is nice, but to me the revamps are ESSENTIAL.

I don't know why the devs are so fundamentally resistant to the idea of revamping content. We probably need to use some debuffs on them to drop their resistance.

Anyway, yes, revamping content IS creating new content, so revamping = making something new. It takes the same effort.

However, revamping a zone can also make new use of older assets - recycling! - which is an efficiency over making an all-new zone.

As I've suggested many times before, if Paragon Studios would just hire one or more people (like me!) for the purpose of continual revamping, the game could be continually renewing itself like a forest instead of making layer after layer of fossils.

What was once new eventually becomes old. The content from i1, i2, i3, i4, i5, i6 has petrified into fossil beds. Sure, there is perhaps a desire among some players to retain the original content. There are ways of doing that (Ouroboros, for example, or optional mission paths from the contact). But someone, or several someones, could definitely make a good full time job out of breathing new life into old zones and old stories, and that work (if done well, of course) would be widely appreciated.

One of the zones that could use new life - in addition to Boomtown and DA - is The Hollows. I know War Witch did a revamp of sorts a year or so ago, but to me that was not really the sort of revamp that was needed. There are plenty of zones in which players can run scanner content; in my opinion there was no need to make something like that for The Hollows. It was a waste of time. However, the field hospital and leveler were long overdue features.

What The Hollows really needs is a reworking of the basic arcs, including the Trial. We need to get more content related to the Outcasts, Trolls, Warriors, Family, Minions of Igneous, Coralax, and Circle activites in the zone, and we need to in some way see Igneous, the Magma Master, show up in relation to the Cavern of Transcendence and the Hollowing Event.

Another thing we could do is create additional options for the Task Forces / Strike Forces. While there are always new players in the game, many of us are veterans who have run the lower level Task Forces numerous times. For myself, I must have TF Commander on like two dozen toons. A refresh of the material is definitely in order!

What the dev team could do, for instance, is keep the old Posi TF, but add one, two, or three more. Teams visiting Posi for a TF could pick whichever one they want to do. Each TF would feature different foes, stories, and have merits determined by the usual rule. I know some players will always go for the max merits, but others may say "Ugh, pick one that doesn't have Vahz," or "pick one that doesn't have CoT," or "pick whichever one is shortest."

I also support a move to drop virtually all hunt and errand missions from the regular contacts, and to give story-based hunt missions to the zone Security Chiefs. (If this proves popular, contacts with an equivalent function could be added to redside.)

There are plenty of things that could be done to freshen old content. I think Paragon Studios needs to wake up, smell the organic fair trade coffee, and get with the recycling movement. Go green, Paragon!

There's a couple problems with investing energy into revamps versus focusing on new content.

First off it's a marketing thing. NCSoft is gonna get a lot of mileage out of Going Rogue. It's an entire new set of zones that didn't exist before, new baddies, new power sets. New kinda character you can play. New everything, while still keeping the original game. So it's both releasing a new game AND expanding the old one.

When they put all that energy into revamping Faultline, it was great for we fans because it was a long time coming, and the results were awesome at first but after awhile the novelty wore off, and for all that effort, the PTB couldn't go to the general public and say "look what we did! We took this part of our game that wasn't as good as it coulda been when we first introduced the game, and we cleaned it up and made it better! Come take a look!" From a marketing standpoint, it's a much harder sell to anyone not already playing the game.

Even a 'mini-vamp' like The Hollows which didn't involve dramatic changes to the zone did still mean a lot of manpower and time. Every corner and crevice of Hollows was looked at and stuff we probably don't even notice was done to it. It still cost, and the end result in the big picture was the same as before. Hollows is still where you go when your toon hits its preteens. I pretty much try to get on someone else's Frost Fire arc for every toon I have if I can, but aside from that I try not to hang too long at Hollows. Even though the facelift was in my opinion necessary, it doesn't make me wanna hang there.

So if you were the developers and you're looking at your finite resources and you can either focus your next project on making Boomtown what it shoulda been five years ago, or creating City of SpaceTime the next expansion, Boomtown's not gonna win. UNLESS you completely revamp Boomtown to make it the zone players now use to access space. That way you kill two birds w/one stone. But of course then you're gonna tick off all the players who have fond memories of Boomtown as is, so you might as well just leave Boomtown alone and create an entirely new zone that'd represent the CoH universe's equivalent of NASA.

I'm saying this and I disagree w/it. I want the Devs to focus on the zones that already exist and make them better. I think adding more zones spreads the player base too thin and the community that used to make this game so cool is kinda dying, unless you have built up a complex network for yourself. I never did. I was too lazy. So now if there's anybody who still plays the game that I know? We're both like twenty characters later and wouldn't recognize one another. I want a new Boomtown. I want a new Perez Park. I never go into Galaxy City to start a hero I always use Atlas Park. Why? Cuz I can never get a team together in GC. Everybody's over at Atlas, except for ppl who don't seem to want to team. I think GC should get more reasons why ppl would wanna go there. I think Independence Port is built the way it is for a reason but it's annoying as all get out to traverse, even with decent travel powers. It's very unfun. KR is getting better, but could still use some tweaking. Steel, Sky, Talos, and Peregrine are pretty much perfect far as I can tell. I like em fine. I'm sure there's others who could see fault where I don't.

The real problem is the developers could waste all their resources on what's already there, and we'd never be satisfied. We'd always want something better. And then the Devs would have nothing significant to show off to potential new players but what they already had with a new paint job.

Sometimes you just gotta let the past go and move on. New content over old just wins out. Cuz when you make the old stuff new, it just turns back into old faster for some strange reason, and in some ways it never stops being old no matter how new you try to make it. Don't look back. Ever forward.

Because yes... the RWZ revamp "just turned back into old fast." So did the Faultline revamp. Definitely hum drum and boring, like the old RCS and Faultline. They never see anyone in there, ever, because it's so old.

Oh, I'm sorry, that was sarcasm, by the way.

Because the RWZ is one of the more popular zones in the game (especially if a server has mothership raid schedules), and Faultline is REGULARLY requested by just about all the teams I'm on in that level range.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.