All Things Art: Building Edition

I have to agree with just about all the posters so far here, David.

The key things I'm seeing is diversity, character and detail. And I'll add to this by trying to elaborate on what I've seen so far.

First off, diversity: I think it's a given that Paragon City seems very 'samey' in a lot of zones, even though the names might suggest otherwise. As mentioned, Steel Canyon has a lot of highrise buildings, but it's not what you think of. The buildings tend to be more brick than skyscraping towers of glass and steel and tends to have more of a 1970's feel to the architecture. The zones need to have a character to draw you to them. Currently, Galaxy City is practically the same in design as Atlas, and I think it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out where the majority of people are starting out. The mention of the Faultline revamp is spot on; it's much more believable that people live there. Swimming pools, apartment blocks with balconies, eatery areas. This distinguishes Faultline and says 'people are living here, this why we look different'. Peregrine Island is superscience central and yet looks more suited for the most part to King's Row.

Character: This goes hand in hand with the above. Atlas Park is obviously the starting area and has City Hall in it, but that is really its only distinctive feature. The Galaxy City argument comes up again here...and the Freedom Corps building wins hands down in terms of a sense of impressiveness and size, but gets lost in the 'same as Atlas' generic feel of the zone. Architecture should vary (not radically, unless it's something brand new) and reflect its generation. For example, Dark Astoria should look older because it's been abandoned for so long whilst the surrounding areas have continued on and developed. Hand in hand with that should be elements of decay and disuse; ghosts don't need doors.

Detail: flows on nicely from character because this is the heart of the beast. The more visually distinctive you can make one building from another, even in the cleanness or crispness of line helps immensely with the visual impression you leave. Break up the texures and patterns for diverse neighbourhoods, turn the place into a patchwork quilt of roofs and streets. If a neighbourhood is a thriving residential area, add details to reflect it. And have buildings that make sense for the area. I understand that in the past religious buildings have been potentially problematic in terms of trying to represent the diversity of the playerbase, but a Catholic church here or a mosque there is all you need.

Shopping malls, fire departments, essential services...that fireman in Steel Canyon just doesn't teleport in! Having PPD precincts are great; you get a sense of a presence in the city and you can find their buildings. All I'd ask for is an expansion of that concept. Either commit to having buses for example animated to serve a preset route to the stops or eliminate them, because it's an art resource without any art purpose if nothing is happening around it. The illusion of a dynamic city is what the end result would be desired I imagine, and that's part of it to me. We generally know the 'feel' of a modern city and expect to see some of the more generally accepted norms of them.

The only other thing I'd add to that is social areas. Obviously Pocket D is meant to be heroes and villains to hang out, but on each side of the game, that's kind of...lacking. Yes, mobs inhabit places like Perez Park, but the parks don't really have benches or barbeques that I've seen. These are again those accepted norms when you say 'park' or 'city center' or 'downtown' or even 'shopping malls'.


These statements all equally apply to the Rogue Isles where potentials to enjoy the environment are lost. The Giza casino is just a big obstacle when just even a single interior room could be added for atmosphere and fun like the monkey cage areas in the D; if there's character already existing, exploit it I say.

I know that Going Rogue has gone deeper into the philosophy that door missions are fixed and have purpose, and the zones are full of individual character. I think the ideal for us as players is to see that carry on back over the original zones.


S.

The two things I miss most in the city, and which break immersion for me, is the lack of suburbs and the lack of an airport. Obviously these would have to be new zones, and are thus less likely to be done.

In particular, I would like to see an area that contains single family houses: ranch style, two story, traditional American houses. Aparently, unlike everyone else in America, the citizens of Paragon city all live in some form of apartment building.

i assume that Paragon City, given its size, must have had an airport, (I wonder where the atlas park blimp is hangared?), but it was destroyed as a prime military traget during the Rikti invasion. How about a grand reopenig so that the people of Paragon City can travel without taking a tugboat or a tanker.

In an old Ask a Dev segment, War Witch answered a question about why sometimes you were sent to a mission door that's totally inconsistant with the verbiage of the mission. She said that each zone has a bunch of doors coded as mission doors. When a mission is chosen, the mission would randomly pick and assign a door from the pool. I'd like to suggest that with every Issue, the doors in the mission door pool get changed. It doesn't have to be every door in every zone, just a few here and there to keep things interesting and surprising. There are many zone neighborhoods that I have never been sent to for a mission. If I hadn't done any sight seeing, those parts of my Map would still be dark after 6 years.


On a different note, I would like some skinnier skyscrapers. It peeves me everytime I encounter a block wide building that is blocking (pun?) my way to where I want to go.

At this late a date, I don't expect this to change, but there are two buildings in Paragon City that, to my taste, completely and utterly dominate the early game, visually. They're both brutally ugly, with equal emphasis on both words: they are brutal looking, and even if they weren't brutal looking, they're ugly. They're way out of proportion to the rest of the city, and their particular architectural quirks make them look like something that I can't imagine ever being built in the United States. They look like apartment buildings that some Stalinist architect would have dreamt up, based on half-remembered buildings by Le Corbusier and Albert Speer, only built in Kyrgistan or Azerbizan by sub-standard labor: ugly, misproportioned, featureless, windowless, and dismally dark. Specifically, I mean this building on the west side of Atlas Park, and this building on the east side of King's Row. And, in fact, I hadn't realized until just now, as I was flying up to it and got a brief graphical artefact, the second building is two of that first building bolted together, face-to-face.

These ugly Soviet-style apartment blocks, combined with the equally Socialist Realist "hero" statues that completely blanket Paragon City, both contribute to my sense that Paragon City is the kind of dictatorship that we're claiming Prateorian Earth and Axis America are, with Statesman as the divine god-king and his personally-approved demigods as absolute rulers as above and beyond the law as the Communist Party was in the old Soviet Union (and still is in the People's Republic of China). These two glaring features of the design of Paragon City are almost certainly what make it easy for me to believe the Arachnos propaganda about what a fascist, dictatorial hellhole Statesman's America is: it looks like a fascist, dictatorial hellhole.

Ironically, there's one other way in which Paragon City looks profoundly un-American, and it's in the opposite direction. One of the first things any foreigner comments on, after visiting America, is just how crazy Americans are about hanging our flag everywhere, and draping it on everything. Every office building and car lot in America has a flagpole, every mall in America has two or more. It gets even more so during war time. But in all of however many square miles of downtown Paragon City, even at the peak of the Second Rikti War, there is one flagpole with one American flag. And even that building, the city hall, still looks wrong, because there's no way in heck that Paragon City's city hall wouldn't also be flying the Rhode Island state flag, too, underneath the American flag. (Ironically, in City of Villains, we do see the Arachnos banner draped all over the city exactly the way the US flag, and other red white and blue banners, should be draped all over City of Heroes.)

But then, if I open that can of worms, it tempts me to point out that in all of Paragon City that we've seen so far, there isn't one single-family home, whether bungalow or mansion, and not one church, not one car dealer or gas station, not one mall, not one airport. An entire city of almost nothing but apartment buildings, office buildings, strip malls, and warehouses. And those buildings all look weird to me, but I realized about a year or so ago that that's just because I'm not from Providence. Around then, I saw a news story that included a long-distance photograph of the skyline of Providence, Rhode Island as seen from the sea, and I freaked out, because it was recognizably Founder's Falls. Providence has, to a midwesterner like me, a very weird looking downtown. But it's still a downtown that's missing a whole heck of a lot of building types.

I'm sorry, I know that nothing useful is going to be done, can affordably be done, about any of these complaints. But you did ask about buildings, and this is my pet peeve with the art design of the game: it would really make Paragon City look a whole heck of a lot more American, and free, and therefore plausible, if we could remove those two hideous and ridiculous buildings, and (heresy of heresies) reduce the size of all the hero monumental statues by about 90%, and put up a heck of a lot more flagpoles, and if any future city zones that got designed included at least some of the missing building types.

One already stated it, but it was based on the colonial aspect of FF, but theme the train stations depending on what zone they are in.

Though I have no specific ideas as to what each train station would look like; all I got is more on the possiblity of a miny museum or art work reflecting the zone in the waiting/exit areas. The building itself should reflect the zone's theme.

Lets get rid of the random mission door mechanic and tag missions to specific buildings. This will allow more named buildings, like the Crey wearhouses in Talos or the Family Jewels. How about curious people looking out of the windows of the skyscrappers when we fly by?

I guess I'm the only one who likes the brutalist architecture in the game then. Discrepancies like not having a flag everywhere could be attributed to a different mindset in CoX US compared to real life US. Maybe everyone is less nationalistic since the entire Earth was attacked by aliens, and a global movement has taken over those feelings. Maybe having flags up around every important or semi-important building turned out to be a bad idea since the Rikti would then know where to aim. Maybe the anti-religious Rikti took out the churches and temples first so ever since then religious services take place in anonymous buildings. Etc. Etc.

One more final thought on what I suggested; if the team were to work on this, it could be done over several issues as I'm sure 1 building could take considerable time, but in between issues we could have the construction workers setting up shop in front on the train station. The next month we would see actual work being done, such as slabs and equipment. A big banner could be place across the entrance and the map wall could have a picture of what the final product will be. Then next issue we get the new building. Then onto another zone.

I agree. Paragon does look a bit more like a model of a city than an actual city.

If it were possible to tear down Paragon City and renovate it into something better, I would totally support all of these suggestions.

I'd like the zones to look different from one another, you know? Make Atlas and Galaxy look a bit more residential. Copy some designs from Praetoria to Peregrine Isle. Things like that.

Some more modern refinements might be nice. I'm not talking about real world modern I mean CoX modern. We have a wold packed stem to stern with little pockets of the high tech but most of the world looks so common. Only the Aracniose citadel in Grandsville looks as advanced as the world should be and it's made by crazy evil people. Why can't the rest of the world have a little of that. Not the crazy just the high tech. A heroic equivalent of Grandville. Holographic street signs, and flying cars. Magic powered street lights, stop lights. Automatic robotic street sweepers. And freaking flying cars. :P

I agree with an asian themed district, and would love to see a tranquil park area with cherry blossom trees using the physics system and say a koi pond.

Aside from more diversity, what about having specific items or places that are activated for certain events or times of year. Say, most of the time it's empty, but when Christmas, Halloween and the 4th of July is activated, decorations are added to sections. If possible, I mean. Why doesn't anyone in Paragon have Christmas lights in their window?

Someone asked about something to help with roof hopping. How about window washing platforms? Also, since the lower zones seem to be the ones with the taller buildings, how about putting some different level mobs on the tops of skyscrapers, such as Sky Raiders, Rikti, etc, since there aren't many hero-side high level skyscrapers.

A few buildings/locations I think the city could use to appear more like a real city:

An airport. Maybe air traffic has been closed ever since the Rikti war and it's only just now been allowed to start up again. Make a bunch of missions around the Rikti, Sky Raiders and heck, Cabal witches disrupting air traffic. Now and then a crashed plane zone event could occur, and heroes have to help put out fires and locate survivors... ok, maybe too much like Champions Online.

A train station and range. Tracks running off into the distance. Trains actually rolling in and out of the station, standing on side tracks, etc. Both monorail lines should come together here. Lots of Family and other gang-related dealings take place there; train-robberies, smuggling, etc. Okay, HERE is a perfect place for a zone event: a derailed train!

A museum. With Family, Council and Sky Raiders constantly trying to steal the precious jewel from the exhibition, or Hellions, Tsoo, Banished Pantheon or Circle of Thorns breaking in to nab an artifact or two, this could be one of the busiest places in town.

A concert hall/theater. Now and then a gaggle of journalists gather outside and limos roll up, letting out well-dressed people walking up a red carpet. A perfect place to stage a huge robbery with all the celebs wearing their best jewelry, or a kidnapping, or an assassination.

How to get these into the game in the most seamless way?

As mayhem/safeguard missions! Instead of robbing/protecting a bank we would randomly get offers to rob the museum, protect the concert hall visitors, assist with the derailed train at the station or hi-jack a plane at the airport. It's so simple I can't believe nobody's thought of it yet...

Other new semi-zones could "easily" be added to the safeguard/mayhems. How about a suburb where villains go to kidnap a hero's family, heroes go to fight off the Rikti and so on.

Crisis at Terra Volta! Another safeguard/mayhem that takes place in the reactor area. Villains are of course trying to steal some plutonium or disrupt the city's power supply for some nefarious plot reason. Heroes are trying to stop them.

Ok, this has turned into an entirely different suggestion but I think I've got my point across.

You know what would be interesting... A rikti city zone where the Rikti that are not warmongers try to live...

enemies in the area might be the PPD and Longbow... you know, groups that are generally heroes but because of the Rikti War Zone are attacking Rikti...

Another stated that they didn't like the the fact that in RV we do not see Wentworth or AE in the zone. I'd like to point out that RV itself is locked in a "time bubble." The events that take place there happened at a point when neither of those buildings existed.

That being said, the other instances of the zone, such as going into the future over on the villian side, we should see a destroyed version of both buildings, as they would exist in the future as well. I don't recall if the new posi mission as both building inside it, but if not, they should.

Any other instance that uses Atlas, or any other zone where one would see either of these buildings (whether or not we can access the area or not) they should still be represented.

Others have said all this, I think, so consider this post an endorsement:

Houses. Schools. Playgrounds. Libraries. Gas stations. Grocery stores. A mall. Little cafés with civilians sitting at faux-wrought-iron tables outside. Places where people live and do things besides walk around and get mugged.

The Faultline revamp got a lot of things right in this regard, but it needs to be pushed farther and spread to other zones. Have those buildings Brad hates so much leveled in a Rikti raid or something, and build a library or museum on one and a school on the other. Yes, I know there are only two children in Paragon City, but there were both male and female civilians around right after the war; even if all the kids were evacuated during the war, there will be new school-age children by now, so make some to populate a school. (Just please, please find some way to not make them look like the Baby New Year abomination.)

Quietly replace some buildings in Dark Astoria with abandoned housing developments--little neighborhoods full of brick or wood-frame houses. Put swing sets in some of the yards, and make the swings swing on their own sometimes. Abandoned houses are a lot creepier than yet another looming office building in the fog. Swap some of the remaining buildings for more Gothic-looking models, with gargoyle rainspouts and such. You don't even have to provide an explanation--most people will have never seen those buildings before. It's a perfect place to experiment, and could use a revamp and some content, anyway. (Maybe we can get them to add a TF that will drive back the Pantheon briefly, and lift the fog for a while, so we can see the changes.)

Since someone mentioned Terra Volta, can we please get it updated at least a little to acknowledge the problems? If not some sort of battle between security/police and the Freakshow constantly outside, could Paragon City borrow some of the overly abundant hulking mechs to guard the door? I mean, I can scrounge up the Vanguard merits myself to get some Heavy Cores to donate, as long as Paragon City pays to repaint them.

Personally, I'd also love to see the final part of the respec mission changed so that the Freakshow enter through holes they blast in the wall, the Sky Raiders enter through a hole they blasted in the ceiling and the Rikti enter through portals, instead of the static doors they are now, but I don't think this' the place for that.

I'd like you guys to use and abuse reflections. Huge skyscrapers with full-reflected glass on the front. At the sides external-elevators.

Basically I don't want more City of Cubes. Bring in shapes, skyscrapers that go further then the current heightmap.

I'll boot up Cinema4d sometime soon to display what I mean ><






http://www.trendir.com/ultra-modern/...d-street-3.jpg

Also would love more parks, blossoming trees, more indepth architecture.

I know we have a City Hall in Atlas, but what about a courthouse? Or a courtroom in city hall? Surely, we're not just throwing all those criminals into jail without any sort of judicial proceedings!? Are we?

Echoing what others have said:

Glass skyscrapers!

Distinct NYC / San Francisco types of neighborhoods, such as Little Italy, Chinatown, Alamo Square (the famous Victorian houses known as the "Painted Ladies"), Greenwich Village, Times Square, etc. Also unique smaller places like Dayton, Ohio's, Oregon District, or Boston's Harvard Square.

It would also be cool to be able to go into local landmarks like the restaurants and such.

Plus, can you please turn off the alarms in the police stations?