Mercy Island Revamp

Seems to me some of the specific islands should look like Jamaica: you have the nice, shiny touristy part, and then you have the slums where a lot of the people live coupled with a ridiculous murder rate. Even pretty places like St. Thomas have some of the highest crime rates around because the wealth is spread so unevenly.

That should be the model for the Rogue Isles which cater to foreigners: looks nice around the casino, but stray from there and you can get murdered right in your face.

Also a little sun would be nice.

I am down for a Mercy revamp IF they make it MORE menacing, MORE dark, MORE difficult to navigate, MORE disparity between the forts and the regular landscape, MORE overcast, MORE scary and depressing overall.

Don't change it too much, just make it MORE. However as it is now, it has a thousand times more character than Atlas or Galaxy, ugh those two zones bore me to death.

Mercy Island is fine the way it is. It's meant to be slums. At least, the first part is until you get to Mercy. There's a reason Mercy is elevated, and that's so all the crud can't get in.

I DO agree that other places need a solid revamp visually. St. Martial should be just a tad bit more glittery. There is a multibillion dollar casino there, after all.

They are getting dulling down the population of the Snakes though, thank god.

...Hrm, allow me to rephrase my previous statement.

The gloomy, gritty, slums and rundown cities of the Rogue Isles are great.

But... for some reason, and I can't put my finger on it, it all seems to run together.

I know the zones aren't all the same. Aeon City and New Haven are completely different from Marconeville, and Aginicourt is completely different from both of those places.

But... they seem similar.


Paragon City, despite being more homogenous, in my opinion, doesn't have that problem as much. Paragon's zones all have a distinct theme, in terms of lore. They have their own distinct problems and stories. King's Row is an industrial district and slum. Steel Canyon is the business district. Founder's Falls is high class residential.


The Rogue Isles also each have their own theme, but they also add "And Slum" to the end of all of them.

I am fairly certain there is a slum on every Isle somewhere.

Now, every factional city in the game has a Slum. Paragon has King's Row. Praetoria has Neutropolis.

But the Rogue Isles have... well, the Rogue Isles.

I would love a bit more variety.

Here are some of my suggestions.

• Port Oakes has four "Sections". Dockside, Marconeville, and Fort Hades. Dockside is the original part of Port Oakes. A quiet fishing village, while Marconeville is a skyscraper filled Gangland. I'd -love- to see Marconeville get a Tall, Dark, and Brooding touch up, while Dockside I feel could be a bit more... piratical. Less patch work slum, and more "Pirates used to be here. Fort Hades is nice, though I'd like to see Arachnos's additions toned down a bit in favor of the old style Fort look. Oil slick is cool, though.
• Cap Au Diable is Dr. Aeon's playground, and Aeon City is currently just a few buildings. I'd love to see it and New Haven get a high tech makeover. Haven, on the other hand, should maintain it's current classic look. Old style buildings, with the PTS haphazardly crammed within.
• Sharkhead, I feel, needs more fleshing out in terms of story more than anything. I love the Scrapyarder/Cage conflict, and I want to know more about it. If I had to recommend additions... how about headquarters for the two factions? A ramshackle place for the Scrapyarders, and nicer accommodations for the Cage Workers.
• Nerva is home to many a tourist, and I'd love to see that reflected a bit more. Turn up the sun around Agnicourt and Crimson Cove. Polish up Crey HQ a bit. Primeva and Thorn Isle are meant to be darker and spookier though.
• St. Martial, I feel, really needs a vegas makeover. More Neon. More tacky buildings that look like things! And the Giza needs some polish as well. The interior should be a spectacle. But right now it's... not.
• Grandville and Mercy I think are fine, though I can't see anyone really living in Spider City. I have a hard enough time getting around with superpowers. I dunno how I'd do it with just Walk.

There are days I love the Isles for what they are.

Then there are other days when I think Recluse needs to paint Black Scorpion yellow, tell him to break out the bulldozer attachment, and get to work.

For such a militaristic organization, the complete reliance on air transport and complete lack of roads from one side of an island to another tends to boggle my mind.

In the interest of finishing whatever the hell they started building in Port Oakes, Aeon should decide he needs fast easy travel between Aeon City (for supplies and labor, teleporting probably isn't an option) and he should build a connecting road and re-open the Tunnel and make a new access road through the port and over to that thing they're building.

In terms of player experience this gives us 3 things:

- Access to the inside of Aeon City. The volume of that structure is almost the same as the Fab. We should get to do stuff inside and see what real capital S Science is all about.

- A travel route that makes sense. We see construction vehicles parked all over the Isles and Paragon, and only rarely are there even roads that make sense leading to the spot.

- Stuff that can happen in the tunnel. There's potential for all kinds of cool events and missions tied into this construction project. What (besides Bat'zul) closed down the tunnels in the first place? What's moved in since then (Troll like Rooge Izzles!)? What sorts of things happen on the back side of the biggest Rogue Isle, when there's approx 1/3 of it that we've never had access to? I'd love to see Family 'dyne factories, and smugglers ports, with shipments heading to Striga and Paragon. Stuff for the villains to do, and ground work for a BackAlley Brawler Task Force for heroes (Say No to Superdyne!)

Well, really all I wanted was an update to take advantage of Ultra Mode.