Details on Dark Astoria Makeover?

I'm actually really glad the fog is going away. It looked sort of cheap. I can see there being a low, longer distance fog effect, but the setting on the current version is a little too opaque.

I kind of get the idea that the zone isn't going to look like an empty city and a really large undead inhabited graveyard as the whole place is going to be twisted and warped by Mot's awakening presence.

More or less, the graveyard is going to 'infect' the rest of the zone. Maybe like First Ward only more brutal :3

I'll miss Silent Hill but oh well...still looking forward to the solo stuff

The fog in DA is cute the first time you see it, annoying the tenth and makes you want to reach through the monitor and strangle the zone designer the fiftieth. Lose it.

Kind of disappointed in the fog going away, though I can understand that if they're going to put all the work into revamping a zone, they'd like it if people were able to SEE it.

I like the idea someone mentioned earlier of having it go in cycles. Weather was mentioned at the player summit as well - seems like that would be a good way to handle it.

Just remove the fog, it's scary enough as it is:

I havent read every single response to this thread but I would add my views..

While I share the viewpoint that Dark Astoria is somewhat unique and it will be a shame to loose the dark fog that mad travel an adventure.. I am glad to see them finding a way to make it a viable and potentially useful zone. Lets face facts along with zones like Boomtown, perez park, and even the entire shadow shard there are a lot of hero side zones that sit all but empty most of the time. Until it was revamped this same thing held true for the rwz.

An entire zone dedicated to fifty plus activity would be welcomed by many that play the game. As it statnds now, here on virtue, we rarely see less than 2 rwzs these days and on weekends as many as 3 or 4. A zone dedicated to over fifty content will make life much easier for the players trying to run mothership raids, at least twice a week on virtue, and the LGFT. Hopefully the devs plan includes the following

1 the same basic services as the rwz .. crafting tables, easy access to base portal, easy access to a store. The added bonis of a merit vendor and a tailor are minor but those big three mean that after a raid players can grab insirations, sell off unneeded enhancements, recipes, ect and even craft fresh ios. A wentworths somelace in zone would make it absolutely perfect.

2. A large enough zone population limit to allow several leagues to start up at one time. currently in the rwz if two trials leagues both try for the maximum 24 team members it doesnt take much to have the zone filled and the league cant start because they have to wait for some members to gain access.

3. The addition of solo content.. this has been sought after by many since the incarnate system began. Give us some contacts with missions we can do solo or on smalled 7 to 8 man teams.

4. make entrance similar to what we have in the rwz... Lets face it if Adamastor is staying its the only way a lower level layer can get into zone safely to join a GM hunting team. A Vanguard base or even Midnighters Club that allows access to the zone would allow anyone to enter and hook up with a team.

5. make it at least semi convenient to get to.. no there doesnt have to be a gate to the new DA in every zone but at least give us the same sort of access as the rwz (2 to 3 zones with direct access on each side red and blue]. much more convenient than the entrance to cimerora which requires getting to a midnight club, zone for the outer xhamber to the innner chambers of the club and then zoning again, a third time, to actually get to the task force.

The game is over 7 years old now and a lot of us have been around a long time. While there is always a need for added zero to forty content a lot of us have multile fifty levels and until the incarnate trials came along there wasnt a whole lot left to do acheive. Now we have reason to actually play characters we sents some time leveling. It seems that the devs have no intention of ever raising the max level above fifty but at least now we have the promise of ten new powers to use and more and more content we can enjoy .. instead of sticking another fifty on the shelf and starting another new alt .. then complaining about how we hate the lower levels and want new quicker ways to get to forty.

This *sucks.* 100%.

Devs: Just drop a meteor on it and close it off if you're going to get rid of the things that make Dark Astoria DA. The fog is NOT that hard to get through. I do it on my Warshades (see also "teleport") all the time.

Players have put forward ideas - several very GOOD ones - for years. Even (recently) adding "tiered" contacts and content to explore DA, from the level 20 of the zone now to Incarnate stuff. Why do you ignore that and make more Peed On By The Well content? Let me guess, the Pantheon was really the Well's earlier experiment gone wrong? Boo.

What's next for a revamp, taking Grandville, flattening it and putting a county fair complete with ferris wheel there? How about taking Skyway, nuking it and replacing all the overpasses with a few farms? You can still use the name, even if the zone's completely different now, nobody will mind, *really.* *rolls eyes*

And co-op. really. My villains would say "Hey, I'm an Incarnate now" and break through into Paragon. Enough with the damn co-op. Give the villains something unique. One of the other DA suggestions had the Incarnate end of the DA missions going to the spirit world to fight the Pantheon - this would let the villains do so *without* placing them, ONCE MORE, in Paragon City. See that nice graveyard in Sharkhead with all the BP? Yeah. See also "portal to that zone" instead of dropping them in Paragon.

And no, obviously none of this is directed at Samuraiko. She's awesome. She's just giving really *bad* news.

I will be sad to see the fog gone. Even though it did annoy at times. The reason I found it annoying wasn't so much that you couldn't see but that the skyline didn't work. By which I mean you could see the very bright War Walls for some distance but then suddenly a tower block would appear in front of you. Even though you should have at least seen its silhouette against the glowing force walls.

If they are removing it I hope they have a decent in-game explanation.

I am more worried about that they are closing the Talos gate. If we are teleporting to the zone please please let it be via Portal Corp or some such mechanism rather than the awful LFG thingy. Please.

I'm cautiously optimistic although anything with the word 'incarnate' attached to it tends to make me very skeptical. The god-modding tool that is the Well is annoying and frustrating. The less I see of it in new DA, the better.

1) Not happy about the fog. I love the fog. It makes DA scary and dangerous. A DA without fog will not be a real DA IMHO. It will lose something that makes DA special.

2) Urk, Co-op. Enough with the Co-op. Maybe for a mini-trial or TF or something but no more. Please let villains have proper mission content for a change. Less 'vaguely heroic' missions, more real villainy.

3) Same for Praetoria. I'm so sick of that place by now.


In short, please, please, please... don't **** up one of the most atmospheric, beautiful and scary zones in the game.

Dark Astoria was underutilized from the start, but had tremendous atmosphere. My guess is that the original idea for game-play by the Devs was street-sweeping, punctuated by missions as desired. Teams could sweep bigger groups, so the Hazard Zones had bigger groups designed for teams to take on. Then the focus shifted to instanced missions and the halcyon days of street-sweeping were done, and many zones sat empty.

The Devs ADDED a zone called Cimerora; they did not convert Skyway into it. They ADDED Crotoa; they did not convert Kings Row. Many folks want additional 50+ content. If new 50+ content was the goal, why does it have to be Astoria? When I first got the game, and carefully printed out the maps, I assumed that the Shadow Shard, so far away and dangerous-looking, would be where the highest-level content and missions would take place. Wrong. It sits empty as Boomtown. Why not make it the highest-level content area?

I suppose that everyone will have problems with the Official Lore, and I have simply concluded I do not want to participate in the whole Well of Furies business, which has effectively announced that everyone owes their power to the sentient, insane, seize-control-of-you Well. Supposedly, our backstories were open to whatever lore we wanted to develop, well, sorry, your powers, regardless of what you say, are from the Mystical Thong of Richard Simmons that you must wear on your head. Don't like it? Too bad, that is the official explanation. And now it is coming to Dark Astoria!

The DA storyline also seems to be another one that has simply been chucked without coherent resolution. We still have a ton of Ominous Thingies that are Yet To Come, and from the looks of it, we will likely never see some of them, or they will get wrapped up summarily as Luke and Leia being siblings, end of story. The DA story's resolution could have been really cool--- giving it to the Well nonsense is a depressing thought.

There SHOULD be 50+ content forthcoming for the folks that are enjoying using all their 7-year stockpile of lvl 50s. I am all for that and there is good demand for it. But could we also get some content for 40 to 50? And if a zone has to be revamped and shut behind the Thong of Simmons, does it have to be Dark Astoria?

I never envisioned DA as a "main zone," but rather something more akin to Croatoa and Striga: atmospheric zones with additional content you can play if you enjoy the atmosphere. Those zones have a flavor and in-zone arcs, which is what I had hoped was coming one day to DA.

There is nothing to do but wait and see what the New and Improved Dark Astoria looks like. Given the Original New and Improved Circle of Thorns (and the huge outcry provoked by the original screenshots,) I cannot say that I am optimistic. Tying it into the Incarnate nonsense triples that feeling.

Just gonna pop in here to add my voice to those asking to please keep the fog. The fog makes DA unique and spooky. Don't get rid of it.

And while we're at it, I haven't seen those shades that used to walk around in the fog in a long time. Those were awesome. What happened?