Details on Dark Astoria Makeover?

Lose the fog, you can do better to give a "spooky" vibe like we saw with the Haunted House mission. The Fog effect was cheap. Perhaps use the Fog as a zone event in any zone. Some sort of super powered serial killer.

You know, I just had an idea of a way to both keep and yet 'lose' the fog...

I'm just not sure if Tunnel Rat can pull this off on this scale, but it'd be a variant on an effect that she added to the last room of the last mission of the Mender Ramiel arc. An otherwise normal Cimeroran map has a very faint, golden, almost twinkly look to it, representing the aftereffect of the well. (It's actually a beautiful effect, and one I wish I could duplicate via demoediting, but alas...)

I wonder if it'd be possible to add something similar to that to the revamped Dark Astoria, giving it a faint silver/grey effect (or other subtle color), and not quite the 'twinkle' but a slight shimmer to indicate that this place is not really all 'there', as it were. Those motes out of the corner of your eyes that make you wonder what was just there...

Okay, gonna PM her this one and see what she says.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Want to chime in and agree not to lose DA's fog!

There's already a newer and more realistic type of fog being used on the Kane Mansion map - it's not nearly as thik as the DA fog effect, but it does creep over the ground, and is nice and atmospheric.

I understand the concerns and I agree that DA is very unique compared to many zones that seem so much alike. The problem is blue side has aways been designed with overkill.. Atlas and Galaxy for levels 1 to 5 or 6, somehow amazingly only KR from say five to ten, Steel and Skyway from ten to twenty.. adding in Faultline from 15. ind port and talos, bricks and ff .. the only level range operating from one zone being peregrin from forty and up

in comparison red side all of the level work out of one zone and until later levels, long after any character would have a permanent travel power, and even the contacts rarely send anyone scurrying to the ferry to complete a mission elsewhere. in other word a contact in Cap Au Diable almost always gives you a mission that takes lace somewhere in Cap Au Diable.. while a contact in Kings Row may send you to Atlas or Galaxy, not anymore, or perez or even the hollows.

The result has been that many zones are much more popular than others and get used much more. While there were a number of players sorry to see galaxy become the new training zone.. the zast majority of people headed straight to Atlas after a quick run through the tutorial and looked for a sewer team. Due to things like the tailors, wentworths, and the university can anyone honestly say they dont think more players head to Steel Canyon at level ten than those that head to Skyway. For the exact same reasons more players head to talos than ip.

As if that wasnt enough then the devs added the hazard zones.. perez, hollows, boomtown, terra volta, da, eden, cf etc.. all the way u to the mutli zoned shadow shard. ... dont forget blue side we also have the sewer network and the abandoned sewer network.

The point to all of this is while I dont necessarily feel any great joy over them revaming Dark Astoria and converting it to a fifty plus zone minus fog ... LONG LONG ago they went overboard creating zones blue side and the result was virtual ghost zones that rarely got used unless a particular task force of contact sent you there for a single mission. To illustrate the point.. how many people visit Boomtown unless they are looking for exp and history badges, headed in to find Big Bertha on the Synapse tf, headed in to defeat twenty council on Numina tf, or forced in for one single door mission by some contact... Heck most people that even hunt for GMs dont bother looking for Babbage there since they can always find him by doing the Synapse TF or just going to help battle him when that tf spawns him in Skyway.

I really have no idea why they felt the need to eliminate the fog in DA but they are turning a vastly underused zone into something that may actually attract players. Frankly if I was doing it .. Id have converted the entire Shadow Shard into a coop zone with both joint missions, hero and villain, and a revamp of the task forces that exist there.

Now before the outcry begins I also admit there are advantages to advantages to all those added zones...

Hero side has a lot more tfs than villain side has sfs because we have the zones to support the extra contacts without having multile tfs begin out of the same zone.. pose 1 and 2 dont count that used to be one LONG task force lol

Hero side has more giant monsters to battle.. same reason as the tfs. more zones to put them in without having one tripping over the other.

And of course hero side has a lot more badges available, without side switching, because of all the added exploration and history badges.

Which all sounds good until you start to wonder .. okay fine but was it really necessary to design an entire zone just for a giant monster... Kraken spawns in perez but couldnt he have just as easily appeared in say Kings Row. Jurrasik shows up in Creys Folly.. Eden is filled with DE.. why couldnt he spawn there. Now of course other things take place in both those zones but absolutely nothing that originates in there. The fact is we have multiple zones that see little or no activity at all and while I dont necessarily agree with them converting DA over any other.. at least they finally found a way to utilize an existing zone instead of adding ANOTHER one. Hey at least we get to kee the old foggy DA access through Ouro for the badge hunting crowd.. which when you think about it means they actually are creating a new zone .. just giving it an old established name.

I love the idea that I'll get to hangout meaningfully in Dark Astoria forever instead of outlevelling it very early in my career.

I hate the idea that the fog won't be there. Loved the fog. I mean, you know, when I was in a hurry, it was pesky because I kept flying into buildings. But that was more than made up for by the fact that it was FOG! It was great. Low visibility. You never knew what lurked around every corner? Much, much spookier than First Ward.

I like First Ward, but it's nowhere nearly as spooky as Foggy Dark Astoria. The idea of an incarnate, Foggy Dark Astoria thrills me.

The idea of an incarnate, non-foggy Dark Astoria is just, bleh.

there's your feedback from the peanut gallery!

Hmmm...

I've gone many times to Dark Astoria for various reasons, TFs, Badge Hunting, RPing, and one thing always seems to be the same...

It's very very quiet.

I see nothing wrong with making the zone co-op. And for those complaining about co-op, I have to ask why? They're making both villain and hero content there. That means you can do villain or hero only content, joining up with the opposite side is purely a choice and one you can say no to.

Hell, with this news, I think the only thing that could make it any better was if the suggestion for flagging yourself for PvP duels could be made in effect for this zone (and then other co-op zones) so we can see heroes and villains battling it out on the streets of DA!

Yes, I know people don't care for PvP, that's why I said FLAG yourself. You hit a switch, it says you're open for invites to duel and it leaves it at that untill someone sends a request to duel.

We limit it to only red vs blue and only to duels. If you don't want to PvP you just don't flag yourself for it.

[EDIT] Oh and again...rethink losin gthe fog!

Mot is the god of death metal, so too much fog would hide all the new death metal scenery.

Thanks for the details, Samuraiko, I missed that panel.

I'm reserving judgement on the fog and ghosts being gone until I see what is done to replace them. Based on how awesome the Halloween Trial was, I'm optimistic.

I do like the feel of old DA, though, so I'm glad we're getting an Echo of it to go to if we wish.

I'll add the counterpoint opinion to most of what I'm seeing here...

I don't care for the fog. It can go bye-bye and I'll not miss it. It makes using Teleport a massive pain in the rear end. It hides any style or beauty the zone might have (if it has any).

I won't be bothered if it does stay, but I'd actually be glad for it to be gone.

I guess now this means I really need to finish my Dark Astoria video...

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite