Make Your Case (Plummit)

Apparently, the Atlas Park revamp took about a year to do - so even if they'd started a Shadow Shard revamp directly after they'd finished with Atlas Park, it still wouldn't be ready yet - especiaslly as they've also been giving attention to Dark Astoria and Night Ward.

Shadow shard. With so much emphasise on Ralaruu as of late, it should be high prioroty, especially letting villians access it at any level.

I'm really surprised to hear anyone say red side zones are fine/don't touch them.

At the very least, all the red side zones need an architectural face lift. *Every* street/block looks the same no matter which zone you're in. A brownstone in Mercy is a brownstone in Sharkshead which is a brownstone in St Martial and it sucks. Red side zones have great localized set pieces (Nerva jungle, Giza casino district, the mining pit in Sharkshead) that gets lost in the greater generic landscape.

Ok, we get it, the Rogue Isles are smothered to poverty stricken ruins but what villain wants to live it up in a ghetto wasteland? If villains steal from Paragon City, then the Rogue Isles should be a glistening hideaway like Dubai. Anything you could ever want or need in your criminal life - but for a very high price...

That said, ideally I'd want Port Oakes and Nerva Archipelago made over in detail. Red side players spend more time in these zones (pre Grandville) more than any other. If Port Oakes is Dubai, then make Nerva a deadly tropical resort paradise...

Of course, I'd also recommend an uprising throwing out Recluse. The Rogue Isles need a new boss - which could be a golden opportunity for the player... If done right.

(And no, alas, I won't be at the Plummit to plead a case for Red side; I wish I could!)

Brickstown:

Why?

It has a huge freaking prison in the middle of it that contains HUNDREDS of super-powered beings and it's nothing more than a morass of Crey, Council and Freakshow. Meh.

How I'd Fix it:

1)Replace Freakshow with a PPD presence:

Remove all the Freakshow spawn and replace them with PPD. Have flying (Peacebringer) PPD around the Ziggurat, engaging escaping prisoners. Have non-affectable PPD and Prisoners fighting each other.

2)Lower Council presence considerably:

The Council are EVERYWHERE. Seriously. From level 10-50 you see them in almost every zone. We get that they are an omnipresent faceless evil-evil group but it's time for a little change. Have them be around The Abyss Towers or something, but start phasing them out.

3)Put Crey mostly around Crey's Folly and the southern part of the zone:

Since this is the zone that is nominally controlled by Crey, keep them there but closer to the center of the zone. Their levels can stay 30-35 to keep them consistent with the costume mission and Manticore's Task Force (getting to that), but add a few Paragon Protectors and Paragon Protector Elite doing propaganda toward citizens (think of Nerva).

4)Rework Manticore's Task Force:

Kind of meld the new zone look with the old TF objective:

1)Prevent Zig Escape!
Enter the Ziggurat and stop prisoners from escaping. Perhaps a small Crey presence is there trying to get them out for testing (remember the Reveant Hero Project?) or something else.

2)Investigate Crey presence in Brickstown.
Small hunt, gives you clue to next mission.

3)Rescue PPD officers, retrieve files.

You find out that Crey has been sending converted prisoners into PPD HQ to steal files on their Ascended troops. Wouldn't want Crey to to get that much more powerful so...

4)Face off against Hopkins or a Paragon Protector X2Z:

Lose Hopkins completely; move him to the Countess Crey arc instead.
Final boss is a Paragon Protector that sends a wave or two of prisoners after you (Phase 1) then converted PPD (phase 2) before fighting you himself. The PP uses "dirty tricks" to make this fight tougher (room suddenly goes dark, or slow patches on floor, etc.).

20 Reward Merits instead of 30-odd.

To be pedantic, there are a ton of zones that could use a revamp. The question is which should be next. The answer has to be which one would help the game the most if revamped, not which one needs a revamp the most.

They could revamp an existing zone that gets used to make it better. Atlas is an example of this. If everyone plays there, improving it affects everyone. The only other zones that "everyone" does are Steel, Talos, and PI. All three of those are pretty good already. I don't really see any significant improvements there.

The other real consideration (assuming that redoing a zone costs the same whether it is a total redo or a partial) is a zone that is different enough that making it good would add something to the game.

Boomtown is a wasteland - but we already have Hollows and Faultline as wastelands. I can't see people getting excited about another such zone.

IP is mostly water surrounded by land, with a huge bridge. That is different. I can imagine it being cool, but they would have to make the water itself interesting somehow to pull it off. A nice idea, but seems unlikely to pay-off.

Perez Park has a forest in it. Croatoa also has a forest, so it is not unique. If done well, I can see PP as being a cool zone with a different feel.

Founder's Falls is unique with its canals. It is also pretty and an active area populated by NPC's. It is a level that lacks much content, and people in general just seem to skip somehow (go directly to PI or something else). Having a 30-40 zone that was the place for 30-40 characters to be would help a lot with teaming. Adding content there would be great.

I say Founder's Falls as the next zone to revamp.

Which city zone doesn't matter to me as much as what they do with it. I lean towards blue side city zones though because of the kind of things I would like to see.

Firstly, I would love to see a zone with events constantly occurring.Armored car robberies, gang fights, prison breaks, hold ups. It would be a lot more interesting if we saw these things actually happening rather than the npc actors holding a pose until a hero comes in encounter range. Sometimes they get away, but chases would be something new at least.

Also, I think I would rather see a 24 hour traffic jam of stopped cars than the 20 or so cars/trucks that are driving around this "city" in any given zone. I am looking out my window at Philadelphia right now and I can say it doesn't look like a city without skyscrapers and cars. And sometimes you don't need the skyscrapers.

I would love to see more of the dynamic sub-zone system where the content of a part of a zone changes with a mission. Gangs move in, get pushed out, move someplace else. The fires in Steel Canyon are a great idea but I don't know why it stopped there. Cats in trees, collapsing bridges, sinking ships, trapped miners, hostage situations, bomb scares, terrorists, all kinds of dynamic things can be done. What is more important than where.

You might even have some of these things be triggered by arechtype or powers selected. Super speed characters might trigger a multiple bomb situation. Flight needs or super leap triggers a save a person from falling situation. Super strength might trigger a collapsing building, ice anything might be a fire, air powers a gas leak, I can't list all the options, and they can't all be done but some of the common powers could have special event triggers.

Can we have an indoor mall? OK, so what I really want is vehicles and a car chase through the mall, but I am sure I can't get that. Also, somewhere in Paragon city there must be an Airport. If we have a really big zone like Independence Port could we have a subway that instantly takes you to different areas in the same zone? This is separate from the monorail obviously.

Finally, whatever zone it is, if it had war walls before it shouldn't any more. War walls are obviously not needed any more to make the game work, and they don't make any damn sense since they do nothing to keep the Rikti out. (1) The Rikti teleport, 2) They also fly. Other than being ugly what is it these walls are supposed to do? They make the game look very dated when you log into a MMO as a new user and see this big obvious zone boundaries everywhere you look. They does not help the image of the game or improve first impressions at all.

Griping is fun, but I have been playing since launch because I love the game.

The Shard.

Is there an assumption that any zone revamp has to be co-cop? Or can a zone on either side be revamped and stay exclusive?

Sharkhead Isle.

Why Sharkhead? Because every Villain more or less heads to Sharkhead at level 20, and Sharkhead is just... dull. It does have its moments, sure, but its main attraction is that it has a big hole in the ground. The content is also a bit lacking, or rather, it sued to be. You get out of Cap au Diable, which is a technology focused zone, with the giant model atom, the university, and of course Dr. Aeon. And then you step off the ferry into a labor dispute. Kind of a step down for a supervillain if you ask me.

Nw if you pick the right contacts, you'll instead begin to learn about the Leviathan, which is a step up from messing with Dr. Aeon, and the newer arcs, plus Diviner Maros are a good enough distraction to never need to go into that whole Cage Consortium thing. Which, to me, is the main problem with the zone. Cage and the Scrapyarders do not a compelling story make. At least not a supervillain story. Now if said villain were to incite the labor dispute and exploit the commotion for personal gains? That'd be better.

That and I kind of want to see the zone have a bit more feel of the Leviathan. I'd like to see the zone have this feel of "Something here is not right..." like a good horror story town. Maybe even have a place where the mining dug a little too deep and hit something.

There are a couple of zones I'd like to see revamped; Brickstown (as already mentioned) would be one, and the suggestions made would be good ones. Some kind of Zig focus (and missions into the Zig) would absolutely be great.

One I haven't seen mentioned is Crey's Folly. I think this would be a good place to do a sort of Faultline-like partial rebuild. The Rikti Restructurists could be relocated there (where, of course, they'd run afoul of Traditionalist plots as they fight for dominance of the zone).

I've seen suggestions of doing some kind of Crey focused/themed issue, and doing something with Bricks and CF in that issue would certainly work. Might be overreaching, but perhaps Eden could be tied in somehow.

If we're talking brand new zones, I think- and I may hear some groans- that an Oranbega zone would be awesome. Not the cramped tunnels of the Oranbega missions- I mean a thriving underground city zone, stuffed full of Circle of Thorns.

It could easily be a co-op zone, and I could envision- aside from CoT- different groups of enemies/allies; Midnighters, Mu, Coralax- perhaps even some new versions of the latter two groups. (Actually, rather than a co-op zone, I'd rather it be a shared hero/villain zone, but with distinct contacts and missions for each side.) Oranbega could even be connected to other underground areas- such as the tunnels under the Hollows.

To me it doesn't matter which zone gets revamped, but if it's a Paragon City zone that doesn't lend itself to CO-OP like Kings Row or Brickstown, please please please set aside some time to include a Villain SF relating to the new zone.

I am NOT attending the Plummit.

That said, I think there are two zones that are prime candidates for makeovers: Terra Volta ("Terror Volta") and Baumton ("Boomtown").

Terra Volta: The zone has never made much logical sense. It's located on an island that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Sam values that large capacity but the fact is that Terra Volta ought to be SMALL. Right now, that capacity serves no purpose other than to create a puzzle for non-flyers to work out how to get through what amounts to a three-dimensional maze in order to reach the reactor.

The reactor itself is supposedly powering the city, yet the zone is a wasteland populated by Freaks and super-terrorists bent on stealing its tech. There's no discernable staff working at the reactor and maintaining it, and there's no discernable way for those hypothetical reactor employees to get to and from work. Even the bridge leading up to the front gate is an unused mess of wrecked cars. In eight years since the end of the Rikti War, the single most important location in the city has seemingly gone completely unprotected and unmaintained except by random heroes responding to cries for help against the afore-mentioned terrorists and aliens (i.e., respec trials).

This despite the fact that the exploration badges and history plaques mark this island as one of the more interesting spots in the city from a historical perspective as well as from the strictly functional perspective of being (until recently) the sole source of electrical power for the city.

If any zone in the city needs to be brought "up to date" with current times, this is the zone. It made little sense for it to exist in this condition in 2006. It makes no sense at all in 2012.


Baumton - "Boomtown" is the poster child for devastated city zones. The precedent already exists for activity in this zone, given that villains have missions to interfere with redevelopment activities in Baumton.

Expanding Baumton is a way to continue to expand on the story of the city as it moves forward. What's more, Baumton can easily be expanded beyond it's current borders. The current zone theoretically has water access to the Atlantic Ocean via Baumton Canal. Some distance East is the Atlantic Shore itself, and the Southeast contains an (the?) airport, another vital service that has never been used or even mentioned.

New Baumton could encompass the blast zone proper and the surrounding areas that would be in more or less of a state of repair, and the efforts to rebuild or alternately demolish the existing wreckage. By bringing the coastline, canal, and airport into the zone proper, the redside players get some plausible access into Paragon City.

Whichever zone is picked, I think that the zone itself is less important than the use to which the zone is put. The devs rightly have been giving each zone its own story and for efficiency reasons they have made these "co-op" to one extent or another.

It seems to me that a better use of a rebuilding zone with open access to smugglers and infiltrators is a multi-use zone, where heroes and villains pursue agendas that are unrelated or indirectly related to each other's activities. It should be a PvP optional zone, where PvP is driven by story or by consensual challenge rather than by a zone-wide rule or state of war.

Basically, this would be a zone where the goals of the heroes and villains are less about saving the world and more about advancing their status and either helping or hindering the growth of the city. (Villains might well want to help the city if there was a profitable reason to do so. They might also want to blow it up just for the fun of it.)

If there was a place to experiment with a destructible environment, this would be the place. I would see the construction zone as being somewhat like Recluse's Victory, in that the state could change from one day to the next. More to the point, though, the goal of the PC's in this zone is not so much to level up as it is to raise their personal reputations in whatever fashion is most conducive to their alignments. The closest thing I can compare this idea to is the facton grinding of some other MMO's where you raise your reputation to a certain level and new opportunities become available at milestone levels; either loot or missions or costume parts or whatever. The mechanism to track such reputation changes already exists in the badge mechanics. Earning a "Savior of Baumton" badge would be no different, qualitatively, from becoming "Exalted with faction X" in some other game.

New Baumton is thematically a land of opportunity, and the missions, rewards, story and activities available would be all about taking advantage of opportunities for personal advancement along paths other than advancement in power levels (which the incarnate path already adequately handles).

That's my pitch.

Let's take a look at the recent revamps & new zones:

Heroes

• Atlas Park (revamp)
• Dark Astoria (revamp)

• First Ward (new zone)
• Night Ward (new zone)

• ???
• ???

Would like to see the Hazard Zones get a QoL revamp; multi-purposing them into 'villain proving grounds' as well (either through co-op and/or phase tech [and/or utilizing the same dialogue tree tech that differentiated Loyalist from Resistance players in Praetoria]). IMO, redside could use a little more real estate and teaming opportunities (with minimal changes/resource requirement)

Some very good points and ideas from SlickRiptide, but I wanted to echo one thought in particular, that meshes with my own vision for an Oranbega zone:

Quote:

Originally Posted by SlickRiptide It seems to me that a better use of a rebuilding zone with open access to smugglers and infiltrators is a multi-use zone, where heroes and villains pursue agendas that are unrelated or indirectly related to each other's activities. It should be a PvP optional zone, where PvP is driven by story or by consensual challenge rather than by a zone-wide rule or state of war.

The idea of multi-use, rather than co-op zones (and I hope you don't mind if I co-opt your term in the future, Slick! )

This is how I'd ideally like to see any such zones coming down the pike; not something for villain and hero teaming, but something that exists for both groups to pursue their own agendas, with different storylines (though perhaps related/connected ones). Obviously it takes more work, but I think it would be well worth the effort.

In an ideal world, of course, we'd see some separate love for Rogues and Vigilantes as well, but one thing at a time.

I have no particular objection to a redside zone being revamped as opposed to blueside. The important thing is not the fact of a revamp but the way it's being revamped.

The zones mentioned by VoodooGirl (aside from Atlas Park which is a newbie zone and whose mirror, Mercy Island, also got a revamp) are all common use zones. They don't belong solely to the "world" in which they are physically located.

If you want to remake Port Oakes, or any other red zone, then your pitch needs to be for something more than just giving it a "face lift". The real meat of any revamp is the use to which the new zone will be put by players of ALL alignments. That's just the reality of the development in the game these days. You might be technically correct to say "it's only fair to target redside for upgrades" but you won't get very far if your entire proposal is "make things nicer for red". Every revamp since Faultline (if you really want to see the Praetorian Wards as "revamps") is about multiple-use.

In my opinion, a redside pitch that has any hope of going anywhere is going to have to include the ways that the revamped content allows blue and yellow characters to participate just as much as red characters. It can't just be "it's our turn now".

When a red side zone gets a revamp, they also need to do a blue side one at the same time.