So why office building reskins?

So, in some of the newer unique maps, I can't help but notice they're just office reskins, and... painfully obvious ones at that. For example, there's the Zig high security ward in the DA Arcs, there's the KoA temple in Tibet (which also suggest KoA cannot into stairs) , and then there's the Eternal Prison in the Night Ward arcs. Which feels a bit like the most egregious example since they deliberately did not use some of the more outstanding office rooms, but still ended up using ones with little side rooms where break areas or offices would be put.

So what's up with just reskinning office maps with random textures?

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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Think about it like this.

They could either bust out ten new maps by just putting in new textures and tossing in a couple different objects, or they could spend all their time creating a brand new map from scratch. But it would only be one, maybe two maps tops.

Honestly, I dig the retextured maps a lot, and hope they keep doing it. Makes the game feel fresh and gives us more variety on where we go.

apparently there's alot of issues with geometry not lining up quite right when creating a completely new tileset, plus spawn points, glowie points, and so forth all have to be created from scratch as well.

Meanwhile, if you do it right, nobody will even realize that the map their on is a retexture, especially if its only going to be a one off map.

Honestly, I didn't really notice that the Zig and KoA temple were reskins. They clearly were if you looked for it, but I didn't feel like I was just running around an office with some Tibetan rugs, they felt like distinct places.

Why office building reskins? Because that's what they have a lot of, and they're easy to reskin.

Curious, can anyone name the other map-types we have?

Like how many unique cave-types do we have vs how many skins over those maps such as the 'big cave' which is reskinned with the bone/flesh in Dark Astoria to look like the entrails of a large creature.

Are the Oranbega map-types unique? I know they reskin/recolor those.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of much. Council map-type (with Fifth Column reskins), Sewer map-type, 'narrow cave' map-type and such.

Now, I *do* feel the devs could add more unique map-types but they can also reskin more than just office maps as much as they do. Reskin some warehouse maps some more, make vertical map-types to reskin, etc.

Okay, I get why reskinning, but why office maps specifically, though this has been sort of answered, second opinions or even Dev explanation might be nice.
Also, why can are the Knives of Artemis apparently opposed to stairs? I mean if you go through their temple, anywhere stairs would be in an office map, they instead have platforms that look like over sized, Japanese dinner tables.
Also, I agree with Leo that we need more reskins of more than just office maps.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

this isn't an FPS game where map geometry plays a big part in the gameplay- maps are basically scenery, a backdrop for our activities. As such, I'll take a bunch of re-skins over one all-new map that would suck up vastly more resources...

As to why office maps specifically - I'd guess because an office is more easily made to look like a prison complex/temple/whatever than a cave, or a sewer, or Oranbega. The office maps are pretty generic buildings once you remove the desks and vending machines and etc.

They're probably the easiest to reskin.

There's also the Tech Labs/Longbow bases/Portal Corp.

The Eternal Prison bothered me as well. I was kinda geared up to finally see this spooky, legendary prison and then I get in there and... Oh. Office Building.

This was a problem because of how ugly it ended up looking. Removing all of the textures does a lot to highlight how blocky the levels are. While we normally have props to distract us from all of the flatness, the Eternal Prison had nothing except particle effects and it made the whole thing really underwhelming, unsatisfying and unattractive.

I don't know what the resources required are for developing new areas, but it doesn't seem like it should be so intensive as to be nearly impossible. Especially considering they made a brand-new "level" for the last Halloween event, and it looked great. Hell I would have been fine with them just re-texturing Dr. What's-His-Face's mansion.

The office re-textures just look ugly and give me the impression that they just didn't care enough to do anything special with this major plot-thing. Sure we only get to visit it once, but there are a lot of cool, unique things we only see a few times and I feel like they could have spared the effort. But to be honest, most of Night Ward feels pretty copy-and-pasted.

Well Johnny, you have to hand it to the Black Knights then because at least the eternal prison is wheelchair accessible.

I quite like the Knives' dojo. The whole point was that it doesn't have stairs because they wouldn't need them, what with their membership hopping around in a ninjaly manner. The maze with ambushes was also creative and fun if somewhat nonsensical.

The office maps are pretty flexible, so they're useful as the base for a variety of different environments.

You forgot the primal lab! Nay, the Technology Danger Lab! Minus Twenty Points!!!

There's also the Praetorian Underground.

And the Cimeroran caverns which now have been reskinned as catacombs for Manticore's mansion and creepier catacombs for the Halloween trial mansion.