Is Skyway City ... superfluous?
I'd personally be happy if Skyway, all its contacts and some of its style were folded into a new neighborhood for Steel Canyon. Would love to see hero zones consolidated a bit.
Well, it serves more purpose than, say, Boomtown. Since it's leftover from a time when zone design was considerably different, it may seem "meaningless" now, but that's only because it wasn't designed for meaning, as much as atmosphere.
I'd personally be happy if Skyway, all its contacts and some of its style were folded into a new neighborhood for Steel Canyon. Would love to see hero zones consolidated a bit.
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As far as what's in skyway?
- Access to faultline
- Access to Bloody Bay
- Tsoo arcs (Cho Ge, Kong Bao, can never remember the other guy)
- Synapse
- Troll raves
... just off the top of my head.
Basically Steel deals with Clockwork, Council and Outcasts, Skyway ends up as Lost, Trolls and Tsoo.
Could some of the content use updating? Sure. Consolidating, no.
I like the atmosphere. I've enjoyed the navigational challenges of Skyway City from time to time, and it has some reasonable arcs, but it's always been tough to do all of the content there. Once they added the Hollows and Striga, revamped Faultline, and increased the rate of levelling, it became easy to skip it completely.
As far as getting around goes, jet packs are so easy to get or craft that it's not really an issue. Hell, you get jump packs from the start for those higher jumps if you miss the mayhem or don't want to craft anything. But it's been so long since I ran through it that I can't point to specific story arcs of interest. So you probably have a point, story-wise.
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27327 - Enter the Homunculi
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Well, it serves more purpose than, say, Boomtown. Since it's leftover from a time when zone design was considerably different, it may seem "meaningless" now, but that's only because it wasn't designed for meaning, as much as atmosphere.
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What I'd love to see happen to the zone is a revamp that would make it look like Steel Canyon and the new Atlas Park combined, with aerial roadways twisting, turning, climbing, and dipping around and in-between gigantic, futuristic skyscrapers. A vertical zone like Grandville, but much easier to traverse thanks to all the roadways. Sure, the zone's backstory would need to be rewritten a little, but not THAT much. Heck, set Paragon City's Chinatown at ground level and ramp up the turf war between the Tsoo,Trolls, and Family, with Clockwork and Lost as outside parties that sometimes find themselves in the middle of things.
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Back at launch, Skyway added to the variety in the leveling path for players with alts, and I recall leveling was a bit slower then, so you spent more time in-zone.
In the game's earliest iteration, zone variety was seen as more essential. They hadn't yet realized how much the mission-instancing would change the nature of gameplay-- to the point that zones are more containers for all the instanced doors, so adding variety to the zones was a valued design element.
Also, I don't think they realized the full effect that travel powers would have on a game. In preceding MMO's, "exploration" was as much about "figuring out how to get there." Overcoming obstacles and learning the ins and outs of a zone provided a sense of achievement that you don't get knowing that you just "fly here, get a badge, fly to the next point." That kind of play has largely gone away and with it, a good bit of the value that Skyway brought.
That said, I question whether steel canyon is really much better. It has its "elevated" areas along the perimeter that can be quite a pain to get to without travel powers-- just a few stairways and ramps leading up there.... very similar to Skyways's barriers and routes. Steel has more familiar grids in its structure, but where it deviates, it can create some rather notable detours for the ground-pounder.
It could also easily be argued that both Skyway AND Steel have lost relevance due to the newer content: the trials and the "newer" zones with stories tied to their design (Hollows-->Faultline-->Striga-->Croatoa-->RWZ)
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I think Skyway was intended to continue the grittier street hero vibe of Kings Row, while Steel Canyon continued the Metropolis vibe from Atlas Park.
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I'd personally be happy if Skyway, all its contacts and some of its style were folded into a new neighborhood for Steel Canyon. Would love to see hero zones consolidated a bit.
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Back at launch, Skyway added to the variety in the leveling path for players with alts, and I recall leveling was a bit slower then, so you spent more time in-zone.
In the game's earliest iteration, zone variety was seen as more essential. They hadn't yet realized how much the mission-instancing would change the nature of gameplay-- to the point that zones are more containers for all the instanced doors, so adding variety to the zones was a valued design element. |
Plus, if they want to add new contacts - or even zone events - it's "hmm, where can I cram it into the zone?" (Mortimer Kai, for instance, doesn't make much sense to me standing just off by the water somewhere - that entire little area between the ferry and AE seems to be the Contact Lost and Found.)
I think Skyway was intended to continue the grittier street hero vibe of Kings Row, while Steel Canyon continued the Metropolis vibe from Atlas Park.
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Steel has more amenities, and even has the two new arcs to freshen it up. Adding a couple of new -- or updated -- arcs to Skyway might bring folks back.
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Is Skyway City ... superfluous? |
Skyway City was always the less preferred choice between it and Steel Canyon, but the death warrant was signed when it was Steel that got the Auction House and University. Skyway as it is now just gives the illusion of choice. It's not a choice, you go to Steel Canyon and that's that.
Personally, I would actually use Skyway City and the ancient missions it has in it, if they'd just take out the bull**** that forces you to talk to Wincott, and every single PvP zone, and the Hero Corps rep, and a random security guy literally miles away to do the most lame street huny mission....
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I think Skyway was intended to continue the grittier street hero vibe of Kings Row, while Steel Canyon continued the Metropolis vibe from Atlas Park.
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and I wish they extended this. My greatest wish in CoH is that they establish content paths through zones: 4 color (Atlas, Steel, Talos, etc), Gritty (Kings Row, Skyway, Brickstown), Sci-Fi (shadow shard zones), Magic, etc
@Glass Goblin - Writer, brainstormer, storyteller, hero
Though nothing will drive them away
We can beat them, just for one day
We can be heroes, just for one day
this
and I wish they extended this. My greatest wish in CoH is that they establish content paths through zones: 4 color (Atlas, Steel, Talos, etc), Gritty (Kings Row, Skyway, Brickstown), Sci-Fi (shadow shard zones), Magic, etc |
But I totally agree about one part of Paragon being dark and gritty, and the other a thriving metropolis. Caters to Batman and Superman types. I wish they'd tweak the level ranges a bit and bust out new storylines to support this instead of adding more, non-Primal Earth zones that have nothing to do with anything.
Kings Row > Skyway City > Independence Port > Boomtown
Atlas Park > Steel Canyon > Talos Island > Founder's Falls
Continue making hazard zones independent, self contained storylines and have Peregrine Island be a revamped combo of both gritty and bright as the 40-50 zone and you'd be set.
I'd argue that (a) "Back at Launch" is still true now, and (b) the zone variety is still essential, instancing or not. Part of the reason I don't play redside much is the *lack* of variation - and instancing doesn't do much for that. It still feels like I'm going "Oh, start a villain? Same path, same thing, blah, no." I burn out with the "been there, done that, but no choice but to do it again" feeling redside fairly quickly.
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Newer zones were designed differently. Rather than emphasize challenging locations for exploration, things became more bland. The feedback they got seemed to be that "flying was fun because flyers could go anywhere easily." whereas superspeeders constantly ran into barriers. The newer zones tried to offer less barriers to the ground-pounder as not to marginalize them and in doing so, made much of exploration a lot more simplified.
CoV zone count was hindered not just by the shorter development time, but an effort to streamline based on feedback in CoH. Players didn't like that most of their steel canyon contacts sent them to skyway (and vice-versa) so zones were more self-contained. An alternate-start zone was out in part because CoH showed that many people chose one "preferred" path and avoided the other one. (and they had the 'destined ones" meta-story to introduce, etc). Hazard zones were omitted because the model had moved from classic MMO 'group street sweeps' to instanced missions automatically adjusted to your group's size and challenge.
Again, I'm more with you in the preference for more world variety, but I can see why the design philosophies moved in another direction.
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Skyway is great!....
Only because that's where you can farm...er I mean, run the SSA 1.1 arc
Beyond that...meh, lots of zones are skipped/not used a lot on the blue side of things, I think.
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At best, they should update Skyway with the damage done in the Admiral Sutter TF and turn it into a Hazard Zone with a new zone arc.
Otherwise, its just taking space, just like half of the CoH zones.
Current Published Arcs
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The Flash doesn't have these problems...
It could also easily be argued that both Skyway AND Steel have lost relevance due to the newer content: the trials and the "newer" zones with stories tied to their design (Hollows-->Faultline-->Striga-->Croatoa-->RWZ)
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These days its DFB>DFB>DFB>DFB>DFB>DFB>Night ward for midnighter badge>then ITFs or WSTs.
H: Blaster 50, Defender 50, Tank 50, Scrapper 50, Controller 50, PB 50, WS 50
V: Brute 50, Corruptor 50, MM 50, Dominator 50, Stalker 50, AW 50, AS 50
Top 4: Controller, Brute, Scrapper, Corruptor
Bottom 4: (Peacebringer) way below everything else, Mastermind, Dominator, Blaster
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In general, there's a lot of zones that we can revisit these days.
I was *just* speaking to some of the devs the other day about this, and yes, we're aware that there's some areas where we could stand to have more content. Some of the underutilized zones present an opportunity to improve that situation, and hopefully we'll get to more fully explore that in the future.
This isn't a hint that Skyway is getting revamped in an upcoming Issue, just that we're not above doing things like rethinking level ranges for a zone, if it can be justified.
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Community Manager
Paragon Studios
I'd argue that (a) "Back at Launch" is still true now, and (b) the zone variety is still essential, instancing or not. Part of the reason I don't play redside much is the *lack* of variation - and instancing doesn't do much for that. It still feels like I'm going "Oh, start a villain? Same path, same thing, blah, no." I burn out with the "been there, done that, but no choice but to do it again" feeling redside fairly quickly.
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And I can't see how Skyway City is difficult for anyone without Fly, considering that both Super Jump and Teleport make light work of the zone and Super Speed is well fast enough to be able to look for ramps going up, even when there aren't direct routes under the bridges. The only way the zone could be a problem is if you tried to play it without a travel power, in which case I direct you to Independence Port for how much fun THAT is.
There's nothing specific to Skyway City because all of the old Launch contacts are interchangeable between the zones. You can get the Vahzilok Plague arc from a number of contacts between the zones. That doesn't mean the zone is "superfluous." It adds variety and it adds a feeling of size to the city, something the game sorely lacks, especially villain-side. The last thing we need is to drop meteorites on another zone and reduce our levelling path options yet again.
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I don't know if I've just had bad luck with picking up contacts, or what, but I've found little reason or ability to spend much time in Skyway City.
My main issues I see here:
1) Skyway City perfectly matches Steel Canyon's level ranges.
2) Steel Canyon has "essential" content (Monty Castanella, invention tutorial, first costume mission) that Skyway lacks.
3) Skyway is a nightmare to navigate if you're not a flyer, and this provides a disincentive to visit the zone any more than necessary.
Admittedly, some of the "problems" I perceive with Skyway are caused by my personal playstyle preferences. The main "culprit", probably, is that I like to do the whole Shining Stars storyline, mainly because there's a nice reward at the end. I like to do Monty's arc ASAP if for no other reason than it gets his face out of my Contacts list (and same for the Invention Tutorial and the AE Tour, though there are no XP or other rewards for the latter; I want to unclutter my Contacts list). And I love the Faultline story too much to skip it. The end result is that my characters are level 20 before they've really even sniffed Skyway.
As to my second point, are there any "essential/awesome" story arcs that come from Skyway contacts? The only one I've managed to find before outleveling the zone is the Vahzilok arc that ends with fighting the Doctor himself. That one is fun, but it's the only one I've found.
Finally, the navigation issue. I can't really see any practical way for a non-flyer to get around Skyway. Really, all of the zones can be confusing to get around on foot (a problem I think could largely be solved by replacing the current topographic maps with plain old street maps c'mon, it's a city, street maps would be fare more useful than what we have). I've made enough alts that I can finally zip around Atlas Park on foot without having to constantly consult my map to see where the streets go, and this is even easier now that I've purchased the Ninja Run power. But later zones, unless you've been playing long enough to memorize all of the streets ... good luck. Skyway City is the worst, because the map itself is completely useless for trying to determine where all the various routes go, what with the way they overlap and criss-cross each other. I've got a few characters who have Super Speed, and they're not gonna touch Skyway (except for the ones I finally trained Flight on out of frustration). Super Leap is a bit better, but the vertical distances between roads in Skyway make leaping up a level impossible in most cases.
Basically, is there any good reason to spend time in Skyway City? Right now, for me, it's basically a quick stop on my way to Faultline.