Is Skyway City ... superfluous?

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.

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 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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.