It is 2019: How would you update the city?

[Techwright]

It's 2019, soon to be 2020.   Assuming for a moment that our dev team had unlimited power and skill, how would you suggest they update the look and feel of the city? 

(Note this is focused on the cities themselves (blue, red, gold), not the instances, power sets, etc. )

 

Blueside -  There's a lot more health-conscious surroundings (at least in my part of the real world) than 15 years ago.

1)  I'd ask for chain gyms.  Bonus points if the avatars can actually enter and use the equipment.  Role players would probably love that.

2)  urban jogging trails added in some new small parks replacing some of the buildings and concrete.  

3) bike pathing added to some roads.  Bonus if they can get NPC's actually biking.

4) boutique, organic groceries and produce shops.

5) cell towers.

6) I'd get rid of phone booths, but I'm not really sure how I'd replace them on patrol missions.  Visualized GPS coordinates and your avatar checks their smartphone at each point, perhaps?

 

New Zone (or overhaul of a dead zone):  city freight yard.  Aging collection of switch tracks and graffitied train cars, with a tired industrial area and a low-income neighborhood adjacent.   However, there's re-development going on as Paragon City tries to redevelop a section as a new neighborhood, new station, and new track on a new national speed rail system. 

 

[Harry_Canyon]

I would replace those dated crt monitors in office cubicles, and maybe a new car model or two.

[XaoGarrent]

I wouldn't, the last 15 years was a mistake.

 

Okay, maybe we can have flatscreens.

[Coyotedancer]

We've had bus stops this whole time... so I'd add a bus or two.

[Clave Dark 5]

Other than the flat screens, I don't really think it needs much, things are fine as is. 

 

Maybe, as someone pointed out, a cellphone selfie emote for when you save that lady from getting her purse stolen, she can run up and say her "you're wonderful!" thing and then pose before leaving.

[Lost Ninja]

2 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

Maybe, as someone pointed out, a cellphone selfie emote for when you save that lady from getting her purse stolen, she can run up and say her "you're wonderful!" thing and then pose before leaving.

Love that idea...

 

Buses in Paragon

Trains in the tunnels that have tracks (Praetorian Underground), make them a hazard that will kill you if you're in their way.

Moving ships/ship bridges/etc in the various aquatic zones. (The big cargo ships not the smaller sailboats.)

 

But given an unlimited budget I think a complete engine, graphics, UI, Powers... etc overhaul would be more useful than adding things that I don't think are even QoL.

[Marine X]

Updates that would probably be relatively easy would be billboards with more contemporary fictional Tech products and services. Also if any kind of deal could be reached with NCSoft, some real life products on billboards would make it seem more realistic and could provide an additional source of operating revenue for the non-profit. Some more urban renewal, parts of say Boomtown and maybe some more progress in Faultline. I think it would be cool to add an airport but that would require a bunch of coding. Could we have a few kids please, otherwise it seems more like the City of Clones if everyone here are adults, which makes me wonder about Penelope Yin.

[MetaVileTerror]

Someone was wondering about the buses?

 

[Sanguinesun]

Why does there have to be an update to the city focused on the current time period?  Consider CoH to be its own alternate reality and time period without the influx of flatscreens or similar things.

 

8 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

We've had bus stops this whole time... so I'd add a bus or two.

That would be more reasonable/logical.

[Xeres]

Yeah Flat Screens.  Everyone walking in Paragon would be looking down at a cell phone.

 

I think Faultline should be built up more.  Boomtown should be in a state that Faultline is in now.

 

I think on the red side Arachnos should be more in control and have built up more strongholds int he Rogue Isles.

[Oneirohero]

I suppose it would be nice if some buildings could be redesigned to have direct interiors. Not doors you click to go into a super far-down-the-map box of a room but like, you'd have a coffee shop or cafe and you can see through the windows of all the chairs, tables and the counters/kitchen at the back; entering through an open doorway so you can move inside. So the whole idea is that buildings have a sense of space, depth and purpose and become less of the background boxes they currently are. Or to explain it a bit differently, to have buildings have interiors much like how Wentworth's isn't just a box with clickable doors, it's an indoor space you can move into easily and even has stuff in the back you can explore in. And as far as building with instanced doors is concerned, you don't have to hollow out an entire building, just create a new model with the new interior space and align the doors back into position.

 

And on the subject of what kind of things you could do with this design philosophy. You could have jewllery stores, supermarkets, tech shops, places to eat. Some could even have 'save the citizen' spawns next to them designed to look like they're robbing the place, so when you beat the bad guys it's like you saved a store from being robbed. Such places should have stuff outside to give players a clear indication that a hollowed-out place exists from a distance so all that hard work doesn't go to waste. It could defictionalise various in-world branded areas like the steakhouses and pizza places. Even if zones are just a transitionary environment for the instanced missions, adding these places into buildings could make it feel a bit more like it's actually lived in and of course, give roleplayers more places to hang out than Pocket D

[moss04]

Add a floating Baby-Trump giant monster event.

[Herotu]

This game is snapshot in time, it shouldn't be updated!

 

BUT I would like it if there were ways to walk around inside buildings and ... you know, interact with stuff.

[Chitlingrits]

12 hours ago, Techwright said:

 

3) bike pathing added to some roads.  Bonus if they can get NPC's actually biking.

 

 

This would be great but make those npc's con hostile so that players can shut those eco-terrorists down and earn some new greenscaping badge!

[roleki]

Personally (personally) I like CoH just the way it is; as someone else said, to my mind it's like a snapshot in time.

 

That said, in the city spaces themselves it would be neat to have more variety in NPCs/vehicles/spaces - kids, dogs, ambulances, bikes, street vendors, taco trucks, so on and so forth.  

 

It would also be interesting to have a 'museum' built in the fashion of Wentworths (open to walk into, visible from outside) where current leaders in given stats could have 'statues' of themselves commemorating that achievement; like say, whoever has accumlated the most XP debt or healed the most damage or whatever on the server, kind of like leaderboards but a little more fitting in a town that has a 70' statue of a guy holding a planet outside City Hall.

 

Stuff like that.

Edited October 17, 2019 by roleki

[Voltor]

Why change anything?  The game is a snapshot or time capsule of 2012.  

 

I'd rather see some of the early blue side missions, circa issue 1 to 6, get an overhaul and tightened up a bit in their design. Retire the originals to Ouroborus.

 

Synapse TF also gets retired to Ouro after a new and improved version is made.

 

Numina TF: must we hit every zone and wipe out mobs in each one until the final missions are available?

 

DR Q Taskforce: 3 of my alts spun through it this week as it is the weekly TF and those 200+ merits are great for obtaining components needed for them.  However that TF is only worth running when its the weekly as  about 5 missions are essentially cut/paste repeats of previous missions in it.   The last few are same map, different zone, similar objective on each one.  Trim that TF down in size by getting rid of the repetitive/redundant missions. Retire the original to Ouroborus. 

 

Now granted with Team Mission Transporter, Personal mission transporter+assemble team or incandesence, and flight you can speed things up but still the DR Q TF needs and overhaul.  Just like they did long ago with the Sharkhead/Leviathan SF.

 

Also some of the i24 missions need a minor debugging here and there. Nothing game breaking just fix a few small errors.

[PSLAnimal]

Honestly, I can think of a lot of different things I'd rather see the Homecoming team focus on.

[XaoGarrent]

2 hours ago, Xeres said:

I think on the red side Arachnos should be more in control and have built up more strongholds int he Rogue Isles.

Arachnos doesn't actually want more control in the strictest sense. Knowing the ideology he follows, Recluse mostly cares about keeping control over his own organization, and having just enough of a grip on the rogue isles to force people into a life of bitter, brutal competition.

 

Recluse's vision is that of social darwinism. The best way to look at the ideology of Arachnos is that they're Anarcho Capitalists with realpolitik. Which is to say Anarcho Capitalist without the non-aggression principle. Which in itself is to say untarnished, uncompromised capitalist ideology, capitalism in its truest most basic form: Dog eat dog, survival of the fittest.

 

Think of how the Patriots think and operate in Metal Gear Solid. Recluse would probably get along with them really well, actually.

[Frostbiter]

Add some coffee shops. Paragon City has a noticeable lack of them. Coffee, coffee, coffee,coffee,coffee,coffee,coffee,coffee,.

[Voltor]

Also I think perhaps the Lore of the game needs to advance another notch.

 

The last advances were the restoration of Recluse's girlfriend in the Valentine Event, then the demise of Miss Liberty (she was retired but still...), Statesman and Sister Psyche, and the apparent permanent dispersal of the power of Zeus. Penelope Yin steps up to replace Sister Psyche.....but,

 

The balance of power is shifted greatly in Arachnos' favor, should Recluse decide to go on the warpath.

 

Perhaps it is time for the Honoree to be cleansed and HERO 1 to arise once again.  In the cape unlock mission the Rikti seem determined to steal the letter left behind by Hero 1 from the time capsule......why? Are they afraid that if the Honoree sees it, that Hero 1 may rally from within and cleanse himself of their corruptive influence?

 

When you seek to unlock your Alpha Slot, Hero 1 is fighting within the Honoree.  Also when you join the Midnight Club you work out a cure to turn the Lost back into humans, and Ms Liberty carries Excalibur which was given  to her by Hero 1 even though she cannot use it.

 

A combination of that letter, the Lost cure, and Excalibur may be just what we need to get HERO 1 back, and restore the balance of power.

Edited October 17, 2019 by Voltor

[Lines]

More prisons.

[srmalloy]

14 hours ago, Lost Ninja said:

Moving ships/ship bridges/etc in the various aquatic zones. (The big cargo ships not the smaller sailboats.)

If you're going to add moving ships, then you need to fix the damn buoys.

[Megajoule]

11 hours ago, Voltor said:

Numina TF: must we hit every zone and wipe out mobs in each one until the final missions are available?

The thing to understand about Numina is that, way back at launch - yea, even before we got Peregrine Island and 40-50 content - that was The End.  The final Task Force.  The finish line.  And so, it was designed as a victory lap around the city, a counterclockwise ("widdershins") spiral out from the center, in which the players face all the enemies they fought on the way to 40:  a "boss rush", but with mooks / villain groups rather than bosses (or AVs).  Naturally, no one actually plays it this way, with the entire group moving from zone to zone in order; but that, I believe, was the intent.

 

As for Dr. Q:  Yeah, all of the Shadow Shard TFs are like that, and all of them are terrible.  If I recall correctly, the thing was that they were supposed to have, like, three times as many unique maps, etc ... but they ran out of time and/or budget, like so many other MMOs, and they had to go live with what they had.  Rather than trying to replace the missing 2/3rds, I think a much better use of dev time - especially considering the changing trends in game design even before the live servers went down (Posi 1 and 2, Yin, and Apex/Tin Mage, anyone?) - would be to trim that fat and make 'em lean, mean, and quick.  (Reduce the merits to match, of course, but at least then people would actually do them.)

Edited October 18, 2019 by Megajoule

[Heraclea]

12 hours ago, moss04 said:

Add a floating Baby-Trump giant monster event.

Baby New Year was a grim warning of things to come. 

 

ALSO: "Phoebas" grates every time I read it.  It's Phoebus.

Edited October 18, 2019 by Heraclea

[Lost Ninja]

6 hours ago, srmalloy said:

If you're going to add moving ships, then you need to fix the damn buoys.

Hmm a bit of transgender content... I like the way you think... 😉