It is 2019: How would you update the city?

[Necessity Bear]

How about bring down the barriers in Paragon?

[ninja surprise]

I'd just make all the landscape and textures more "slippery" so that Supers don't keep getting stuck on bushes, wall edges, etc.

[Shadowsleuth]

 

We have universities but no preschools & K-12 schools for younger children.
Daycare Centers
People with disabilities
Fish Market

Fruit Stands
The Street Vendors that appear in Cap au Diable should also show up blueside too, especially in Talos by Spanky's Boardwalk, also in plazas across from office buildings in some zones.
Food Trucks, Ice Cream Trucks
Occasional Street Fairs and Food Festivals
Street Performers

Amusement parks with Roller Coasters, Carousel, Bumper Cars, Water Parks
Zoos
Rental Bike Stands
Bike lanes (as was mentioned earlier in the thread)

 

 

Multi-Purpose indoor venues for Rock Concerts, Sporting Events, Rallies (and mission maps for each of those, same map reskinned to look different.)

 

Staged for Basketball

 

 

 

Staged for Hockey

 

 

Staged for Boxing

 

 

Staged for UFC

 

 

Staged for Rock Concert

 

 

Staged for Corporate Exhibitions & Product Launches

 

 

Staged for a Political Convention

 

 

Staged for Circus

 

 

Staged for PBR (Professional Bull Riding)

 

 

Staged for Motorcross

 

 

 

Lore-wise what are Paragon City's sports teams? What teams are their rivals? The name of music groups people listen to?

 

The answer to those questions could show up as NPC dialog (talking about a recent game), flyers/billboard around the city, etc...
 

Edited May 30, 2020 by Shadowsleuth

[Spotlore]

I'd remove the war walls, and make the whole city one large map.  That count?

[Chris24601]

I recently had some door missions take me to Kallisti Wharf. The level of difference in the quality of the textures and layouts is almost painful. The revamped Atlas Park is one of the only other zones that’s even close to that standard and it really makes a massive difference in how dated the game feels when you compare the issue 0 (c. 2004) assets of, say, Steel Canyon to the late 2012 assets in Kallisti Wharf.

 

So I would start with Steel Canyon and Brickstown and just start swapping out the tired old building meshes with their too small windows for the ones from Kallisti Wharf (use the “hero side” ones from KW for Steel to make it feel hyper modern and the rundown and industrial ones from the “villain side” of KW for Brickstown).

 

Steel Canyon particularly feels desperately generic and in need of such a facelift. Brickstown doesn’t need it near as much, but other than Kings Row (which is outleveled far too quickly).

 

I’d also look at re-using some of the Praetoria building models as well in a general revamp. Praetoria is/was a parallel universe with similar figures and even warped versions of Primal organizations (ex. Both had a PPD) so having a parallel to the TPN (only it would the Total PARAGON Network in Primal) and other distinct buildings would make some degree of sense.

 

Essentially, just spread some the gorgeously designed work out of the rarely visited zones and into the much more populated ones.

[Leogunner]

They should add an optional sepia filter for all the young players so they can tell that the game takes place in the distant past where people flipped open their cell phones and only chatted online via Instant Messenger like Skype.

[KC4800]

On 10/17/2019 at 11:17 AM, Chitlingrits said:

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!

A bike helmet and a cycling kit would be nice for the costume designer. My main pretends to bike around the city but I use the jet board because - no bikes. See. There's roleplaying on Indomitable too 🙂

[gamingglen]

On 10/17/2019 at 12:13 PM, Voltor said:

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

.

 

Newer cars, taxi, bus, pick up truck. BTW, chrome bumpers died in the 70s, but that's what the cars in COX still have.

[gamingglen]

I think many of you forget that Paragon City is a city under siege. The Rikti invasion and all the super villains have changed the world to isolated pockets of civilization with some basic rural areas (we hope, or where else...) food comes from.  Some tech will evolve (i.e., flat screens, cell phones, newer cars), but many of those fancy things would be very low on the priority list for the current situation.  Hiking trails?  Those parks are infested with hoodlums and soul stealing magic users.  If anything, update some NPCs with modern clothing, have a bicyclist being held in CoT green smoke and a bike lying nearby (that would be a laugh: a hordeling wobbly riding said bike).  

 

I do like having shops one can enter and get a particular mission from an NPC in the shop. But I doubt many would be so open.  Wentworths can get away with it because 1) supers hang out there, 2) they have enough leverage to get a few precious police drones to guard the doors.

[Twisted Toon]

6 hours ago, gamingglen said:

 

Newer cars, taxi, bus, pick up truck. BTW, chrome bumpers died in the 70s, but that's what the cars in COX still have.

But, they need cars from the 70's to be able to handle running over super powered individuals. Nothing from modern times would last past the first look from a super, let alone actually running into them like 99.99999% of the drivers on the streets are wont to do.

[gamingglen]

2 hours ago, Twisted Toon said:

But, they need cars from the 70's to be able to handle running over super powered individuals. Nothing from modern times would last past the first look from a super, let alone actually running into them like 99.99999% of the drivers on the streets are wont to do.

yeah, you're right. It's a lot easier to replace the front bumper than the whole front of the car after the super tears that bumper off.  I hear brutes like to use those bumpers as clubs.  But you also run into the problem of Freakshow stealing them for their daily wear.

[Clave Dark 5]

I've always thought of the old-look cars as being an intentional choice, bringing something of a "this could be anytime, more or less"/nostalgia time period feel to the game.  Plus they might have made them look "modern" in, what was it, 2004? but they'd be out of date by now.

 

ETA: and think of the poor Grav toons, throwing a modern car at someone just wouldn't feel the same!

Edited November 21, 2019 by Clave Dark 5

[BuzzKilla]

On 10/26/2019 at 9:38 AM, MetaVileTerror said:

"Some walkers glued to smartphones."

 . . . what does it say about me that it took me nearly a minute to /stop/ visualizing:  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Walker._frame.jpg with a cellphone literally glued on it?

and what does it say about me that I imagined Zombies ( a.ka. The Walking Dead "walkers") with cellphones ?? :D

[Chris24601]

I'm pretty okay overall with the level of interactivity between PCs and the world (I don't need GTA levels), but I think I'll double down on "replace as many of the issue 0-1 buildings with Praetoria building assets that have a similar footprint as possible."

 

That said, I have no idea how hard that would actually be. For example, replacing a building would also change where potential mission doors are located and that could be a nightmare.

 

So as my fallback. We already know there are functioning mission doors in Kallisti Wharf. How about just allowing radio/newspaper and tip missions to function there (cut and paste PI's and Grandville's for the radio/newpaper missions) as well as the contact missions that attach random zone missions to doors there.

 

Honestly, with no actual hostile mobs on the streets in KW it might even be worth allowing radio/newspaper missions all the way from level 5-50 there. That'd make it a safe place for lowbies to join up with higher level groups for radio/paper/tip missions and put the game's best looking zone assets front and center.

[Techwright]

On 11/21/2019 at 5:12 PM, Chris24601 said:

I'm pretty okay overall with the level of interactivity between PCs and the world (I don't need GTA levels), but I think I'll double down on "replace as many of the issue 0-1 buildings with Praetoria building assets that have a similar footprint as possible."

 

That said, I have no idea how hard that would actually be. For example, replacing a building would also change where potential mission doors are located and that could be a nightmare.

 

I'd be fine with a story where a Death Ray from Orbit takes out that city block in Bricktown: you know, that one where the buildings are elevated over an underground area and there are 2 mission doors that account for about 60% of all missions in Bricktown.  I really hate that.  Then rebuild it and spread the mission doors around the full zone.

On 11/20/2019 at 7:09 PM, Clave Dark 5 said:

I've always thought of the old-look cars as being an intentional choice, bringing something of a "this could be anytime, more or less"/nostalgia time period feel to the game.  Plus they might have made them look "modern" in, what was it, 2004? but they'd be out of date by now.

 

ETA: and think of the poor Grav toons, throwing a modern car at someone just wouldn't feel the same!

The "anytime" look is IMHO exactly what Paragon City should be.  We've talked earlier in the thread (I think) about the 1989 Batman movie which combined 1939 city elements with 1989 to create their Gotham, and that other movies and TV series did the same.  Real cities are a merger of several decades.  You'll still see cars from the 1970s around, though most will have notable wear and tear.  Architecture will likewise show decades or even centuries of structures.  So that would be greatly appreciated in our hypothetical facelift.

On 11/18/2019 at 1:58 PM, gamingglen said:

I think many of you forget that Paragon City is a city under siege. The Rikti invasion and all the super villains have changed the world to isolated pockets of civilization with some basic rural areas (we hope, or where else...) food comes from.  Some tech will evolve (i.e., flat screens, cell phones, newer cars), but many of those fancy things would be very low on the priority list for the current situation.  Hiking trails?  Those parks are infested with hoodlums and soul stealing magic users.  If anything, update some NPCs with modern clothing, have a bicyclist being held in CoT green smoke and a bike lying nearby (that would be a laugh: a hordeling wobbly riding said bike).  

 

I do like having shops one can enter and get a particular mission from an NPC in the shop. But I doubt many would be so open.  Wentworths can get away with it because 1) supers hang out there, 2) they have enough leverage to get a few precious police drones to guard the doors.

I see your point, but it is one we have to be careful not to fully buy into.  Paragon City is swarmed with hoodlums every few dozen feet because there's a supply need for all the players to fight.  Essentially, we are seeing many time slices compressed into one for the sake of gaming.  Were we to more properly set the stage (say for the animated series that never developed), I suspect that, except in the darker corners of a zone, you'd not see a constant on-the-street presence by an overwhelming population of villainous scum.  Were it just like the game portrays, no one would live in the city, regardless of however many heroes.  Bravery and stubborn resistance aside, it just wouldn't be viable, economically and safety-wise.  

[50caltech]

for the aquatic zones, a actual old fashioned sailing ship....much like the flying dutchmen...for a ghost ship....to travel thru all zones, both hero and villain sides  etc....

[gamingglen]

37 minutes ago, 50caltech said:

for the aquatic zones, a actual old fashioned sailing ship....much like the flying dutchmen...for a ghost ship....to travel thru all zones, both hero and villain sides  etc....

An aquatic zone?  One that 99.9% of the population will visit once?   How about instead a revamp of Talos Island zone, where the mostly water northern part could be changed to have whatever aquatic elements people want.  There's a lot of wasted space in TI. Maybe that would be a good zone to separate into two smaller ones with a pass through like Praetoria has (or was that a Paragon Chat thing only?)

[Chris24601]

4 hours ago, Techwright said:

I'd be fine with a story where a Death Ray from Orbit takes out that city block in Bricktown: you know, that one where the buildings are elevated over an underground area and there are 2 mission doors that account for about 60% of all missions in Bricktown.  I really hate that.  Then rebuild it and spread the mission doors around the full zone.

At some point I need to just take a toon out and do a building-by-building catalog of all the Praetorian building assets that could potentially be employed in the revamp of other zones (there are way more than I thought there were before going back to those zones). First Ward's north side also includes a number of more worn down/abandoned buildings that wouldn't look out of place in King's Row. Heck, even the ruined skyscrapers there look better than a lot of the issue 0 building assets.

 

I've been running the Praetorian content again and the way they incorporated buildings with different architectural aesthetics into the skylines of Imperial City and Neutropolis Just feel so much more like a real city than say, Steel Canyon's skyscrapers that look like they were all put up by the same company at the same time. The only Blue-side zones that remotely compete are Atlas Park and Kallisti Wharf (imo, Red-side has its own particular "run down" aesthetic with fewer large buildings that actually makes it look pretty good despite its age).

 

I'd personally make a revamp priority of 1) Talos Island, 2) Peregrine Island, 3) Steel Canyon (particularly the core skyscrapers), 4) Brickstown and 5) King's Row. The key idea would be to provide a 1-50 path through the regions with the revamped assets... Atlas (1-5), King's Row (5-15), Steel Canyon (10-20), Talos Island (20-30), Brickstown (30-40) and Peregrine Island (40-50). Then after that, you side-grade into Independence Port and Founder's Falls (I'd say Skyway too, but I'm not sure there's much that can be done to help it because the primary eyesore is all the overpasses).

 

Almost as important as the actual zones in some respects would be replacing the buildings in the instanced city and ruin maps that are still running off the ugly skyscrapers from issue 0.

 

Like I said, I want to do a count of the Praetorian building assets, but I'm pretty sure there'd be enough there to actually redo at least 1-5 on the revamp list. I've got a background in 3d animation (woefully out of date at this point) and you'd be amazed how much distance you can get out of re-using assets as long as they're far enough apart that you're not seeing them sitting right next to each other (which is the primary issue with a lot of the issue 0 skyscrapers... they look like cut and pastes of the structures right next to them).

 

That's the main reason I think the Praetorian buildings are ripe for harvest... they're not visited all that regularly except by those making Praetorians and they're not as likely to be visiting much of King's Row or Steel Canyon outside of mission doors they're rushing to for a story arc. Similarly, Imperial City cuts off at about level 14 so re-using buildings from there for Talos Island and the parts of Brickstown that most need the revamp would put a 6+ level gap between when you were regularly running around in that part of Praetoria and where you'd run into the duplicated asset on Primal Earth.

[RikOz]

18 hours ago, Techwright said:

I'd be fine with a story where a Death Ray from Orbit takes out that city block in Bricktown: you know, that one where the buildings are elevated over an underground area and there are 2 mission doors that account for about 60% of all missions in Bricktown.  I really hate that.  Then rebuild it and spread the mission doors around the full zone.

Any zone, really. This is actually something I recall noticing back on live, not long after I started playing. So many functional doors, yet I seemed to keep getting sent to the same ones over and over. I found it puzzling, particularly for randomized missions like radio missions. For most missions, the only actual requirement is selecting the appropriate map type for the mission, and when the mission calls for an office or warehouse map, there are so many available, appropriate buildings that it just gets weird when all the rhubarb seems to happen in the same handful of buildings.

[50caltech]

21 hours ago, gamingglen said:

An aquatic zone?  One that 99.9% of the population will visit once?   How about instead a revamp of Talos Island zone, where the mostly water northern part could be changed to have whatever aquatic elements people want.  There's a lot of wasted space in TI. Maybe that would be a good zone to separate into two smaller ones with a pass through like Praetoria has (or was that a Paragon Chat thing only?)

as i mentioned....all zones, not just talos or indy port.....it should travel thru them all....port oakes, cap diablo, sharkhead...st martial, grandville, nerva, the abyss , all hero zones, and yes even the ritiki war zone....lol would be funny to watch the ritiki turn into ghosts..... 

[Bastille Boy]

On 10/17/2019 at 6:18 PM, Lines said:

More prisons.

It is odd that the Rogue Isles has a police force but no visible prison.

 

I have several characters based on a non-canon story about the prison that the Rogue Isles Police Department presumably operates west of Port Oakes. The RIPD is not about justice; it's entirely a for-profit operation. Prison labor can be profitable. If a clever warden could find a way to get superpowered prisoners to work, their labor would be highly profitable. But it is difficult to keep supervillains or superheroes behind bars even when their powers are chemically suppressed. (The frequency of serious escape attempts at the Zig is shocking.) Force alone won't keep people with active superpowers in prison, and it certainly won't motivate them to work. There has to be a positive incentive.

[EmmySky]

9 minutes ago, ejworthing said:

It is odd that the Rogue Isles has a police force but no visible prison.

 

I have several characters based on a non-canon story about the prison that the Rogue Isles Police Department presumably operates west of Port Oakes. The RIPD is not about justice; it's entirely a for-profit operation. Prison labor can be profitable. If a clever warden could find a way to get superpowered prisoners to work, their labor would be highly profitable. But it is difficult to keep supervillains or superheroes behind bars even when their powers are chemically suppressed. (The frequency of serious escape attempts at the Zig is shocking.) Force alone won't keep people with active superpowers in prison, and it certainly won't motivate them to work. There has to be a positive incentive.

Incentive:  offer to PL them or give them a cut for those super sweet set bonuses lol

 

 

 

Maybe AE is a prison and we just don't realize it.

[Bastille Boy]

1 hour ago, EmmySky said:

Incentive:  offer to PL them or give them a cut for those super sweet set bonuses lol

That is remarkably close to what I had in mind.

[Shadowsleuth]

 

Besides an underwater city, I would also love to see Golden Ace's Moon Hazard Zone finally get created.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120904084836/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=114726

 

 

And have Golden Ace be the trainer for that zone.

 

 

I also want to see if the moon is where the rikti that survived the initial invasion retreated to, since the Rikti War Zone only has the one crashed ship & according to lore other ships survived.

 

Quote

And so it went across the city. The aliens outnumbered the heroes at least one hundred to one, maybe more. It was impossible to get accurate numbers as the portals had allowed them access to the entire city at once. The fighting raged on through the rest of the night. After six hours, the heroes had managed to clear the skies of the large attack craft, some of which had retreated either up into space or out over the ocean (none of the aliens ever went back through the portals).

https://web.archive.org/web/20121003083341/http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/game_info/story/invasion.php

 

Quote

Several scientific journals have reported activity on the surface of the moon, yet government officials refuse to comment.

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Paragon_Times/20070605

[Oubliette_Red]

I would toss the Criptic engine.