Kings Row to Perez Park - The Perez Connection

[Aberrant]

Vol. 26.6 No. 1                                   Paragon City, RI, June 13, 2020                                             80 cents

The Perez Connection

City agrees Kings Row to Perez Park gate

Artist's impression of proposed plans to build new SWAT guarded gate in Kings Row.

 

PARAGON CITY, Rhode Island, June 13th -- In an effort to restore city connectivity disrupted by the tragic meteor attack on Galaxy City, the Paragon City Council has approved plans to open a new SWAT guarded gate between Kings Row and Perez Park. This decision comes after a long and powerful cooperative campaign between the Kings Row Citizens Association, the Galaxy City Refugee Fund, and the Rhode Island Natural Spaces advocacy group, with support from the Paragon Times. These groups have been pushing for Perez Park to be reclassified from a Hazard Zone to a City Safe Zone as soon as possible, the hope being that Perez Park could once again provide vital recreation space for Kings Row's citizens, an amenity lost with the destruction of Galaxy's Gemini Park. 

 

Perez Park fell to it's dangerous gangs shortly after the conclusion of the Rikti War, when the PPD and valiant Heroes were stretched to their limit, resulting in the area being closed to the public. Other groups would move in later, with the Circle of Thorns and the Lost finding the cover of the overgrown park suitable to hide their nefarious activities. Despite all this time little has changed in Perez Park, with newly registered Heroes accused of being lazy by some citizens for taking the PTA Monorail to get around the city unnecessarily. Council members hope that this new gate will encourage more Heroes to travel through Perez Park on their way between Atlas Park and Kings Row, fighting crime on the way.

 

City Representative Brighid Moreira said at the announcement: "Access to our city's parks is vital to the health and well-being of all citizens. Building this gate is part of our longstanding commitment to the rebuilding and regeneration of Paragon City after it has endured such devastation. New PPD patrols will be created to ease the gang related activity in the area, and I encourage any available Heroes of Security Level 7 and above to regularly patrol Perez Park and aid in the cleanup."

 

Local Hero and PPD Liaison Blue Steel has been working with the City in the development of the plans: "The gangs of Perez Park are a blight on this fair city and have been allowed to run rampant for too long. I'm currently looking for a veteran Hero to organise a new Task Force to retake the Park." 

Continued on page 3

 

Regeneration Under-powered?

Mayor Morales has faced criticism for years as to the extent of his commitment to the regeneration of the city's Hazard Zones, with many areas still left lawless and work underfunded, while dimensional refugees pour into the City and demand for development space is at an all time high. Plans for the rebuilding of Baumton South have stalled once again in the face of renewed battling between the Council and 5th Column, halting construction crews entering the zone. However, the ongoing detoxification of Venice has seemingly been stepped up in recent months, with Freedom Corps science teams frequently spotted within Brickstown, travelling through the southern gate to ‘Crey’s Folly’ as the City’s Heroes call Venice.

Continued on page 5

 

---

 

Proposal:

With Galaxy City destroyed, the north section of Kings Row has little reason to be visited beyond the Paladin/Shining Stars zone event. Interestingly there is a disused area in the North East of Kings Row found at coordinates (-600, -0.0, -2435) that looks suspiciously like the run-up to a SWAT gate that was presumably removed at some point during the games development, when Kings Row may have connected to Perez or another zone. In fact, the city of heroes website stated on the Kings Row page: "Present day Kings Row connects North to Perez Park, East to Skyway City, and West to Independence Port.". Possible then that this area led to Perez, but was removed before the game came out, a new north entrance connecting to Galaxy City (likely a later developed zone) was added and Galaxy got the Perez gate. Currently this area has four security watchtowers guarding an occasional spawn of Clockwork, a top secret dumpster, and two mysterious burnt out containers.

 

I propose to install a new SWAT gate here that leads to either the currently closed Galaxy City to Perez Park gate or a new adjacent entrance, restoring the number of connections for both Kings Row and Perez Park, and making Kings Row feel more connected to other low level zones rather than sandwiched between two higher levels zones with only the monorail as a viable access point for low-level characters. The Galaxy City gate already appropriately opens onto the Boneyard neighborhood of Perez, where the Skulls have the largest presence lending more credibility to it possibly being the original purpose.

 

Here’s a before and after .gif: 

 

And here’s how an updated city map would look:

 

That’s it really, just a simple zone re-connection. Nothing too grand! Sorry for the full post white background, couldn't seem to keep it only on the Paragon Times article!

Edited June 13, 2020 by Aberrant
Fixed typos

[Redlynne]

King's Row originally connected to Galaxy City ... until Paragon Studios "wrecked" Galaxy City to make a new Tutorial Zone.

[Aberrant]

I know, I was there. This would be a new gate in the North East of Kings Row that goes between Kings Row and Perez Park in an area where no such gate exists but has evidence of a gate possibly once existing before the game launched.

[Doc_Scorpion]

30 minutes ago, Aberrant said:

With Galaxy City destroyed, the north section of Kings Row has little reason to be visited beyond the Paladin/Shining Stars zone event.

Let's review the reasons to visit any particular area of any zone examine this area and the effects of Galaxy City being destroyed:

A) Stores/Vendors/Hospitals - there were never any in that section of KR to start with, unaffected by the destruction.
B) Contacts - there were never any in that section of KR to start with, unaffected by the destruction.
C) Mission doors - there's more than a few there, and those were unaffected by the destruction.
D) Plaques & Badges - still there, unaffected by the destruction.
E) Contacts - there were never any in that section of KR to start with, unaffected by the destruction.
F) Zone events - still there, unaffected by the destruction.

One could argue that some of these items were in fact effected because of the increased travel time to reach them...  And I'd be sympathetic to that argument if your proposal addressed that.  But creating a link to a distant corner of a Hazard Zone doesn't significantly reduce travel times.

And that brings us to the final reasons:

G) Transportation/In Transit - In reality, unaffected by the destruction because it's one connection was to the now destroyed zone.  And, as I said above, your new gate doesn't really add any useful options because both ends are (relatively speaking) fairly remote.  It doesn't make it particularly easier to reach the north end of KR, nor does it make it particularly easier to reach the south end of Perez.  (Which is already served by SG teleport point and the gate the Skyway City.)

H) Street hunting.  Both linked areas are of (more-or-less) equivalent levels, but both linked areas are also more easily reached via existing transit options.

tld;dr You cite "little reason to visit" as justification for the new gate, but your proposal does not provide any significant new reasons to visit the relevant areas.

[Aberrant]

1 hour ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

tld;dr You cite "little reason to visit" as justification for the new gate, but your proposal does not provide any significant new reasons to visit the relevant areas.

Something doesn't need to be 'justified' to be done, this is a video game, none of this is necessary! I'm not trying to force anyone to go to North Kings Row or Perez Park or anything. That's why I presented this as a Paragon Times article, to give it an in-universe justification, it feels like a small scale change and something that would happen logically in the life of the City. I also didn't want to make this a full zone revamp suggestion with an enemy group makeover and a task force as people on these forums seem to baulk at even the slightest change so I thought I'd make this as minimal impact as possible. Sorry I didn't supply enough empirically measurable Reasons for you. I thought the suggestion was simple enough that it would speak for itself. Here's some state approved Reasons for you then.

 

B & E?) Contacts: Several contacts in Kings Row give visit Perez Park missions, which would make more sense if Perez was an adjacent zone like I suspect it was at some point intended to be before City of Heroes launched. Currently with these missions you have to leave Kings via the train, go to Atlas and talk to the security chief at the Perez Park entrance there, which is a minor pain in the arse.

• Juan Jimenez
• Linda Summers
• Paula Dempsey
• Ron Hughes
• Samuel Pierce
• Vic Johansson

If this gate were built then to fix this would require another Perez Park Security Chief Task NPC in Kings Row, possibly editing the common Perez Park SC missions in to two groups, ones from Atlas Park contacts, and ones from Kings Row contacts. 

 

G) Transportation: Adding zone gates is a change in line with other Issue 25 changes like the re-opening of the Crey's Folly to RWZ gate, and the Talos to Dark Astoria gate. Wholly 'unnecessary' since these zones had teleportation systems available for access, but restoring inter-zone connectivity gives a better sense of place and cohesiveness to these largely detached zones. 

 

H) Street Hunting: Personally I very much like to wander around the city and spend lots of my time playing CoH just walking and looking at the sights, fighting low level mobs and jumping around the city, eschewing taking the trains during my downtime to see the sights. But with the removal of Galaxy, King's Row can only be walked to from Skyway and Independence making it navigation-ally a bit stranded and breaking up the flow of low level street sweeping.

 

 

Edit: Sorry for the harsh tone, but it's quite dispiriting to have spent a day thinking, writing and re-writing an article and photo-shopping mock-ups of a non-existent security gate for someone to quote my least important half thought out sentence and take that as my whole argument, boiling it down to "not enough reasons".

Edited June 13, 2020 by Aberrant
Apologies for harsh tone.

[tidge]

I like the idea, and I especially like the work that went into the original post. Great job!

 

The only thing I have against the suggestion is that I wouldn't find the connection that useful. Writing only for myself:

• The northern part of King's Row is dull and out-of-the-way. Sure the 'Paladin' event is there, but with the event bugged, there is very little reason to be up there... even for level appropriate characters. There isn't 'enough' in that part of the zone for my taste. 
• That side of Perez Park is somewhat out-of-the-way as well, except for Hunting Skulls. Perez Park does have things of interest: useful History badges, mobs for several 'defeat' badges, plenty of missions which spawn there. It's just that I've gotten so use to using either the Base drop-off point or just dashing from Atlas Park that I rarely consider using either Steel Canyon or Skyway City entrances now.

I do wonder if we could 're-open' Galaxy City as another Hazard Zone (somewhere in the range 20 - 35?), populated with Neo-Shivans, Circle of Thorns, Lost, whomever. Even if we didn't get an entire zone the size of Galaxy City, would it be possible to piece together some map elements (from the Shining Stars arc?) to give us something to play in? I know Trial/Hazard Zones aren't the most exciting areas to play in (ehem Tunnels of the Trolls, Boomtown, Terra Volta) , but if the stakes are 'low enough' I don't think the Dev team would be judged that harshly for trying something 'major'. I know there are thoughts about populating Khallisti Wharf with villains, but as is that is an easy zone for allowing mixed-side gatherings of all levels without problem.

[Doc_Scorpion]

58 minutes ago, Aberrant said:

Sorry for the harsh tone, but it's quite dispiriting to have spent a day thinking, writing and re-writing an article and photo-shopping mock-ups of a non-existent security gate for someone to quote my least important half thought out sentence and take that as my whole argument, boiling it down to "not enough reasons".

Let's review the reasons you gave:
 

2 hours ago, Aberrant said:

the north section of Kings Row has little reason to be visited beyond the Paladin/Shining Stars zone event.

 

2 hours ago, Aberrant said:

restoring the number of connections for both Kings Row and Perez Park, and making Kings Row feel more connected to other low level zones rather than sandwiched between two higher levels zones with only the monorail as a viable access point for low-level characters. The Galaxy City gate already appropriately opens onto the Boneyard neighborhood of Perez, where the Skulls have the largest presence lending more credibility to it possible being the original purpose.

Or, to put it another way...  You're in no position to complain about "quoting the least important half" as I addressed both "reasons to visits" and connections.  Fully half my reply is dedicated to transit and connections.  You even reply to that part.

(One thing I experience daily as a photographer - nobody can see how much time and effort went into something.  Either it stands on it's own, or it doesn't.)
 

58 minutes ago, Aberrant said:

Contacts: Several contacts in Kings Row give visit Perez Park missions, which would make more sense if Perez was an adjacent zone like I suspect it was at some point intended to be before City of Heroes launched. Currently with these missions you have to leave Kings via the train, go to Atlas and talk to the security chief at the Perez Park entrance there, which is a minor pain in the arse.

I'm not seeing how traveling most of the length of King's Row is any less of a PITA than traveling a short distance to the tram, and then a short distance from the tram to the Perez gate.  Doubly so now that we have travel powers at level 4 rather than 14.  Maybe the tram bothers me less or bothers you more....
 

58 minutes ago, Aberrant said:

H) Street Hunting: Personally I very much like to wander around the city and spend lots of my time playing CoH just walking and looking at the sights, fighting low level mobs and jumping around the city, eschewing taking the trains during my downtime to see the sights. But with the removal of Galaxy, King's Row can only be walked to from Skyway and Independence making it navigation-ally a bit stranded and breaking up the flow of low level street sweeping.

Same here (as far as wandering about), but I suspect we're in the minority.  And even if this connection existed, I'd rarely make use of it because I'd spend so little time up there...  Unless you're XP locked for some reason players spend very little time in that level range.  And if they're XP locked, then it's likely they are concentrating on doing something specific - not wandering around killing arresting mobs in remote areas of Paragon City.  (Even with this connection, they're both still pretty remote.) 

If you're referring to wandering about smacking down grey-conning mobs, I suspect that's a very niche interest.

IMO, there really isn't a solid reason to go from one zone to directly to the other except than on random whim, or also doing additional work in terms of adding a new NPC and rewriting a number of missions to provide a reason.  Which takes us directly to circular logic.
 

58 minutes ago, Aberrant said:

Something doesn't need to be 'justified' to be done, this is a video game, none of this is necessary!

Yes, it does need to be justified.  The investment of a limited resource (developer time) must be balanced against the return in the form of utility or fun to the playerbase at large.  For me, the equation doesn't balance.

Edited June 13, 2020 by Doc_Scorpion

[Aberrant]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

I like the idea, and I especially like the work that went into the original post. Great job!

 

The only thing I have against the suggestion is that I wouldn't find the connection that useful. Writing only for myself:

• The northern part of King's Row is dull and out-of-the-way. Sure the 'Paladin' event is there, but with the event bugged, there is very little reason to be up there... even for level appropriate characters. There isn't 'enough' in that part of the zone for my taste. 
• That side of Perez Park is somewhat out-of-the-way as well, except for Hunting Skulls. Perez Park does have things of interest: useful History badges, mobs for several 'defeat' badges, plenty of missions which spawn there. It's just that I've gotten so use to using either the Base drop-off point or just dashing from Atlas Park that I rarely consider using either Steel Canyon or Skyway City entrances now.

I do wonder if we could 're-open' Galaxy City as another Hazard Zone (somewhere in the range 20 - 35?), populated with Neo-Shivans, Circle of Thorns, Lost, whomever. Even if we didn't get an entire zone the size of Galaxy City, would it be possible to piece together some map elements (from the Shining Stars arc?) to give us something to play in? I know Trial/Hazard Zones aren't the most exciting areas to play in (ehem Tunnels of the Trolls, Boomtown, Terra Volta) , but if the stakes are 'low enough' I don't think the Dev team would be judged that harshly for trying something 'major'. I know there are thoughts about populating Khallisti Wharf with villains, but as is that is an easy zone for allowing mixed-side gatherings of all levels without problem.

Cheers! Would very much be in favour of a plan to recreate Galaxy as a Hazard zone of course, but obviously a much larger proposal requiring substantial amounts of work. The idea with Perez is that this could be a prelude to a soft reboot of Perez, more in line with the Hollows as a zone with associated contacts or at least a TF or Trial, minimising required new asset creation, but obviously did not want to exceed scope. Wanted to keep this a very modest proposal. Perhaps a partial safe zone, where the city parts could be inhabited by citizens but the park is dangerous, kind of like how modern Faultline is set up.

Edited June 13, 2020 by Aberrant

[ImpousVileTerror]

Impressive work, @Aberrant.  You have my support in this, and I think it's absolutely justified.

[Greycat]

I'm not sure I completely support throwing a gate there - primarily because of the out of the way-ness - but I have no real argument against it, either.  (Also wouldn't mind Galaxy getting to be a real zone again.)

 

Mostly wanted to say "Nice presentation." 🙂  (I kind of miss the Paragon Times.)

[Shadowsleuth]

When you first step into Kings Row at level 5 I find that a few contacts (& the police radio) sends you to mission doors at the top of the zone.  (Dodging purple con enemies to reach your door is a pain). 

Having a place nearby to sell any drops & also able to restock on inspirations would be appreciated.

 

And there are some Kings Row contacts that send you on Skull hunts in Perez, having a gate right there would be handy.

 

While this would be a nice quality of life feature to have, there is no rush to implement this right now; it can be done when the Dev schedule allows.