Let's talk about Paragon City. I have questions.

[TraumaTrain]

(This is for a table top supers RPG I'm setting up using City of Heroes and Paragon City.)

 

What is the financial district of Paragon? I'm thinking that's Steel Canyon with all the skyscrapers.

 

What's the commercial center? Skyway?

 

What would be the trendy neighborhood? I'm thinking Talos.

 

What would the "bad neighborhood" be? Kings Row?

 

Is there a quiet suburb?

 

I'll have more questions and topics, but let's answer these first.

[Machariel]

>Is there a quiet suburb?

Croatoa?

[Eva Destruction]

There really isn't a commercial center, just shops scattered everywhere.  Probably the touristy places would be in Atlas, the upscale boutiques in Founders, trendy hipster places in Talos, Steel Canyon canonically still has some of the old jeweler's shops. 

 

As for quiet suburbs, there's Woodvale...oh wait no.  Or maybe Eastgate...oops, not there either.  I think the lesson here is that urban sprawl is bad. 

[Redlynne]

19 minutes ago, TraumaTrain said:

What's the commercial center? Skyway?

Independence Port is the commercial shipping hub for the city.

There isn't a "shopping district" that meets the expectation of being a big box mall or even an outdoor fairground/flea market.  You just have occasional shops scattered around, only some of which can be entered (because there's services inside of them for PCs).

[Frostbiter]

Paragon Studios actually has an office in Kings Row. The zone is based on the real neighborhood their first office was in IIRC.

[Techwright]

Keep in mind that each of these centers you seek may now lie in a pile of rubble from the Ritki Invasion, or the meteor attack that destroyed Galaxy City.    While I could see Steel Canyon as the finance/banking district, it very well might have been Baumtown with its skyscrapers.  I would guess that, even several years out, the city is still in makeshift mode, renting what space it can, where it can to replace those offices and businesses that were destroyed.

 

"Trendy" seems like it would be Founders Falls, with its canals and gaslamp-lit bridges.   A case could be made for Kallisti Wharf, even though it never fully developed as a game zone.

 

Kings Row is definitely the surviving industrial district.  This kind of makes sense as it is adjacent to Independence Port, the main shipping district (though Talos has one, too), ideal for importing raw materials and exporting finished goods.    I'm not sure how you define "bad" in this case.  A zone/district where lodging is still rented?  Because Crey's Folly, another industrial district, is a much bigger mess, and there are people living there, if you can call the shanty's of Freaktown  a living.

 

I'm not sure I'd call Croatoa a "suburb".  We had a discussion a while back on the forums, looking at old maps that suggest that Croatoa was not far above Indepence Port, which would indeed make it a suburb, but other evidence, including comments in-game, suggests that the train ride to Croatoa is actually significantly farther.  I don't know that the city has any true suburbia in-game,  but I think a case could be made for Eastgate, a.k.a. "The Hollows", since it's mostly a park, few small collections of apartments and small businesses.  As to quiet, well, when a place is filled with roving ghouls or trolls, is it really "quiet"?

 

As a side note, back during the original game, I'd pitched an idea to the art director (truly sorry, I forgot his name/forum handle), that as a big, northern city, Paragon City really needed ethnic districts.  He seemed to really like the idea, and said he'd look into the possibility.  We'd chatted about using new street decor to existing buildings to add a Little China to the spots in Skyway where the Tsoo were roaming at the time, a Little Italy to the west side (non-train side) of Independence Port (mostly due to the Family influence), and maybe some other places, like a Czech Village (I'd just visited Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which has a Czech village, so it was fresh in my mind).  Perhaps that discussion will inform your efforts.

 

[TraumaTrain]

These are all really great comments!

 

Undoubtedly each area of the city serves multiple purposes, especially since the Rikti invasions and the meteors and earthquakes and such.

 

For an MMO experience, obviously there will be mobs and spawns running rampant for leveling up via street fighting. For a table top RPG experience, the world would be much more sedate. I think Croatoa could fit nicely as the "quiet suburb" if you imagine it for the table top.

 

Independence Port is definitely the commercial district. I was thinking commercial as shopping and Skyway sprang to mind. But I think you are right, Redlynne, that commercial is more in line with shipping and ports and such. Striga too. And to a lesser extent, Talos.

 

The industrial and generally run-down aspects of Kings Row is why I looked at it as the "bad part of town."

 

I agree Founder's Falls is a trendy neighborhood, but it feels more upscale to me. Talos is the trendy neighborhood for the common folks

 

I love the idea of ethnic neighborhoods within the city, and have some good ideas there, Techwright.

 

If i were to pick three descriptive words to characterize Paragon City with, I'd say bustling, diverse, and sprawling. 

[Frostbiter]

Lorewise I think Perez Park may be another old financial/commerce district.

[ImpousVileTerror]

I believe the old Security Reports have that information in them.  Let's see if I can track one down . . . 

 

"Galaxy is south of the financial towers of Steel Canyon and north of the industrial warehouses of Kings Row."

https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Galaxy_City_(Pre-Issue_21)

So, inference from that . . . yeah, Steel Canyon is a financial area.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Well we know Brickston seems to be Creys main area of control, and they being basically the focus of all corporate and industrial activity, it stands to reason that area is where such districts may lay as well.

 

There are many neighborhood zones. One such was once called Paragon Heights and later renamed Galaxy city ( odd name should likely of made some kind of sub island area like Manhattan and called Galaxy Island or the like)

 

Fault line seems like it must be abit of a town kind of area with a donut shop

 

I always felt talos needed like a big old Mall. Id of swapped out the arena for something like that years ago meself. Its very much got a kind of downtown shop vibe to me

 

Always got the Feeling Astoria was very much a kind of apartment heavy suburb zone once upon a time.

 

Steel canyon seems a real kind of centralized bit of everything zone. you got areas that seem like apartments, businesses, warhouse districts etc.

 

due to the boardwalk in talos Ive always seen it as something like the santa cruz boardwalk I went to as a kid.

 

Perez park is very much a kind of central park equiv.

 

Just some ramblings

 

[Eva Destruction]

You can find some background on the zones on Paragon Wiki.  Steel Canyon is canonically the financial district, Talos Island is relatively new and was a real estate hotspot, Founders Falls is where the rich people live, Eastgate and Woodvale were suburbs before they turned into the Hollows and Eden, Kings Row is an industrial zone that has seen better days.

 

I read "commercial" as shopping too, and there really isn't one.  There are stores scattered throughout many of the zones rather than a dedicated downtown shopping district or a mall.

[Android]

2 hours ago, TraumaTrain said:

The industrial and generally run-down aspects of Kings Row is why I looked at it as the "bad part of town."

I never really noticed it on live, but since coming back to CoH for Homecoming, I've noticed that Brickstown actually seems more like the "bad part of town" than Kings Row (which is where I based the backstories for all my vigilante characters back in the pre-beta days). I'm particularly thinking of Seven Gates, which is a neighbourhood literally in the shadow of a prison. It's rundown, overflowing with criminals (The Council is openly recruiting on the street), and filled with the kinds of tenements you also find in KR. I also think it's interesting that it's the only zone (that I can think of) where you can run into running street battles between various villain groups (usually the Freakshow, I think?) and the cops. So I'd have said KR back in the live days, but playing through Brickstown this time around changed my mind.

 

EDIT: Remembered you also see cops fighting the Skulls in KR, but I'm pretty sure that was added with the new superadine arcs. I'm not sure when the street battles were introduced in Brickstown.

Edited July 4, 2020 by Android

[TraumaTrain]

Oh Brickstown! Definitely a bad area with the prison. Crey's Folly also a bad area.

 

 

[TraumaTrain]

White Plains, aka the Rikti War Zone, could have been the major shopping area of the city. The wiki doesn't say much of anything about the area before the momship crashed. Looking around the zone, though, there are parks and apartments, and a few taller buildings, which may have just been high-rise apartments and condos.

[Redlynne]

3 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

Always got the Feeling Astoria was very much a kind of apartment heavy suburb zone once upon a time.

I was going to say that Astoria (before it went Dark) would definitely have been a suburbia ... although once the place went Dark ... nobody lived there and the place became a (literal) ghost town.  That's why in the Echo of Dark Astoria you can see civilians walking the streets who disappear as you get close to them ... because THEY'RE ALL DEAD and what you're seeing are their ghosts, still going about the routine of their daily lives that they have lost ... which is gloriously creepy (and quite horrible!) when you stop and think about it.

 

However, I also think that Baumton (before it became Boomtown) would have been a high density residential area, with most of the (now toppled) skyscrapers being apartments and residential, rather than being commercial office spaces like you'd expect to see in Steel Canyon, just to the south.  Croatoa would qualify at exurbs, since there's barely any town there at all before you've got wilderness area (that's getting wilder all the time).

3 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

I always felt talos needed like a big old Mall.

The fact that originally you'd get higher prices for DOs and SOs sold to the "right" type of shop (tech origin enhancements to the tech shop and all that) turned Talos into the go to zone for selling to vendor NPCs since the origin shops were closer together in Talos than in any other zone.  That tended to cement the idea that Talos was the "shopping" district for most Players (myself included).

4 hours ago, TraumaTrain said:

I was thinking commercial as shopping and Skyway sprang to mind.

Skyway is literally THE ROAD TO NOWHERE.

The only notable feature of Skyway is "roads in the sky" that don't connect to anywhere useful, that are all wide enough to be freeways in a part of town that has no use for freeways.

4 hours ago, Techwright said:

Because Crey's Folly, another industrial district, is a much bigger mess, and there are people living there, if you can call the shanty's of Freaktown  a living.

I wouldn't call it "living" there so much as surviving there by scavenging.  Crey's Folly is an industrial disaster zone that's had "squatters" move into despite the hazards.  It's basically abandonded industrial hellscape.

1 hour ago, Android said:

I've noticed that Brickstown actually seems more like the "bad part of town" than Kings Row

If you look at the tram map carefully, you'll realize that the northern end of Brickstown is simply the southern end of King's Row after the War Walls went up.  If the War Wall wasn't there on the north side of Brickstown you'd just keep on walking into southern King's Row.  What makes Brickstown seem worse than King's Row is the Zig dominating the skyline and all the guys in orange jumpsuits outside the fence (and the fact that Brickstown is a higher level zone than King's Row).

 

To be honest though, I'm kind of sad that there was never a "riot suppression" Task Force developed for Brickstown that would take us INTO the Zig (as Heroes) to prevent the inmates from taking over the asylum (so to speak).  Missed opportunity there, I'm thinking.  Possibly the coolest thing that could have been done with it would have been to "feature" (by means of bias to the randomizer) NPC groups that the PCs on the team had Defeat badges for ... because you've beaten them before, so now you ought to put your reputation to good use in putting down a prison riot by the types you put into the Zig.  That way, although the maps might be the same every run, the spawn groups that show up on those maps could vary widely depending on the team composition and the randomizer biases they'd bring with them into the content of the Task Force.

 

"But nobody listens to Zathras."

[Techwright]

9 hours ago, Redlynne said:

I "But nobody listens to Zathras."

Which one?  

[Gulbasaur]

9 hours ago, Redlynne said:

Skyway is literally THE ROAD TO NOWHERE.

The only notable feature of Skyway is "roads in the sky" that don't connect to anywhere useful, that are all wide enough to be freeways in a part of town that has no use for freeways.

I once tried to walk from somewhere to somewhere using only roads and crossing and Skyway City's roads just don't connect in any logical way. I think it's actually impossible to get from one side to the other without running through traffic.

 

9 hours ago, Redlynne said:

I wouldn't call it "living" there so much as surviving there by scavenging.  Crey's Folly is an industrial disaster zone that's had "squatters" move into despite the hazards.  It's basically abandonded industrial hellscape.

Crey's is such an underused zone. That shanty town had serious story potential, but it's somewhere that you skip through briefly one one or two task forces and never think about again.

[Redlynne]

40 minutes ago, Gulbasaur said:

Crey's is such an underused zone. That shanty town had serious story potential, but it's somewhere that you skip through briefly one one or two task forces and never think about again.

The original access to the Rikti Crash Site WAS through Creys Folly and through the Freakshow fortified shanty town on the western side of the zone ... kind of like how the Abyss access is on the west side of Eden.  That all changed with the introduction of Vanguard and the new Vanguard base and so the west end of Crey's Folly turned into a dead end that nobody needed (or cared) to go to anymore.

[Eva Destruction]

To be fair though, nobody really needed to go to the Rikti Crash Site either.  The Rikti respec trial is the only reason I can think of; did regular random mission doors even send you there?

[Patti]

I remember tf2 having these maps that showed foot traffic on their maps so they could see where players went in matches.  Can they do something like that here to see where players travel on average?  Not just the neighbourhoods but like exactly on the map where people go.  Maybe just which mission does get used the most?

[jacehan]

19 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

There are many neighborhood zones. One such was once called Paragon Heights and later renamed Galaxy city ( odd name should likely of made some kind of sub island area like Manhattan and called Galaxy Island or the like)

 

Nothing wrong with a subsection of a city being called city. NYC has Long Island City, Lefrak City, Co-Op City...

[Redlynne]

2 hours ago, jacehan said:

Nothing wrong with a subsection of a city being called city. NYC has Long Island City, Lefrak City, Co-Op City...

Star City ...

 

/em significant look

[Blastit]

21 hours ago, Android said:

I never really noticed it on live, but since coming back to CoH for Homecoming, I've noticed that Brickstown actually seems more like the "bad part of town" than Kings Row (which is where I based the backstories for all my vigilante characters back in the pre-beta days). I'm particularly thinking of Seven Gates, which is a neighbourhood literally in the shadow of a prison. It's rundown, overflowing with criminals (The Council is openly recruiting on the street), and filled with the kinds of tenements you also find in KR. I also think it's interesting that it's the only zone (that I can think of) where you can run into running street battles between various villain groups (usually the Freakshow, I think?) and the cops. So I'd have said KR back in the live days, but playing through Brickstown this time around changed my mind.

 

EDIT: Remembered you also see cops fighting the Skulls in KR, but I'm pretty sure that was added with the new superadine arcs. I'm not sure when the street battles were introduced in Brickstown.

Is it Brickstown that also has, uh, Crey death squads murdering inconvenient people? I think it's Brickstown.

[Android]

13 hours ago, Blastit said:

Is it Brickstown that also has, uh, Crey death squads murdering inconvenient people? I think it's Brickstown.

Yeah, you can often see Crey doing super-shady stuff in the back alleys of Seven Gates, as well as Crey tanks testing their armour out on the street. Man, I would hate to live in that neighbourhood.

[ImpousVileTerror]

With the Brickstown update, they also have "Press Conference" mobs.  Basically a bunch of NPC reporters and spectators, as a Crey Rep talks about the new "safer" version of the Crey Tank Armour . . . and which point if a passing hero aggros them, the Tank shouts something along the lines of "CAN'T CONTROL IT!  HAVE TO DESTROY HERO!" and the reporters run away screaming, while the Reps say "Get it contained!  Get it contained!"