Concept for Kallisti Wharf: "Timeskip"

[mechahamham]

While they're a staple in anime and serialized manga, we don't see many 'timeskips' in western Superhero comics. Rather than 'let's have lots of filler while the characters age to this point', manga fans often get a 'Five years have passed since the climactic battle and our characters are more adult than children now...' line.

 

Western comics typically have a more Soap-opera-like sense of time. Some characters may age rapidly in the story while others don't budge. Some skip ahead or even backwards, with or without time-travel.

 

That WAS the case until a certain climactic comic-book movie dropped a stunning 'FIVE... YEARS.... LATER...' on us just before the curtain rose on its second act.

 

 

And we, City of Heroes players, have experienced our own timeskip. Eight years ago, NCSoft pulled the plug. Now we're all back in Paragon City.

So while Kallisti Wharf may have been intended as a battleground for players to fight against the mysterious aliens known only as 'The Battalion', I suggest re-purposing the zone for 'The Timeskip'.

 

"I was just a little kid when the Battalion invaded here. It was pretty epic watching all the heroes and villains come together to save the planet!"

 

The people of Khalisti Wharf have somehow been shunted forward in time 8 years. They remember a fight against the Batallion that no one else in the city recalls. The only person in Paragon City who can make sense of the temporal mess is Montague Castanella, who senses that his own history has been significantly disturbed. He's our first story-arc contact, who helps the player uncover a plot designed to either skip the Battalion invasion entirely, or to make the people of earth *think* they've skipped it.

 

Both Praetorian and Primal Penny Yin, helping each-other to navigate the chronal madness, act together as our second story-arc contact with wonderfully chaotic dialogue. In this arc, the true history of Giovanna Scaldi's mask, the same mask worn by both Praetorian and Primal versions of Vanessa DeVore and later by Desdemona, is revealed, along with its importance in restoring the fractured timeline.

 

Our third contact is Mender Tesseract. Her tragic journey across time into our pasts and futures is explored, as is the founding and eventual demise of Ouroboros. Tesseract's secret identity as the daughter of [REDACTED] is revealed, even as we and she use the knowledge gained to try to keep time itself from unraveling.

 

"I was only getting Pizza," is the excuse given by our fourth story-arc contact, Mender Derek. Yes, he's an idiot, but an idiot-savant when it comes to navigating the twists and turns of temporal paradox. He'll act as a temporary temporal guide for the Heroes and Villains who set about repairing time and replacing what has been lost.

 

The last story-arc contact is none other than the Dark Watcher, who has been tracing different timelines, different parallel Earths, for far longer than anyone should have to. He'll help us to understand what ramifications 'repairing' our 'damaged' timeline will have, and why it must be done anyway.

 

Scarred, older, but wiser for his sojourn in an almost-alien world, Hero One has returned from where very few others have-- complete Riktification. Few understand the Rikti and their history better than he. Most importantly, he knows of their conflict with the Battalion and how it changed them. He'll charge the bravest of earthlings, hero and villain alike, to undertake a grave responsibility: The newly repaired timeline puts Earth back in the sights of the Battalion. Many of Earth's most powerful leaders, hero and villain alike, desperately want to avoid this conflict. Both we and Hero One know that the conflict HAS to take place, or our future will simply fragment again. Defend the repaired timeline from the greatest super-powered individuals Earth has ever known and hope that they can forgive you for doing what must be done.

[MTeague]

I dunno. I suppose we do need more incarnate content. There's big demand for it anyway.

I just.... would like some story-arc love for non-incarnates too. Maybe even a couple zones were incarnate powers just flat out Do Not Function (achieved by forcibly exemplaring you to 44 if need be).

 

I mean, okay. Yes. We have incarnate powers, there's not that much content to use them, and lots of people want some Bigger Better Faster challenges.

 

I'd just also like some additional content that doesn't get into a competition with itself for "My Cthulhu is bigger than your Cthulhu!", and we don't necessarily have to face the next reality eating monstrosity all the time. 

[Sakura Tenshi]

@MTeagueGonna be honest, I want more incarnate, stuff but I kind of agree with you. I feel like Kallisti Wharf would be a good place to kind of step back from all that stuff. My ideal content for the zone would take things back to a bit of basics: heroes helping people, villains seeking self gain, vigilantes punish the guilty, and rogues are all about their bottom lines.

 

if I were to throw in incarnate stuff, it would be restricted to some specific TFs or a new trial. (though my ideal would be using Croatoa for Incarnate stuff and continue/conclude that story. Celtic myth is crazy, yo.)

[Grouchybeast]

12 hours ago, MTeague said:

I dunno. I suppose we do need more incarnate content. There's big demand for it anyway.

I just.... would like some story-arc love for non-incarnates too. Maybe even a couple zones were incarnate powers just flat out Do Not Function (achieved by forcibly exemplaring you to 44 if need be).

 

I mean, okay. Yes. We have incarnate powers, there's not that much content to use them, and lots of people want some Bigger Better Faster challenges.

 

I'd just also like some additional content that doesn't get into a competition with itself for "My Cthulhu is bigger than your Cthulhu!", and we don't necessarily have to face the next reality eating monstrosity all the time. 

I don't really understand the idea that non-Incarnate content is being neglected, because in both late live development and on HC there has been consistent additions of new non-incarnate content.  The live devs were working through the lower levels of the game, adding some great new arcs and revamping old TFs.  Right at shutdown, I24 added a solid chunk of non-incarnate blue and redside, right across the levels.   The new story content added on HC isn't Incarnate level, either.

[Lines]

Maybe a best of both worlds? Kallisti Wharf could be a zone where fallout from other incarnate plots seem to gravitate. Minor incarnate level characters who may not have the resources they had during Dark Astoria or the iTrials trying to regain some small foothold in Paragon City.

 

It doesn't need to be grandiose, earth-devouring, multidimensional risks to be endgame content, but it will need powerful player characters to keep those threats in check.

[Sakura Tenshi]

@Grouchybeast It's not so much that I feel Incarnate content's taken over, but it can feel like all the newer stories are tied back to the incarnates and/or praetoria. Dean MacArthur/Keith Nance, Vincent Ross/Roy Cooling (lesser degree), New Praetorians/Mr. G (well, obviously), Revamped Atlas and Shining Stars, Admiral Sutter and Mortimer Kal. They all kind of have the shadow of the coming storm, the praetorians, or incarnate plotline looming over in the background. There's exceptions like Shauna Stockwell and Eagle Eye, Laura Lockhart/Brother Hammond, and Grant Easton/Bane Spider Reuben, and yes, there's a backlog of a lot of old story arcs, but to be honest, a lot of those old story arcs are kind of a boring slog in many ways, even the Indigo and Veridian Arcs suffer from 'issue 1 writing syndrome', shoot, not even the villainside stuff is spared from heavy 'tell don't show' writing.

 

Now from my stand point, Kallisti Wharf has also just become a surprisingly quiet and clean part of Paragon, and it feels like it'd be ruined with looming cosmic scale threats and endless masses of level 50 spawns. I kind of would like the idea of KW becoming a sort of 'peaceful' zone where at the very least most spawns are in a default non-aggressive state, maybe have a few 'indoor' areas with active and agressive mob spawns like some of the missions in revamped Atlas, and otherwise actively aggressive spawns only appear in a few events, maybe even tying it to repeatable content?

[AsbestosBill]

What about making Kallisti Warf a sort of Firstward/Nightward 2? The zone takes place 8 years in the future and features non-incarnate content, level 35+, and there are tears in reality that incarnates can access to go back 7 years to mid invasion where there is a destroyed version of Kallisti Warf, hazard zone levels of battalion and a Dark Astoria style story-line that takes you through the Battalion war. From this zone you could access the space station zone which would also be a two version zone one during the invasion and one in the new future.

 

EDIT: There could be 3 versions of the zone, a level 25-35 PVP zone where Statesman Plaza is edited out and there is a large presence of longbow and arachnos, as well as refugee Praetorean resistance and Cole Loyalists with a story line that builds on the Brickstown praetorian story. This is the zone accessable from the tram. In Kallisti Warf, and accessable from Oro, Tunnel, and maybe Pocket D you can access the bright future version with the 35 plus story or the dark nearer future invasion story

Edited November 26, 2020 by AsbestosBill