An open letter to the Paragon City office architect

[MTeague]

On 5/31/2019 at 5:59 PM, Robotech_Master said:

I remember on the old RP Congress site, I posited a secret conspiracy of the elevator repairman's union to explain how even decrepit ruined skyscrapers in Boomtown or rusty abandoned bases or laboratories nonetheless had working elevators. Even Lord Recluse knew better than to mess with them.

Babylon 5, "A Late Delivery from Avalon",

Garabaldi:  “What are you so nervous about?  We went up against the entire Earth Alliance and two carrier groups.”

Zack:          “Yeah, but this is the Post Office. We could get in real trouble for this.”

[Stygus]

On 6/1/2019 at 5:59 AM, Robotech_Master said:

I remember on the old RP Congress site, I posited a secret conspiracy of the elevator repairman's union to explain how even decrepit ruined skyscrapers in Boomtown or rusty abandoned bases or laboratories nonetheless had working elevators. Even Lord Recluse knew better than to mess with them.

Anyone else flash to Community's school of air conditioner repair here?

The ancient consipracy of elevator repairmen, something to shudder about

[srmalloy]

4 hours ago, Richard Nelson said:

They were all made by Frank Gehry.

No... Maurits Cornelis Escher.

Edited June 18, 2020 by srmalloy

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Guys guys guys how do you not see the brilliant security features inherent in the design.

 

The single story elevators help reduce the risk to people should the elevators be knocked out by a super powered battle going on outside, one large emp burst could easily send nearby elevators offline, and one could explosion or impact to the building could cause it to start falling.

 

Consider the design from the perspective of a lone hero trying to defend the building from invasion. Many good choke points that a lone hero could hold the line at while waiting for back up. After that very issue costing many lone heroes lives during the rikti invasion, Such as Nebula who fell in Perez park cut off and alone with no good place to rally the civvies to and set up a defensive position, that noble young hero gave her life fighting out in the wide open as people scattered in every direction. If anything this brings up a much needed thing, armored shelters for civvies in every zone!

 

Crey got a hold of rikti teleport and phasing tech back in 03. Its very likely by now they have fine tuned that tech and seeing as they basically own nearly every business on Earth via front companies and mind control via the countess, it stands to reason valued employees have access to something like mediport and emergency phase devices like the temp power we can use. Likely why we actually see so few people in said offices when we go in to clear out the baddies. Speaking of crey it would actually be pretty cool to see Paragon Protectors actually well protect as they do in the Lore about them during the rikti war. I bet it would make it far easier to swallow the whole crey manages to keep a good face on the company for the world if their trade marked blue and gold meta soldiers popped up doing good things for PR. Maybe even stop having them be outdoor baddies at all and instead use them like cops around the prison in BR and even out fighting the other vil vactions( keep them as baddies for indoor mishes obviously

 

So really when you think about it the design of offices make sense in cohverse.

[GastlyGibus]

It's a security feature in a world where villains try to take over the world every day. 

 

 

"Oh, Captain Awesome Pants, thank goodness you're here! The council broke into the offices of Super Guns Incorporated and are trying to steal the plans for the Universe Gun! You have to stop them!"

[Captain Awesome Pants arrives at the office.]

Council: "Seriously, we've been searching for five hours! Who the hell designed this place?? How do I even get out of here? .... and now the heroes are here!? Curse you, office architects!"

That's why every time you go to stop an office theft or kidnapping or whatever, you're always there in the nick of time. The villains are just as confused as you and spent the entire time just trying to figure out where the hell they were going. 😛

Edited June 18, 2020 by GastlyGibus

[seresibyl3]

I don't think I've ever seen elevators hidden BEHIND stairwells like they have in coh T_T

[Sailboat]

These places would NOT pass fire safety inspection.  Imagine trying to evacuate swiftly and in an organized fashion.

[Peacemoon]

On 6/17/2020 at 9:52 PM, Sakura Tenshi said:

You know, while I was playing live I had this idea, not necessarily one for the future of the game (not even sure it's possible) but something for maybe some future MMO that might find itself using logically multi-leveled facilities for instances.

 

Basic idea would be that elevators give a floor list and you can pick any floor to ascend (or descend) to, but once you use the elevator, it's locked down until you beat all enemy spawns on the floor (or maybe even a key one, depending on the mission I guess). But if you really are in a rush, most all instances would include alternate means to scale the levels depending on how many there are. There'd be firestairs, air vents, utility elevators, etc. as possible alternative ways to get around, but like the elevator, if you're not on the floor you want then that method gets 'locked down by the enemy', requiring you to clear the floor to free it back up again. Could also give some maps an inherent bonus objective of like accessing a security room or something to keep the means of egress through the building free.

 

From there, challenge could still be had by not necessarily playing the objectives on the top floor, or just having certain levels be locked on starting the mission.

 

This still doesn't solve all the insanity of office buildings though, given the sheer chaos of their design.

What you’re looking for is City of Heroes: Diehard Edition, and I wholeheartedly approve!
 

My favourite ever office map is in Dark Astoria. The lifts don’t work and you have to take the stairwell to go down into the basement to find a clue. It’s half submerged in water and pitch black. Suddenly I was playing a very good single player game..! 

[Sakura Tenshi]

38 minutes ago, Peacemoon said:

What you’re looking for is City of Heroes: Diehard Edition, and I wholeheartedly approve!
 

My favourite ever office map is in Dark Astoria. The lifts don’t work and you have to take the stairwell to go down into the basement to find a clue. It’s half submerged in water and pitch black. Suddenly I was playing a very good single player game..! 

well, glad you like it, I think another way to make office spaces and even council maps work is that first, you need to basically set up a reasonable floor layout, then you can block things off into a labyrinthine pattern via perma-sealed doors and bulkheads. Could even then make ANOTHER part of fun map and mission design and side objectives be unlocking the doors or using your powers to bust them open (but it'd be like the prison doors where holy cow they take forever to smash).

[Likara]

I remember seeing a picture that overlayed one of the office building maps over the building it was supposed to be in. The map was an impossibility of design and had no way to actually fit inside the building

[srmalloy]

16 hours ago, Ritikesh said:

I remember seeing a picture that overlayed one of the office building maps over the building it was supposed to be in. The map was an impossibility of design and had no way to actually fit inside the building

You can do the same thing with warehouse maps; I don't know of any warehouse map that would fit in the building the door is set in. Not to mention all dead space in the building not connected to anything. We should have a lot of (cosmetic) doors in the warehouse corridors to at least suggest that warehouses in Paragon City aren't just logistical nightmares unable to actually be used as warehouses.

[Sakura Tenshi]

You could even do the same on the cargo ship maps. Even though they're roughly the same shape, the world assets we see of cargo ships are laughably minuscule compared to real world freight ships while the mission map interiors seem closer (albeit woefully nowhere near cargo capacity) to what the real world size would be.

[Zombie Hustler]

I think the oddest office layout is the one with the "floating" floor. One set of stairs leads up to a door that immediately ends in stairs, where you then have to go underneath the floor to the opposite side of the room, to access the stairs leading right back up to the floating floor and access another set of stairs.

 

Bizarre.

[Zombie Hustler]

22 hours ago, Ritikesh said:

I remember seeing a picture that overlayed one of the office building maps over the building it was supposed to be in. The map was an impossibility of design and had no way to actually fit inside the building

The architects were Gallifreyan.

[Zombie Hustler]

On 5/30/2019 at 2:16 PM, Mantid said:

That architect is the most subtle and fiendish villain of all. Who knows how much psychological damage residents have suffered due to those nonsensical layouts? 

Now I want to see a supervillain in this game named "The Architect." His story arc would consist of a series of maddening, labyrinthine maps that were never the same from mission to mission, and the final showdown would feature a map that was shifting constantly. 😵😈😈

[Rishidian]

Here's a Halloween nightmare:

 

As you enter a building (As we have seen, the outside architecture does not have to have anything to do with the inside space), the exit door is actually an elevator - you can't exit that way.  You have to clear every floor before another elevator appears and allows you to exit the building.