Everyday things missing from Paragon City/The Rogue Isles/Praetoria.

[Darmian]

Having commented on the recent Day Job thread this led me to thinking about things that could have Day Jobs and that led to this.  Ordinary things missing from the game that really should exist.

 

First off.  Fire Stations.  Not a single one of them anywhere. And yet when the Steel Canyon fire alarm rings that Fireman shows up with his extinguishers.  From where?  Did he just carry them?  He's not a super.  

 

Churches/Places of worship.  Ok, possibly a delicate point given so many people's varied response to religion, whether for, against, indifferent or any shade in between.  There's one (Kinda two but not really) and that's in First Ward.  Plenty of graveyards though.

 

Theaters.  Nope, not cinemas, theaters. (Speaking of cinemas, maybe the signs could change every now and then?).  We have the Theater District in Kallisti Wharf, but it's historical and there's none left.  We have a theater building long since converted into offices in Imperial City, so none there. We have mention of a theater showing a production of something called "Mimi", but I have no idea where it is.  Can't find it.

 

Anything else?

[MsSmart]

I actually, there is a cinema in KR, but have not really been looking for these items to be quite honest. I think there is also a single restaurant as you enter Peres park from Atlas (El Super Mexicano Restaurante).

 

To add to your list:

1) Restaurants

2) Grocery Stores

3) Schools

4) Gas Stations

5) Hotels

 

[Rudra]

22 minutes ago, MsSmart said:

4) Gas Stations

Kallisti Wharf

[srmalloy]

There are other parts of the Paragon City urban area and environs that we don't normally see -- the instanced outdoor maps like the Janissary Heights map, and presumably other areas we never see, because they've got better access screening and aren't overrun with criminal organizations the way the city zones are. The 'missing' locations may be in these 'offscreen' areas. I remember an observation I made about how every place you get sent to in SWTOR as a Jedi is a crapsack world/location -- well, of course they're crapsack worlds; if they weren't crapsack worlds, they wouldn't need Jedi intervention.

[Rudra]

17 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

There are other parts of the Paragon City urban area and environs that we don't normally see -- the instanced outdoor maps like the Janissary Heights map, and presumably other areas we never see, because they've got better access screening and aren't overrun with criminal organizations the way the city zones are. The 'missing' locations may be in these 'offscreen' areas. I remember an observation I made about how every place you get sent to in SWTOR as a Jedi is a crapsack world/location -- well, of course they're crapsack worlds; if they weren't crapsack worlds, they wouldn't need Jedi intervention.

Good point. Like in the Laura Lockhart arc, in the timed mission, the mission is timed to keep the 5th Column and Council from destroying the apartment building at the end. And as far as gas stations go, the only one in  the game is boarded up and being used as a derelict storage area, so maybe Paragon City cars don't use gas any more. (And I haven't seen any cars in Praetoria or the Rogue Isles that I can currently remember.)

 

(Edit: And maybe the schooling is done online?)

 

Edited Thursday at 02:39 AM by Rudra

[Rudra]

On 10/7/2025 at 9:50 AM, Darmian said:

Churches/Places of worship.  Ok, possibly a delicate point given so many people's varied response to religion, whether for, against, indifferent or any shade in between.  There's one (Kinda two but not really) and that's in First Ward.  Plenty of graveyards though.

Oh, yeah. About churches in the game. It isn't a delicate point so much as an extremely risky or map intensive one. There are multiple reasons to not add churches, but three immediately come to mind.

 

1)  Even in the Christian faith, which is what churches are typically associated with, every denomination within the umbrella of Christianity has their own take on churches. For instance, where I am, there are 5 churches about a block from me. Only two of them are styled in the manner I readily think of as churches. Two of them I didn't even realize were churches until I read the front sign and the building label. So which denominations would get represented by being added to the game and why that one or those ones?

 

2) Paragon City is in the US and we have more places of worship than just churches. There is a mosque I drive by almost routinely. So would mosques and synagogues also get in-game representation? And how much map space should be devoted to all these churches, mosques, synagogues, and other places of worship on the already full maps we have?

 

3) Paragon City is awash in gods. Most of them are player characters, but also NPCs like Tielekku and Hequat. How do we address places of worship for these gods too? And if they don't get their own places of worship, then why not? City of Heroes has actual gods walking the streets, so shouldn't the civilians pause in awe or run in terror even in Paragon City from the honest to goodness deity walking around? Or maybe prostrate themselves in abject worship?

 

So yeah, adding religion beyond current story driven interactions to a video game like City of is problematic at best.

 

Edited Thursday at 03:38 AM by Rudra
Edited to correct "isn'6" to "isn't" and "ever' to "every".

[Darmian]

9 hours ago, Rudra said:

Oh, yeah. About churches in the game. It isn't a delicate point so much as an extremely risky or map intensive one. There are multiple reasons to not add churches, but three immediately come to mind.

 

1)  Even in the Christian faith, which is what churches are typically associated with, every denomination within the umbrella of Christianity has their own take on churches. For instance, where I am, there are 5 churches about a block from me. Only two of them are styled in the manner I readily think of as churches. Two of them I didn't even realize were churches until I read the front sign and the building label. So which denominations would get represented by being added to the game and why that one or those ones?

 

2) Paragon City is in the US and we have more places of worship than just churches. There is a mosque I drive by almost routinely. So would mosques and synagogues also get in-game representation? And how much map space should be devoted to all these churches, mosques, synagogues, and other places of worship on the already full maps we have?

 

3) Paragon City is awash in gods. Most of them are player characters, but also NPCs like Tielekku and Hequat. How do we address places of worship for these gods too? And if they don't get their own places of worship, then why not? City of Heroes has actual gods walking the streets, so shouldn't the civilians pause in awe or run in terror even in Paragon City from the honest to goodness deity walking around? Or maybe prostrate themselves in abject worship?

 

So yeah, adding religion beyond current story driven interactions to a video game like City of is problematic at best.

 

And I'm pretty sure that the lone (again, not really) church in Praetoria is part of a State sponsored cult rather than say a "true" religious building.

 

I had intended Temples and Mosques and Halls of Congregation to be included in the umbrella term "places of worship".  Perhaps the various stone circles we see are such places? Who knows.  Regarding the gods walking the streets?  Well, if they don't have a cult/religion around them then no biscuit, I mean church-like building for them!  

[Darmian]

11 hours ago, Rudra said:

Kallisti Wharf

True.  A ported copy of the Neutropolis one but true.  Although it's apparently closed and there's seemingly only one in the entire city!

 

Another thing.  An airport.  Well, in Paragon at least.  The Rogue Isles has a tiny one on Sharkhead.  Now, Paragon HAD one, at least according to a close scrutiny of the map, in Boomtown. But in the meantime, nothing.

 

A train station.  One that goes outside the city rather than around it. Oh, I don't know how we'd use it since we usually don't go to New York or wherever, but it's odd that a major city doesn't have one at all.

 

 

[UltraAlt]

On 10/7/2025 at 11:50 AM, Darmian said:

Churches/Places of worship.  Ok, possibly a delicate point given so many people's varied response to religion, whether for, against, indifferent or any shade in between.  There's one (Kinda two but not really) and that's in First Ward.  Plenty of graveyards though.

 

How not really?

 

On 10/7/2025 at 11:50 AM, Darmian said:

Theaters.  Nope, not cinemas, theaters. (Speaking of cinemas, maybe the signs could change every now and then?).  We have the Theater District in Kallisti Wharf, but it's historical and there's none left.  We have a theater building long since converted into offices in Imperial City, so none there. We have mention of a theater showing a production of something called "Mimi", but I have no idea where it is.  Can't find it.

 

There are several of them. 

There is one in Atlas Park for example.

 

12 hours ago, MsSmart said:

1) Restaurants

 

They are all over the place. Read the signs on the buildings.

 

12 hours ago, MsSmart said:

2) Grocery Stores

 

Penelope Yin's father runs a Grocery Store in Faultline.

 

12 hours ago, MsSmart said:

3) Schools

 

Well, we have the various branches of Paragon University.

 

12 hours ago, MsSmart said:

4) Gas Stations

 

Isn't there one floating around up in the air somewhere between Pocket D and the Ski Chalet?

 

12 hours ago, MsSmart said:

5) Hotels

 

No hotels, but motels all over the place.

 

What I see missing from Paragon City:

1) Buses

2) Motorcycles

3) Ice Cream trucks

4) Street Food Vans

5) Traffic that stops at intersections

6) Animals (sure some players play humanoid animals and we can transform into a couple of type of animas). The only ones are really the birds in some areas of the Rouge Isles 

7) ...

[Darmian]

29 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

How not really?

Well yes, two, but they're technically the same building.  

 

29 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

There are several of them. 

There is one in Atlas Park for example.

 

There's none.  The only theater I can see mentioned is from a billboard in Echo Galaxy, the Morway.  And we don't know where that is.

 

 

No hotels?  The Geneva Hotel has branches all over the city.

 

 

Edited Thursday at 01:51 PM by Darmian

[JasperStone]

11 minutes ago, Darmian said:

There's none.  The only theater I can see mentioned is from a billboard in Echo Galaxy, the Morway.  And we don't know where that is.

The movie theater in Atlas is in the northern part of the city, east of the Steel Canyon gate

 

Midnite show is Rise of the Council:  The Broken Column.

Victoria Manuel stands outside. She is a brief NPC you engage with in an early mission.

[UltraAlt]

25 minutes ago, Darmian said:

There's none.  The only theater I can see mentioned is from a billboard in Echo Galaxy, the Morway.  And we don't know where that is.

 

dag it. i was going to call it now I have to go back in game and get a screenshot. brb.

 

 

 

oh, wait. I see are indicating just some kind of "stage-play" theater and not a "cinema"/movie theater. 

yeah, past time for me to go to sleep.

 

 

Edited Thursday at 02:08 PM by UltraAlt

[Darmian]

4 minutes ago, JasperStone said:

The movie theater in Atlas is in the northern part of the city, east of the Steel Canyon gate

 

Midnite show is Rise of the Council:  The Broken Column.

Victoria Manuel stands outside. She is a brief NPC you engage with in an early mission.

 

On 10/7/2025 at 4:50 PM, Darmian said:

Theaters.  Nope, not cinemas, theaters.

That's literally what I said above.  I made a point of differentiating. Cinema theaters are all over Paragon and elsewhere.  I was talking about actual theaters.

Edited Thursday at 01:57 PM by Darmian

[Darmian]

12 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

past time for me to go to sleep.

Sleep well!  See you later.

[Rudra]

4 hours ago, Darmian said:

And I'm pretty sure that the lone (again, not really) church in Praetoria is part of a State sponsored cult rather than say a "true" religious building.

For all we know, that building in First Ward was just where the groundskeeper lived before Hamidon and First Ward becoming an undesirables dumping ground.

[MsSmart]

Let me clarify....

 

I meant that these structures should be more common, not a sample instance somewhere...

[Oubliette_Red]

Regarding restaurants and pubs, I wish they were actual, enterable gathering places that used the AE building mechanics so you can observe the goings-on outside whilst eating/entertaining inside.

 

[CoeruleumBlue]

13 minutes ago, Oubliette_Red said:

Regarding restaurants and pubs, I wish they were actual, enterable gathering places that used the AE building mechanics so you can observe the goings-on outside whilst eating/entertaining inside.

 

 

I know lots of people use SG bases to make restaurants and pubs, but that would be nice too. I also tend to think we should have player housing that isn't just base building. I hope they add mechanics for all of that and just let us build the maps, and also let us have day job badges for some of them depending on what we designate them as. I was literally just building an island for psychic mostly-mutant characters in the Everlasting server based on that being sort of a repeatedly-used trope in various works of fiction, and there's a RATS City for escaped human-animal hybrids that someone else made, as well as Vice City which has multiple different maps all using SG bases that someone made seemingly solely so they could have enterable restaurants, gas stations, etc. just because they weren't in Paragon City but otherwise didn't have a particular theme. I think people will be more than happy to just fill out stuff for themselves and it isn't hard to do as long as there's some kind of mechanics there that lets us do it. As far as what I mentioned about day jobs badges, you can already get a day jobs badge just for being in the SG base so I would say allow different ones depending on what we designate areas as, since I don't think any of the day job badges are supposed to be super hard to earn anyway.