LET'S MAKE THE CITIES MATTER AGAIN

So recently, I've been thinking, we have these gorgeous cities with so much personality and longevity to them, why don't we give them a second wind!

With the recent implementation of episodic content, this would be a perfect time for something like this. When I was flying around Metropolis recently, I found that there was a police station, totally unused in the middle of downtown. That got me thinking "Is there something like this in gotham?" Turns out there is!

Metro Unused police station:



Gotham Unused police station:



Now I have an idea or two on how we can use these, however, they don't have to be used in this way, this is just the best I could come up with in the middle of the night.

Use of the police stations:
They would be opened up as "SWAT bases", or "Science Police Stations" or something similar. Police stations are good, but with the threats these cities face, we need something with a little more firepower. They would be similar to the police stations, however there would be a little more industrial in design and rough around the edges. I can't imagine special forces are to concerned with interior design
The villain's equivalent would be an Arms house (Black market, etc.), filled out with lots of mercenaries, gang members, and the like, buying and selling weapons. Going away from the nightclub theme for the more... aggressive and industrious villains. They would be functionally the same as the hero version of the new safe houses.
I found several buildings that could suit this purpose, however since there aren't as many criteria to meet, almost any building will do. One of the more promising is this building located in south Gotham:



These stations would be the starting point for an open world(ish) instance. I have two ideas for these instances, a duo version and a alert version. I think these could be scaled up for a raid or operation, but I think the smaller format works better, you be the judge.

DUO:
The player, is teamed up with one other hero (or villain obviously depending on faction) and two exobyte empowered (science) police officers. The two players would be responsible for a stealth operation on the opposite faction's new station (police station for hero's, black market for villains.).

I'm going to focus on the hero perspective from here on, just to simplify things. In this example, the heroes would be attacking the new villain's safe house, (see above)

The heroes would be responsible for taking out two exobyte snipers at the top of the two roofs without raising an alarm. The idea here is that players would have to kill these two mini bosses at the same time (within 10 seconds of each other) without using any powers, and using exclusively weapon attacks.
Once this has been completed the players will have to provide a distraction down in the central courtyard, while their NPC allies go in through the roofs, if you aren't doing enough damage, or distracting the gang members enough, they will discover your allies above and kill them. (should they die, this results in the duo starting from the last checkpoint, being the killing of the snipers)
The heroes will then navigate through the building (only one, randomly chosen) from the top working their way towards the middle, where the final boss is waiting. "Knocking out" any gang members that stand in your way.

The final boss is barricaded inside his office, getting in will be hard, as the players have to protect their NPC's as they lock pick the door. Every time they are hit, their concentration is broken, and the time required restarts.
Once in the final room, the final boss is a fairly straight forward boss fight, simply a damage sponge, with again the responsibility of making sure your allies stay alive throughout the whole fight.

ALERT:
(See above for specifics, this only servers as a clarifications of the differences needed to make the duo an alert.)

The alert version (both would not be made, either one or the other, depending on what you guys like more.) would have four players accompanied by 4 exobyte officers (mercenaries, SWAT members, whatever) to help. In the parts of the duo where you are protecting the two NPC's it would work the same, only now you have the help of the other two guarding them as well. (these NPCs must also be protected throughout the entire instance)
So pretty much, it's exactly the same otherwise, only now, the boss battle is different. Your allies are immediatly captured, now, one player must distract the boss, and the other must activate the NPC's various cages to keep them alive as bombs continually attempt to kil- knock them out.

I know the alert version is weak, but bear with me here, not my best moment. I did think the duo held it's own though.
Additionally (I only thought about this as I was writing it) If a villain duo is at the same point as the hero duo on the same server, at the same time, the final boss would be a PvP match. The winners would get an extra mark of valor each, just as the losers would each lose one mark. PvP gear would still be disabled as this is normally, a PvE instance.

I cannot stress enough that I do not expect anything to come out of my instance idea. However, with episodic content coming in, this would be a brilliant time to include another safe house into these fabulous cities we have spent so much time in. It would give players a reason to spend time in them again, being able to see heroes and villains streak the skies once more.

I apologize for my excessive use of parenthesis. I found it easier using those, rather than writing an extra sentence where I might use a simple inclusion with parenthesis.

I can't help but wonder if there have been similar threads and ideas before, and if so, I fear I've missed them
But even so, let me know what you all think, any changes you'd make, or even ideas of your own to make use of these abandoned safe houses!

Thanks for reading,
Hemmy

Didn't read the OP, but I'm for anything that makes these cities relevant again in end game content.

I am open to any new open world content the current consoles will allow.

There is also the unused police station in Gotham a few blocks from the Knightsdome. The Ace O' Clubs nightclub in Metropolis Suicide Slums could also stand to have some more action.

The biggest unused open world area in the game, I believe, is the CAO Dam complex in Metropolis. Simply huge and quite deserted.

I wholeheartedly agree. That would be an excellent area of the map to utilize!

You know the flock mission in Af1, we can have our own machine gun etc.

Was hoping the Devs would make a Dlc of the forgotten (aka the people that weren't saved during the Brainiac invasion) The Dlc would be the new generation of heroes/villains that were never saved and eventually escaped on their own and now seek to kill everybody who was saved as revenge. The places you mentioned would be ideal spots for missions especially since those areas are kinda forgotten by most players ( me included)

Ace O' Clubs and the unused police stations could be used as base entrances. That'd be pretty cool. Even on the villain side. I'd totally buy a base at a police station and pretend I took over it in a siege or something.

Don't forget the beach area around the water treatment plant and dam in Metro. Would make an awesome spot for an open world Atlantean Operation.

Also half of South Gotham is quite and would make for a final Brainiac showdown DLC.

I totaly agree they should add more EXO buahahaha

They will never make the cities relevant again. That is the point of the operations. It is what it is.

No new cities, and all you ever get is over thought out operations. I miss the open world as well.

But they do not have the development team to do what people want.

This is just INCORRECT. The DEVS have never stated that there will never be open world content again. In fact it is quite the OPPOSITE of that. IMHO i belive they are waiting to PHASE out the PS3 before taking on any new open world content. They have stated the FACT the PS3 has limitations from moving forward on open world as there is TOO much PROCESSING of CODE when ACTIONS start to rise in certain AREAS or SITUATIONS ( like fighting large groups in the open world and powers and such animations ).

BOTTOM LINE: They are not willing to drop PS3 soon as they are still a BIG part of the PAYING COMMUNITY to let go of yet, BUT as the new content keeps coming the closer they will get to having to let go. At that time we may see things like OPEN WORLD content again as there are many ideas floating around the forums as is. I myself is hoping that the OPERATIONS will be brought back to the open world like they were when the content first dropped. AHHHH those were the DAYS ( even with the constant freezes this was FUN times in the OPEN WORLD ).

Until we get off the PS3. We will continue to have limited to no open world content. Consider the seasonals the best your gonna get when it comes to open world content.

Right now its just too much of a hassle to try to fix all the rendering issues and loading issues for PS3 players. So they will just hit us with instance after instance.

They can't add more stuff tot he cities.

They pretty much reached the limit to what they can have in them.

Which is why they made alternate versions of Gotham and Metropolis.

Wish they had removed the bottles in those alternate version....but that too was not an option apparently.

Which is another thing..... they lack the ressources...... man power..... heck even knowlhow to be able to do all that would need to be done.

I don't think this is entirely true. The cities clearly haven't reached the limit of what can be put into them, there's no restriction on memory, as these buildings exist now, but are covered by Brainiac bottles. It was my understanding that they made alternate versions of the cities for several reasons, the foremost in my mind being;
1) They needed a different tone for the content they had envisioned than the cities could give, but their maps and resources were still invaluable, and so they simply revamped the maps slightly, and separated those versions.
2) It wouldn't do to have an area the size of Metro battlezone be totally inaccessible to lower level/ tiered players. The difficulty of enemies in these areas would make almost any player below t4 instantly die.

The developers clearly do not lack the resources to do this, as they've been creating entirely new maps for the last several years, recent episodic content included. The area of New Genesis, while beautiful, was more resource intensive than the city revamp I'm suggesting. The same goes for the flash duo, that one instance has just as much work put into it as would be needed for my entire suggestion.

As for the idea the devs may lack know how. Not true. Have you seen what they've done with this game in terms of creating content, new areas, powers, instances, progression paths, styles, etc? They most certainly have the "know how" to get this done, they only have to much on their plate to focus on what one or a few players might want.

Yes the buildings already exists........ but adding new quests/NPCs to the open world almost break the game whenever they do it.

The best example has to be the summer seasonal.

The summer of OC.... the game was unplayable on PS3 in the open world thanks to the seasonal.

Heck last year... it was not as bad..... but still it was bad.

Luckily this year... I was on PS4... so no issues.

As for ressources...... yes they are limited in those areas.

Why do you think they put the new UI on hold???

They had to take whatever ressources they had on the new UI and allocate them elsewhere.

Yes they made New Genesis and the Flash Museum maps.... because they made the choice to allocate ressources on such map.

Sure they probably could have ressources working on trying to improve the open world...... but that would mean taking away ressources from making new missions and making new maps for those missions.

Would you want them to stop doing new missions for 6+ months so they can try to fix the Open World???

As for the Know How........ do you remember the Valentine Seasonal and how there was a new Race for that seasonal???

The race was coming VERY close one of the spawn point of the EVIL Villains....... so they would pretty much grief Hero players as they were doing the race.

We were pretty much told that they lacked the knowhow to fix the race so that it would not pass so close to the Villain spawn point. So they came up with other solutions to fix the issue.

We had been told as much as well when they changed the park in Gotham with all the flying debris.
There used to be a race there...... but the race was removed when they changed the park

There was a change in the Dev team at some point.
There are thing that the current Devs team either cannot do or do not have the ressources to do that the Original Team could.

Not blaming the Devs.... I know too much how it is.
Try doing a project when you are told you would get a certain budget..... and then as you start.... WHAM!!!...... you are told that you only have 50% of the Budget you used to have.

Decisions have to be made when that happens.

The Devs do have a limited amount of ressources..... and decisions need to be made in allocating those ressources.

Do you allocate those ressources to make a new UI??? to make new Missions with new maps??? new powers??? or do you try to fix the Open World or add to it???

U decide.

It's too early for all that, so I didn't read your post yet. But, I hit like immediately based on the title

[ I think your enter key is broken...]

I don't really think you've understood what my intention was, that or I've communicated it poorly somewhere, either way:
The addition to the open world would simply be another two safehouses. One for each faction, it's not a whole lot considering everything we already have. The instance itself would work similarly to how intergang: crimewave, the black dawn works. It would be an instance (totally removed from the rest of the player base) which happens to take place in the southern part of gotham.
This would take a place in the next episode of content, which if past episodes are any indication, means they would have to spend LESS time and resources, not more. The amount of work required for a regular duo (Assuming new environment, character models, etc) is far more than simply adding another zone (of which the maps already exist in the form of our existing safe houses) or two into the already existing cities.
What I'm proposing is in no way a fix it's simply another instance and two new safehouses. Nothing more. There would be no more memory required of the playstation 3 than it already utilizes for any safehouse entry, and then for the instance, no more than is used in intergang crimewave. Most likely less in fact.

I'm sorry if I didn't communicate that the first go around, my bad. But I hold by the opinion that this is totally feasible and completely within the limits of the PS3. Additionally, that it would take even less time for the devs to do this, than it would to create a normal duo (something like flash museum with the new map, assets, etc. which would not be needed) from scratch.

Didn't read the OP, but the only thing I would want to use the physical spaces of the cities for is for instanced content, not true open world stuff.

Having noticed a few just now, sorry about any grammar or spelling mistakes that appear in the OP, that was done fairly late into the night

Think of it like this...

If a scale goes up to 20lbs and has 18lbs weight sitting on it, then you keep adding 0.5lbs in small disc shaped weights to the scale, you're going to overload the scales after your 4th tiny disc. The same applies to DCUO but instead of scales, it's the PS3's hardware and instead of weights, it's visuals and effects, including audio.

The current cities we have have been optimised for PS3 usage. Anything more is going to cripple the PS3's hardware and make it unplayable for that section of the player base. You can't add much more to them without breaking the game for the PS3. Heck, too much and the PS4 will suffer, too. My PS4 has yelped before when Mepps has been spawning things or if there's a huge war in the PVP phase.

As for the reason why they use the same city with different tones, it's probably a lot simpler than that: Money. The cost and time to build a vibrant city which feels entirely different from Metropolis/Gotham will be astronomical. Look at all the assets which the miniature Central City map has to make it feel like Central City (Jitters, Flash museum, Flash memrobilia, new sky scrapers etc.) They all have to be built and it all costs a lot of money.

As for New Genesis and Flash Museum Duo, they're all tiny instances. The maps are not open or expansive, they're all contained within small boxes. Even New Genesis which appears to be open and expansive is nothing more than tunnels with no texture on the roof and a skybox to give the impression of open space. They can afford for these areas to feature more detailed textures and props because the overall maps are much smaller.

Basically, PS3 is an issue for expanding existing maps. They could produce new maps of equal size to Gotham or Metropolis as long as they didn't contain too many buildings/textures/props, but the sheers costs involved to build a brand new open world map would far outweigh any benefit they'd bring to the game and that's the more likely reason why we don't see them.