CoH: Villains in the Shard

Okay, technical problem solving time.

Over in the thread I linked earlier I made the suggestion that the Developers open up the Shadow Shard, a level 40-50 zone, to the Villains, in order to give Villains access to the Shadow Shard Task Forces. One of the responses back on the idea stated that the developers would have to solve the mixed teams issue before Shadow Shard could be opened up.

Well, here's my solution:

Interestingly... I thought about that after I went to sleep... but I think there is a way to handle the "run arounds" from the Shard TF's without major modifications to the game's system... and it's actually already implemented in RWZ.

In some of the RWZ missions Hero players have to go Villainside, such as going to PTS or WSPDR, and Villains have to check out hero zones like the Dam : http://www.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Serpent_Drummer : http://www.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Dark_Watcher

In order to achieve these objectives players must take a portal corp gateway inside of RWZ.

The first modification is to move the Portal for the Shadow Shard from Portal Corp's Control to Vanguard Control.

Redraw the PI Map with the hallway to Shadow Shard heavily blocked off and sealed by Huge Metal Gates. This leaves the other Portals unchanged for existing missions, such as those given by Maria Jenkins, Tina, and so on.

Create a new Shadow Shard Portal Room with Vanguard Tech's and 4 new small portals.

Link two of the portals to the existing Vanguard DPO buildings in the same way that Trains are linked, and that the exit maps from RWZ are linked with the option : Portal Corp HQ

Now the Vanguard DPO will take players to basically a holding tank for the Shadow Shard Portal. As far as the story goes, players are still under PI in one of the most heavily guarded portals ever constructed.

Now here comes the part the developers are going to hate. I've accounted for two of the small portals I've suggested adding to the room, the entry and exit portals for heros and villains.

The other two portals are "mission" portals, that take players directly to the mission.

As evidenced by WarWitch's work on the Hollows, moving mission doors around doesn't appear to be too terribly complicated.

Simply move all of the none Shadow Shard Zone missions to the new portals in the Portal Corps Holding Tank.

Presto : problem solved. Villains get access to Shadow Shard, the travel time problems are cut way down, and Gaussian is settled down now that Vanguard has some say in the Shadow Shard Portal.