All Things Art: Building Edition

I'd like to see Galaxy City turned into a futuristic shopping district with a huge mall and fancy bar and grills. Something kind of half sub-urban, as most US Cities have a belt of suburbia around them, could exist on the other end of the zone away from the mall. It would provide a nice contrast to Atlas. It might be cool to place enhancement vendors of all types and levels in the various stores in the mall. This way people would have a reason to go to Galaxy other than for Respecs and some missions. Maybe place an ICON in there for those lowbies who messed up on an element of their costume and don't want to try and make it to the one in Steel to fix the error. You could have a store in the mall that would access the NCSoft Store to buy booster packs or something too.

Tons of things you could do with a mall.

I'd like a mall as well, actually.

Galaxy seems like the perfect place for one. I'd make it kind of like a "Shopping district". Like So:

• Stores for Every Origin, catering to every level. (It's a QoL thing.)
• A few Pharmacies and Restaurants that sell Insps (I realize Galaxy has the Arena, and the AE... but Insp Vendors are nice!)
• RP Zones, like coffee shops and the food court.
• Missions that take place inside the mall.
• A Pocket D Entrance, for the lowbies.
• A Tailor (Lowbies can use the RWZ Portal, but Galaxy doesn't have one currently.)
• A Wentworths.
• Merit Vendors
• And if you could incorporate the zones AE into it, that would make it all the cooler.

I'm not sure that religious buildings would be an issue unless it actually displayed symbols of its denomination.

But adding anonymous buildings, here and there, with 'grand' architecture and stain-glassed windows; maybe even some statuettes with indistinguishable features could be made to satisfy the need for religious buildings outside of those already used by the CoT.

War Walls = I dislike. Makes the game world feel incredibly small, like I'm playing in a shoe box.

My favorite ambiance for places like Steel Canyon is during Rikti invasions, with the war walls down it makes the city feel huge, like a real city should feel.

Perhaps there is a solution that pleases both continuity and players.
Can we say that the war wall tech has been updated and have war walls similar to how the rogue isles have?

I.E. the walls become visible only when you get really close to them, that way while you are heroing about the city can feel bigger. Also you can reduce the concrete part of the wall as leaving that how it is defeats the purpose of removing the "playing in a shoe box" feel that the game has in many zones.

EDIT:
Oh and how about maybe not have all of the trams look identical. Give each tram some flavor from the zone they are in.

I had a huge post but dumped it condensed it to this:

Faultline is awesome. It feels like an interactive city, ith buildings and structures I can enter without having to zone (the dam, the elevators, the Arachnos tunnels), cool set pieces (the apartments, the doughnut shop) and a very unique flavor.

I'd like to see more buildings I can go inside of, more unique, zone specific structures (like maybe some huge video screens or some such in Steel, to make it feel like a big, bustling consumer/business part of the city, or some nifty walk-in bars/cafes that cater to heroes and sell insp or something.

At the very least, static, unique structures that are unique to one zone and one zone only, and done in a more organic, natural way like faultline, instead of the pre-existing Skyway/Steel/etc where it just feels like I'm flying in-between huge blocks.

Probably a selfish request, but I'd like to see a school in Atlas park near the Skyway gate. The reasons are RP related, hence why I'd like one there since there's a set of buildings I've designated as my character's school right around there.

Also, more building variety. Even if it's just some slight changes in colors, like making some of the brown brick buildings in Kings Row into red brick buildings, it'd make a big difference.

I also find the scales of the game a problem. There are often buildings narrower than the streets which surround them. How can they put rooms in buildings so small?

Independence Port is another example of scales gone odd. It's 1.2 miles long, one of the largest maps hero-side. Yet, a 40mph fly takes forever to fly down it. And, for all that, it's effectively empty.

Being able to build bases that looked like they were in buildings would be cool. I know the whole "underground" thing tries to explain it, but it's a bummer.

I also want to see the older zones - Atlas and Galaxy, especially - touched up some. We don't need more places to go, just make our existing places better.

Like many, I don't like the copy pasted buildings. However, I wouldn't really mind if each zone had its own copy pasted buildings. This is one of the reasons I much prefer redside. If I log in a character and can't remember where I left it, I can see right away that I'm in Grandville or Mercy Island without looking at the map. There is still more similarity than I would like, but it's much better than blueside. Most of the zones in Paragon City all look the same to me. I would much prefer if each zone had its own flavour. I don't expect every zone to be as awesome as Croatoa, but when I think of a zone, I want to immediately think of the unique style associated with it.

I would also love if there were more iconic structures. Just as Paris has the Eiffel Tower and London has Big Ben. Cap Au Diable has that awesome huge atom (I remember that I gasped with joy when I first saw it) that is iconic of Cap Au Diable. Slightly less so is the clock tower in Mercy and the huge Lord Recluse statue in Grandville. I would love it if more of the zones had some kind of iconic thing to associate with that zone.

Street Signs!

You know, with like the street names on 'em?

Ok, not a building suggestions exactly but it does tie in to the creating distinct neighborhoods andimmersion themes.

Most areas would probably have normal, basic street signs but others could have some with a bit of flair on them. In my city we have an historic district with a circled A in front of all the names to signify this (it's the Allentown District) or the Old First Ward which used to be THE Irish district - it now have dual street signs, the extra with the Gaelic version of the actual name... (which is weird since some of those streets have distinctly NON Irish names!)

Plus, you could always have fun with the naming of the streets: In game references, in jokes amongst the dev's, whatever...

RP'ers would probably learn to love it. They might be annoyed if they had named a certain street something already but that's what retcon is for and one can always just claim City Hall changed the name to honor someone or such... Besides, would be very cool to be able to tell someone to meet you at the corner of Statesman blvd and Nakayama Way...