Regarding the asthetic variation of Nodes.

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Yes. Pure first past the post.

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(ref: Racial influence on nodes )

Statistically, there will be variation in the density of individual races within even a uniform population across the world. There will probably even be a couple player efforts to get less represented races to all focus on a single server to boost its chances. It's reasonable to assume that some aesthetics will not be seen on a given server, but far less reasonable to assume they will not be seen on any server. Similarly, it's guaranteed that you will not see a metropolis from all races on your server, but you may get a reasonable spread of level 3 nodes, etc.

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You can also check out the wiki for various concept art for each race's building style.

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I don't feel like this is a terribly significant concern. There will ideally be plenty of servers, and the nodes won't grow up the same on each. Even if this does end up being the case, art is where Intrepid Studios is furthest ahead right now, and you'd honestly be surprised how quickly a good artist with a proper setup and tools can turn out something like a building, particularly with judicious reuse of components.

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This is a concern that many people share. Despite archetypal self-selection where players gravitate to areas with the architecture style they prefer, and in doing so will tend to bias the area's influence toward the races that they prefer (which theoretically should line up more often than not, at least), it's possible that a large bias toward Kaelar characters on a server as a whole will be represented somewhat 'unfairly' in world architecture. I don't know how they intend to solve this. I think that they do not, and that they intend archetypal self-selection or specific, focused player-driven efforts to handle the issue, which one could reasonably describe as "not actually technically a problem in the first place".

There have been suggestions that players be able to set their architectural racial influence separately from their character race (or even if you don't want Empyrians providing Vek influence, simply be able to set it to "I don't affect the race of nodes I contribute to") which would allow players a bit more freedom to influence nodes the way they prefer, or at least not influence them against their own preference, but Intrepid hasn't acknowledged any of these as yet.

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(ref: Racial influence on nodes )

They seem to intend (though I don't know how strongly) to design cultural influence types such that they'd work reasonably in any biome, or maybe have biome-related variants of some. We'll see how that goes, but while I somewhat share your feeling about materials (since I'm picky about wood types, as a woodworker), it wouldn't be too strange to have a general architectural design like this Nikuan style in a snowy mountain settlement (particularly if you just 'add doors'):

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It does seem like something that could take quite a bit work, but they appear to be aiming for the simplest form of it, in all cases,

- No racial blending based on contribution: Everything's from one race.
- No racial blending based on prior stages: Everything is from the latest main race.
- Nodes affect their terrain, rather than are affected by it for the most part: No need to adapt layouts to terrain differences for the most part. (Some allowance may be made for things like "mountainside" it seems.)
- Not designing racial architecture such that it would be out of place
- Designing all architecture so that it can reasonably fit in any climate, with minimal changes (perhaps 'adding glass to the windows').

so it probably won't be terribly unmanageable.

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I didn't notice that one, and I'm glad they've promised it. Thanks!