lol, I love the idea of picking up the inspirations, boosts, or whatever at a vending machine. That's a crazy cool idea. I always wanted more little modern stuff like that. Maybe a fast food resturant chain I would see in each zone too. Either it's just for show and I can buy a "meal" there, that's just a little boost
Fake of course, unless you wanted to leave room to change the signs later for product placement. OH, speaking of which, let me throw this in there.
C. I don't mind product placement at all, IF IT'S DONE RIGHT. Don't just throw up a Nike shoe on a billboard and call it a day, make it feel super. More importantly, don't advertise to me, be clever. I miss the old days of advertisement where they researched the product, the audience, and created something clever for them that would be appealing. You only really see work like that in old episodes of Bewitched....and that was fake. The point? Do not advertise Gaderaid to ME, I am not here and I don't want to be called to. My character is here, advertise to him. Or better yet, to the Citizens.
"You may not have powers, but with Gaderaid you'll feel super." Something like that, or bother to use models or themes from the game itself. If you go about it like you're trying to sell it to the game WORLD instead of the player, it becomes infinitely more interesting, palatable, and clever things stick with you longer and you'll find yourself liking the product, the producer, and telling everyone you talk to about it, instead of just giving negative feedback about it to your gaming friends. If this is too hard for the company to do, I (as the game making company) might ask whenever this came up for the art department (or someone on staff) to take whatever the ad is and make it fit the world, see if they like it, explain why the change, and really I would have made this sort of thing a requirement in the contract from the get go. Either it fits our world or never mind.
I agree the CoH style of Hospital rezzing was a pain as if you died on an instanced mission you went through 2/3 loading screens:
1) Res in the Hospital
2) Exit hospital and load the 'zone'
3) Get to mission door and load the mission
If there was an outdoor "sick bay" you only had 2 loading screens. And I think this is the best way forward. All "res points" are not inside a building (unless a specific mission has it in the story). I res at the front door and there is a "pharmacy" or vending machine for Insps that I click on.