Original lore on the Mercantile Guild, in the Faction spotlight boards of old, there's mention of 'Fleets of airships to rise above the filth and pestilence of the city streets'. If we were to take that literally, one wouldn't be wrong in assuming that the Merchants have a city basically above the city. Airship-borne houses and manors that could very well be airborn Versaille's.
So the idea is to address past desires for a more vertically focused map, with cover that, instead of being attached to the ground, more so floats as a static object. The ground is still there, of course, but a higher ceiling for the map allows for these floating bits of cover to give a new experience to the play.
For example, let's say there are 4-5 floating manors above the city below. Combat wouldn't oly focus on narrow corridors that enemies may be able to slip through, or on long-range snipes on relatively open maps, but more so on control of the islands that you can take for snipes, and darting in between, under, over, and around these cover points to take snipers by surprise.
An example would be, say, a Spire hiding behind one of these islands, with a Pyra running defence for any flankers. On an average map where cover extends to the ground, this would mean flankers would be able to go low and have to try and sneak below the Pyra, right under the guns and hope it isn't spotted. On a map with static, air-borne cover, the flanker may be able to simply fly under the cover piece and pop back up behind both ships. Some cover bits on most maps offer something similar from above, but the potential is there to make a very interesting combat scenario.
Visuals would also be rather interesting, the beauty of the flying manors points compared with the heavily industrial and slum-like city below, should enough work be put into both.
Tl;dr: Verticle focused map with floating manors acting as cover, with the ability to flank above and below, and control of these flying 'islands' being key to victory.
Anyways, a theory for something that I've seen requested a time or two for a verticle map. And it would allow us to see something in the south, as I believe very few maps are based there.
