I have mixed feelings about all of this. I agree there is an issue, and that is that players build gleam towers or they bury a bunch of high value blocks and chisel them all to get high prestige. If you lower the prestige for gleam, people will just resort to the second option. I don’t think there’s a real solution to this honestly.
As for variation of blocks used, I like to build black buildings. Right now, I have 2 choices for black; stone and brick. All of the refined and decorative black blocks don’t look black at all. Most of my main build is black stone.
I think I have one of the nicest builds on Seginiaki (I know we all think ours is great though) but I have a pretty low prestige rank, probably because I use so many of the same block. I don’t think I should be punished for wanting my build to keep a consistent color theme.
My base reference: