Well, it's probably gonna have three mostly connected islands in the middle of an ocean, with some vague differentiation of locale (downtown, residential/suburbs, industrial).. and you'll fight three gangs who are based in those areas each. They seem to like that formula, and to be fair it works.
As for WHERE it is, that's not so important. I preferred Stillwater to Steelport because it felt.. bigger. More involved, more to it. Not sure why, but that's my impression. Doesn't mean I want a return to Stillwater over any other new locale, it just means I want them to get that feel again wherever it is.
Question then is what to go for the Saints, except the same "Oh some gang comes and takes over your stuff and you have to rebuild your empire". What'd be interesting would be say break the mold with TWO areas. Stillwater or Steelport.. AND the new area. You can do stuff in both, but the missions are more of the new one, and it's sort of a combatitive resource war mixed with combat. Where you'd run missions in their 'town' to take some of their area and gain control and resources, or do ones in your own to improve your own, and they'd do attacks so you'd have to stop them too, and those would come to specific 'story missions' that would lead to the story and actual major changes. Kind of like the whole respect-threshold system from before but in a more tangible form (you can do skydiving for 'xp' levels like in 3, but can also do say a stronghold assault for territory and money and add "control" which lets you get the next big mission like in 2)
Just my thoughts. In other words.. both and none of the above.
Sadly that's probably way more work than would be done, and while they'd find it fun too, that's the sort of thing that they look at at the start of development and say "Ah, too ambitious, sorry, stick to the one localle so the map designers don't strangle you in your sleep"
