Anet Spoiler Policy on the Expansion is reaching the point of absurdity

[Flapjackson.1596]

The livestream today was the most drastic case yet of them refusing to show things off due to the risk of spoilers. I understand that some people do not want to have story content spoiled for them, but Anet has increasingly been hesitant to show off anything of substance and it has hamstrung their marketing of the expansion. They talk a lot about what we can do. What have they shown? What can we actually SEE?

 

Fishing, and some light map exploration, is all we have received so far. Considering the vast majority of consumers have not actually played GW1 Factions, selling the nostalgia of Cantha is a limited appeal at best. For most people, they want to know why we want to go to this region. What will we be doing, what will happen. Where will our investment into the gameplay pay off and what content is there to do. Anet's approach to this expansion has been to keep as much to the chest as possible, and it has made for an incredibly lackluster presentation. Today's showcase revealed nothing. Strikes get no more than a blog post. Map metas are a mystery. The masteries are still unclear. The idea that story spoilers are so prevalent in every inch of the expansion that they can't show off anything at all without ruining everything just isn't believable. Show us content. Show us things to do. Stop running around empty sections of a map with no UI or anything at all. 

[Mushin.6789]

Dude stop, what's the point of this thread.  They can do what they want, they don't even have to do any of these livestreams.  Yeah this week didn't show much, so what.  It's good that you're excited but you're just complaining to complain.  I'll go the opposite way and say I appreciate that they don't spoil anything. 

[Flapjackson.1596]

No week has shown much. They don't have to show anything but I question why the half measure on everything. Shing Jea, Echovald, now Jade Sea. The content exists but they seem hell-bent on not showing any of it. 

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

For Path of Fire all we got was a single livestream and then a beta that included one mount and only part of a map. Yet somehow players were very satisfied with this, and that's pretty much only because it came out shortly after LWS3 concluded, instead of the huge gaps we had before that (like between LWS2 and HoT).

 

What they're doing with EoD has been far, far better. And if they saved up everything and just announced it all at once shortly before release like PoF, would that somehow be more interesting?

 

Its like players who complain about Living World versus expansions when LW actually delivers more content on average across the entire season than the expansion delivers entirely, with expos only claim to fame being that they bring in Elite Specialisations and some new mechanic (gliding, mounts, etc.). The complaints aren't because its lacking, but the piecemeal delivery makes it seem lacking to them.

 

It seems like many players can't truly be satisfied unless they get a huge burst of content all at once.

 

My only complaint so far is that the ending of IBS was bad and didn't even have a teaser cinematic, and that while delivered many expansion-like features such as Legendary Armory, it didn't add new Elite Specs.

Edited November 20, 2021 by Hannelore.8153

[Chichimec.9364]

Personally, I don't mind spoilers myself. Heck, I wish someone had told me how GoT was going to end so I could have skipped that last miserable excuse of a season. Some folks feel very differently though and go out of their way to avoid spoilers. I respect that and didn't mind that the Anet talking heads were working so hard to avoid spoilers in this latest livestream. As for what have they shown, what can we see, in my opinion, we've seen a LOT already. That's what the profession betas were about. That's what the siege turtle video and the siege turtle article in PC Gamer were about. During the last beta, my main guild did a dungeon run where everyone brought a mechanist and their battle mech. It was great fun. In eleven days we get to run around on our siege turtles with whichever new elite specialization we like. Those aren't things we can see, they are things we can DO and I like that a lot better than someone just showing me something in a livestream.  🤖

[mythical.6315]

There’s still plenty of time for them to cover the rest of the expansion. I doubt this would be all there there is otherwise the expansion wouldn’t have any substance and just be abandoned a month after release. Just have a little patience. 

[Omega.6801]

I get what their reasoning is I guess. But it feels strange if their sell is "Oh we removed something really cool here, trust us, you'll love it, it's really cool but we can't show it now, just need to trust us LOL". It really doesn't help with the lack of hype I am experiencing. Sure, there could be cool stuff hidden and the map design looks fantastic, but this is also the company that brought us the Kourna or Bitterfrost maps, where nothing cool was hidden, just empty unfinished space.

Edited November 20, 2021 by lokh.2695

[vanfrano.1325]

I'm fine not knowing much, I would be fine with only one trailer and waiting until release too but I guess the time where one trailer was enough is long gone.

[Dami.5046]

I don't see the issue, I want to have things to find out about. I think they are spoiling enough showing what the maps look like. And besides, you get to see some of the events during the trailers. 

I love exploring 🤷‍♂️

[Gorani.7205]

What I took from the "we hide everything stream" was, that The Jade Sea map is closer to Vabbi in PoF than it is to Dragon Stand in HoT. The later being a completely meta-driven map that is no stand alone map to play on.

I agree, that opening up with "here is an empty map we will show you, because we have disabled EVERYTHING" isn't a great marketing stunt, but I did not care too much, as I follow all "map reveal" streams only via audio to start fresh when EoD comes out.