Is this entire expansion a bait-and-switch?

[Atoli]

Supposedly Doma was "destroyed" as a result but the city looks intact to me so /shrug.

We have yet to see the city of Doma. What we saw in the trailer and gameplay footage during the keynote was Kugane, a port town on a chain of islands off the coast of Doma.
Basically, they are as far apart as Vylbrand with Limsa and, say, Gridania. Gridania can totally get destroyed and Limsa will still be completely fine, so Doma could be in pretty much any state and it would not affect Kugane

[myahele]

It makes sense that there's still Doman survivors living on the outskirts of the ruined city-state.

Yanxia is the region and Doma is the city, so while Doma is destroyed, the Yanxia region should be fine. There's probably other small hamlets/ villages in Yanxia that the survivors escaped to.

They did show "Doma" in the keynote. Or they at least showed a slide of a city that had Doma written on it. Regardless, I'm stoked that we're going to Othard.

Assuming that this is Doma, it looks like the Empire placed barriers around it. Maybe they turned it into a labor camp of sorts?

[Naria]

I seem to recall that they did show a screen of Doma in addition to Kugane, but I'll have to go back through the keynote when I've had more caffeine.

[RaijinSupreme]

Then you end up disappointed by your own expectations. Nobody to blame but yourself. Sorry if you WANT to be disappointed then you can be.

This is exactly where most people's dissapointment stems from. They let their hype run their imagination wild, to the point they are already creating scenarios that they expect to see when the content releases, and it will be almost impossible to please them once the content isn't what they were expecting.

Its ok to be hype, its ok to speculate, and its ok to make predictions. But don't develop the entire game in your head, cause its a terribly high chance it won't turn out that way.

[Rokke]

They did show "Doma" in the keynote. Or they at least showed a slide of a city that had Doma written on it. Regardless, I'm stoked that we're going to Othard.

[Fatestorm]

This is exactly where most people's dissapointment stems from. They let their hype run their imagination wild, to the point they are already creating scenarios that they expect to see when the content releases, and it will be almost impossible to please them once the content isn't what they were expecting.

Its ok to be hype, its ok to speculate, and its ok to make predictions. But don't develop the entire game in your head, cause its a terribly high chance it won't turn out that way.

I get that overhype means you're set up to be disappointed. But look. When No Man's Sky was released, everyone was disappointed. Yes, part of why they are disappointed is because they overhyped how good it would be for themselves. But at the same time, the developers did nothing to check the hype (because it works to their advantage for sales), and in fact, advertised features to some degree that didn't end up being put there.


I'm absolutely not saying this game is NMS. But what I am saying is--if this expansion drops, and Ala Mhigo doesn't feature LARGELY in it (I don't require exclusively, but I do require it be a large portion), then no, that's not my "hype," that's them advertising something and then not delivering on it.

[Greedalox]

that's them advertising something and then not delivering on it.

But they just advertised something beyond Ala Mhigo, so if they don't do a good portion of it in the newly announced area, isn't them that advertising something and not delivering on it? The xpac's not out yet, it's not like they only advertised ONLY Ala Mhigo then launched the game and then showed the newly announced region after the fact- this was ALL done before the Xpacs launch so you can't really call it lack of delivery.

[Fatestorm]

As far as zones, these are the named zones I know of so far:

Ala Mhigo:
Rhalgr's Reach

Othard:
The Ruby Sea
Yanxia
The Azim Steppe
Kugane (City)
Shirugane (Housing)

If anyone has more zones to correct me on, I'll be happy to throw them up on the list.

[Omegakiyohime]

Yoshi said about 50% of 4.0 would occur in Ala Mhigo. So I doubt it will be lacking.

[RaijinSupreme]

snip

Ah ok. This is where the problem is originating from. You believe that Yoshi-P and the development team advertised that Ala Mhigo was going to be sole area that the entire Stormblood expansion was going to be based in, so you're disappointed that its now also including Othard in a large capacity.

But see here's the thing. It was never advertised by the development team that this was going to be solely the Ala Mhigo expansion. Literally, the only thing that they ever said about Ala Mhigo is that we were going there to liberate it from Garlean occupation. They showed us an area in Ala Mhigo that we will be going to, and a couple of characters that we may be interacting with while we are there.

It was never said that Ala Mhigo was going to be entirety of the expansion. If anyone believed that it was only because of their own speculations as to how they believed the expac would play out. In fact (and i will try to fact check this) I remember yoshi-p saying that the expansion was going to be about 50% of Ala Mhigo.

The difference between this is & No Man's Sky is that Sean Murray announced a ton, and I mean a literal TON, of content and features that were going to be in the game that were not there. The hype that consumers gained for No Man's Sky was largely because of the lies Sean told about his game, and all of those lies were uncovered once the game came out.

But there were no lies told about this game. In fact, the way the 3.1-3.5 patches and all of the announcements that were made about the game is following the same path that Heavensward took with 2.1-2.55 and the fan festival announcements. The first thing that we found out was that we were going to Ishgard, and we were showed the Foundation (Ala Mhigo, Ralgr's Reach). The patches told us why we were going, and led all the way up to us being on our way. Later, through the rest of the fan festival keynotes and the following live letters, we were shown only ONE other area in Ishgard, and every other area we got were in other places like Dravania and Abalathia's Spine (Othard). These patches now are leading us to Ala Mhigo and is telling us why we are going. But it is not being implied in anyway that we will only be in the Gyr Abania area, which is a very small area btw. We would not be able to have any new multiple large zones like we got in Heavensward if the only place the expansion took place was in Gyr Abania.

I can see if throughout the entire advertisement campaign that Yoshi-P only talked about Ala Mhigo, and never mentioned any other place, but then the expansion came out is when we found out about Othard. THAT would definitely be considered a bait-&-switch. But that didn't happen. We know about it.

TLDR,
yoshi-p never advertised ala mhigo to be the sole area of 4.0. It wouldn't even be fun if that was the case considering Gyr Abania is so small anyway. If there was any thought that ala mhigo was the only place we were going, its because the community claimed it to be.