CoH: Signature Story Arc Spoiler Alert (no spoilers)

A wag of my finger to Paragon’s official Twitterer (and their Google Plus person, to a somewhat lesser extent). Today was the opening day for the fifth installment of the “WHO WILL DIE?” signature story arc in City of Heroes … and there’s @CityOfHeroes twittering away about how you should click the link to see the storytelling decisions behind [REDACTED]’s death, or go over to Massively for their reaction to the Death of [REDACTED]. Ditto, pretty much, for the +CityOfHeroes Google Plus chatterer.

WTF, fellas?

I mean … really? Spoilers of that sort, of a story so profound and reaching that it was considered a signature story arc and advertised constantly and promises to have dire consequences?

Sure, I’ll play the story multiple times, but I would have liked to have been surprised at least once.

Bad show. Really bad show.

(If you want to read some similar, “WTF, spoilers?!” reactions, with spoilers, check the forums.)

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I linked to this item on Google Plus (https://plus.google.com/u/0/101083456815352083930/posts/eRvn4QUm1AG). Paragon’s response:

Hey there Dave! I totally understand your sentiment, however we actually revealed a couple of weeks ago that Statesman was going to shuffle off into the great hereafter. (http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/news_archive/death_of_statesman.php for reference). We decided to reveal his death in advance as a story telling mechanism, much in the way other famous Comic Book characters have done. I definitely apologize if you disagreed with our creative choice, however this information had been available for awhile now. Plus, there’s still plenty more to come with two more chapters in SSA 1, so be sure to stay tuned!

To which I replied:

So apparently I missed a news bulletin.

Judging from reaction on the forums, I’m not the only one by far.

While it’s very keen that you folks make use of so many media — blogs and forums and news stories and event notifications and Twitter and Plus and so forth … not everyone reads all of that (especially in the holiday season).

The primary way — even sometimes the sole way — that we get story information is in-game. If it hasn’t been revealed in-game, it hasn’t happened. In fact, some folks even prefer that, since the game is what’s we’re here for, not the news bulletin tab on the web page.

If the plan was to “reveal his death in advance as a story telling mechanism” then reveal his death in advance in-game. Yes, it’s a time-honored tradition, but how much better and more reliable if you actually started the arc with Manticore talking about Statesman’s death [“A month from now …”], or something of that sort.

Heck, if you really wanted to be sure, then call the arc “STATESMAN MUST DIE.” Give out interviews beforehand about it. Make it a big event, so that people are wondering how States is going to die, not if he is or if someone else will be.

Assuming that people are going to read the news bulletins and therefore already know how it’s going to turn out … is silly.

And their response:

Totally understand your points, and we’ll be sure to take that into consideration the next time we’re presented with a similar situation. In this particular case, we didn’t believe it was appropriate to announce in game, but I can see where you’re coming from.

We’re certainly doing our best to share information through as many mediums as possible, main page, forums, Facebook, Twitter, G+ and even through the news updates in the launcher you use to fire the game up, however I’m sure there’s always room for improvement!

Best!

I maintain that the only way to be sure and let people know about stuff is in-game (perhaps in the launcher, but even that’s sketchy). The other bits? They’re great add-ons, enhancements, etc. But, in the end, they aren’t what people are focused on.

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