Just once id like a gameplay demo that isnt a bunch of BS and is representative of what im gonna play.
I think it is a situation, especially in a game with giant ambitions, where the game DESIGNERS are telling their programmers and others their vision. What they want. Give me this vision, give it to me!
So the right hand creates that vision, in a limited form, for the initial reveals and demonstrations. But, as time goes along, the right hand begins mentioning to the left .. aka the programmers begin telling the designers that X is simply not possible, or Y will need 8 months to implement properly and the deadline would have to be pushed.
Yadda yadda. The ambition then has to be gradually scaled back to be able to ship the product in time.
Demo 1 - wouldn't it be cool if you could call down your friends and see them enter into the game via a ship? Yup, do that. Ok, they get it done for a single demonstration. Get it to work under perfect conditions during a very scripted event. Then the scale that sort of thing into larger tests in-house and find all sorts of lag issues. Dude being dropped off with no ship in sky. Or ship passing overhead and 10 seconds later the dude loading into the game. The " beam me up " animation not synching with the player entering the game. The actual missions not beginning until you cross through the public areas already filled with people, so how do you get someone dropped into the game like this when the server is maxxed for that area already? Then friends begin dropping into the wrong server.
List goes on with the potential issues with just dropping people from the sky into your game, when the game is always online.
That example could be applied to most early demostrations that end up being pretty different in the end.