The chest is no biggie but changing the disc is pretty darn disappointing. It was more than just a gameplay element but also an exciting visual element with its lit up inserts. Replacing it with an unlit map is sadly a pretty steep downgrade.

Here are some ideas for alternatives:

Make it a spinning LED disc. You could create wild holographic effects with it. When not spinning you see the map graphics, when it spins different animations are played.

Make it a literal liquid maelstrom. Some sealed blue fluid and some lights and you could have an impressive “analog” visual.

I’m not gonna cancel my preorder just yet but it does feel like I ordered a neopolitan ice cream and found out it won’t have any strawberry. I appreciate the radical candor of JJP and Eric and know they are trying to make something great.

Then at least give it to the CE buyers?

Problem with game companies being transparent is that it just tends to cause them more harm then good.

We as consumers end up with enough information to do harm to the brand but not enough information to see the forest from the trees.

And in a worst case scenario the developers announce cool shit and then take that cool shit away.

For me these changes highlight how little I care for the theme. POTC is not a dream theme for me but with the full package they unveiled it seemed magical. It was just enough cool shit to cross over into "gotta have it" territory. Now that it's being stripped down it's falling out of that zone for a lot of people.

The calculus for the average high-end pin buyer is something like THEME+FEATURES/PRICE = BUY or NOBUY.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Mickey