This is something that that has been a source of constant frustration for me ever since I've become more knowledgeable with how Arelith works.
FOIG (Find Out In Game) is not inherently a bad concept. It serves to allow players that desire a chance of exploration, and the opportunity to find out want they want, at their own pace. I remember when I first joined Arelith, I had no idea about roughly... anything, nor that there was a discord, and most of what I learned was exclusively through talking to others ingame.
And that's fine. It's fun for some, and if you want to play that way, more power to you!
However, when I slowly waded myself more into the endgame aspects of the server, and dealing with some of the more esoteric aspects, there seems to be a trend to keep information hidden, from an almost weirdly strict gatekeeping way.
Most likely the biggest example of this are the ingame Boons, which have very little in terms of ingame references that actually point them out to players, but offer a fairly significant mechanical boost for those that do find them.
However, there are problems when you hide mechanics behind FOIG.
It serves to further enhance the often very negative pvp, 'I must win' mindset. More than once I've seen rather infamous groups/players that know quite a handful of beneficial information ingame relating to mechanics, but then also refuse to share and talk about it with anyone outside their inner circle. Why would they tell others about hidden things that serve to make them stronger?
Testing anything that is gated behind FOIG becomes very difficult to verify if working properly, as there is nothing documented to check against. This is particularly egregious when something new is being introduced, and I have no idea what it does. How can I verify that it's working and not a bug, if I don't even know what I'm looking for?
It ultimately leads to metagaming. People often joke that FOIG = FOID (Find Out In Discord), and this has been very true in my experience. I specifically learned about a FOIG mechanic, the Maurs boon, after speaking to someone in OOC communications. But despite having done Maurs before, nothing ingame there even suggested that there IS something to find! Which leads to the next problem...
It widens the gap even further between new and old players. While some players who are in the know are more than happy to share any and all information about FOIG mechanics ingame, realize that a lot of newer players don't even know the questions to ask. This a problem for almost any sort of profession, or hobby. And one of Arelith's most strongest benefits is the relative accessibility for new players, in spite of this.
Recently, there was an update that added several lanterns ingame. Firstly, that information isn't even on the wiki, so I once again was informed OOCly of their existence. I've been told that they offer several bonuses ingame relating to mechanics, the angler lantern I've been informed of.
I want to state that I think this is the completely wrong approach. We should be striving to get away from FOIG for mechanical benefits, and allow it to be used for an actual good purpose, which is anything player generated, such as ingame happenings, events, RP, ect.
What will end up happening, as I've seen many times before is:
A group of players will collaborate OOCly to test on what these new items do. If they're very strong, and offer a clear mechanical superiority, then that information will likely be held internally as long as possible. Players in the know will be able to use their new toys to their fullest abilities, and new/uninformed players will never even think to buy a lantern because they have no idea that it does anything at all. The game never communicates that.
And one of the most important thing about interacting with a game's mechanical systems, is that you're receiving proper feedback.
I hope that we can follow the example of the recent specialty drink update, which highlighted all the benefits of how the drinks worked. It allowed for proper player feedback, and actually gave me incentive to use these. As it stands, I won't be bothering with the lanterns until someone else figures out what they do, because it's an insane inventory tax on an already bloated inventory to begin with.