Improvements they could make for Fan Fest 2015

[Bluplanet]

...
Lastly, I feel the time for the fanfest was misrepresented. The first day felt like a tremendous loss being exclusively reserved for registration and the reception, combined with the time it took to get through the lines, it got to be rather challenging to completely partake in all the activities in just the two days that fan fest took place in, the full 3 days of actual fan fest would have been much nicer.

/comfort to the London Fan Fest. They only have one day to do what we did. (not including the pre-registration day)

[Bluplanet]

Hello! First thing I want to state is that overall, I enjoyed my time at the fan festival. I appreciate all the effort the Square Enix Organizers, Staff, Crew, and Retainers made to get this festival to happen. Thank you very much!

Now I wish to give you feedback that will hopefully make future events better for the organizers and attendees.
- London Fan Fest is coming up in less than a week and it is only one day long.
- Not sure if anyone's feedback from this thread can help with that event, but perhaps some things can be implemented in time.

Pre-Registration Day:
- True or False, but it was apparent to attendees standing in line that the number of attendees there for pre-registration was unanticipated.
- Several rumors were floating around about what contributed to the long lines:
○ equipment the staff were using broke down
○ most surprising rumor was that Staff/Crew/Retainers were standing in line with regular attendees versus going to the front of the line to check-in and get to work.
- Megaphones (funnel type): Provide the Staff/Crew/Retainers something to use to help communicate with the attendees who are standing in line (inside/outside the exhibit hall). We can't hear them over the din of the crowd.

Square Enix Store:
- Personally, I stood in line before the 1:30 Lore Panel and didn't reach the cash register until after 5PM.
- More registers and cashiers are needed; three was not enough.
Event Lines: Share your lessons learned.
- Split First timer lines with pre-formed groups and singles. Then a line for re-trys.
- Megaphone again: Provide Staff/Crew/Retainers something so we in line can hear what they are saying over the din of the crowd.

CosPlay Contest:
- Goodness gracious! Yes, please. Give them somewhere to sit! Two hours in costume without sitting? /comfort
- Post-contest photo op. It was a bit of a mess. I would suggest:
○ Form two lines: One for the CosPlayers and one for those seeking pictures.
○ CosPlayers Line would spread out with enough space for them to pose or stand with people.
○ Photo seekers would just move down the line (one direction) passing each CosPlayer taking pictures.
○ Assign Staff/Crew/Retainers to manage the lines.

Event Hall:
- Stage area seating: Specifically, the left & right seats. Consider angling them to face the stage. Noticed a lot of people sitting sideways or twisting their necks to see what was going on stage. (The two big screens on the left and right were not always showing the stage.)
- Challenge areas: Better spacing between tables & chairs.
- Sound: Specifically during events. Those participating during an event will probably disagree, but this is for those standing in line while an event is going on. When I was standing in Challenge lines or the store line, I could barely hear what anyone was saying. Perhaps a few more speakers in the middle and back of the exhibit hall. More monitors as well, for people standing in lines. (can't see through walls or screens.)

[Mamakat]

1) Registration day for that HUGE line there were only 3-4 max people registering people/passing out badges. There were more giving out shirts and swag bags than badges... I think having more people dedicated to actually checking people in would have helped a lot.
2) That there is no exclusivity with the moogle suit because it's a reward for premium streamers also.
3) I loved having it in Vegas, but I hated having it at the Rio. Being off strip it's not close enough to walk to anything (but gold coast, where my husband and I stayed) IMO it would have been better at Excalibur/Luxor/NYNY/MGM for a few reasons. a) they're all connected making travel between them very convenient opening up lots of places to go eat or shop b) they have arcades/midways in them. Some people in our group don't gamble or drink, so it would have been nice to have other options of things to do in our off time that didn't require leaving the hotel (cabs suuuuccckkkkk)
4) Also, the reception party was a major annoyance because there was a huge line (that it ended up we only needed to be in if we wanted to take a picture with the cosplayers, and we didn't find out till we got to the door. It would have saved me (and my feet...) the pain of standing there for nothing if things were properly marked.

Looking forward to... FFXIVFF2016? :3

[Sabaku_Usagi]

So as an attendee of the event, there are some things I noticed that could have been utilized to make people a little more comfortable and save time while setting up the parties.

1. Pre-Set macro (IE: Target's Target Virus, Focus Target Blunt Arrow, etc) maybe have a poll of the attendees and use the most common macros?

2. Locked UI stations. Have some stations that are setup with the most common hotbars and don't let anyone change them. Then offer people the option of using a custom setup or the pre-setup stations. It was really frustrating when everything was reset when I saw the person ahead of me had a great UI setup. To make using these even easier, print the UI setups in our book and have the person at the front of the line brief newer players about it.

3. Timer control. There were some serious abuses of the timers and I understand it can be hard to manage while understaffed (I believe they were seeking retainers for the last day) On the last day a group took over 40 minutes in the primal extreme challenge on Moogle and as frustrating as it is to wait in line it's more frustrating to see people not following the rules setup by your staff.

4. Better line planning or more obvious "End of the Line" signs. Have the lines show in our booklet.

5. Get us the song promised for the Theater rhythm game. It was a real bummer to be told we wouldn't get anything for trying out the game. I loved the game and will buy it but it would be nice to get the promised rewards.

6. An actual prize for the linkshell "live quest". The LNC/DRG badge was really lame considering the time spent on things. Maybe have the photo booth use a special BG for clearing the live quest? "Quest Complete!" would be kind of cool IMO

7. Distinct Datacenter/Server badges. It was a small bummer but nobody could visually see where you are from until you were in a very close proximity. Even then, some badges didn't have the server printed.

8. Signing sessions. Have some scheduled sessions for the other staff and have a line. I was getting Koji's signature and almost didn't get it because people were flooding from the opposite side the line started. The same thing happened with Mr. Gondai & Soken and it was unplanned so I understand that but it would be nice to know when those would be. I'm just glad I didn't miss getting their signatures! I didn't get any other signatures and it would have been nice to get the other staff signatures without having to play the stalking game or interrupting them when they are needing to get somewhere.

9. This point has been hit, but on the signature wall please put some foresight into the size of each area. Also, please have at least one staff member over seeing this as to prevent people from being people. There were some names written over, and some general rudeness on the board that never got taken care of. It was embarrassing to see that a few people in Hyperion made the rest of us look bad. With the upcoming London & Japan Fan Festivals I will think you'll get the same comments if you did in fact make 3 of these boards. Spend the little extra and focus your sizes based on the attendees who purchased tickets. Also some people were very precariously standing on chairs that could have ended badly so please be safe ^^"

10. Yearly Fan Festivals. This also has been touched upon but please make it happen! Nothing helped motivate me to get back into this game than seeing players and being recognized. It was a huge moral boost and I appreciated the recognition. Being able to recognize someone by face next year would be even nicer so keep up the yearly festivals!

I wish everyone who planned and put this together the best of luck with the upcoming fan festivals but please take the fan feedback into account for the future fan festivals of 2015 & beyond.

[Daragust]

My suggestion for the events would be to give the retainers/staff a true reset capability. A one click utility to reset the ui and settings could have saved hours of time in the end.
Additionally I feel like odin should have had headsets too. It was nearly impossible for the tanks and healers to communicate split on opposite sides of the row. This lead to wipes that could have been avoided and thus more attempts.

[Mamakat]

Oh and another small one, not a big deal, but I wish on the badge where it said "Adventurer" it said our server name there instead. Was hard to find people on our server with the name so small under our character name.

[Mamakat]

Then during the second day of the event, it was decided to let the team that technically lost continue to try to finish if they were already fighting Diabolos or at least close enough to him.
The thought was so that those teams could still get their winner stamp.
But doing that made it so that everyone in line, who were either doing it for the first time or trying again from not winning earlier, have less of a chance of actually getting in to try >_>;
It was just a huge mess.

This was a big bummer for us. With the lines on day one + watching the panels we ended up trying Sunday. Went to get in line around 4 and she told us we couldn't get in line because the PCs were being shut down at 7:30... now, I knew that line wasn't a 3 1/2 hr line, and it was especially frustrating to see the people just keep on going multiple times and when we asked if we could just at least get the complete stamp so we could get our patch we weren't allowed

[Sramdi]

Also, there were cases where people took lots of extra time to set up keybinds, or started arguing with the staff.

I met a guy in line who bragged about he snapped back and was a jerk to one of the retainers when they asked him not to take 10 minutes setting up.

[Sandrock]

Probably a good chunk of these have already been said, but better to have too much feedback than too little! ...also TL;DR >.>

Lines

Seconded with the ticketing system or some form of block time tickets. Disney has fast pass where you have a window of time to come back later and wait in a 15-30 min line for their rides. Would help drastically with this kind of an event. Heck, even an "Average wait time from this point" sign would have been nice. I know the lines had to keep being adjusted due to fire codes, length, etc. (which was really handled very well) but if we would have had a ballpark time frame of how long it would take, that would have been nice.

Merch Line

This one deserves it's own area cause of how ridiculous it was. 2 of our FC mates were in line for over 5 hours. We all ended up just texting them what we all wanted and gave them cash later (gogo for 15 person group and teamwork!). I thought the order sheets were a great touch for speeding things along so you wouldn't have people window shopping much, but releasing them ahead of time would have helped a lot, or having them in the notebook we got as a tear out like the art contest form. I had friends from back home who wanted an art book, but we had no clue how much they would cost, which would have helped with the next point: Separate lines for cash/credit. I know you guys had a problem with 2 of the registers losing their card readers. Even so, a cash only line would have helped speed things along MUCH faster, and if one of the lines gets cleaned out, the other register can help out with the backlog in the other if it's able to... See the card reader problem above. I felt especially bad when I walked up the second day to get some extra goodies and found there was no line. SO glad I didn't spend all of day 1 there, but felt bad for the folks who did.

Schedule

This one is probably a bit nit-picky, and the schedule was great and really well done with one exception: the "Dev Panels." All the other events had clear descriptions in the back with the exception of these two. There was a large schedule near the front doors that said what they were, but oddly our individual ones didn't have any information on them besides the time. Would have been nice to know. Also, there was no Question 7 on the personality test in the live quest journal! Tsk-tsk!

Venue

(High five to my FC leader for reminding me of this one! (/^_^)/\(^_^\) ) The Rio was really inconvenient to get to if you weren't staying on that side of the interstate. There aren't many shuttles to and from it, and if you're staying anywhere off the strip, they only offer shuttles to the strip. Made for a lot of Taxi fares for our FC members who had timeshares, memberships at other hotels, etc. The actual exhibition hall was very nice, and I know it's hit/miss with the one room setup for people, but I found it to be fantastic with all the waiting. Most of the stations had a clear view of a screen so you could see what was happening on stage. Couldn't hear it at some points when the lines got denser cause of the chatter, but at least I could still see things.

I will say this one thing though: Please check the reputation of the hotel the event is held at. Not a single person in our 15+ group who was staying at the Rio didn't have a problem with their room. 2 of our groups were shorted on their reservations. They had paid for the full weekend ahead of time, and found that the Rio only had them booked for 1 night and pretty much told them tough luck. One was able to scream at them enough to get a second night (they had to check out and then back into the same room the next day though) and the other had to go to another hotel, causing them to miss the second day of the event as they had a flight that afternoon, and getting to the Rio was such a pain. After talking with some of the other attendees, we quickly discovered that our group wasn't alone in this. I even mentioned it to the lady at the front desk of my hotel and she replied with "Yeah, they can do that to you there." I would highly recommend that if you keep fanfest in vegas that it's not held at the Rio, but instead at a more convenient/reliable location.

Staff

The last and probably the most important thing: THE STAFF WAS AWESOME! With all of the problems and quirks the weekend had, not once was your staff rude or short with us. In fact, quite the opposite! When registration was taking so long on friday, one of the people organizing lines grabbed one of the tablets and was printing off badges and running to get them so people could bypass that section of the line. I know some people found her to be annoying, but I thought the little girl at the archery station running clipboards was adorable (even if she did call me ma'am. Long hair and such XD). Everyone was very accommodating and polite when there were problems like the lines closing fairly early due to waits yet still being willing to stamp our books, letting sections of a group slip in and out of line for bathroom/food breaks (hats off to other attendees for be understanding as well), and trying to get as many cash only folks through the merch line when things got crazy. The only thing we ran into was a bit of misinformation on line status. We got told by the front events desk that all the lines were closed @4:30 on day 2, but to our delight, she was incorrect and we were able to get our last few Odin wins in for FC members who didn't get to do it earlier. Overall everyone was quick to adjust to the problems, polite and understanding when people complained, and were fun and sociable with everyone. It made the weekend into a delight when it could have been absolutely miserable.

[Kisik]

Well, during the registration day, one of the staff was a bit rude. They had closed off the line, and a bunch of people were just waiting around behind the staff member who had capped the line, waiting for it it to reopen. The staff member told us if we didn't leave he would call security on us. At that point, the line was almost to the hash house a go go, and there was no danger of it extending into the casino floor, so I thought it was rather uncalled for bit of heavy handedness.