Post Fan Festival 2016 Experience, Thoughts and Suggestions

[RubyWeapon23]

With the NA Fan Festival 2016 coming to a close, how was your experience there? What did you like? What did you dislike? Any suggestions or ideas to help improve the next Fan Festival for players and fans? Leave your comments here!

I will update this more as I read and gather more thoughts, work in progress.

My experience: I have gone to both of the NA Fan Festivals and I feel that both events have had their pros and cons. I really liked meeting fellow players as well as members from the Dream Network, the FFXIV Development and Community Team

Likes: Very fast registration process compared to 2014; bigger venue at Paris vs the Rio venue; discount on hotel rooms where the fan festival was being held; staffing was more abundant (volunteers needed in 2014); badges were professional looking; room next to convention served food; real life fat chocobo mount; nice concerts on both days: Susan Calloway and the Primals; scheduling cosplay contest earlier; PvP was entertaining; jumbo cactpot vs raffles

Dislikes: Merchant line was terribly long and disorganized; no party mixer; no organized server gatherings; badges were not personalized with name and server; short list of music requests for primal; no shirt reward for beating the proto ultima challenge; not enough seating; the development team members were only out for brief moments to interact with fans and they were in random areas; some staff members did not even know what final fantasy was (probably hired specifically just to "staff" the event); room next to convention had food that was quite expensive; live letter was weak; trial roulette had some ridiculously unbalanced choices and no reward; jumbo cactpot vs raffles

Feedback, suggestions and concerns: I would like the development team to reserve a time of the event specifically for meet and greet, signing, and picture taking. I would also like the merchandise line problem to be addressed, possibly by allowing us to pre-fill merchandise ordering forms and/or placing red tickets in each gift bag as this may speed up this process. Giving us a special code to order exclusive items online may also be an option. Please add a space for our badges for server and character name. Please extend the next fan festival to 3 days instead of 2. This day can then be used to complete registration, have times to meet members of the development team, and have specific areas for players to meet each other. As a fellow player has stated in this thread, I do not think the choices for the cosplay contest were all fair and would have preferred to have actual professional judges used in that area instead of the development team. An eorzea cafe would be great instead of generic food. Overall, I would like to give this Fan Festival a score of 7.5/10.

I really do hope the development and/or community team takes the time to read and acknowledge this thread. I created this thread in hopes of them using our feedback in order to improve and make the next fan festival even more fun and exciting. Thank you!

[PotatoTree]

I watched it on a stream and while the fanfest itself is fine, the Cleeng streaming website is pretty bad. It's difficult to look at archived footage, it doesn't save comments like twitch does, I can't save the video, and I can't resize the video stream. And after all that it's $30. And it was slow to archive too, I couldn't watch the keynote because I was at work but when I got home it still wasn't up.

I would have also like to see more screentime of what was happening on the "showroom floor" like they did with the previous fanfests. Like walking around and seeing what people were doing, etc.

[Keetla]

My biggest gripe with the event, like most people I spoke to, is the merch line and how disorganized it was.

There was a large amount of line cutting, line capping and general confusion surrounding the line. There was also no enforcement of item limits about 1-2 hours into the event and I'm not sure when they decided to put the item limits back in place. The staff was enforcing the one activities book per person and it would have been appropriate to enforce a one purchase order per person too.

We got near the front of the line on day 2 only to be told that the lore book was sold out.. the staff was trying to see if it would be possible to give event holders a presale code but that never happened. Was also 10 ppl from cashier when mog slippers sold out.

We all still had a fantastic time at the event but these are downsides that SE could have mitigated or compensated for. It was also a bit disappointing that there were no personalized badges or exclusive shirts (E.g. Odin).

[ShinSoku]

The organization of different sections one the events floor could have been better. The staffs are being very helpful, but there were a lot of confusion of going where for what. The merchandises line was a nightmare. People are waiting online for hours just to be told that the items are sold out.

My suggestion for the merchandise is to have some kind of preorder online OR do an online survey to get an idea of how much products to bring. While I understand that most products will be available at SE online stores, however, the buying experience isn't the same...

[NieFirst]

I had a great time at Fanfest but every time I dealt with the staff I wanted to leave. All but one of them were rude and unhelpful. I was yelled at, scowled at, given contradictory information. Would have hurt any of them to smile and welcome the attendees? I got to meet some of the devs that were all really great, all the panels and stage events were good. But the merch situation breaks my heart. Day 1 we couldn't find the line and when we did they dispersed us said it was capped about a thousand people in front of us. Day 2 we were told that tickets for merch were being given away starting at 10am. We showed up at 8am and the red tickets were gone.
I hope they do something to make this right with the fans. My suggestion is set-up a temporary webstore for Fanfest goers to be able to buy the exclusive merchandise such as the shirts and hoodie make up for those of us not able to complete the que for the Weeping City of Merch.

[Sorrel]

But the merch situation breaks my heart. Day 1 we couldn\\'t find the line and when we did they dispersed us said it was capped about a thousand people in front of us. Day 2 we were told that tickets for merch were being given away starting at 10am. We showed up at 8am and the red tickets were gone.
I hope they do something to make this right with the fans. My suggestion is set-up a temporary webstore for Fanfest goers to be able to buy the exclusive merchandise such as the shirts and hoodie make up for those of us not able to complete the que for the Weeping City of Merch.

Exactly this. And yes, I understand the lore books and others things will be online, but the exclusive items will not be. So sad about this.

Also no free Tshirts for a trial was very disappointing since this is fan fast ot a normal convention....

[Brill_]

Well, I had a good time. Didn't get to go in 2014, so I have nothing to compare to.

Likes: Fast registration, good presentations, activities were fun.

Dislikes: Crowd control, didn't get to meet Yoshi or any of the dev team, Primals didn't play Shiva(Oblivion), blackjack dealer took my money

Other: The OP mentioned organized gathering. I would've liked that. I went alone and am not a person that is very social in large groups. I was very much out of my comfort zone. I would be for something like this.

[JaydeDancer]

This was my first fan festival and I had never been to Las Vegas before. It took me a few days to acclimate to the smell, the crowds, and the people handing out escort cards to people on the sidewalk, lol. However, once I acclimated, I had a very good time!

Here are the things I liked:

*The open floor concept. I loved the fact that even though you may have been in line for something, you could still see and hear what was going on on the stage.
*ALL THE SEATING!
*The water stations. THANK YOU!! I got so thirsty walking all over the place and talking to people. It was so nice to be able to go to the wall and get some water.
*The mini game events. I had a lot of fun with the mini games. In fact, that was all I ended up doing at fanfest (plus the art contest judging, and the fat chocobo experience). I didn't do any of the in-game stuff because I haven't really played in over a year and I wasn't confident enough to be able to test my in-game skills.

[JaydeDancer]

Suggestions:

*Don't give out ALL of the tickets during presale. Reserve 300 of them (or more) and allow those who didn't get to purchase presale tickets to enter a lottery. However, allow them to specify how many tickets they would need if they won. Some people purchase tickets for multiple people.
*Announce when servers are doing group pictures and where they are going to be over the intercom system so that people who want to participate can.
*Set aside some time each day for the Dev team to sit at a table so that people can ask them to sign stuff, or, in Yoshi-P's case, give them gifts. :-p I realize that they are EXTREMELY busy, but I would have really appreciated the opportunity to get them to sign my Encyclopedia Eorzea.
*Bring back the job-themed mini games and the "soul stones" that people got at the first fanfest.

[JaydeDancer]

Suggestions 2 (because we are STILL being limited to 1000 characters per post. -_-):

*Merch seemed to go quite a bit smoother this year, however, there were still a lot of issues. Is it possible to switch to an online system? Kiosks or something? Then you can devote all of the staff to putting together orders and people can go and pick up their merch a few hours after ordering it, to give the staff time to put the order together.
*I hate to say it, but I think you need a bigger venue, lol.
*I appreciated the fact that you had food available for purchase in a neighboring conference room, but $15 for a sandwich and $3 for a 12oz can of soda is a bit ridiculous.
*If someone has lost track of another person, maybe consider allowing us to request that the other person be paged over the intercom system?
*I ended up being in line for the fat chocobo exp. for more than 90 minutes. Perhaps it would have gone a bit faster if all you did was take a photo instead of a 6 second video?