Post Fan Festival 2016 Experience, Thoughts and Suggestions

[JaydeDancer]

Other things I really liked:

(Sorry, I had the entirety of a 6 hour drive home to mull this over today).

*The Primal Concert. It was so awesome, I loved the music and the energy, and I loved how extremely into it Koji was. I mean DAMN Koji, I didn't know you sang too! I'm seriously fan-girling right now, lol.
*The PvP exhibition. The commentary from Matt and Tony (?) was fantastic and incredibly amusing. My only disappointment was that the JP Dev team didn't even try to beat "Hello the First Time". Come on guys! Give us a challenge, we know you play this game, lol
*The Fat Chocobo Experience and the moogle mystery.

Ok. I think I'm done now.

[Catwho]

Having been to 2014 and 2016, as well as being a veteran of many anime and sci-fi cons, I'll chip in my 2 cents here.

PROS: Registration line was well done this year. I loved the swag in the swag bag. I liked the Triple Triad cards, and the trading and wheeling and dealing we did for them. The Fat Chocobo experience was fun, even if someone accidentally broke it for a few hours on Friday. Concerts were great, all the panel content was great. Trial roulette was hard as heck as always. The new 24 man primal trial is a tad too easy and I expect Mr. Ozma or whoever programmed that to tune the difficulty up.

CONS: Merch line. Lack of T-shirt in swag bag. $15 for a basket of chicken tendies in the food line. Location being in a casino again - I'm allergic to cigarettes and I spent the weekend physically ill since the only way in and out of the convention area was via the casino.

SUGGESTIONS:

- For the merch line, assign a time to stand in line AT REGISTRATION. Once the times were assigned on Saturday morning, things went a lot more smoothly. Hand out a ticket with a specified merch line time at registration instead. Also, make ANY of the items that are "fan fest exclusive" available if you have a Fan Fest registration. Include a one time special code or something for the SE store. As it is, I'm hitting F5 on the store trying to get a copy of the book.
- Give us the option of ordering a T-shirt at the time we place our Fan Fest tickets instead of forcing us to go through the merch line. I had to pay a friend to buy my shirt since I didn't get a time ticket.
- Don't bother with a food court. Maybe that was the hotel's idea, but I got a really nice sandwich at the cafe that was literally 1000 feet away, for less money.

[zelasart]

Registration worked great, suggestion to have an additional space below the badge for us to write our character name w/ a sharpie pls!

I love how all the cosplay enteries got to go on stage this time!

Free swag and the challenge items were fun, but we can't actually play with the triple triad cards since it's single sided!

Please put the ballot box for the art contest close to the art gallery! It got blocked off since everyone was trying to check on cactpot.

Community gathering suggested times per server would be great since we didn't have a meet and greet this time.

A line to meet yoshi & co and autograph please.

[ArkNova]

First time my Wife and I went but that merch line sucked bad. My wife sat in line for 2 hours for that 1 staff member to tell her she wasnt in line anymore. I'm sure you guys know what staff member was a super ass. In the end though we got everything we wanted to buy. I made the suggestion to Camate that next fan fest needs to have a "I survived the merchandise line at Fan Fest" T-shirt.

[niwaar]

The only things that were even close to the price of admission were the two concerts. The rest of the experience was nothing but heartbreak and disappointment. When compared to FFest 2014 this was an utter failure. Square Enix failed at Scaling Up 101. The experiences inside the room were just nowhere close to the fun and enjoyment that were had at the previous FanFest @ the Rio.

The actual content we were given was very low in comparison to the previous experience. Last time we got the title, the cutscene, the announce the Dragonsong, Calloway/Nobou's involvement. We got info/lore on the new race. This time we got a cutscene with nothing but an unintentional(?) hint at a job we may or may not see. No song, no new information on anything substantial that effects gameplay. Just a few QoL announcements and no PS3 support. Its all fine and dandy to tell us we are getting more inventory space, but we deserved a job (if there are 3 one in each city was appropriate with the lack of a new race). The Keynote was merely mediocre. The battle panel was above board, the Q&A and the Live Letter which was merely another Q&A with mediocre/repetitive questions wasn't worth the time either. (Many people in my group left because they were so incredibly board by it. No real new information even regarding patch 3.45. Not even the patch date, which oh by the way they announced this morning. The Lore panel was an extended sales pitch for a book the vast majority of the audience couldn't buy because they oversold it during the day one merchandise debacle and were sold out. (Btw SE you owe me 20$ because now I had to pay your insane shipping price.)

The lack of shirts included in the price of entry was ridiculous. When combined with the merchandise debacle, we really should be getting some recompense from SE. The vast majority of people walked away from this fanfest without anything to show for it except a refrigerator magnet and a small usb drive.

Toss in the fact there was less FFXIV related activities to do on the show floor, which pushed the line for Trial Roulette longer and longer. The fact there were no more stations for the Roulette than last time even with the expanded attendee pool, was ridiculous. And the continued need to have PvP where the lines were often nonexistent because the pvp player pool is so low.
The concerts were the saving grace of the festival. Even if the Primals couldn't play either Shiva or Brute Justice. (Koji and Soken still are the best).

The Paris as the venue had a lot to be desired. Rooms were no where near as nice and much more expensive than the Rio. Being on the strip was very nice though (even if food/drink was a lot more expensive because of it.)

The merchandise line was just horrible. No communication between staff members. Staff members being extremely rude, threatening, being physical with attendees and the claims that some where soliciting cash bribes to put people in line. I know from personal experience that at least a few people were actually allowed past the bearded/pony tailed gatekeeper to cut 100s/1000+ people in line just because they were a pretty girl. The entire merchandise situation was poorly handled. I have no idea if this was a SE Merchandise issue or if it was the FFXIV team not planning well, but there really needs to be some sort of post fanfest solution to this. The lore book and odin went up on the store this morning. The book sold out in under 30minutes. A LOT of people were back at work this morning and probably missed their chance at picking it up. But the Lore Book was not all most of us were after in that line. T-Shirts were the huge thing because SE failed us and didn't include one/two in the price of admission as they had the last time. Not only were shirts not available in larger sizes, most all of them were quickly out of stock in most sizes. SE needs to figure out how they can sell those shirts online to attendees they failed to adequately service.

All in all I had fun at FanFest 2016. But not because of FanFest itself. Because of the wonderful community that has been created. The Social aspect of the convention was the real fun and we made that ourselves and had nothing to do with SE or the outright mismanaged event we received.

[AesSedai]

This was my first fanfest and overall I did enjoy it. I loved the triple triad cards and would love to see a board to use to play it. I think th TV with the cactpot numbers could have been higher up and stay on the winning numbers longer.

I liked the Hildebrand quest book. The staff were not consistent with the stamps. I think times in our bags and order sheets or an online version would have helped with the merchandise. Also the option of getting a shirt when we get tickets...I wanted to wear it there. Pretty disappointed that I couldn't even get a book online either.

The concerts were amazing! I like the idea of adding areas to have people meet others on their world. I like that you can see what is going on while in line, but I think it needs to be a larger room for that so people aren't distracted. Las Vegas is expensive and crowded. It would be nice to see it in a new location that is more accommodating for others to go. I look forward to even more fun next time!

[Kai_Lee]

Knowing what you know now and your personal experience, if for say SE does not change anything for the next NA fanfest, would you still go?

[ArkNova]

Yes Kai a lot of us are still going from house of umbra next fan fest, but damn that beard/ponytail guy was an asshole but he was a temp he's not SE staff.

[synesthetic]

This was my first Fanfest and my first convention, so I can't compare it with much.
My friends and I all loved it.

In particular, I thought the event scheduling and available activities were great. The Primals concert was especially good for leaving everyone feeling amped and ready for more.

I spent probably a total of about 8-9 hours in various lines, 5-6 of which were in the merch line from the start of Day 1. Judging by the sheer volume of people who lined up for merch throughout both days, I question how much better it could've gotten. Major kudos to all of the staff working at that warzone of a booth.
Waiting in that line became a fun social event of its own, so I don't regret it at all. But I do request an I-Beat-the-Merch-Line t-shirt.

With all of the lines, the Triple Triad cards and quest booklet were pretty nice. They allowed for some icebreakers and got people to reach out more and talk to strangers. If I have the good fortune to attend another Fanfest, I hope to see more of this sort of content. I wish we got extra TT cards in our goodie bag though, because it was sad not being able to help complete so many peoples' sets by the end of Day 2. I'm sure some people wanted to hoard cards of their favorite characters, so there probably wasn't enough in circulation to let everyone get a full set. If there were RL commendations I could hand out, I would've definitely given some to people who forsook completing their sets to help others get that one last card to complete theirs.


It would've been nice if all of the staff members could've had the same positive energy that the devs, community reps, and attendees had. I understand that their job of running around, and herding and serving so many people for hours had to have been really unpleasant, but their attitude has an impact on the overall experience of the event. I felt like I was bothering most of them with my presence, and the people stationed behind counters all looked extremely bored and tired. And I didn't like how one guy dispersing lines during early registration was shouting for people to move in such a way that he was trying to guilt trip everyone, as if we were all intentionally there to be assholes and create a fire hazard.

A few people stationed at the various activities were okay. But I recall one staff member in particular who was actually upbeat and had an attitude I wanted to see more of (at least when I was there). And he was the guy directing people in the merch line towards open registers. High-fiving and trying to re-energize the attendees. It helped a lot.

Maybe something special could be done for staff members to help uplift their spirits more?

[ArkNova]

But I recall one staff member in particular who was actually upbeat and had an attitude I wanted to see more of (at least when I was there). And he was the guy directing people in the merch line towards open registers. High-fiving and trying to re-energize the attendees. It helped a lot.

I think i know who youre talking about, yeah he was really cool and understood why this stuff meant so much to us we didnt know his name but he was really supportive and was fed up with the other temp staff that were rude so he didnt come back on saturday.