So, what was missing? (FanFest 2021)

[DrWho2010]

there was literally ZERO chance of anything controversial being asked. not sure what everyone was expecting.

[Grimoire-M]

there was literally ZERO chance of anything controversial being asked. not sure what everyone was expecting.

The Class and Encounter Design teams to match Soken's quality performance?

Really though some insight into what they're going to do at a broad level would have been nice. You can highlight some goals based on prior feedback without committing to any tangible changes at this point, which also facilitates player feedback by allowing us to focus on current aspects we find in conflict with their goals, and that kind of feedback is useful in the interim. That's why people are disappointed.

[Stanelis]

there was literally ZERO chance of anything controversial being asked. not sure what everyone was expecting.

Well nobody is saying controversial questions should have been asked, but they could have talked more about actual gameplay.

[StriderShinryu]

Well nobody is saying controversial questions should have been asked, but they could have talked more about actual gameplay.

For me, as indicated in the OP, it wasn't even just about gameplay related questions. It's more that there are, first, some pretty major new modes or new content that had already been announced but that we got basically no information on and, second, some obvious outstanding questions that were not addressed at all.

I'm not even someone who is that fussed over the whole Viera/Hroth hair/hats situation but it's clearly something that should have at least been acknowledged. I also think that there should have at least been some sort of commentary on the growing discontent many players have with class homogenization and removal of skills. While those topics certainly could have been broached in a "controversial" way, they aren't inherently controversial topics and the dev team could have brought them up themselves or, in the Q&A, selected question askers who asked those questions in non-controversial ways. Maybe they even did select some of those questions to be asked but because the Q&A was so short relative to the length of YoshiP's answers they just didn't get around to them.

In any case, while there was a lot of good stuff in this years FanFest, it does definitely feel retrospectively lacking regarding actual information and fanbase engagement.