Suggestions for Future Fan Fests

[LorenzoMoranta]

Another thing I'd have liked is seating during the keynote. That way you're not shuffling and jumping to try and see the stage, and you don't need to break your neck craning it skywards to look at the screens. Also possibly another room set aside with tables and chairs that people can use after getting food. Luckily I found a spare table but had to steal a chair from someone else's table after I got my lunch. And I felt I had to rush my food because I saw another group of people waiting for a table so they could have theirs.

(Sorry, this is gonna be part two of a triple post because of character limit. -.-)

[Nemausus]

Seating for the keynote would have been great. I was in an awkward position standing between two screens and out of sight of the stage craning my neck from one to another. I didn't realise at first that one was being used to display game information while the other was showing what was going on on-stage.

So I was late to the joy of the EU data centre, wondering why everyone was going nuts when very little was happening on the stage itself. A 160 degree head turn finally revealed what everyone was clapping about.

I felt very sorry for a girl dressed up as a Miqo'te who sat on the floor close to me during the speech and couldn't see anything going on.

However its all over now, perhaps it was teething troubles and next year will be better arranged. The great joy was finding my VIP tickets had arrived from the Royal Albert Hall. So next weekend I've got the Final Fantasy A New World concert at St Johns and Distant Worlds the next night. I can't wait to meet Nobuo Uematsu!

[LorenzoMoranta]

One more thing, would it be possible at all for the crew to reset the characters after events? Like, I'm a BRD and have a little experience playing as THM... Yet every challenge I did I had to be BLM because BRD and the other DPS classes were taken. Not a big deal, I could pick it up easy enough... Or so I thought. Every time the hotbar was set up differently. On one of the Odin events, I had two hotbars, each were only half full and one hotbar had Blizzard III on it three seperate times. Not an ideal setup for someone that doesn't know the class. So in addition to using a setup I'm not familiar with, the layout changed each time and half the time the skills you'd gotten used to weren't even on there because someone before you butchered the hotbar.

[LalaLeChat]

I'm actually not sure what to say. This was my first fanfest so I didn't really know what to expect but considering the tickets cost £65, by no means cheap, I guess I expected maybe not more but better.

I arrived just in time for the keynote, couldn't see the stage at all, there was no seating and some tall people decided it was a great idea to stand right infront of me. I had to almost dislocate my neck to at least see the tv screens. There was a live stream of the whole thing and I would have probably seen more just watching that. After the keynote I picked up my goody bag, which consisted of a t-shirt, a small portable charger and a notebook. Then I went to the merchshop or should I say queue. I spend 4.5 hrs in the queue and only managed to get 1 out of the 3 items I wanted to buy, the rest was sold out. I should have probably left the queue and ordered online but after you've been queueing for some time you jsut don't want to go away with empty hands. They only had one till! How could they think that one till for an event of that size would be enough is beyond me. Yoshida himself had to go around the queue and apologize to people for having to wait so long.
I missed both dev panels and lunch because of the merch queue and the dinner menu really did not look appealing. The venue is quite a hike away from any sensible food places so I just decided it was time to go home.
There are more suitable venues in London, like the Excel centre, which is where the comicon (same weekend - bad planning?) is held. The venue itself has many places where you can grab something to eat and coffeeshops.
Although I haven't personally joined any of the battles they seemed to be quite well planned, the queues looked reasonable and seemed to move at quite a quick pace. They had a few smaller rooms with aesthetician, crafting rooms which seemed quite cute.

All in all it's great they have an EU fan festival but there are a few things they really need to work on to make it worth the ticket price.

[Albiere]

Thanks to everyone who took the time to post here. I must say as someone with Arthritis and Scoliosis (my spine is curved in two places, think of a backwards 'S' shape) the stories of long stands and the merch queue people have mentioned here has put me off the idea of attending a future fan fest unless we can get some kind of reassurance that it will be improved.

Keep the feedback coming guys, I'm very interested to hear more about the event and your experiences on the day.

[Gilgamesh29]

I attended the London FanFest yesterday with my partner and both of us had a great time. The staff were friendly and there were lots of fun activities to take part in. We especially enjoyed the crafting areas and the battle challenges (lucky to get together with a great group to take Odin down first time).

Whilst overall our experience was excellent we would love to see the following addressed for any future FanFest:

1. Please make the theatre area all-seater for all shows including the opening address as it wasn't fun standing right at the back and getting a worse view than the online stream.
2. Please make the merchandise queue better. We both think that the previous suggestion of being able to place an order/buy items before arrival, to pick up before the end of the event, would be an excellent idea and would ease many people's main issue with the event.

continued...

[Gilgamesh29]

3. Please make sure there are more places to sit around the venue - it was quite a back-breaker standing in so many queues for so long.
4. Please make more screens available around the venue so that people in queues can see and hear things they are otherwise missing out on.
5. A server-meet area would have really helped to meet others you might run into in-game.
6. More 'floating' staff not manning specific events would have been better to help answer queries.

Otherwise it was a great event and we hope there is another soon.

[Carnathina]

Firstly, I had an amazingly fun day and was fortunate to have a number of my FC with me as well as a friend from beta. Meeting people and making new friends was easy and fun (a huge thank you to the Balmung duo we partied with all day, it was a pleasure!).

The staff were always helpful and kind and you could tell that many of them were enjoying the event as well.

The small complaints I have echo much of what was here:

1. That merch queue! I was one of the fortunate people who high-tailed it out of the opening ceremony and made it to the merch stand in enough time to result in a queue time of less than 45 minutes. I saw the queue as I left and every time I wandered past it in the day and I really feel for the people who committed. Solutions as above - more tills, more staff, pre-ordering for Fest prices and maybe a limit of 1 or 2 per person for each item. You really shouldn't come to the Fest to buy for all your friends! It isn't fair on everyone else!

Tbc...

[Carnathina]

2. not enough seating ANYWHERE. 2k people with very little provision for rest and recuperation. Not everyone attending is in the peak of physical health so it is a worry when you make these people stand. One of my party ended up with the first aiders. Thank you to the staff that allowed him to sit for the whole of the Gilgamesh musical chairs and got him help.

3. I was disappointed in the food personally. I was expecting something more inspired by the Tokyo Eorzea cafe. I expected a little more in terms of refreshment choices and availability...especially since they weren't included in the ticket price. I would happily have paid more for something a little nicer.

All-in-all it was a really fun day. I didn't manage to get everything done as we were trying to move as a full party but I will eagerly await news of a re-run next year.

[Ergy]

1. As everyone else has said: the merchandise queue length sucked, and meant missing out on the dev panels. One easy fix for this would be to let the attendees have access to the livestream recordings... Have to thank Yoshi-P though for signing stuff for those waiting, and those seats that randomly showed up near the front of the queue were a godsend! (Being 6 months pregnant and standing for that long was not good for me )
2. The food was disappointing. The carline canopy set up was great (could have done with more seating though!) but the food let it down. It was a nice attempt with naming it after in game foods, but the foods themselves had almost nothing to do with those names. Also: more drink choices please! Coke, sprite, or water was a little too limited for me. Better food and drinks choices next time please!
3. Better advertisement of when the art contest and bucking behemoth results would be announced. I happened to be in the cosplay audience when they announced them, but no one knew it was going to happen!
4. I got into the odin challenge really quickly because I was with a full group of 8, but there were a lot of people in the queue at that time that were getting frustrated because they were having trouble forming a full party. A setup where you could have solo queuers in different lines depending on their job preference (tank, dps, healer) and then another queue for full teams (or even part teams that are looking for particular roles) would make the organisers jobs easier in making up full parties. And in that situation (if I'd not been in the merchandise queue for most of the day and had had time) I would have definitely re-queued in the solo queue to help other people beat odin!
5. The alchemist and goldsmithing activities were fun things I really hadn't been expecting. The woodworking activity (decorating a cardboard mask) however, seemed a little naff in comparison Perhaps scrap that one in favour of something else next time? A culinarian activity where you decorate biscuits maybe?

I must stress - despite all this, I had a really fantastic day. I just want the next one to be even better!