Suggestions for Future Fan Fests

[Hyzy]

I loved the venue, the setting was perfect and everything looked great. The guys doing the Manderville at the crossing was hilarious

The closing ceremony was great, much thanks to the band!

I am sad that i missed out on some things, it would be great if we were able to see the HD premium stream just to see what it would've been like!

[Wyrmlimion]

More perks for VIP attendee's, but meeting the Devs was awesome.

My Suggestion is have a market Hall for Merchandise at the VIP Party, as that line was insane!

[FJerome]

It's been said about a thousand times already but it needs to be said again, the Merch Shop Queue was ridiculous. We were some of the first ones there and it still took 75 minutes to buy our stuff. One of the staff at the till mentioned that they had this same set-up at Gamerscon and didn't have anywhere near this problem because everyone brought cash - if you're not really equipped to handle a lot of people bringing credit cards please just tell us not to bring credit cards?

Art contest showed the results of how badly the contest was managed, I laughed so hard when I saw an entry that had been openly submitted as a joke in protest had still made it as a semi-finalist.

Everything else was pretty fantastic, though, the venue atmosphere was perfect, all the activities felt like someone had put a lot of thought into them and I was amazed by some of the attention to detail like the Ul Dah motifs on the furniture in the Salon.

[Miakyo]

Open the bar earlier than 6pm next time guys.

.... I realise the folly of my one complaint. After all the joys of drinking copious amounts of wine and beer on the Friday I was saddened to not be able to purchase beverages earlier the Saturday. The rest of the event was awesome! ;D

[FabledFox]

My boyfriend kinda made our group RUUUUNNNN to the merchandise store after the opening ceremony (after hearing from our FC friends about the horrible NA waiting lines) and I am so glad that he did. I was litterally the first customer (ONE DELIVERY MOOGLE AND ART BOOK PLEASE *excited jumping in front of the cashier*) but MAN, I feel so sorry for all the people in the queue. That was just WAAAAAAY too crazy, it's sad to hear that people missed stuff, hurt their backs and got bored beyond infinity while waiting. Hope it will go faster for your guys next time... When I got out of the store, the queue had already reached the Odin Battle room.

For me, except for the merch store in the name of other attendees, no complaints at all. Lovely venue, awesome staff, amazing activities,... A big "/pet" on your head, organisation team!

Edit: Also, I went to the SE Store at Gamescom in 2013. Let's be honest, not every single Gamescom visitor wants SE stuff. While there were some people checking out the items in the SE Gamescom store, there was not really a waiting line for actually BUYING stuff. But this? This is the frigging FFXIV Fan Fest! We all collect FF stuff, and we're talking about exclusive items. Comparing the Fan Fest to Gamescom is really a silly reason to only have 1 cashier. xD (He was a friendly one, however! :P)

[Sasunaich]

Hello everyone,

Thank you for all your feedback so far. Please keep it coming and rest assured that we will keep your suggestions in mind for future plannings ! Also we would like to apologize again for the long queue for merchandise ! We really appreciate your patience and hope you had lots of fun once you were able to leave the queue behind !

[Finalfreak]

Just like Fabled said, I think the merchandise store wasn't prepared at all. It felt like it was just placed there "in case some people would show up". We were lucky to run there like crazy chickens right after the opening ceremony, but once we left the shop, I was shocked by the crazy queue who was behind us. I feel bad for the people who had to wait there for hours.

Second issue we had was with our VIP-tickets. Friday evening we asked 4 crew people "Are we able to enter without queueing tomorrow?". All answered us: "Yes, no problem! Once you arrive, you'll be placed in a fast queue and you can enter immediately".
We were really happy to hear that news, so we decided to sleep 45 more mins than planned.
Once we arrived there on Saturday, we wanted to enter and the security people was like "No sorry, you can't enter, please join the queue.". We replied "But yesterday we were informed we were able to get into the fast queue on arrival?" "No sorry, that's not correct, you'll have to join the pre-queue (which was about 1000 people long once we arrived) before you'll be placed in the fast queue".
We were pretty upset just like all the other VIP-ticket owners we saw arriving there. There is no real reason to have a "fast lane", when you need to queue just like all other people before entering the fast lane.


Other than these 2 issues, we had a great day. Odin battle was really fun and the queue was really fast. Battle challenges were really fun to do and again the queues went pretty fast!
Also great job to the people who created the whole FFXIV setting in the building. It looked really beautiful!
Also a big applause for the staff! Very friendly and always in to help you when you needed it.
Also the mini-games were really enjoyable and the arts galleries were very nice to see.
The idea of doing quests and treasure hunts to get rewards was brilliant and really enjoying! I felt 14 years old again haha ^^.

Maybe one more thing, food prices were really a bit too high... 6.50 pounds for a hamburger (which was pretty dry) in a paper box, that's really too much. On the VIP event we were at least given some (extremely hard, ouch my teeth...) frites together with the hamburger, but even then 6.50 would be way too much. I really would've liked some more FF-related food for that price or maybe some sushi.
But big cheers for the staff who was serving the food though. Really friendly people and up for a joke!

So don't get me wrong. Except for those 3 issues, I had 2 really great days! Thank you SE for organising this event. I'm looking forward to next year! With the feedback given here, I'm sure next year will be even more perfect than it was now already! ^^

[FabledFox]

5) More of a personal bit of feedback myself after seeing a previous post - a piece of my work made it into the finals of the fanart contest and after seeing it actually mounted on the wall I was actually hoping I could take it home. I didn't get the thought to ask! Is there any chance the finalists could at least get these, even if they weren't signed by the dev team?

Hi there! I was one of the finalists as well, and I had the exact same question. I managed to talk to a staff member when everyone was leaving the building. I was lucky enough to talk to the guy who actually hosted the competition. He chose the drawings and knew all the titles by heart. Very friendly guy!

So, apparently, SE will keep the drawings (they don't get thrown away!) and they will expand their little collection of fan art so they can display them again later!

Knowing there's apparently a big chance that our drawings will be displayed elsewhere in the future, I was really happy that SE didn't want us to take them home. ^^

[Geesus]

Hi there! I was one of the finalists as well, and I had the exact same question. I managed to talk to a staff member when everyone was leaving the building. I was lucky enough to talk to the guy who actually hosted the competition. He chose the drawings and knew all the titles by heart. Very friendly guy! So, apparently, SE will keep the drawings (they don't get thrown away!) and they will expand their little collection of fan art so they can display them again later!

Knowing there's apparently a big chance that our drawings will be displayed elsewhere in the future, I was really happy that SE didn't want us to take them home. ^^

5) More of a personal bit of feedback myself after seeing a previous post - a piece of my work made it into the finals of the fanart contest and after seeing it actually mounted on the wall I was actually hoping I could take it home. I didn't get the thought to ask! Is there any chance the finalists could at least get these, even if they weren't signed by the dev team?

Yes. If I remember correctly, anything turned into SE for contests such as this become "property" of SE. It's in the rules somewhere.

Congrats though on having a piece displayed!

[Colino]

I won't go on about the merch queue because plenty has been said already.

I just wanted to say absolutely massive props to the staff and all event organisers, with very minor hiccups the entire event was just amazing and I had the time of my life.

The staff were all friendly and approachable and the red-shirted SE staff were clearly lovers of the game, so much so that several of the Tobacco Dock employees told me they would probably try the game out after seeing what a cool community we have!

Really, I can't say enough thanks because I can only imagine how massive of an effort organising all of this was and I truly appreciate it.

PLEASE COME BACK NEXT YEAR! (But maybe with 3 or 4 more cash tills ok?)