North American Fanfest 2023 - Egregious Mistakes and Suggestions for the Future

[VelKallor]

Rainichan: theres one other factor OP forgot..the elephant in the room. COVID is still present and adjustments have to be made. A reality we will have to learn to live with.

[rainichan]

Rainichan: theres one other factor OP forgot..the elephant in the room. COVID is still present and adjustments have to be made. A reality we will have to learn to live with.

I live in Nevada, we have no restrictions at present for covid. They may require to mask up though because of the sheer amount of people, and I'm sure plenty will anyway just to be safe, but we don't have any restrictions.

[VelKallor]

Rainichan: more to do with the approach, number of people, venue etc Id say. They are conscious of the issue, Japan has had a bloody bad time of it. So, its logical to assume that stance has shifted over into how they organise these fanfests.

It cant be ignored. Maybe they are being conservative in that regard, I cant say I disagree with their erring on the side of caution.

Understandable.

[Catwho]

I only went to 2016 (and pretty sure I saw you there in your Matoya cosplay ) and it was P A C K E D. Glad they went away from casinos for more people but I would be happy with virtual tickets like they had in the past that got you all of the stage stuff + concerts. I guess they want the concerts to be exclusive or not have people pirate stream them out to people who haven't paid up, but it's a little silly to me that they wouldn't have a free option for the keynotes + panels and a paid option to add in the concerts for that extra $$$ but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yep I was Matoya! And I also had an actual cold. This was pre COVID too so I know it wasn't that. But I started to get sick ON THE AIRPLANE and it was so bad I spent $100 at a Minute Clinic just to verify it wasn't the flu. By today's standards I definitely should have been wearing a mask, but 2016 was the Before Times.

It looks like a lot of us east coast folks are eying Otakon as our alternative meet up location. It's the same weekend, and they won't have the same ticket limits as Fanfest, so we can all collectively crash there for our pity party.

[Vuro]

Japanese users 30% - US & Canada 34% = difference is 4% so extreme majority = NO.

Sorry, where did I say the US & Canada was an extreme majority? I'm pretty sure my post is very clear that the data presents the playerbase as being near-equal in size.

[Renalt]

Personally I've never really cared for fanfests or conventions, but the way this one was handled was pretty stupid. Honestly, this would put me off from trying to buy a ticket next year, even if I wanted one.

I'm in the same exact boat on this.

[alibutterfly]

I've been playing this game since the launch of ARR. I've yet to go to a fanfest. Despite their statements that this one would be much larger than the previous NA fanfests, I had once again resigned myself to not going, based on the absolute cluster that was the ticketing situation for previous events; I didn't want any part of the stress of that. I'm glad now that was my decision.

The thing is, though, while it definitely feels like an event capacity of 15000 is too little, especially when you had people sign up for a lottery to buy up to two tickets a piece for each person selected (meaning only 7500 names max could get "pulled" in the first place), when I step back and think about it, that does actually feel quite big for what is essentially a single-topic FANFEST as opposed to a multi-topic CONVENTION. If you go to something like a PAX event or an anime convention, what have you, there's going to be lots of different people going there for all kinds of different reasons: maybe they want to see the show floor, maybe they want to see a panel, maybe they're specifically interested in one or two IP's, maybe they want to compete in a cosplay competition, etc. For fanfest, though, everyone's going there ultimately because they love this one, single IP and they'll likely want to be involved in most/all of the panels/concerts/special events/etc. that are offered since they ALL relate to this same IP. For example, I think it's probably a reasonable assumption to say that this year's event's keynote is going to be special both because of the 10-year anniversary, AND because we know we're likely to get some of the first pieces of information about the next expansion. Given that, it's probably reasonable to say that at least 90% or more of the convention is going to want to be in the room for that panel. Sure, you can make overflow rooms and such, but it will be more exciting to be in the same room where Yoshi is actually giving the presentation, right? So then, 90% of 15000 (13500) is already quite a large audience... what happens if we made the attendance cap something that was more commensurate with interest in the game? 50000? 75000? Where would 90% of THOSE people possibly go? Do they just then spend the whole convention in line for these few panels? Do they accept that they'll get "frozen out" of them if they aren't willing to do that, and then they feel like some (possibly large) portion of their ticket price is wasted?

Now, there are maybe some ways to alleviate this. Personally, I think it would be better if they did make Fanfest more like a traditional Convention, in the sense that I think they should work both within their own team and with outside creators to offer panels on different sub-topics of the game. Wanted to learn more about PvP? Get some people who specialize in that to come give a panel on it. Want to learn about solo Deep Dungeons? Get some of the Twitch streamers who specialize in that to come talk about it (AngelusDemonius or whoever). Want to learn about Ultimate prog? Get some of those people to come talk about their experiences. So forth and so on. Despite the fact that XIV is indeed a single IP, there are many "sub-genres" of content within it that could be expanded upon. And that's just for panels. I'm sure there's other things that could be offered too (expansion-themed cosplay contests? karaoke to your favorite XIV tracks? signings/meet-ups with XIV streamers? etc.). Square would have to be careful to label which was their "officially produced content" and which was not, but I think this could definitely be done.

In lieu of any of that, at least let people who couldn't buy an actual event ticket purchase a streaming option. I realize that the concert content may be bound by copyright and licensing agreements, but it's THEIR content, at the end of the day... surely they should be able to find some way to make it work?

Anyway, I'm just tired of Fanfest being this same kind of problem every time it comes around, and I wish they would do something to accommodate more actual fans as the game continues to grow. I'm just one person over here and I can think of multiple ways to make this happen... no reason a huge company like SE with all the resources at their disposal couldn't put together a team to do the same.

[SassyAssassin]

Rainichan: theres one other factor OP forgot..the elephant in the room. COVID is still present and adjustments have to be made. A reality we will have to learn to live with.

I thought covid completely dissipated since the current thing, here we never hear about it anymore, nor do we have to wear masks, limit big gatherings or maintain any distance in any form xD

[Yodada]

snip

You should be glad that we are getting an NA/EU Fanfest beside the JP one. Other Competitors are just staying on their home market and are giving a single f*** about their other regions.

And right now we dont know if there are any Virtual Tickets (I guess there will but not announced yet)

[Themarvin]

Well the price for a bigger place is also costly if only 30.000 tickets sell.

FFXIV Fan Fest is not a Huge band that has way many more people going crazy over it, so it is easy to showing hindsight... or to be mr, or mrs. know it all.

Big concerts also sell out and they usually have a fanbase going beyond 20-30.000.000 active people... and yet those concert places can only host up to 50-100k people.