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PAX 2010 Suggestions Thread
Moe Fwacky
Right Here, Right NowDrives a BuickModerator Mod Emeritus
Right Here, Right NowDrives a BuickModerator Mod Emeritus
Now that PAX 09 is over, it's time to get your thoughts out there. What was great? What was not so great? What would you like to see next year (both at East and Prime)? You know what you want, so say it here and now.
Moe Fwacky on
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oh and you guys should have like more 360s
Twitter: @lesterleesm
Lets make that happen.
YES! Pirates vs Ninjas vs Robots(led by fruit fucker prime of course).
I did this. I lucked out 'cause that shiny sticker thing wasn't in the middle, leaving me enough room to write my name on my badge. But yeah, agreed.
And don't schedule Wil Wheaton in a smaller theater that fills up an hour before the show.
Everything else was awesome!
but here is what i have to say, as nothing is perfect*:
i say keep it in Seattle for 1, 2, bigger byoc area, and keep the tf2 tourney out of the same time frame as the street fighter 4 tourney =o. but thats just me.
keep up the good work and i will see you all next year, same time, same place, same etc.....
1.) The Wil Wheaton panel really needed to be in a bigger space (perhaps even the main theater) as I saw enforcers turning away loads of people over an hour before it even began.
2.) Please, please, please start the final round of the Omegathon on time. It was late starting last year, and it was late starting this year. A lot of people are trying to catch flights out on Sunday night, but we've gotta get out of there by 6 if we're going to have any chance of making it. Last year I was able to stay long enough to at least see what the final event was (but couldn't stay for the whole thing), and this year I missed it completely as I simply couldn't wait around any longer.
Other than those 2 things, I had an amazing weekend. Thanks guys.
That is my biggest complaint. Great event, thanks so much for putting it on!
This has probably been repeated year after year, but there must be some solution. Maybe the streaming thing is it... though it's only useful to those with a computer at hand.
Better system to ensure pre-order badges are sent out on time and in the correct quantity (still haven't received mine and don't think they'll ever come)
No Nvidia button matching game... it's so annoying.
Better organization of swag bag/wrist band handout. Maybe do a punch out on badge when swag bag/wrist band received to reduce the number of people getting multiple.
My Body Is always Reggie
^^^^ What he said. Also Paul & Storm too. I wasn't a fan of theirs before but they have converted me and now I
Paul & Storm need to show up again (Best concert night in the history of PAX imo)
Bring back the OneUps
Make sure the people running the sound booth know what they're doing and manage the audio better for concerts; sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's not
Get the Brawndo guys back
That's all I can think of for now...
And more Paul and Storm.
<@zerzhul> you win at twdt
Triple that.
Some BYOC suggestions:
1) For the tournaments, get server admins who know what they're doing. The Left 4 Dead tournament was a total mess. It was supposed to be no medkits, pills only, 3 maps, no finale on No Mercy. Our match started on the second map of No Mercy, medkits were usable and being used, and we played the finale as our 3rd map. There didn't seem to be using any plugins to regulate this. Only thing on the servers were the ready up plugin. I'd imagine you'd want to use something similar to this for a tournament.
2) Don't use crap computers for tournaments. We were given machines that could barely run TF2 at a decent resolution. Our entire team was getting ~25 FPS in the spawn room and around ~15 FPS once you went outside and were fighting with all the settings turned as far down as possible. On top of that, two of our people didn't have any sound.
3) A TF2 tournament with unlockables allowed would be interesting. Not quite sure how that would work though. Maybe once every class gets unlockables it will be better for tournaments.
4) Stop using Vista! AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!
Was still a ton of fun though. Can't wait for next year!
Yeah, this system was really was great stuff this year, but I hated how Saturday's line was just the same stuff as Friday's. Maybe have it using wi-fi to connect instead of text messaging, so that out-of-towners don't get dinged on our phone bills.
I felt that off-site Will Call was a huge success. Although, I still think it makes more sense to hand out the swag bags at the Will Call for those picking up badges. It's not like there's a shortage of bags. Oh, and putting the schedules and bags together might not be a bad idea.
STOCK MORE PAX SHIRTS!! I got one within the first two hours of the convention, because I remember them selling out of my size before I bought one last year. However, it was my friend's first time this year and he didn't get a shirt at all, attempting to buy one on Saturday.
I also support the idea of a place on the badges to write names.
Oh, and force the live-demo organizers to give us epic swag. The copies of KOTOR were nice, but I was a bit disappointed walking out of the Ubisoft live-demo without swag :P
edit: P.S. Thanks for an awesome time again this year everyone! I can't think of anything that could possibly make PAX more fun - this is all just logistics'n'things.
1) DoTA in the intel machines <_<
2) more water dispenser thingies. Those things are awesome and some of us don't like sodas.
yep only two. It was extremely fun.
Edit: Please bring back Paul and Storm!!!!!!!!
Every panel I attended in Raven Theatre really should have been in Serpent or something (Co-op, Brodeo Reunion).
A few things. As mentioned above, the badges having room for name/handle would be a great addition.
As far as the BYOC thing went; Friday night the network was completely fubar. Playing online was a no go due to high pings and packet loss, that did not get fixed the whole weekend, and playing on LAN was iffy at best due to dropped connections (if players were able to even see all the servers). Saturday LAN was fixed so it made access to internet servers less of an issue. Basically get network people who have a little more experience or are more prepared.
Also for the BYOC: 1) more room for more BYOC people to come. 2) if its not something regulated by the venue make it an all night event. Saturday night I think everyone was having so much fun most of them (myself included) would have stayed well into the morning hours if not till close Sunday evening.
I'd love to see some sort of sign-up for the panels but I realize that it would probably be very difficult to get done effectively.
I'll add more when/if they come to me.
Overall thanks to everyone (Gabe, Tycho, all the enforcers, and all the sponsors) for the awesome weekend-o-fun. See you all next year
-FoX
1. Wheaton definitely deserves the main theatre next year. You shouldn't have to get in line over an hour in advance to be able to see a panel.
2. The expo hall seemed even tighter than it was last year. I tended to avoid it unless I was making excursions for a specific demo or piece of swag because I hate being completely compressed in a crowd of people and advancing one step every 5 seconds, even if you're not in line and just trying to walk through. With the number of exhibitors, I know it's unrealistic to hope for wider lanes, but still, it bugged me.
This isn't a complaint so much as a bit of recognition to the Enforcers running the Pokemon tournament - technical difficulty took the event out, but you guys tried your damnedest to make it work anyways. Thank you guys for sticking with us and trying to find some solutions so we could show each other our pokeymans.
Speaking as a group who spent the majority of their time in the expo hall both this year and last, this year was without a question much less crowded and had much better swag than last year.
I think the additional space really helped, but it could always use more!
agreed, that was totally awesome. how often do you get the chance to rickroll thousands of people at the same time?
The solution then is to make the final round of the Omegathon something that can be played on a machine that doesn't take hours to set up (and still not have work correctly). Skee Ball was awesome, but people had flights to catch, and, well, I personally did not enjoy standing in the theatre for an extra hour.
The only thing that REALLY disappointed me this year was getting turned away from Wil Wheaton's panel right after the second PA panel. If I had known it was that bad, I would have skipped the PA panel.
-I *loved* the qualifying format. It would have been nice to let us use our own pedals/guitars in quals (or let people drop them off at Freeplay in case others want to use them). But the song selection was spot on and getting to play as many times as you want but wonder if you can do better made it interesting.
-The Rock Band tournament is pretty all-consuming. I had to give someone my phone #, and I thought the point was that people could text me schedule changes, brackets, and "time for your round!" reminders and so forth. That would have been handy. Also would have been handy to put the selected songs, scores, percentages, and streaks for each instrument for each performance somewhere on the interwebs or sent to teams via text messages. This way there's no need at all to sit around and watch other bands play unless you want to do it for fun; you have most of the information you need to think about what song to pick for your next round, so you can think about it while waiting in line to play the demo for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 or Guitar Hero 7 next year. Since most cell phones can receive texts via email this should be really easy.
Having DLC for the tourney is fun, but it's too many songs ... it becomes an exercise in "pick a song you think the other band hasn't played or isn't good at" and there are too many options. And next year the selection's gonna be much, much bigger. It's also unfair to people who don't buy much DLC. It would be better to keep the selection to RB1+RB2 on-disc songs, which is still plenty of variety.
For maximum on-stage epic-ness, it might be nice to restrict song selection to harder songs during the semis and finals ... e.g. "songs must be from tier 6-7". That would still give teams 32 songs to choose from with RB1+RB2 songs.
"gay" and "rape". You keep on using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.
Having video streaming to various locations for seeing panels, as well as preped for later viewing
Having a method of communication that's more locally available to the attendees for the purpose of coordinating efforts
Having the interactivity brought more to the lines to keep people from inventing new and exciting ways to incorporate penises into yet another facet of PAX culture... :P
Those are just some things that have struck me as practical and awesome for the purpose of future opportunity at PAX.
Thanks, all. This year was so amazing.
ETA.Confidence
EscapeTheAsylum.com
1) Goody bag/program distribution sucked. Why couldn't we obtain the goody bags and/or programs at the same time as our lanyards? By the time I got my bag + program, I'd missed half of the first round of the omegathon
2) The in-line entertainment/game was awesome, though a little repetative. Randomly adding 3-5 more questions and/or videos would have helped a lot. (Still can't get that leekspin song out of my head QQ)
3) Wil Wheaton should have been relocated to the Main Events hall. With the way it happened, it was impossible to go to the PA Q&A #2 AND Wil Wheaton's Awesome Hour because Wil's line filled up before the Q&A was over.
4) I really liked the exhibit hall this year. Yes, it was crowded, but there was a lot more in terms of interesting things to look at. Maybe (hopefully) it's a reflection of the quality of games that are coming out? I happily bought sparkley dice at the chessex booth, and got a good deal on a mouse from steelseries. The PAX10 had a good variety of games, and it was really hard to pick a favorite.
I guess that's more like .04
The Best in Terms of Pants on JCCC3
I'd suggest a few things with regards to the exhibitors: choice of content and booth babes.
We really wanted to do the Dragon Age demo, but the lines were epic and they didn't seem to move at all. So, we got in line early Sunday (730-ish) and planned to run straight there. Well, ended up that we were not the first group in, and not the second, either. The demos took well over a half hour each, and we were let in around 11:20. I got to play about ten minutes of demo before I absolutely had to leave and clear out of the hotel by noon :-( Though I really do appreciate the higher quality demos (a half hour on Dragon Age is pretty epic), there are better ways to do it than letting 10 people in every 35 minutes. The wait in line was decidedly unpleasant; redeemed only by Evil Chris and the developer guy being super cool, and the game being completely badass :-)
And about booth babes. Seems there are bonafide, vapid, booth babes now. I like eye candy as much as the next guy, but it seemed like there used to be a standard for knowledge of the game. Or knowledge in general . . . this is an excerpt from an ACTUAL CONVERSATION:
Babe: "Come on in! Sign up and you could win our raffle!"
Me:"Oh, cool - what are you guys giving away?"
Babe:" . . . I don't know, but it's probably pretty awesome!"
Me:" . . . "
The only babes I talked to that had knowledge of their product were the Serious Sam babe and the Tru Blood babes (I'm sure there were others, just my experience); the rest would point you to other people in the booth. Maybe it was inevitable, and I guess I'm not REALLY against vapid booth babes, but it does seems against the spirit somehow.
Welp, that's my two cents' worth, hope it can be of use to someone :-)
I have to say first that this PAX was a lot better than last year in many regards. I can't think any major complaints, really. Just more minor nits.
After three years, I've made my peace with the idea of lines. I don't go to a lot of the small panels so this doesn't bother me that much. Though I really wish things could be in the neighborhood of the schedule. It sort of seemed like the queue room didn't go into the theater until the events were supposed to start, which is pretty much a 15-20 minute delay in start time right then and there.
I kind of missed having some Gabe art on the cover of the program this year. And why weren't schedules put in the swag bags? Also, the posted signs and official schedule seemed to contradict each other at times. Also on this note, maybe I'm crazy but I thought the convention center's boards had times for individual events on them last year?
There was definitely a pro/con situation with the revamped console freeplay setup. It was nice that it was all in one place. But that was also an issue, noise-wise: you basically couldn't hear anything over the din.
Those are very fair comments you made, but I would like to make a precautionary request. Can we please not have another long and pointless debate about booth babes? In fact, I found that there were very few of them this year.
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