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PAX Prime Aftermath
Gerzzog
OhioRegistered User regular
OhioRegistered User regular
in Pinny Arcade
Now that the craziness is all over I wanted to ask everyone how it was this year.
- How was the pin quest?
- Was it way harder than other years?
- Was it harder than this year's East?
- Was it tough to get all the pins for your pin pals?
- How many of you have backed down from hardcore because of this crazy list and the fact that it seems to be every increasing each year?
- What was the "Crazy" pin that was the most annoying to get that everyone will be clammering for (ie: Leeroy, Gold Overwatch, etc...)
I hope everyone had a blast and I look forward to seeing some of you at East next year!
- How was the pin quest?
- Was it way harder than other years?
- Was it harder than this year's East?
- Was it tough to get all the pins for your pin pals?
- How many of you have backed down from hardcore because of this crazy list and the fact that it seems to be every increasing each year?
- What was the "Crazy" pin that was the most annoying to get that everyone will be clammering for (ie: Leeroy, Gold Overwatch, etc...)
I hope everyone had a blast and I look forward to seeing some of you at East next year!
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The Behemoth: There were separate vending machines for the 5 new pins, and each one was $10 again. For some reason, the Rainbow Horse seemed much harder to get.
Portal Set: The Portal set was $45 if you paid cash, and I think $50 if you paid by credit card
Iver and Belower: Both Banner Saga pins were purchasable for $15 each. I think Iver was free if you demoed the game
Rage of Demons: There was a pretty significant line for AcqInc, and some people didn't get in but still got the pin as a consolation prize. I heard the line to demo the game was over an hour long.
Gideon: The free social league was pretty quick and easy. They also gave the pin away at some panels.
Double Fine Logo and Raz: These were $15 each
Vault Boy and Doom Revenant: I believe that there were a total of 1000 of each of these. Every day, the Vault Boy pin sold out within 30 minutes or so. On Friday, the line started out unorganized - just a crowd of people in front of the merch desk, blocking the walkway.
Co-Optional Podcast and Seattle Polaris Grand Prix: These were $10 each
Diamond Block: This was $15
Kappa: Got in line for Twitch panel immediately when they let people, around 90 minutes before. They weren't handing out anything when you entered, so I guessed that they must have put the Kappa pins in the swag bags near the front. Twitch also sent out tweets at 12:00 and 4:00 every day for people to go find someone with pins. The mobs of people and poor cell reception in the exhibit hall made this pretty difficult.
Tyto: In order to get this pin, you were supposed to demo the game five times, which seems crazy. They gave you a badge every time you did the demo, so some people were able to just get additional badges from people that didn't care about the pin. Motiga also did twitch giveaways, usually along the lines of tweeting out a selfie with a dev. This turned out to be the easiest way to get the pin.
World of Warships: When I did this, the line was about 45 minutes. I don't know when or if they ran out of their 1000/day allotment
Starslip Prime: This was $15. Kris didn't get his pin until later in the weekend.
Lovers in a Dangerous Space Time: This was $10
CW Skull: This was $15. I think Katie had all of her previous pins too.
Rainbow 6: Very quick to get if you had them take a photo of you and send it out to twitter. I believe they ran out of pins on Monday.
Bin It 2 Win It: This was $15
LRR Muffins: This was $10.
Commander Bragh: This line was less than an hour. I don't think they ran out of pins.
Sprite: This was $10. You could also do a scavenger hunt to get a free pin, which involved finding 5 sprites posted around the exhibit hall. I think they ran out of pins Monday.
Riptor: You just had to play, you didn't have to beat the dev. There were never too many people in line, but it could take 45-60 minutes since they only had one station. I think they ran out on Monday.
Rock Band: In addition to the demo, you could also get this pin if you pre-ordered through Amazon. I think they ran out of pins on Sunday.
Prime 2015 Set: $30, plenty to go around.
Prime Polygon: $15, I think if you got in line at least by 7:30 you were able to get these.
I had a lot of luck with Twitter, catching the "Itaku" several times. Sprint data seemed to be working well in the convention center for me, for the most part.
The "selfie with a dev" thing was pretty great. Their staff were pretty awesome, so it ended up being far more entertaining than I expected. They didn't mention this on Twitter, but this was limited to one per person, so there was a chance they'd turn you away if you had done it another day and they recognized you.
I'm guessing a lot of people didn't like this pin, because I kept finding them on the staff trade table. I picked up two from there over the weekend and never waited in the line.
Early in the weekend, they weren't running this as frequently. They told us to come between 2pm-3pm for the event, which involved being live streamed on Twitch on stage and getting your ass handed to you. You only got a pin during that event if you won, and from what I heard not a single person did win the entire weekend. If you were in line to play against the dev at the small kiosk they had running (where everyone got a pin for playing), they would move you over to queue for the 2pm event shortly before it started and shut down that kiosk. Your best bet was to completely avoid it between 2 and 3.
They also gave away shirts, codes for the full Killer Instinct game on Xbox One (also unlocks the future PC version), stickers, and other cool stuff. It varied by day.
They ran out of pins around 4pm on Monday (I was the second to last one).
Various folks reported that Harmonix devs would also trade with you for their pin. Shortly after they ran out on Sunday, I ran over and traded an Iron Guard Stance for one of the last ones on a dev lanyard, since I hadn't hit that booth up yet (it's also one of my favorite pins of the show).
They also opened merch lite progressively earlier each day. If you were at the front of the line, you could be done by 8:30 and run over to queue for the show floor, which was great.
For what it's worth, I got my ass handed to me quite handily on stream and still got a pin (and dowload code for KI on XBone, which I don't own).
The guy said to activate it online if you don't have an Xbox, then wait for the PC version to release later this year.
I traded a Tycho Tot for a Diamond Block. @Lazorz traded a few pins for it as well, but I don't remember what he traded. Definitely was cool getting to do this - I don't remember anyone doing this at a previous PAX.
2015 PAX Prime Omeganaut (I will forever hate Katamari)
Prime Polygon - $15
Prime Core - $30
Merch - spend $100 total to get
Starslip Prime - $15
CW Skull - $15
Bin it 2 Win it - $15
Double Fine Logo - $15
Raz - $15
Iver - $15 or complete a 20-30 minute demo
Bellower - $15
Diamond Block - $15
Portal Set - $45
Co-Optional Podcast - $10
Seattle Polaris Grand Prix - $10
Vault Boy - $15 (sold out in 30 min each day)
Doom Revenant - $15
Behemoth x5 - $10 each, random luck
Lovers in a Dangerous Space Time - $10
Sprite - $10 or a 5 picture scavenger hunt
LRR Muffins - $10
Total cost is well over $300.
If you eliminate the 15 staff pins you trade for, 30 of the remaining 39 pins involved money.
2015 PAX Prime Omeganaut (I will forever hate Katamari)
On the other hand, WHY were We Love Fine's pins so expensive? After getting two portal sets and the two secret pins, I think I ended up over $100 and I didn't realize they were going to be that high. Ick.
$45 for 4 pins is $11.25 each. That's really not that bad, it just stinks that you have to buy them in sets of 4 if you don't want all of the pins.
www.pinnypals.com/pals/d0rkangl
-Nearly $50 for a set of four pins seems like extortion, even though we don't blink an eye for a $15 individual pin. We Love Fine could charge whatever they want, of course, but a pin set retailing for $50 is bonkers to me.
-Star Wars had a cool pin and a cool game. Someone on WhatsApp (can't remember who) called it KOTOR Lite, and that's exactly what it is.
-I would've killed for a playable Fallout demo, but the pin was lovely enough that I didn't mind not getting any time with Fallout 4. Also, I don't think the Bethesda folks or the enforcers expected so crazy of a press of people for those pins.
-My wife likes the new Prime Kemper. It's now up in her office.
Always looking to trade.
Yeah, I don't like the higher cost trending. If it was lower, I might've picked up extra sets, but I just got what was needed for me and my pin pal.
Dat wuz me. ^_^ And it honestly is. I think the Star Wars games are hitting a real stride. The interface was simple but classic Kotor style, and they're definitely sticking to the story element as well.
Yeah, their reaction was a lot like the Star Trek booths reaction at East this year. Harmonix as well I don't think realized how much of a grab their pin would be. There's a lot of sleeper hit pins that are emerging.
Interestingly, the first day at the Star Trek booth way back when was so tame. It got crazy on Saturday.
Always looking to trade.
Check out my YouTube Pinny Arcade Videos!
Selfie tweets brah.
Trade me pins! - https://pinnypals.com/pals/TheAggroCraig
- Collecting all the pins has become downright hostile to my wallet. Not that pin collecting has ever been a cheap hobby, but to buy all the purchasable pins for Prime this year would set you back $300 (in addition to vendors who had pins available from previous PAXes).
- Collecting all the pins has become unfriendly to Canadians. I'm only allowed to bring C$800 back across the border before CBSA gets all huffy and wants me to pay duty. Slam the low loonie on top of that and I can only buy US$600 of stuff before hitting that limit; dropping half of that on pins is something I'm becoming increasingly hesitant to do.
- Up until now, there have been very few pin designs that I disliked. But this year, while there are some pins I absolutely love, there are also pins I absolutely hate and can't imagine spending time or money to collect (e.g. Rainbow 6 and Polaris – these pins do nothing for me).
- I found I had less patience this year for LineCon than I was expecting. I only lined up for two games this year – Rock Band 4 and Star Wars Uprising – and only because they had pins that I really wanted, but I kind of resent that what I'm queueing for is being dictated by who's offering pins.
- I have even less patience for exhibitors who expect you do something extraordinary for their pin. No Gigantic, I will not play your game five times just to get your pin.
- The final straw was that I was capped out of the staff trading event, despite arriving 30 minutes before the event. I was relying on that event to collect all the staff pins (to maintain the illusion of hardcore-ness) and to dump the excess holiday pins I had for more tradable pins. Yeah, maybe I should've planned to queue earlier for that, but I didn't, and when given the option of queueing in the overflow room or spending time with friends, I choose friends.
Basically, collecting all the pins requires more money than I'm willing to spend, eats up duty exemption space I could use on board games and other merch, and requires more time than I'm willing to invest.Pedro and I had a chat at one point that we're going to see a great merging of the Hardcore pin pal groups, with a great many casualties in the process. Shit's gonna be Andromeda and the Milky Way for a bit. I think the step between will be us seeing a lot of group start doubling up people who are assigned to specific PAXen; that's already somewhat happening anyhow.
Next is really gonna be when we see all this happen. It's hard to keep up, both financially and energetically. I honestly don't know how long I'm gonna be able to remain at 100% myself.
Now, it's not like I'm going to give up the pins entirely. But I will have to restrict it to a select few pins for games or groups that I really like. Which I suppose is what Gabe wanted all along, so... mission accomplished, I guess?
(Sunday night was doubly frustrating for me, because after getting capped out of pin trading, I got capped out of Late Night Dub Fight as well. I didn't expect either to be capped 30 minutes in advance.)
Always looking to trade.
Perhaps there needs to be a "staff pin only" trading session at this point, for people that are only interested in that aspect of collecting those specific pins?
2015 PAX Prime Omeganaut (I will forever hate Katamari)
Totally agree with you about some of the designs lately. I saw the Polaris ones and thought "Yeah very few people will want those"
The trading is really key, I did more of that this year than I ever have before and starting to meet the community just pulled me in more.
www.pinnypals.com/pals/d0rkangl
And then, I had two more days of PAX to do whatever I wanted. So I did what I wanted, while continuing to trade and obtain a "few" more pins here and there. It was awesome. And now I have a bunch of Prime pins to take to the next PAX I'm at, for more trading.
Harmonix was an easier one this year before they ran out. The center line with 3 guitars never took me more than 40 minutes to go through at the longest. Many times it was 15-20 minutes. I traded a number of these to other pin traders for pins that took more time to get or cost money. Saved them from having to play it, and saved me some pocket money.
World of Warships was another. It was slightly longer but I played it 6 times over the weekend for 6x pins (and a new shirt every day).
Last year it was Age of Empires. Could do that once every 10-30 minutes. Must have played that game 15 times. Almost traded for a full staff set with just AOE pins.
Look for opportunities to do 1:2, 1:3, or even 1:4+ trades of new timesink pins for fodder; these aren't that hard to find as many established collectors have tons of fodder and want to get multiples of the new timesink pins without grinding the lines all day. Then take your newfound fodder pile into the pin trading event and do 26 (the max allowed, 2 per staff member) uptrades on the tables to turn your fodder into medium value trading pins. That plus some strategic purchasing should give you a nice base to start working serious trades with. Keep up with the forum/slack/whatsapp between shows so you don't miss out on online exclusives and limited editions which will always trade well
http://pinmash.info - Two pins enter, one pins leaves... then the other pin leaves with a lower Elo rating
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That's part of the problem I had – most of the pins I had available to trade were low-value pins that most people already have, and I was hoping to trade them at the staff tables for medium-value pins that I either didn't have or which would make for good trades. In retrospect, I really should've prioritized the trading event higher than I did, but I didn't, and now I'm well behind.
You'll get one. I have faith!!
Was this me? It might have been me, I made a very similar trade (I was working the TG booth). We generally had zero problem trading for cool pins because why the hell not?
Gets boring working the booth sometimes and it becomes a challenge to see how many we can collect by just standing there.
Did you get to keep the pins that you traded the diamond blocks for? TG would be pretty dang cool to let you do that.
http://pinmash.info - Two pins enter, one pins leaves... then the other pin leaves with a lower Elo rating
[/br]https://www.pinnypals.com/pals/misskass
Well, I appreciate it greatly if it was you. It was just so refreshing to see people excited about pins and willing to trade as opposed to charging crazy prices
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