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Constructive Feedback - West 2016
Please post civil constructive feedback of the show here
As always, it's fine to disagree and dislike things, just don't be a dick about it.
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The enforcers I interacted with were very well organized, communicated clearly, and were very friendly this year.
"Oh what a day, what a LOVELY DAY!"
Of course by "well" I mean it worked most of the time at a extremely reduced speed instead of "don't even bother trying".
I liked that more panels were allowed to be longer then an hour long. Too bad PAX Rumble used it to be even more disorganized and later then normal.
I'd like more enforcers to use digression with the bunching of the line. Some were like "Okay it's 45 minutes till the panel starts time to start crunch 1", 15 minutes later "Okay no more sittling" then 15 minutes later "okay sardine time" Even if the panel was clearly going to be like 1/4 filled and there was still plenty of room in the panel line.
Others didn't care and just focused on entertaining the line until bunching was needed. I'd prefer that.
While I thought the pre-signup thing was a nice touch, I didn't even know thats how it worked till Sunday. That makes it hard for someone who is both a fan and an exhibitor to try and juggle time. by the time I wasn't working booths signup was over. Some of the booths (Sony) worked really well with others and I was able to sneak in before the floor, but not all worked that way.
Enforcers, as always, rocked. I almost was always able to find one.
tabletop back in the main building helped with our traffic flows, which for a booth runner is a great thing.
I was bummed about some smaller big name booths, but understood why.
The Shuttle rocked, though there were times where it was more like 30-40 minutes. I think this iwas due to them using a big bus vs like a passenger van which could navigate traffic better.
I want to make a special E Call out. I don't know his handle, but my wife (who is partially Deaf) went to Merch lite alone on Saturday to finalize our purchases. The Din in the room was so loud and confusing that she was getting lost. Whomever the E was successsfully was able to sign to her and help her complete the list and get checked out. MAJOR Kudo's for having that even if it wasn't planned.
I agree with this. Media does have their own convention and unless they're at the booth to interview the staff, they need to wait in line like everyone else. The interview should be scheduled and if it isn't then media badge is equivalent to regular badge, not medical badge.
One thing that surprised me at the con was the expansion of the handheld lounge by the disappearance of Nintendo from the 2nd and 3rd floors. Did the Fire Marshal get on someone's case? If this is going to continue in the future, it would be nice if there could be more beanbags in the expanded handheld lounge - they felt very thin on the ground this year.
I'd also like to have classic console and the arcade closer to each other in the future. I felt like I barely made it to the arcade because it was so out of the way. I don't mind splitting the arcade off to a separate building, but I do think it would be nice if it and classic console could be near each other.
I like the continuing proliferation of indie games at PAX. It's a great way to find out about these games that aren't going to get covered by the main press. More indies! Bigger megabooth!
All in all, a great PAX as usual.
I'm going to echo what a couple people have said in that booths for games should be given a higher priority than Twitch/Xfinitey etc. twitch was especially weird because so much of it was "partners only" and they were selling their own convention tickets right smack in the middle of PAX.
Also, as others have said, either bring back the goodies that used to be in the swag bags, or just do away with them all together. One of my hotel roommates had grabbed one, and told us that there was nothing but advertising in them this year, so I didn't bother grabbing one.
-Back in 2011 (they may have done this before but this is the first year I can remember) vendors used to use a unique punch on your badge when you got a piece of swag, swagbag, etc... So you could only get 1 per day. I know there was some hullaballoo over badges getting marked up but the quality of the items were by far and above anything I can remember from the last few years. I know they don't want to do custom badges as there are costs associated with that, but maybe just a generic swag badge that can be punched out and mangled a bit so vendors aren't handing out 19 shirts to the same greedy ass every day.
-No league presence was this year was kind of nice, but should they come back, maybe give them a satellite site? They attract a large crowd and would probably do better with dedicated space.
-Throwing in my hat for more Indie Megabooth space! The 6th floor was a gold mine and giving more room to let some of these indies breathe would be awesome!
-That myxomyosis in the Omegathon final round, what a heart throb! ;p
-And as for media cutting in lines for Pinny Arcade, collectibles, etc... I was lucky enough to have access during media hour this year and I think it's per vendor policy on how they handle their merch. I grabbed a couple shirts for my friend from bungie and there was a guy trying to get some limited edition stuff and they weren't selling anything limited until after 10am. So maybe the issues of PAX collectibles could be fixed with some simple education and policies for vendors?
As an Omeganaut this year, I wasn't able to test out many of the games I was on the fence about buying. From what I understand, years before, Omeganauts were able to cut lines. This helps a lot since there are two rounds on Friday and Saturday.
I've talked to several exhibitors(volunteers and employees) while I tried to get in lines. They too wish to view other games aside from the ones they work for. When you get 30mins lunch, you really don't get a chance. Plus they get to the hall super early, why not?
The swag should be given to those enduring the long wait times.
2. Swag bags should go. This year was the lamest showing. Doesn't even have packs of Magic cards!
3. Check in times, tickets to come back later, etc are great...if you can get in at 10 to sign up at the booths.
4. Another hour longer. Close expo hall at 7!
I called it :biggrin: In the PAX East forum I stated this would be a complaint for West and sure enough it is. This is the never ending complaint and now I kind of want it to be a tradition that the swag bag has junk in it and we complain about it :biggrin:. Let me state it here that this will be a complaint for East 2017.
That is my understanding about the Omeganaughts, esp since they are limited number of people. I have don't have an issue if its just the Omgeanaught and they are polite about it (the one I met one year was super nice and polite) but the whole let me and my whole group of friends in is annoying and unfair.
I would have to agree with many others as well. Twitch taking up so much room for, basically, nothing of substance, was odd to me. Rooster teeth was an odd one. Most of their area seemed to be a lounge and merch booth, but they did have some stations for their RWBY game.
Swag bags were even more disappointing than previous years. At least last year there were magic starter packs, this year there was a single card for superfight (they appeared to be trying to do the X of Y trading thing ala CAH in previous years), some beta and discount codes, and the ever present adverts. And really, an old spice advert? Single sided printing and nothing else? Is someone trying to hint at something?
Having the line indicator in the guidebook was a very good idea and helpful vs checking twitter and potentially having to scroll back through a metric arseload of tweets to find out what the status of a given line is, but it seemed that it wasn't being updated as frequently as it should have been, and having an actual number there showing the capacity of the line would have been more helpful IMO than just a bar that gave a vague indicator of how full a panel was going to be.
Having the VR stuff out of the main hall. I think it was a shame that it was put over in the Westin, being relatively out of the way, but considering how popular VR is right now, I feel that it really was a good idea and helped a lot to prevent traffic problems on the main floor (I still remember the lines around the oculus booth from previous years).
Vendors/booths running raffles... This, I think, needs to have a limit, or some area set up specifically for it. Almost every year, I see a vendor doing this at the end of the convention, and it results in huge crowds, clogged walkaways, being unable to talk to any devs who had the misfortune to be near the booth, and stressed out E's trying to keep the walkways cleared. I'm all for winning free stuff as much as the next person, but I also see the problems that happen because of them.
Edit/addition: The indy area. Yes, oh yes, this needs to be bigger... somehow. It was almost always packed and very hard to get through, much less stop and be able to talk to the devs in there and properly check out their games.
And after filling out the emailed feedback form from Reed (and a brief discussion with an E), please oh please, NEVER move Pri...West to anywhere but Seattle (but having it in Portland Oregon would be pretty sweet since I live in the area). Myself, I have been attending since 2012, camping the site for passes, making the several hour drive in I5 traffic to the hotel, etc. If it ever moved to somewhere in California, I would not be able to attend as the costs for getting there would skyrocket for me. PAX started in the PNW, and that is where it should remain IMO.
Interesting. Well, several of us would appreciate just having the extra hr for those two days. Makes it a lot less stressful and doesn't feel like we are missing out.
The RoosterTeeth booth was great this year, was awesome that i did not have to wait in a 2-3 hour line (that is if i managed to get in for the 15 seconds when it was not capped all the time) to get merch and i could come back at another time for it to be signed.
Hard to find any other cons, panel lines were very well managed and expo hall bad great booths.
Attended: East 14, 15 and West 16
Attending West 2019
The Expo Hall was a letdown this year, as the AAA titles were few and were pretty much sequels. I get it, a lot of these companies didn't have big games to show off and next year will probably be back to normal. Thankfully there was still a ton of other great stuff to do, but this was easily the least amount of time I spent in the expo hall.
Also, I'd still like to see the expo hall games with 2-3 hour wait times have 2 lines: one for the 2-3 hour wait with the 30 minute demo, and one with a quick 5 minute demo so that if you can't wait for the huge line you can still get to check out their game. Doing the math, the current setup doesn't get your game out there to many people. If it's a 30 minute demo and you have 20 stations, that means you only are getting 40 people through an hour, or 320 a day, or 1280 through the entirety of PAX! (And less than that if you're at a 3 day PAX...) That's a pretty small audience, even if you double the amount of people to around 2500 by having 15 minute demos, which is just as common. That's still only a fraction of the attendees.
-Another fix to this is to bring back what has been done in the past. Have the game available in PC freeplay and let people play it there. I have bought games solely because I played them with friends at PC freeplay and it was a blast, and that was after being on the fence after a demo at a booth.
All those years with 1up still on the "how did you hear about PAX?" list and now this year during the "what parts of PAX did you visit?" part, the wrong theatre names were used.
Pros
Cons
It's really frustrating to have to line up outside hours in advance - and of course there is only one place you can be inside at 10:00 AM sharp. Somehow I managed to get into the FFXV demo the second day, but it was really painful - basically you had to be at the booth (!) before 10:02 or you were out of luck. Same with D&D - line up hours in advance, run to the line as quickly as you can only to find out it's "capped" or all the slots have been filled and you're just lining up for the waiting list. More people should get the chance to play.
I greatly preferred previous years where you could show up later in the day and still have a chance to play if you were willing to wait.
The swag bags have dwindled to almost nothing at all - and the Amazon bags ran out early. I miss real swag bags that had good things inside of them. I'd also be happier with fewer sponsored tweets and less promotion of Amazon.
Lines seemed worse as far as being told to "compress, compress!" was concerned. I like it when they let us spread out more so that we can play games while we're waiting in line for hours rather than being subject to a human compression algorithm. I was also surprised at how the line for Acquisitions Inc. opened up 2 hours (!) before and then was 50% full or more almost immediately. I wish I hadn't had to burn 2 hours of expo hall time waiting in that line.
I've given up on trying to get the limited edition PAX pins - I tried 3 days last year and didn't get them, and this year I had to line up for the "be there at 10 AM or you're out of luck" tickets.
I agree about prioritizing playable games over non-game things like Twitch or intel. Some good merch booths are OK though.
Tabletop gaming is still much more relaxed, other than the horror of D&D signups at least!
I don't know why but it really did seem hard to get around - part of that might be that the expo hall entrances and exits aren't well marked and there aren't obvious paths to take. The 6th floor seemed tricky to get to, and that's probably one reason it was less crowded! It also had more space and was well lit.
And I'll say it again: please, please, don't ever send out any more of those obnoxious "PAX is x% complete" tweets - they are awful.
Yeah those were the theater names for East. Looks like a copy and paste job gone wrong.
Oh, and as far as D&D goes, I talked to a few of the people running it and they said they had no idea AI D&D would be this popular and that clearly next time they'll have to add a bunch more space for it. They also hadn't anticipated most people going on to part 2, so even though on Monday I finally managed (after 3 attempts!) to get into a game, I was surprised to find out that part 2 was even more full. So, here's hoping next year they've got the space for it.
-I will say, though, that they did an awesome job with it. It's hard to anticipate something like that, but now they know.
And another AI thing--it would be awesome if it didn't start until later. The previous years it has been later in the day and that worked out so much better for doing everything else. East this year was probably the worst for that though since it was in the middle of the day.
I mean, it already ran until 9pm, I doubt they can really push it much later...
I would imagine part of the reason for starting when they did was due to showing it in theaters. It went to almost midnight on the east coast. A later start might lessen east coast sales. I know I personally may not have gone with a later start.
I wonder if this implies that they don't even read the survey
PROS:
CONS:
Overall, I think I'm sticking with East. I had a blast at Pax West, dont get me wrong, but overall I see why the "Prime" title was dropped. I'm looking forward to March for PAX East. It will be cheaper and some of the exhibits that were lacking at west seem to be a staple at East now.
I agree with this, it is more disappointing than anything else. I hated being reminded that Pax is almost over. Was gonna turn tweets off because of this but kept forgetting to.
CONS
PROS
PAX Weast 2017 Status: Badges [X] Room [X] Fried Rice [X]
I very much disagree. Last year AI started at 8:30pm and it was a mess because people weren't "allowed" to line up until 2 hours before, but everyone was done at the expo by 6 so it created a huge disorganized mess of people trying to line up and security and enforcers telling them they weren't allowed to be there yet. The line was basically capped as soon as it was created at 6:30.
I decided not to go this year, but I did check the line status and 1.5 hours before AI started the line wasn't quite capped yet. That is much more manageable for staff and enforcers and leads to a lot less spectator frustration.
I agree last year's line was awful, but they let us in 3 hours before this year (I was there at 3:10 pm this year and I was already a few hundred people back) and that largely fixed the problem. They also intentionally scheduled a large chunk of time before the show which helped so that the line wasn't conflicting with anything.
However, to the other points, with it being broadcast in theaters I can definitely see that as it would be very late for the East coast if it started later.
Not So Great: The PAX XP event was not that fun this year. I think it's okay to have them in a specific order, but have each one give you clues about where the next one might be located!