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PAX Prime Suggestions Thread
Moe Fwacky
Right Here, Right NowDrives a BuickModerator mod
Right Here, Right NowDrives a BuickModerator mod
Moe Fwacky wrote:Hey guys, PA has this handy survey up about PAX. You should all fill it out. https://survey.efmfeedback.com/se.ashx?s=705E3EC807CAC0C6
PAX is over, and most people are winding down. If there was something you did like and want to see more of, didn't like and want to see less of, or didn't see at all and would like to make an appearance, this is the place to suggest it. Remember, this thread is for suggestions about next year's PAX PRIME. Also, please stay civil, and obey the Glorious Edict and Wheaton's Law at all times.
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Bring back a Rock Band area.
Downsized (seemingly) beanbag lounge areas were sad. Don't care if it's Sumo but I want my old lounges back.
Said it last year, and I'll say it again and again unless somebody tells me it's at his personal request that it not be so: Wil needs to be in the main.
New event staff (white shirts) were good.
Halofest was meh. And a large meh.
I'm ignoring everything that was awesome but hadn't changed. I'll probably be back with more.
keep the paramount, it was perfect for the main hall!!!
why wasn't skyrim in the main hall? i went to line up 40 mins before the show and was immediately turned away as they had already reached capacity! i suggest having major release/AAA games be given the main hall due to obvious high demand
after going through halo fest i think having an iam8bit art gallery/showing during pax would be pretty cool
i also think that the PAX 10 developers should be given more visibility, maybe some floor space at the sky bridge at least
have a ticket system for the big games similar to the DMV/govt so people don't have to spend 2+ hours in line waiting and clogging up the aisles. they can still walk around and explore and come back every 20 mins or so and if they see that there number is close to being called they can then wait around
-Don't cut BYOC anymore. With 350 seats it sold out in under a week. Even if it stays at 350 it'll probably sell-out in 72 hours next year. Please consider putting it back up to the 500 seats it had in 2010.
-Re: floor space; hopefully next year when Halofest is gone we can finally have PAX proper take over the entire convention center.
-PAX_Lines is a great tool and should continue being used. Also could Official_PAX please stop tweeting the percentage complete. They are the single saddest tweets of the whole weekend.
-I've said it three years now. Give Paul and Storm/Joco their own concert. If I were the Supercommuters I would be furious that we were after Joco. Have Friday night be the indie/up-and-coming/new-guys night and leave the big show to the headliners.
-I didn't know about the hole-punch method that On-Live was doing but it sound brilliant. Add little boxes that can be punched right onto the badge.
-Have a new special shirt design next year please. I want to give you my money! But I don't want two of the same shirt.
-I found the amount of Firefall advertising to be very close to excessive. I liked that the street banners went all the way down Pike St. but I found the adds on the bathroom mirrors to be a little obnoxious. Developers are free to spend their money as they wish but at some point enough is enough.
-PAX has picked up the nicknames "Line-con" and "Queue-con" for a reason. Please continue to work to make lines more manageable, both in the expo hall and for the panels.
This PAX was the best one I've been to yet. It is still, IMO, the best gaming convention on the planet. All these suggestions are made with the best of intentions to keep PAX as good as it is.
I'm not a Halo player, and I heard that Halo Feast was not really all that by some people, but... I think it could be neat to have and improve things such as this. I'm thinking about how GDC runs, and how they have the various "tracks". It seems like it could be interesting to have FPS, MMO, Meta (for talks on things such as Child's Play, Girl Gamers, etc...) ... tracks. I honestly don't know what the specific tracks would be, but I'm sure people much smarter than me might have ideas.
One thing I really loved at PAX East was the TT/Card/Board game room. Being able to go to one place and find so many people interested in playing these things was really awesome. Here at Prime, I felt... a little more confused on where to go to play things other than Magic or D&D. This is another one of those, I don't know how to "fix" it, but maybe people have an idea for how to make it easier to find things? (I'm not sure there's any space to have a giant room that would replicate East's room)
KEEP THE PARAMOUNT
Yeah, that scheduling was definitely a violation of Wheaton's Law. I felt pretty bad for Wheelie that they had him go on after those two acts.
1) +1 on the Paramount. While I sat in lines for the main theater events, I don't think a single event fully sold out (people were saying that there were open seats for Acquistions Inc at the start of it). Amazing venue. Please, please, pleeeease keep this.
2) If its possible, move Wheaton to the main theater. Skyrim makes sense, as I suspect it was already arranged theater wise, and then it got the crazy press from Comic-Con. So, that's understandable about why it was in a small room.
3) Reading the fake passes thread; the overpopulation makes way more sense, if there were 3000-5000 extra passes (which makes sense, based on what some of my enforcer friends have said), that's why things were so crazy. Unfortunately, something will have to be done about this, as PAX is at severe risk of getting shut down due to the fire marshal if this isn't curbed heavily. This also shuts off my rant about lines; that's probably why the lines were insane.
4) In line with #3, you might need to charge more for passes to get that added security. I'm comfortable with $80, as two single day passes shouldn't be $10 more than a three day pass I think. I'm not going to complain if it stays in the 55-65 range, obviously, but just economics kick in at a certain point, especially if serious security measures on the badges need to be taken to keep PAX functioning as a convention.
5) Bring back the Rock Band stage! Plleeease! Or, if you're going to remove it, make that area PING PONG FREEPLAYYYYY!!! (Next year, I may or may not show up with a ping pong table to the Q&A. I'm just saying.)
6) More panels! I'd love to see more insights into the PA universe and a Khoo & A. Also, I love the intelligent debates that occur at many of the panels (The continuation of the PAX East discussion panel was really cool). DRM, Women in Gaming, Violence in Video Games, etc, all seem like awesome, awesome topics (and they will be e-mailed to pax_panels once I can put them down on paper and in more detail).
7) Thumbs super, SUPER up for streaming the main theater events into Wolfman. I think this should be done for all main theater events personally. (I know 6 and 7 run into each other a bit, though, in terms of having more panels but then using up another room for main theater overflow). The other place where it could be streamed could be the queue room? That said; the main theater did never fully fill up.
8) As a community, we need to be super careful about thumbing our noses at the "halo / console" players; I met several folks who were at PAX for just HaloFest, and they felt a little scorned. As a community, of all folks on this planet, we should not be judging / exclusive towards other gamers. Halo / WoW are amazing gateway drugs, I mean, games. ;-)
9) Expand PAX_Lines to each room if possible (this would mean getting some of the enforcers to do those accounts). That would be awesome.
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The PAX XP scavenger hunt this year was pretty neat, but it could be improved.
1) Provide an alternative for people who don't have a smartphone capable of reading QR codes - maybe they can write down a code word that's on the back of the code, and get the clue from the Info Desk later.
2) Ensure that all clues are accurate - there were two clues that were definitely wrong (and confirmed so later by Enforcers) that caused me to spend way more time trying to solve the puzzle around them.
3) For QR codes in the Expo Hall, please put them where everyone can get to them. I realize that there may have been some sponsorship going on, but the code that was inside the middle of the Gunnar booth was very hard to get a clear shot of because people were all over the place.
4) Possibly make additional clues available as PAX goes on. I spent a LOT of time finding all the clues, but due to (2) I was really worried that I wouldn't solve the puzzle in time to get my keychain. Being able to show that you did find 95% of the 37 clues should get you some help, especially since last year's keychain was just 6 or 8 stamps on a card with no puzzle involved.
Thanks for making a new game for the event, though!
PAX Prime Attendee since 2006, BYOC Attendee 2008-2012, Buttoneer 2010-2014
https://www.pinnypals.com/pals/alegria
Keep using the Paramount but let us buy PAX umbrellas from you. Great for the outdoor lines in sun and rain.
The companies on 2nd floor needed recognition on the location banners. Just saying it was 'tabletop' didn't help. I didn't even know about uncles or Gary Games until way late in the Con (and as part of that my wife almost missed being in a tourney that didn't make the books but she wanted to be in) It shouldn't be hard to say where SJ Games, Dragon Dice, Pajaggle, and those companies are like you do for the exhibit floor booths.
I actually LIKED that Rock Band wasn't there, as it made that area quieter for gaming in the area. That being said, having a RB room somewhere could be useful (there was a full floor in the annex not being used)
I don't know about having wizards off in another building. its like a whole separate Con that just happens to share badges.
A bigger attention to LFG in the TT area..the twitter works well, but I looked around for the better part of 2 hours and was unable to find a game to join in. maybe get some kind of flag or cone or something that can be put on tables looking for more players.
Firefall overkill, nuff said
Bring back Intel and Get in Line games!!! I missed both of them (and said as much all over twitter)
If you are going to do live talking in the queue room, like onlinve was, then it needs to be better sounded. I could barely hear them over the normal Din.
Better flagging in the Queue room to ID what needs to stay open. Having one of the WSCC ladies come in and SCREAM at you to clear the center isle when it wasn't marked as such was both bad for her cause she came off as a bitch, and bad for the attendees who are just there to have fun and don't understand. (not everyone frequents the queue room so probably didn't know). It might be better do do a 'fill from the center' method to help avoid this. (also maybe have enforcers just have a headcount on how many people can fit into 1 section, so there doesn't need to be any early compression.)
more global announcemnts, less advertising on twitter. (would have loved to have reminders when certain major, non filled events were going, like the streaming concerts and such (btw, that was a HUGE perk as I got to finally enjoy some of the concert)
More Later I'm sure
- As others have said, the Firefall blitz was on the excessive side
- The nos booth was out of place - the "booth babes" didn't bother me too much, but in general it didn't seem to have any tie in to gaming. Maybe if they sponsored some "pro" gamer and had him/her around a few hours each day for folks to challenge, that'd be another story.
- As for booth babes, I saw the tweets about the NOS girls and some other instances of the rules being violated. If they're just standing there to look pretty and draw hormones to the booth, then see ya later, but so long as they can tell me about the product, then it doesn't bother me. I see just as much skin on display from some cosplayers.
- There was a big banner in the queue room for the walking dead - my group wasn't sure if this was for the board game, or just a general ad for the TV show. If for the show, that's kinda disappointing, because I'd hate to see more and more TV and movie stuff creeping in.
- People standing in the walkways forcing paper stuff at you. If you have something to hand out, hand it out at your booth. There's enough traffic as it is, we don't need someone standing at a busy intersection handing out brochures for their product and making the congestion worse.
- Some kind of identifier on the badge that the vendors can utilize would be nice - whether it's a mag strip, QR code, RFID, NFC, whatever. We had onlive punching holes, Riot cutting the corner of the badge, and I remember last year the WoWTCG loot wheel punched the badge (dunno if that was there this year, didn't see it). I dunno about you, but I don't like the idea of my badge getting all punched up full of holes and whatnot, and while it may just be a few companies this year, in time it could get a lot worse. With something like a QR code, implementation costs for the exhibitors could be low, a few smartphones running a custom app could serve as scanners.
- Signings in bandland are problematic to me, though not sure what can be done about it. I get that people want to have their stuff signed, but kinda sucks to show up and just wanna buy a shirt, but there's a huge line of people waiting to get stuff signed and take pictures. Can be a roll of the dice if you get a chance to make it back to bandland later, and even then the item could be OOS. Maybe move the signings into a room adjacent to bandland?
- Sad to see the sumo lounges gone. and the rock band freeplay stage.
Swag auction is an amazing, amazing idea.
Maybe just at the end of the day, when the proper PA merch line has calmed?
Don't think PAX needs anything that big, but would be pretty neat to have a small newsletter each day that could touch on some show info - previous day's tournament winners, omegathon results, maybe a poll or two from the previous day, a few interviews with random folks about what they've seen and liked. With the show going so late, might not be possible to have it edited and printed by 10am the next morning though. Lots of obstacles to overcome, but I think it could be pretty awesome.
A few points:
1) There seems to be a consistent problem year after year with rooms not getting loaded until the very last second. This will tie in with point 2, but it would be nice to actually be able to sit down at a panel before the scheduled starting time.
2) The queue rooms, particularly in the Sheraton, could be better managed. It felt like in the Sheraton (for both the Wil Wheaton and Guild Wars 2 panels) we were getting crammed into standing room only for extended periods; I understand the desire to get as many people in the queue as possible, but there's a balance to be struck.
3) I'm not a fan of smoke machines in the expo halls
4) I'm not going to bother arguing about music volume at concerts (I have earplugs), but several panels were decidedly too loud - the point is the panel, not the background music as people are getting seated. The music while seating at the GW2 panel was enough to make me plug my ears, and the volume once they started playing their trailer was literally ear-damaging - I and several other friends walked out of the panel with splitting headaches even after plugging our ears. It would be nice if there was more oversight of such things.
5) There has been a trend among certain gaming companies towards closed booths (large walls with lines around them where only a few people can get in at a time). Especially with how long lines can get, this denies the vast majority of PAX the ability to even glimpse from a distance what was going on. I would prefer that this trend not be encouraged.
And I may as well save the most controversial opinion for last: In my opinion, there are just too many people at PAX. This may be a fight that can't be won, as I get the general impression that they're trying to let as many people as possible "experience PAX", but with as many people at PAX as there are now, there's a minimum hour wait to see anything you'd want to see in the expo hall, and even longer waits for the popular panels. This severely limits the amount of things people are able to experience - I recall as recently as PAX 2009 I was able to go from session to session to session with not much time in lines at all, whereas for PAX 2011 I probably spent half my time in lines. In fact, I would gladly pay considerably more for a pass to a less crowded event.
Saw jim sterling tweet about it today. Apparently lived up to the name.
Agreed on "closed" booths. It seems to be a trend, too, particularly with established, popular games. Yay, long line with a single chokepoint that I MUST wait in to even see your game. Super. Part of me says fuck them, if they don't want me to see their shit I don't want to either. He other part feels like it goes against the spirit of PAX, and maybe some control should be exercised over such booth designs.
Seems like a violation of Wheaton's law, either way.
I understand the changes to the second hand badge thread in the forums from a forum admin perspective. With that said, the lottery vibe of the thread surely pushed more and more attendees into the eager arms of scalpers, some of which were selling fake badges.
Admittedly, I don't have an easy solution to either of those issues.
Wil's panel needs to be on Saturday or Sunday.
I also agree with the above poster about JoCo and Paul & Storm. Having anyone follow those two acts only does that act a disservice. Personally, I would have loved a VGO - P&S - JoCo show.
I too loved the Paramount. My wife and I were both pretty impressed we closed off a whole street for the queue.
i don't like the closed booths either. it's ironic that gearbox would be dicks and keep Borderlands hidden behind giant walls yet do the complete opposite and awesome by giving the game away for free
* FireFall adverts were absolutely insane and yea, we all like the green paper stuff, but holy jello, it was overwhelming. I will very likely not be playing their game because I was so turned off.
* Lines for some games really needed to be cut off the way that the TOR line was. That was done very well, with an Enforcing holding up an "I am the end of line" board. If other lines had that as well, I think traffic flow would have been better.
* Small booths doing raffles/stuff-throwing and clogging up walking areas was a real bitch to put up with. I hadn't seen that in other years and wish that could be dealt with better.
* Hopefully with Halofest gone, PAX can take up the whole convention center. Not MORE BOOTHS, just rearranged booths to spread things (and people) out.
Aside from those things, the only personal complaint I really have is one Enforcer. I have never ever had an issue with an Enforcer until Saturday. We went into the PC Freeplay area for the first time, and were promptly led to our computers (yay). There were TONS of free spaces and we ended up around some people who had quite obviously been there longer than us. 30 minutes into gaming, we got a tap on our table and rudely told "Time up". Then the Enforcer walked off. No one else had to leave. We weren't being loud or doing anything douchey, so I'm not sure what the deal was.
- Firefall. It's lost all meaning as a word from the oversaturation. I understand they probably paid handsomely for this bombardment, but maybe you can suggest to vendors who want to buy massive amounts of advertising space that it really isn't the best idea. I noticed by Sunday some of the adverts were being vandalized. Oh, and despite all this, I still am not sure what type of game it is, but I really, *really* don't want to play it.
- PAX XP needing a smartyphone. I did say this elsewhere, but because I have a stupidphone that can't do QR codes I wasn't able to participate. Why don't I, as a geek, have a smartyphone? Because the $480 a year I save having a stupidphone data plan versus a smartyphone one pays for half my PAX experience.
What I loved:
- Big shout out to all the WotC folks and volunteers who worked the MtG and D&D rooms. You are all fantastic and deserve at least three internets each.
- Separate queue rooms in the Sheraton. Worked quite well, in my ever so expansive experience of... lining up for the only panel I saw all weekend.
- The increased TT space over last year. YAY!
- The 6th floor being almost exclusively indie games. I spent a lot more time up there because 1) TOO! LOUD! BRIGHT! SHINY! in the 4th floor expo, and 2) I don't play a lot of MMOs or FPSes, but boy do I love me some rhythm and tower defense and puzzle games. As a corollary to this, and I don't know if it was 'official' PAX, but the Indie Games quest to get the
+++BRONYS BEFORE BROS!+++
Cannot agree enough. I found them at about 4:45 Sunday afternoon, and let's just say I was not at my freshest. I would much MUCH rather see them take a chunk of the main expo hall than see another megabooth like Firefall. (Nothing against those guys, mind.)
+1 to the "what happened to the handheld lounges?" too. Dug up my DS just for those this year, and was presented with, instead of a fairly quiet, chill atmosphere with a bunch of tired nerds sacked out on beanbags(last year), a loud, exciting Nintendo booth with lines and Pokemon and children.
+1 to barcodes on the badges for swag. Beep, bag, one and done. Sure, people shouldn't be a dick and grab a pile to eBay, but... People shouldn't lots of things. No reason to hassle with scanners everywhere, in the lines or anything. Just a code for bags, maybe a QR the exhibitors could scan to sign you up for things as well.
Don't get me wrong, I had a great time, but I'd rather see more love given to the guys like the PAX 10, or the Ska Studios guys who I will be honest made me emit a sort of high-pitched gleeful noise when I accidentally found them. In a corner. Behind a sign saying "beware of leopard". I love me some Bioware, I love me some 2K (XCOM!), but I'm not just there for long lines and megatitles shut behind blank walls and a security guard. I'm there for the indie stuff and the "I'd never have found this..." and, yes, my fellow socially slightly maladjusted monitor-blinded dorks.
On a YES YES MORE OF THIS PLEASE AWESOME note: Twitter use was fantastic, both official accounts. #ttlfg was quality too. The whiteboards last year were nice though for the "wander by and see a LFG" factor. Paramount was such a good choice, as well. QR codes! Holy crap handy. The "I am the end of the line" Enforcer. So useful!
tl;dr: Halofest meh, Firefall megabooth meh, felt slightly more commercial this year, couple quibbles, overall B+ to last year's A. Enforcers are getting more and more pro, too. I could see you guys, I could see things were being controlled, but I could NOT see you doing it; high marks for getting things done but not getting things in the way.
For next year I would love to see some nerd improv from Synaptic Chaos Theatre. I've seen them do improv shows at anime conventions and it's always been roll-on-the-floor-might-pee-yourself hilarious. I think it would be a great addition to the general con experience.
Acquisitions Inc is always, always amazing, but there's no way that two hours will ever be a sufficient amount of time with the amount of (totally hilarious) dicking around the guys do. The panel ran over this year, which is entirely expected, because even down in the D&D one-hour delves you can barely get through one encounter in the time allotted, and that's without hilarious amounts of dickery. Three hours is probably a more realistic time amount for Acquisitions Inc--I know I'd be willing to sit through it for that long.
The booth Grandmas at Good Old Games need to come back every year and bring their delicious cookies with them.
yeah, we got in line for the Acquisitions panel, stood in the sun for about 5 minutes, and decided to just go watch the stream in Wolfman. Glad to hear the Paramount made itself available for PAX this year, since Benaroya was widely panned last year.
I agree with this 100%. I've been going to PAX since '08, and while it's been getting bigger and bigger every time, the lines were just out of hand this year. The enforcers did a great job keeping the peace, so respect and thanks are due there. But I remember last year that Duke was about a 2 hour wait, and that was unheard of in PAX land (at least for me)- suddenly, one year later, 4 hour lines weren't uncommon. How did this happen? Am I missing something? The only major game I could consistently walk up to and play was Forza 4.
The solution doesn't seem too easy to me- the point of PAX was, and is, to make it as accessible as possible to gamers. Unfortunately, if you make it available to too many gamers, it ends up being a crowded mess with 4 hour lines. It seems like it could be against the mission of PAX to raise prices, but I agree, I'd be happy to pay double if it meant reasonable lines for Panels and Displays. It isn't an easy call, but something has to happen. Maybe it is the reportedly high number of counterfeit badges, but something's gotta give. Add a hologram, or a UV symbol, or a watermark that is only visible when light shines through the badge. This year was insane. I'm just glad I'm not the one who has to make the call on what has to be done.
On the note of lines- it's been said before, and maybe hindsight is 20/20, but putting the Irrational and Skyrim panels adjacent to each other in the same auditorium was probably the worst idea of this year's PAX. That 6th floor was a disaster for a few hours on Saturday. It isn't like the extreme popularity for these panels couldn't be anticipated- Bioshock Infinite and Skyrim are seriously anticipated games. I'd have moved Skyrim to the Paramount, to be honest.
And also on the subject of lines- I'd love to see reservations, that sort of thing. Civ V did reservations last year and it was great- set an appointment for whatever time, go off and do something else, come back on time, you're in. If you're not back, draw from a line. But think about it- you have a set number of seats to fill, you know about how long your demo takes, so why not?
And I'll just +1 the enormous spot Firefall had. While they did pay for it, no doubt, it was GIANT. Just a bit over the top.
2. Shade for outdoor lines please.
3. Lines in expo hall need to be controlled. If some exhibitor wants to put up huge walls to prevent us from being able to browse their product, then they need to devote their own space to controlling the line.
4. Harder to fake badges. I asked the question about additional registration concerns at the Comic Panel on Saturday, to which they replied any additional registration hurdles would only cause headaches for everyone. Fair enough. But add some sort of a watermark detectable by flashlight perhaps and have random events have more secure checks (not EVERY door because that would be a headache).
5. Some sort of official re-sell ability for people who buy tickets but can't attend, that fixes the price and prevents online scalping. With my MLS tickets, I am able to put my tickets up as available at the face value to a (ticketmaster?) market place and someone else is able to buy them. Then they print their own version out. Something like that where last minute cancellations could be managed would be awesome and help ease the pain of the fast sellout.
My sister was one of the NOS Girls at PAX, it's a summer job while she attends the UW. I guess NOS wants to expand from car events to gamers. She told me they had been asked to cover up (they normally wear skirts) with pants... knowing what they normally wear I figured that would happen. Then I went downstairs and saw the strippers, I mean "models" for Need for Speed wearing next to nothing... PAX's dislike of booth babes seems to be something that the gaming industry has trouble wrapping their head around.
So it would be nice if there was less of that next year.
Agreed.
Note, Skyrim was toe-to-toe with Acquisitions Inc as well, which had to be in the Paramount.
* Badge pick up was poorly managed and located. Having people line up next to a busy road with no clear signage or management of queue lines was just not on.
* Shoving PAX 10 onto level 6 was a great diservice to them. They deserve to be placed within the main hall, not tucked away 2 floors up.
* Console free play areas were way too small this year, resulting in me and my cohorts leaving the room due to the extended wait times.
* Halo Fest was not a good idea. That space could have been taken up by other more deserving things, such as Console Freeplay.
* Crowd management on level 6 was poor. The Mine Craft booth was awash with people at all times and made the space around it difficult to navigate. There were also events happening on the corridors on level 6 that blocked people movement. This was somewhat dangerous at times.
* D&D area was really well run and kudos must be offered to Wizards of the Coast for doing such a good job with utilising the space they had.
* The Booth Babe issue really needs addressing; either have them there or not. The show floor was awash with them as were the lobbies around them. I really have no idea why companies feel the need to have them at PAX, despite protests otherwise by the event's organisers. I think something in the T&C's for exhibitors needs to be included to prevent them from being there, if that is what PA wishes to happen.
* The badge forging was attrocious behaviour. It's inexcusable and everything must be done to prevent the same thing from occurring again. It's either that or PAX Prime ceases to be...
This was my fifth PAX and I've enjoyed it every year, but this year was clearly the least enjoyable.
-Panels Have to start on time. I waited two hours for a half-hour panel. (irrational)
-Popular panels cannot be back-to-back in the same theater. (irrational-skyrim)
-Panels and really everything need to be spread out across the weekend more. Way too much was crammed into Friday
-There needs to be better theater to panel assignments. Too many popular panels were in theaters too small and too many not so popular panels were in theaters too big.
Skyrim and Irrational should have been in the Pegasus. Bioware Mythic should have been in the Unicorn.
-Bring Protomen back to the main stage
-I understand they bought booth space but can we not have celebrity signings on the actual expo hall floor. There's enough lines for actual games to have to add that.
-I was turned away far too many times. Never has an enforcer told me that I couldn't go somewhere in the expo hall until this year.
-Oh and this last one is more for the community rather than PAX itself but as someone who has gone to PAX for five straight now, people are far too rude. Back in 2007 everyone would say excuse me and sorry when they bumped into you, now people are literally pushing you aside. I understand its crowded, but the extreme politeness was one of the things that I loved most about this con. Clearly people have forgotten Wheaton's rule.
2) Perhaps, regroup bands and do Game/Bit Music Friday Night and P&S/JoCo/Frontalot Saturday night.
3) Move the PAX 10 to an area with a little more presence, the 6th floor kinda felt cramped/banished away from the rest of the convention, and I thought the PAX 10 were awesome and definitely deserving of a little more space and attention.
4) It was a little hard to find where to start out this year, and I missed out on the first round of swag bags because I didn't make it to the "queue" room in time, they lined us up when we came in the convention center but sent us to the exhibit hall instead of the swag bag queue room. Luckily, I was able to snag one outside of the Pegasus room later that weekend, but I felt heartbroken when I thought I had missed out on them.
5) Label the location of the Tabletop HQ on the maps, took a bit of wandering to find.
6) I loved the little music room across from the tabletop HQ, keep that
I think the queue room for Pegasus was a good idea but it turned into a giant fire hazard. The doors in the back of the room could not be opened and making people stand for an hour to fit more people in is dangerous. Also the ventilation system for that room was lacking.
I liked the Paramount as a venue but I don't think the theater staff knew how to deal with PAX. I saw staff try and pull someone's badge (an enforcer got it back). They would not allow outside food and drink and I understand the need to make money but there were people who sat in line for 2 hours and they should be allowed to keep there bottled water. Also when I did purchase a drink from them I could not drink it at my seat. It seems like they are used to shows with assigned seats, tickets, and an intermission.
I think supercommuter did get a shaft by following JoCo but the only change I would make is by having them as first act on sat. PAX east did a VGO P&S then JoCo line up and there was at least a half hour of downtime to breakdown the omegathan set up the VGO and then another long wait to break them down again. I have a feeling that PAX has a hard stop that the shows have to be over by so then JoCo and P&S had shorter sets.
I think the enforcers did an amazing job this year and really appreciated the line entertainment and contests.
I also agree that closed booths seem to be counterproductive. If the goal is to get your game seen by the public and you know only a small percentage of people will be able to play then why would you want to cut off people who might want to get a look but not play the game.
+1 Paramount
+1 Streaming main events to Wolfman
+1 PAX XP game
+1 @PAX_Lines
I can't think of anything to complain about this year.
As for suggestions, I understand why PA is hesitant to make scalping more difficult, but what about instituting a 5-10 ticket per household maximum? That shouldn't impede most normal attendees (even if you're buying for a group of friends), but would stop scalpers from buying 100's of tickets. During lunch one day, I watched a pair of scalpers count thousands of dollars in cash with a stack of 3-day badges still around their necks waiting to be sold. I overheard one of them say something to the effect of "even if we only sell them for $75 each, $15 profit times 600 is still a lot of cash."
As for counterfeiting... I'm not sure on that account. Even in years where the badges had the hologram, I heard about people getting through with counterfeit badges
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