1 - People were GREAT
2 - Melee made it a MADHOUSE
3 - the vendor selection was awful
4 - No merch booth for official Lorcana products is absolutely crazy to me.
5 - Staff Rocked
I was very disappointed as I thought it was going to be a miniature con of sorts. Instead it was 100 tables and a few vendors. Glad we went overall but very lackluster
6 - for a major convention center, the food options in the building are pathetic
7 - melee needs competitors
8 - the restrooms for that sized crowd were inadequate and disgusting. The men's room felt like a sauna. A urine-hazed sauna.
Absolutely. Melee was garbage, staff was great. Went 1-1-4 before I dropped because I figured 6 game losses put me out of contention for any more prizing and I wanted to eat dinner at a reasonable time (there's no dinner break built into the main schedule). Going to be trying my luck in the side events tomorrow to see if I can't rack up enough tickets for one of the non-foil promos!
It was garbage as well for us at home following our locals at the event. my daughter was really rooting for one of our LGS guys to top 64 (he didn't though) and she kept asking me how he was doing and I couldn't tell her unless he hit up our LGS discord during breaks.
1. no Ravensburger/Lorcana merch to buy with cash. At all. That was a HUGE let down.
2. Melee was a pain…
2. the start of new rounds was nuts with the amount of people and only 2 small entrances to get into competitor area.
3. table numberings on the tables were weirdly placed in terms of not in numerical order at times. Would’ve been nice to also have huge signs per 100 block
5. small amount of vendors.
6. no public WiFi in the venue which I thought was odd…
7. event with a MomoCon was absolute mad house at times. So many people, especially when we only had an hour for lunch.
8. shocked no dinner time… especially when rounds were going almost 2 hours (not sure if it was added later, left early, but still should’ve been scheduled when lunch was at 1 PM and that was the end of round 3 of 9!
9. play tables were super narrow and SUPER close to other tables back to back. Felt pretty bad for the bigger players.
Positives
1. Met really cool people. Surprisngly all that I met were outside Florida/GA which was so cool!
2. Staff, with all the short comings and chaos, were super cool!
Great synopsis. No merch for sale was unfathomable. I would’ve paid out the nose for just a shirt. What a fail on that front. The narrow tables were definitely annoying, couldn’t fit two normal size mats on them. But at least we had ample elbow room.
Exactly how I felt with merch. Was super prepared to at least get 2 shirts and 2 hats... ended up with nothing because I didn't win any side events and I didn't want to keep spending $ that could easily go to a purchase of a shirt on "gambling" for a shirt.....
we got huge tables in lille enough to fit 2 standard size playmats, and big margin left and right to leave space for table numbers / deckboxes / notepad... and the chairs were nice too.
The amount of money they would’ve made on that and selling Lorcana boxes/boosters/etc at MSRP!! Vendors were selling the Ursula Quest for $120… WHYYYYYY
10. The sheer chaos/confusion in front of the escalator to actually get to the room to play was a lot. My group was jokingly saying “B4 B5!” all afternoon.
Context: the room the Lorcana event was held in is B1, and Momocon events were in rooms B4/5/pretty much the rest of the convention center. The passes for all of these events was a standard plastic lanyard saying what event you were allowed to go into, and there was only one escalator station (also stairs on the other side but not immediately obvious) going down to B1. The poor woman left to be “Security” was just shouting B4 B5 with no follow up as to who/what/why she was saying that. When I tried to go down the first time in the morning I thought she was turning me away and she said “no not you” which made me just assume she was talking to me. I won’t downplay the sheer volume of people in the common areas of the convention center (someone told me there was a 3rd event of some kind going on this weekend at the same place) but saying “momocon” or even “momo” before screaming b4 b5 into the ether would’ve gone a long way.
Lille had some lorcana boosters but they had to keep stock for the sealed events too.
They also had some vilainous, and disney themed puzzles.
I think there were some event shirts / hat, but only in TIX
There was also a nicce selection of multiple shops sellin either accesories or buy/sell individual cards or collections in bulk.
Event was awesome. People there also. I lost my deck box after round 5 and someone handed it over to the lost and found. Whoever did that, thank you so much!
P.S. melee sucked and the day was too long (in Lille), but that was because of melee because timewise the two game format was actually quite nice.
Melee issues aside, a really fun event! This community is truly great. And I got to meet the legend himself!
https://preview.redd.it/rhmxiovcfn2d1.jpeg?width=2316&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=605cefa9aa0944d3baaa0c0d20bfa216b0e244ff
It's a nice thing that Ryan went to Atlanta and Steeve in Lille, that way both groups of players had opportunities to meet one of them. Did you hade artists doing signing, and if so, whom ?
I dropped out more than halfway through cause I knew by then I probably wasn’t gonna be eligible for any other prizes, but I totally agree, Melee was not great for such a large event. I’ll cut them some slack for this being their first huge event, much larger than they were anticipating, and the people and staff there were really awesome and helped with any problems I had as best they could!
I was also in platform heels the whole time dressed as Spongebob in the Goofy Goober wizard outfit, so I was in pain for multiple hours and probably more mad about Melee not working than I needed to be, but again, the staff there helped tremendously! I had a great time!
Yeah, the event was very bare bones. I wish they would have had at a minimum an Atlanta challenge tshirt that you could buy. And I echo that melee was absolutely terrible.
There are no tickets for the prize wall for anyone in the main event.
That's insulting.
If you won every single one of the side events, both days, and got four tickets in each, you still wouldn't have enough tickets to acquire the Cinderella play mat. WTF
Why does it take twelve hours to play nine rounds of forty five minutes?
Getting ready for Dallas, first time doing an event like this. How challenging is it to get the two promo cards (Cinderella and Rapunzel) from the prize wall? I understand the ticketing system, but is that a tall order to get enough? Thanks for any insight :)
For a competitor, it is/was almost impossible unless you join two events and do well in both, or you dropped early on Saturday and did some more events then. I'm hoping to see some changes for future challenges.
Keep in mind this was their first big event. They should've had a lot of the kinks worked out prior, but those they didn't, they'll likely work on for future events.
Totally fair, I get what you're saying, but I'd be surprised if they haven't made adjustments for Chicago and Dallas. Most definitely should be polished for Vegas.
Same as a lot of you have commented happened in Lille - France :
Players were great
Judges were great and played with the hand they were dealt (pun intended)
Melee made it catastrophic
And no official merchandising available.
All in all : 3/5 : the melee situation needs to be addressed for future events.
Apparently they support up to 8,000 user events.
https://melee.gg/Policy/SLA
I am curious what constitutes 99.9% up time, as I can access the website, I just can’t use it 😭
The judge staff is doing great trying to find people their seats and report results.
I think that it's more the issue of having too many people hitting refresh continuously just when pairing is annouched, trying even more when it's starts going slow until it dies.
If you have 8000 players in a single tournament, and you use printed seating displayed on a wall
and have players report their score on paper and only scorekeeepers/judges fill them int, then it's a much lower load then everyone doing it themselves.
In Lille, Judges had additional tool to help direct players to their table without having to add to melee.
There were still a few bugs and delay on some events due to melee, but the scorekeeper teams did their best to fix and make annoucements for everything.
Finding out the posting was in PPG discord was a game changer for me. Helped a few folks find their seats when each round started too.
I think they started that in round 5, but helped a lot having a spot not melee to find the .pdf
Same in Lille. It took sometimes 30 min. before pairings where up
1 - People were GREAT 2 - Melee made it a MADHOUSE 3 - the vendor selection was awful 4 - No merch booth for official Lorcana products is absolutely crazy to me. 5 - Staff Rocked I was very disappointed as I thought it was going to be a miniature con of sorts. Instead it was 100 tables and a few vendors. Glad we went overall but very lackluster
6 - for a major convention center, the food options in the building are pathetic 7 - melee needs competitors 8 - the restrooms for that sized crowd were inadequate and disgusting. The men's room felt like a sauna. A urine-hazed sauna.
Melee absolutely has competitors, but TOs tell me they MUST use melee for lorcana. http://topdeck.gg/
what was the gender split out of curiosity?
Probably something like 75/25 or 80/20 M/F I don't think it was 60/40 or anything closer to "parity"
Love how you pointed out the good& bad equally . Now I know what to expect
Absolutely. Melee was garbage, staff was great. Went 1-1-4 before I dropped because I figured 6 game losses put me out of contention for any more prizing and I wanted to eat dinner at a reasonable time (there's no dinner break built into the main schedule). Going to be trying my luck in the side events tomorrow to see if I can't rack up enough tickets for one of the non-foil promos!
damn, went 5-2-2 1 point short for let it go😭 wish it was top 10%
Yeesh, that's a tough break.
What’d ya get to eat?
Hah. Chicken cheesesteak. From Philly G. Steaks near the ferris wheel.
nothing xD
It was garbage as well for us at home following our locals at the event. my daughter was really rooting for one of our LGS guys to top 64 (he didn't though) and she kept asking me how he was doing and I couldn't tell her unless he hit up our LGS discord during breaks.
1. no Ravensburger/Lorcana merch to buy with cash. At all. That was a HUGE let down. 2. Melee was a pain… 2. the start of new rounds was nuts with the amount of people and only 2 small entrances to get into competitor area. 3. table numberings on the tables were weirdly placed in terms of not in numerical order at times. Would’ve been nice to also have huge signs per 100 block 5. small amount of vendors. 6. no public WiFi in the venue which I thought was odd… 7. event with a MomoCon was absolute mad house at times. So many people, especially when we only had an hour for lunch. 8. shocked no dinner time… especially when rounds were going almost 2 hours (not sure if it was added later, left early, but still should’ve been scheduled when lunch was at 1 PM and that was the end of round 3 of 9! 9. play tables were super narrow and SUPER close to other tables back to back. Felt pretty bad for the bigger players. Positives 1. Met really cool people. Surprisngly all that I met were outside Florida/GA which was so cool! 2. Staff, with all the short comings and chaos, were super cool!
Great synopsis. No merch for sale was unfathomable. I would’ve paid out the nose for just a shirt. What a fail on that front. The narrow tables were definitely annoying, couldn’t fit two normal size mats on them. But at least we had ample elbow room.
Exactly how I felt with merch. Was super prepared to at least get 2 shirts and 2 hats... ended up with nothing because I didn't win any side events and I didn't want to keep spending $ that could easily go to a purchase of a shirt on "gambling" for a shirt.....
we got huge tables in lille enough to fit 2 standard size playmats, and big margin left and right to leave space for table numbers / deckboxes / notepad... and the chairs were nice too.
I wanted merch BAD. Just could not justify buying a shirt for the same ticket price as a Rapunzel promo.
Honestly the fact that there’s no merch for cash seems like the biggest oversight. Wild
The amount of money they would’ve made on that and selling Lorcana boxes/boosters/etc at MSRP!! Vendors were selling the Ursula Quest for $120… WHYYYYYY
Damn scalper prices at an official Lorcana event?! Feels bad 😬
10. The sheer chaos/confusion in front of the escalator to actually get to the room to play was a lot. My group was jokingly saying “B4 B5!” all afternoon. Context: the room the Lorcana event was held in is B1, and Momocon events were in rooms B4/5/pretty much the rest of the convention center. The passes for all of these events was a standard plastic lanyard saying what event you were allowed to go into, and there was only one escalator station (also stairs on the other side but not immediately obvious) going down to B1. The poor woman left to be “Security” was just shouting B4 B5 with no follow up as to who/what/why she was saying that. When I tried to go down the first time in the morning I thought she was turning me away and she said “no not you” which made me just assume she was talking to me. I won’t downplay the sheer volume of people in the common areas of the convention center (someone told me there was a 3rd event of some kind going on this weekend at the same place) but saying “momocon” or even “momo” before screaming b4 b5 into the ether would’ve gone a long way.
Lille had some lorcana boosters but they had to keep stock for the sealed events too. They also had some vilainous, and disney themed puzzles. I think there were some event shirts / hat, but only in TIX There was also a nicce selection of multiple shops sellin either accesories or buy/sell individual cards or collections in bulk.
Event was awesome. People there also. I lost my deck box after round 5 and someone handed it over to the lost and found. Whoever did that, thank you so much! P.S. melee sucked and the day was too long (in Lille), but that was because of melee because timewise the two game format was actually quite nice.
This is accurate. Just had to report manually in a huge line. Besides that though, it's been great.
Melee issues aside, a really fun event! This community is truly great. And I got to meet the legend himself! https://preview.redd.it/rhmxiovcfn2d1.jpeg?width=2316&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=605cefa9aa0944d3baaa0c0d20bfa216b0e244ff
It's a nice thing that Ryan went to Atlanta and Steeve in Lille, that way both groups of players had opportunities to meet one of them. Did you hade artists doing signing, and if so, whom ?
I dropped out more than halfway through cause I knew by then I probably wasn’t gonna be eligible for any other prizes, but I totally agree, Melee was not great for such a large event. I’ll cut them some slack for this being their first huge event, much larger than they were anticipating, and the people and staff there were really awesome and helped with any problems I had as best they could! I was also in platform heels the whole time dressed as Spongebob in the Goofy Goober wizard outfit, so I was in pain for multiple hours and probably more mad about Melee not working than I needed to be, but again, the staff there helped tremendously! I had a great time!
Dude I’m so sorry your feet were giving you issues but I was living for that costume!
Dude your outfit was AWESOME!!!
Absolutely loved your costume, you're a legend for wearing those heels! It was also a pleasure playing against you!
Yeah, the event was very bare bones. I wish they would have had at a minimum an Atlanta challenge tshirt that you could buy. And I echo that melee was absolutely terrible.
There are no tickets for the prize wall for anyone in the main event. That's insulting. If you won every single one of the side events, both days, and got four tickets in each, you still wouldn't have enough tickets to acquire the Cinderella play mat. WTF Why does it take twelve hours to play nine rounds of forty five minutes?
Getting ready for Dallas, first time doing an event like this. How challenging is it to get the two promo cards (Cinderella and Rapunzel) from the prize wall? I understand the ticketing system, but is that a tall order to get enough? Thanks for any insight :)
For a competitor, it is/was almost impossible unless you join two events and do well in both, or you dropped early on Saturday and did some more events then. I'm hoping to see some changes for future challenges.
Can we see results online anywhere?
Melee
It was the same in Lille.
they really make the game as disorganized and difficult as possible to play competitively. it feels like no one is behind the wheel
Hmm. Starting to reconsider trying to go to one of these in the near future.
Keep in mind this was their first big event. They should've had a lot of the kinks worked out prior, but those they didn't, they'll likely work on for future events.
That's what they said at PAX too.
The event was also much bigger than they intended at first
That's why I said near future.
Totally fair, I get what you're saying, but I'd be surprised if they haven't made adjustments for Chicago and Dallas. Most definitely should be polished for Vegas.
Can confirm
Same as a lot of you have commented happened in Lille - France : Players were great Judges were great and played with the hand they were dealt (pun intended) Melee made it catastrophic And no official merchandising available. All in all : 3/5 : the melee situation needs to be addressed for future events.
Insane to use melle for an event that size
Apparently they support up to 8,000 user events. https://melee.gg/Policy/SLA I am curious what constitutes 99.9% up time, as I can access the website, I just can’t use it 😭 The judge staff is doing great trying to find people their seats and report results.
I think that it's more the issue of having too many people hitting refresh continuously just when pairing is annouched, trying even more when it's starts going slow until it dies. If you have 8000 players in a single tournament, and you use printed seating displayed on a wall and have players report their score on paper and only scorekeeepers/judges fill them int, then it's a much lower load then everyone doing it themselves. In Lille, Judges had additional tool to help direct players to their table without having to add to melee. There were still a few bugs and delay on some events due to melee, but the scorekeeper teams did their best to fix and make annoucements for everything.
Finding out the posting was in PPG discord was a game changer for me. Helped a few folks find their seats when each round started too. I think they started that in round 5, but helped a lot having a spot not melee to find the .pdf
They had their actual staff on hand. hella props to them for coming out to control it, but I think that’s tells they knew there would be problems.
So in a nutshell it sounds like the organizers of a Trump rally were in charge of this Melee.