I tend to be a negative ball at times, so take this with a grain of salt I guess. Only went to EU so can't say if things improved for NA
As someone who made a room, before the event I was heavily considering to pull out before the event happened the more I was seeing how it was made, and now that it's over I definitely believe I should have pulled out.
--
First with impressions as visitor, before overthinking things:
The map was uploaded 15min after the start of the event, once there we had to wait 30min after the instance was up (so 45min after the announced time) before starting.
Once the thing starts, the main thing you'd notice is that it feels more like a school-themed vket exhibition than a festival. Finding that good or bad is up to your own preference.
Lots of rooms were high effort and soulful, size of the map wasn't a problem in my opinion (though having a map would've helped in case you wanted to check specific booths).
I was not a fan of the frequent interruptions for teleport spheres to listen to unknown speeches, in my opinion these events benefits more from letting people go at their own pace rather than tardwrangling them into a specific "everyone come here" kind of deal. If there's speeches and other scheduled activities, sharing a schedule and directions beforehand is fine.
There were issues with audio: no way to disable the map's bgm, people sometimes being on global audio, hearing the sound cues for the photoshoot when you are in a completely different room, ...
--
Ok now I can voice my opinion as a room maker, and also overthink a bit more broadly about the event itself.
So the main thing I want to stress is that logos have been imposed out of nowhere during the months of preparation, without asking first if we were fine with it or if we had one to begin with. And it leaves a bad taste in my mouth both in terms of representation (which I'll come back to later) but also in terms of how it shifts the goals/perception of the event.
The logos were imposed because Y wanted to have his logo stamping system, and that's one thing he put the most effort into for the event. It's the first thing you see when you enter the event (especially when you have to wait 30min at spawn with only the display of the tutorial for the stamp to look at), so a lot of anons ended up just catching the logos without necessarily checking the rooms/booth, the focus has been shifted.
The descriptions, we literally NEVER heard of a description being in our rooms as rooms makers; and in case I missed the call for it, I've never been contacted to provide something missing.
There's also a *significant* amount of booths that were made by Y, without asking any of the hosts of said activity.
If I talk about these, it's because these 3 things added a considerable amount of work on Y's side; which shows because other, more important and CRUCIAL aspects of the map have been half baked.
My own room got the TV from a different club, and a logo + description of another club; as well as a semi-missing wall and z-fighting on some parts of the wall. I've overheard that some other rooms got elements they didn't ask for, or that another room wasn't included. It's especially ironic that Y worked on several UNASKED for booths when the SEA EXPLO ROOM/BOOTH WASN'T EVEN ACCESSIBLE DUE TO LACK OF TESTING. Room makers also NEVER have been sent a test version of the map to check that everything was fine on their scale.
I want to stress out, my issue is NOT that we had technical issues, that's bound to happen. My issue is that the technical problems are there because the event shifted goals and went from the so-called "celebration of anon’s varied groups and activities" to "Y's imposed vision on how /vrg/ should be".
--
For this last section I will have a "coup de gueule" in public for once and complain openly about how/why this whole situation pisses me off so much.
In my opinion the initial idea of the event, giving people from this community to shill their ideas/activities/events/... is good; it should be an event that gives freedom to the different sides of the thread.
However it ended up enforcing a format: Everyone needs to have the same ugly logo template. Everyone needs to be at the same place at the same time and listen to the same people. Everyone needs to have a representation even if they chose not to have one. Everyone needs to be seen as Y sees them.
By not pulling out of the event, I feel like that not only I validated this homogenization, but that I participated to it.
The representation of events that are no longer a thing is what hurts the most to see. In my own case: why was there a chess booth, with completely wrong info on them (hosts, description, and even stating that the games still happens before mahjong???) especially when I explicitly told Y not to have one when it was mentioned before the event? When nobody have been hosting games for almost year?
What's going to happen next? Would every activity that have been stopped be advertised as still going, described by AI Slop? Would any punctal activity NEED to be represented by a shitty logo even if it's something as banal as turning on the TV to watch football or eurovision? Everyone and everything have to be in their little boxes after all. People who deviates from their boxes in events or activities, will they keep being begged to go back in line? And for people who distances themselves from vrg, are they going to keep being begged to stay and go inside their little box?
Honestly this kind of hive-like ideals is typically what could make me distance myself from *some* parts of vrg. I would appreciate not only some more "laisser-faire", but more importantly some "laisser-vivre".
Sincerely,
- Jiraymin