After every event we take the time to go through your survey responses to see where we can improve to keep making the events better. 

Sometimes we cant change things, or there may be good reason why we don't want to (e.g. we've tried before, or they'll have a hidden cost implication), but we'll also tell you why. 

Here are some of the headlines from your EPIC47 comments. 

Need more food options – We know this is always an area we can improve and we pass on regular feedback to the venue and caterers however in event terms we’re still a relatively small footfall compared to other events that outside caterers could be attending when we are on so we are limited sometimes on the number and variety of caterers we can get, they’re all small  businesses after all. However, don’t forget with our events, unlike many other similar events, you do have complete freedom to bring in your own food from other nearby takeaways etc so if there isn’t something that you fancy from the on-site catering there’s plenty of other options available in town that deliver to the venue.  

The wait for pizza – We’ll pick this up with the caterers, being a van they’re limited on the number of orders they can process but we think it’s probably better to cut off orders once they hit a certain wait time rather than continuing and leave you all waiting.

Catering Standards – We’ve flagged this with the caterers and venue and awaiting their response.

Missed the box cider – So do we, but as we discussed in the last feedback stream unfortunately we weren’t clearing the volumes needed to continue having it due to the short expiry date on the boxes, so we moved to the bottles instead that have a longer expiry date and can be used in other areas of the venue when we aren’t in.

Bring back Moretti – Unfortunately the bar’s distributor put Moretti prices up quite significantly,  I’m sure you’re all seeing the effects of price rises in food and drink at home too. So swapping it out for Cruz still retained a ‘premium’ lager at a similar price point.  

Prices – Yes we know, but as we keep reminding everyone it is an event bar, not a Spoons I’m afraid so the venue does not have the same buying power that a traditional pub has. The prices are still cheap compared to most other event venues such as theatres, stadiums and arenas, but they will never beat pub prices.

Healthier options in the day – We’ve been selling sandwiches and pasta/salad pots at the EPIC.LAN shop for quite a few events now, head to the shop and take a look what’s in the chiller next to the fridge, it’s just inside with us instead of outside with the other caterers

The shop range seems to be getting a bit less – Nope, we still have pretty much the same range of products we always do as well as trying other items seasonally. What we are being more strict on is letting stock run down towards the end of the events. As we only run the shop 3x a year we cant hold on to loads of stock or risk throwing it all away so we have to be sensible, so towards the final days of the event there may be less available

Hot water machine temperature – You can actually set the temperature on there to whatever you want but appreciate it needs a degree to work out how to operate it, we’re going to replace it with something a bit easier and more reliable, like a replicator maybe.

All the suggestions of things we should stock that we do in fact stock – I don’t know how to answer this…they’re there! Or if you’re not sure, ask!

More merchandise – We’re still working on a new merchandise provider to completely refresh the range, hopefully have something in place for July, if not for August.

Bottles rather than cans – This was a conscious choice last year to start moving away from bottles towards cans to improve on the huge amount of waste generated through our events.

Indigestion/heartburn tablets – Will look in to this and see if we’re allowed to, good idea though.

Wider range of coke/Lucozade/Red Bull etc. – We’re pretty much maxed out in terms of fridge space for the products we have, again for a shop we only use 3x a year. We analyse the sales data every time and rotate in particular flavours within the brands we’ve selected and try out various season specials but we cant keep adding more lines unfortunately.

Chewing Gum – Intentional choice not to stock this I’m afraid as we cant trust that it wont end up all under the hire tables, trodden in to the venue carpet etc.  

Clothes sizing for children – Good idea and something we can speak to our new merchandise providers about children’s sizes, or at least have a preorder option if we wont sell the volumes on site, but it’s great to see a lot more families attending together and bringing our future competitors along to the event.

Clarity over bringing in non-alcoholic drinks – We’ll make sure this is clearer in the event FAQs and with security and the venue for the next event.

Showers – We hadn’t realised that people leaving their towels etc had become like a holiday resort swimming pool full of British tourists. We’ll remind people not to leave them in there during the event and discuss removing them periodically with the venue during the course of the event.

Out of Order Toilets – We’ll check that these are all in full working order again ready for the next event. Sometimes it happens unfortunately, sometimes it’s even caused by our participants, all we can ask is that people respect the facilities for the next user.

Cleaners – We’ll pass on the lovely feedback about the cleaners to the venue so it gets back to the staff involved. Some of you don’t make their jobs easy at times but they’re on it!

Unsure where to take part in community games – For the last 2 events we’ve had a website page in more detail explaining how/where/when all the games will be run, we link this in Discord and through the email reminders going out during the event, we’ll continue to push this, but if unsure, please do come and ask one of the Community Team members in person or in Discord, they don’t bite.

Multiple games/activities going on at the same time causing clashes – We know, but there’s also lots of people at the event to entertain and not everybody likes everything, so things will clash, you just have to pick the thing you want to do the most, same thing happens at many other events like music festivals with multiple stages, you can’t be everywhere!

Move the entrance back to where you had it for EPIC40 – Yeah we liked that everyone came past the stage too, but ultimately that wasn’t the most practical route for us to use into the event from a flow of people and security point of view as that’s when we used the back door to the venue. Now we use the main conference entrance it gives a far better entrance experience which is easier for us to run securely and get people to where they need to be in the building, unfortunately that means we cant force everyone past the stage but the benefits outweigh that.

Have an esports closing event – We’d love to but we run out of time on the Sunday after the finals are completed, plus everyone often leaves as soon as their tournament has concluded so we don’t think many people would stay. As soon as the last final has completed we have a crazy fast derig schedule to make sure we’re out of that venue later that evening so we don’t get charged for another day.

Esports Finals & In Ears – While we invested significantly in the AceZone headsets we see the feedback about in ears and will go back to asking teams to use in ears in combination with the AceZones for our stage finals.

Integrity with teams sitting nearby – It is a BYOC LAN I’m afraid, that is and always has been the nature of events like ours. We do the best we can but ultimately we can’t prevent teams entirely from seeing/hearing information and we don’t have a big enough admin team to sit behind every single team at the event. If you have particular concerns about a match, please do flag with the admins and we'll do what we can but it's not practical to keep moving teams around a BYOC LAN for example. 

Better way of showing/tournament changes and updates – It’s important that all teams are present in Discord as our main way of communicating with teams during the event, but we also think the big screens could be used better around the halls for more dynamic information and we’ve asked for how these are managed to be improved.

Rename Inters – We agree, not sure what to, but agree that the name doesn’t really fit any more.

Toxicity – We’re always trying to monitor this and penalise teams/players where appropriate while retaining the atmosphere of a community LAN. Please make sure you’re reporting specific incidents to us, with evidence, so we can take further action as needed.

Communication during power issues – We think that the stress of the situation got to the team a little here, we’ll review our comms during larger issues like this and ensure that things are explanations are clear and polite with regular updates.

On Power Issues – Most of these are being caused by people not plugging in to the right locations, daisy chaining of other power, or bringing non permitted devices. We’re going to send out more information before the event about this and probably have to clamp down further on what people bring to the event, your PCs are getting more and more power hungry so our power budget per person is very quickly going up and it’s becoming a fine balance.

Network Issues – We’re going to do a stream on this in the coming weeks to discuss more, unfortunately some of the issues we encounter are pretty hard to test at scale and don’t manifest until everyone turns up, even when things haven’t changed from the previous event. We got there with the diagnosis, but also understand that needs to be quicker to minimise any downtime or game impact.

Use the stage screen more in down time – Completely agree, we’ve suggested having things like mini games/pop up quizzes (Kahoot style) or showing the tournament feeds when there’s nothing on. We know you all enjoy the drone footage of Kettering, but that space could be something more dynamic too.

Hearing protection for karaoke – We think some people just shouldn’t be allowed to take part any more.