I would argue against this premise. That is clearly the intention of the lockdown, but like so often, results of rules and regulations do not correlate with its intentions. I'm going to argue that not only is it not a necessity, but has the opposite effect than that what is its intention.JudgementDay wrote:The way I see it, ticket lockdown is a necessity for both BE as well as Commanders to be at some point able to tell how many players will attend or not.
Making the tickes non-refundable will make the roster more static, but making the tickets non-trasferrable makes it less static.
From the airsoft organization that I am a part of, out of 24 people with berget tickets this year, eight ended up cancelling the trip for one reason or another. Five of those on a relatively short notice, so they could not sell their tickets largely because of the lockdown. The reasons of these late cancellations ranged from sudden onset of illness and injuries to work and family emergencies. So the unintended consequences of the lockdown made it so that those eight people in the roster ended up just missing, rather than possibly being replaced with a second hand ticket buyers.
The fact that the ticket in non-sellable doesn't prevent anyone from not-attending. It just prevents anyone from filling in for that person.
And I'm also going to argue that...
a) Ticket holders are unlikely to sell their tickets willy-nilly regardless of lockdown or not. If a person is motivated to participate, he will do so.
b) There was not a single player this year in Berget, who was there only because he was unable to sell his ticket. (this should be fairly easy to disprove if I'm wrong)
c) It is better to have an unwilling or unmotivated participant replaced by a motivated second hand ticket buyer. This is true from everybodys perspective (commander and fellow player alike).
Prior to seeing this unfold I might have agreed with you in thinking that lockdown was a good idea. But after seeing the real empirical consequences of the lockdown first hand, I can tell without any doubt that it does not do what it's supposed to.
Lockdown or not, no rosted made prior to game start is final or accurate. It is infinitely better to have the not-final roster in the hands of the commander in February, rather than have the not-final roster in his hands 3 weeks prior to game start. Neither roster is final, but atleast the one in February will let the commander adapt to changes gradually as they happen.
I think that placing a commander between the situation board and the player is quite enough to prevent it from becoming evident to the player. The only person to whom it is evident is the commander. If you don't believe me, go ask around. How many people felt like the game was scripted.wormbyte wrote:There are other ways this can be achieved without compromising top level planning and without making evident to the players.
When the commander gives an order, there is no way the underling can tell if the commander came up with that order himself or did he read it from a script. Unless he is literally reading it from a script right in front of them.