Now that the lottery failed ... here is a suggestion

[Savannah]

Very well said!!! A lottery might even work well in the future if the tiered tickets are eliminated.

I know two nice married couples who were able to participate this year because they could afford to enter at the first two tiers but not the $390 and $420 tiers (times 2 people, plus fees, it adds up). I'm glad that they will have 1 more year of a little familiarity and normalcy--and a little control over their wagers--before any theoretical future attempt at completely leveling the price to somewhere significantly above rock bottom.

Tiers are not worthless, but nor are they a law of the universe . . . maybe they will change in the future, after some weighing of pros and cons. But it seems like the most necessary changes & strategies were employed first.

Change everything, and it would have been even more upsetting for everyone.

[karma_cat]

Very well said!!! A lottery might even work well in the future if the tiered tickets are eliminated.

I know two nice married couples who were able to participate this year because they could afford to enter at the first two tiers but not the $390 and $420 tiers (times 2 people, plus fees, it adds up). I'm glad that they will have 1 more year of a little familiarity and normalcy--and a little control over their wagers--before any theoretical future attempt at completely leveling the price to somewhere significantly above rock bottom.

Tiers are not worthless, but nor are they a law of the universe . . . maybe they will change in the future, after some weighing of pros and cons. But it seems like the most necessary changes & strategies were employed first.

Change everything, and it would have been even more upsetting for everyone.

But again ... if you read my post there still ARE tiers ... but they are tiers that are set up by other burners offering the gift of paying more than they need to for their ticket, and others requesting ticket assistance if they need it. This prevents the scramble for a set number of lower-cost tickets. It might even let your friends pay even LESS than they are this year.

[The CO]

kharmacat- Did you register for a ticket? I must have missed whether you covered that or not.

If so, then i don't think you can accurately claim the system has failed or succeeded until the lottery is completed.

If you didn't register for a ticket, well then, you are truly <sagegrouse>-ing about things.

[karma_cat]

kharmacat- Did you register for a ticket? I must have missed whether you covered that or not.

If so, then i don't think you can accurately claim the system has failed or succeeded until the lottery is completed.

If you didn't register for a ticket, well then, you are truly <sagegrouse>-ing about things.

My brother registered for two tickets. One for each of us at the top tier. I chose not to double our odds.

But even if we get tickets I will still argue that the current system is terrible and needs to be fixed.

[pink]

I'm starting to wonder how much scrubbing will need to be done, what percentage of registrations are culled.

I guess we'll get an idea of how many hoarders there were vs. population growth when the resale site opens up.

[theCryptofishist]

I suspect that there wouldn't be a whole lot of people randomly giving more than they had to. It's not like giving a ticket to someone directly, which as social primates we evolved in such a way that there was a nice biologically based good feeling that was gained. But when it's a choice in a really abstract system facilitated by computer there's a huge "meh". So, yeah I don't see the cat's (sorry, lcn) solution as actually maintaining much varied-level pricing. We're better off with Trilo's "If you get a lower tier than you could afford, use the extra to defray the cost of a friend not so well off so he can buy top tier ticket" method.

[Jenifersteppat]

At first I was skeptical that most Burners would do the right thing and not game the system (human nature) and wanted to get in on the presale. My husband talked me out of it (boy is he sorry after seeing the latest JackRabbit - can you say I told you so)? I tried to hope Burners would not fuck other Burners over by hoarding, that most people did not have the ability to tie up that much money, that they would not want the hassle of ending up with extras they would have to unload, that a large amount of people would not even have HEARD about the lottery yet, that a lot of Burners would not have their shit together yet...you get the picture. I'm sad my initial instincts that human nature would win out were right. I am still positive and hopeful I will get tickets, but have to say I have ZERO confidence that people who got too many tickets will nicely sell them at face value to fellow Burners (human nature again) and think MOST will try to make a buck. For the first time I am really starting to think I better start making a back up plan trip...which makes me sad, but I am still staying positive and hoping for the best!

[Arcticcircle]

I really like your idea, karma cat, and I think ppl on this thread are being too hard on you. Really clever.

[socks]

A sage of the eplaya once said...Those who plan burn....Tell me how in hell do you plan on luck.This is nothing more than a money grab.Bm.org just wants the money now.And for the fellow people who will their sell tickets at face value how stupid do you think we are ?When its sold out imagine what the price of a ticket will be.

[theCryptofishist]

The event sold out last year, and the high prices dropped pretty steeply after ten days. Scalpers aren't going to be able to sell for above face value if no one pays it...

[burntjburn]

I think the overbuying by members of the community is a good thing as members of the community will then resell to other members of the community at the price paid. Such overbuying reduces the possibility of purchases by scalpers.

However, I would suggest as a further step: Put a clause on the tickets stating any ticket that is priced above face value is no longer valid. So essentially this would be another term of sale along with the copyright transfer to bmorg and release of liability. Then, if some more talented members than I, put together a scanner app for smartphones, if someone advertises a ticket for an outrageous price, a burner could download the app onto their smartphone (assuming they have one), arrange to meet the scalper to authenticate the ticket and "purchase" it if valid. The burner scans the ticket and enters the price being offered. If above face value, the ticket is canceled (w/refund to the purchaser or not) and the ticket can then be resold on STEP (perhaps with a right of first refusal to the burner who brought the ticket back into the pool). Seems very doable and the app would also be a way (perhaps) to authenticate a ticket that a prospective purchaser could have on hand rather than making the discovery at the gate.

[Killbuck]

.

[theCryptofishist]

What if the one person who wins is Norwegian?

[karma_cat]

I really like your idea, karma cat, and I think ppl on this thread are being too hard on you. Really clever.

Thank you I tried to put a lot of thought into this ... I feel bad for getting angry at Trilobyte ... but I've been watching people get smacked down for months and I was getting very frusterated.

[International Incident]

Your lengthy post makes a number of inaccurate assumptions, starting with the subject line. The lottery has not failed. 40,000 tickets will be awarded next week.

Hi Trilobyte,

I was wondering when you were going to show up with a condescending post ... and I have to say you're a bit off your game. You usually manage to dismiss concerns/suggestions much faster.

But to respond to your inaccurate belief that the lottery was a success ... sure 40K tickets will be sold ... but people overbought because this entire thing was setup like a game and the people who played fair were going to automatically be at a disadvantage.

I sometimes wonder whether this whole thing was set up as a piece of art to demonstrate a real-life prisoner's dilemma.

Anyway thanks for dismissing everything I said with a quick blurb!! We rely on people like you to show us all how not to act!

-Karma_Cat

Hey karma Kat how about holding your fire and opinions til after the wrap on 2012. The lottery hasn't failed... Yet. The BMorg is setting up a resale market. Also don't pick on trilobite. It's just bloody rude.

[karma_cat]

Your lengthy post makes a number of inaccurate assumptions, starting with the subject line. The lottery has not failed. 40,000 tickets will be awarded next week.

Hi Trilobyte,

I was wondering when you were going to show up with a condescending post ... and I have to say you're a bit off your game. You usually manage to dismiss concerns/suggestions much faster.

But to respond to your inaccurate belief that the lottery was a success ... sure 40K tickets will be sold ... but people overbought because this entire thing was setup like a game and the people who played fair were going to automatically be at a disadvantage.

I sometimes wonder whether this whole thing was set up as a piece of art to demonstrate a real-life prisoner's dilemma.

Anyway thanks for dismissing everything I said with a quick blurb!! We rely on people like you to show us all how not to act!

-Karma_Cat

Hey karma Kat how about holding your fire and opinions til after the wrap on 2012. The lottery hasn't failed... Yet. The BMorg is setting up a resale market. Also don't pick on trilobite. It's just bloody rude.

Trilobyte's been picking on everyone with a suggestion for improvement or even the mention of a thought that things could be done better. All I did was point that out.

[BBadger]

I think we ought to just deny tickets to people posting their "ticket-solution manifestos" and/or "lottery damnations" on this board before the lottery has even occurred--especially if it's their first post. Those tickets can then go to the scholarship ticket program or something. It might be arbitrary, but I'd still support it nonetheless.

[Mofessor]

Why would anyone be pessimistic? Because every step along the way the naysayers have been right. (but I'm sure this time is different).

Equally disheartening are excerpts like this from the BMORG talking points email:

"We believe that this has been caused by people - unsurprisingly - padding their odds of getting tickets by encouraging their friends and campmates to all order more tickets than they need."

"Unsurprisingly" is an interesting word choice given all their comments to the contrary.

"The good news is we believe we have kept most tickets out of the hands of scalpers. The better news is these "extra" tickets are in the hands of members of our community, and we have a "secure ticket exchange program" to facilitate tickets getting to people who want them."

Not sure how they "know" this, but it's interesting that the same people who, in the words of some of the mods, acted selfishly are now being relied on to act altruistically.

"The net result is that a very large number of people will not be awarded tickets in the Main Sale, many of whom will likely announce / complain about it on social networks, expressing their fear of not being able to get tickets. Because this is happening with our largest bulk of ticket distribution (40k), it will send a psychological and emotional shockwave through the community signaling scarcity in the market, making for higher demand for tickets, and driving the scalper trade. This news will quickly get picked up by the mainstream media, who have consistently covered Burning Man 2012 ticket sales Š likely they will play to the sensationalist "Burning Man Sell-Out Imminent" or "Panic in the Streets of Black Rock City" story.

While the popular perception will be that few tickets remain, the reality is that THERE WILL BE A LARGE SURPLUS OF TICKETS CIRCULATING IN OUR COMMUNITY THAT SIMPLY NEED TO BE REDISTRIBUTED, and that natural forces will ultimately prevail - over time - such that most everybody who wants a ticket will get one."

Through inflated prices/scalpers.

"We see this as an opportunity for the community to "police itself" and redistribute these extra tickets to those who need them at face value, shut scalpers out of the market, and to thwart scammers. And while Burning Man is here to help the process, it's ultimately up to them to make it happen - and so the goal is to initiate a VIRAL CAMPAIGN that educates and empowers the community. Just like we're able to accomplish Leave No Trace against all odds, we can do this too, working together."

Interesting, the people lucky enough to get a ticket now must be counted on to make the whole system work. What could ever go wrong?

"YOU HAVE OPTIONS. Options include the upcoming Open Sale and what will be a booming secondary market, facilitated by the STEP."

Have to say, I never understood the open sale if the lottery really was the best way to distribute to as many people as possible.


"KEEP IT IN THE COMMUNITY. Do NOT patronize eBay, Craigslist, StubHub or other ticket resellers when buying or selling tickets ... use the STEP.
- DON'T FEED THE BEARS. Only the Burner community can stop scalpers and scammers by not patronizing them, and by selling tickets at face value ... or gifting them."

If only... but given what's happened so far, not likely that thousands of tickets avoid the scalping market.

"THERE'S MORE THAN ONE WAY TO BURN. Ultimately, Burning Man is a way of life, lived year-round, including a large number of Regional events internationally, and the activities of the Burning Man Project. If worst comes to worst, or you just want an alternative, it's out there."

Puhlease! As if this makes everything better.

[The Bruce]

No tiers, No tears. The tiers should really be reevaluated. Are they worth the cost/benefit ratio? It seems that with the new system everyone has an equal chance of getting a tier one ticket (per entry) so how does this benefit someone who can only select a tire one option? Assuming of course they are in fact drawing the tier one tickets first. Personally I think it makes much more since to draw top tier down. If all the tickets were an average price, excluding the low income program, it would make things so much easier and the motivation to "game " the system would be reduced. The only way to solve this problem once and for all is to convince the BLM to drop the population cap. More tickets = more money=more infrastructure to accommodate the larger population. The playa is fucking huge I don't understand the need to limit ticket sales. If tickets don't sell out there is no benefit to scalpers.

[AntiM]

The playa is huge, HWY 447 is not.

[Sham]

Maybe they should consider a month long, rotating event. Cars can come and go steadily for 30 days. Every Saturday night, they can burn another man!

[The Bruce]

I suppose the road in and out does have a huge impact on how the blm calculates population limits. However isn't there multiable ways into the playa. Couldn't traffic be funneled in from different directions? Or is gerlach and hwy 447 the only road in?

[AntiM]

I suppose the road in and out does have a huge impact on how the blm calculates population limits. However isn't there multiable ways into the playa. Couldn't traffic be funneled in from different directions? Or is gerlach and hwy 447 the only road in?

Pretty much. The other ways aren't suitable to heavy traffic, and they'd have to duplicate the Gate, and Greeters.

[Sham]

The road is 100+ miles long, through beautiful winding mountains and vistas. It's just one lane in each direction, and during the week of the burn, it becomes very active with every imaginable shitbox, RV and contraption traveling it. It could never be widened just for this event. I drove this route a month after Burning Man was over, and I didn't pass a single car coming in the other direction the entire time.
It might be possible to move the event to Orlando, near Disney World. They have oodles of land, an airport and an infrastructure to handle lots of traffic. "It's a Burner World After All"!

[A Jester]

There are two areas which I think could be improved:

1. Eliminate tiered-prices. It's not needed any more and it only favors those who can afford more by automatically entering them in multiple drawings.

2. Do not call out reasoned grievances as "whining" or do the "it hasn't happened yet so why worry about it" thing.

blah ablha blah

1. reasonable, but I think many people would be upset. I don't see how it causes a negative effect to the lottery itself, it just causes some confusion to the people who enter into the lottery.

2. Make sure those "reasoned grievances" don't sound like whining. For instance, the sentence you wrote after number 2 up there sounds a LOT like whining to me. The Org isn't coming down to your house to call these posts whining, it's free willed members of our community. So, if the annoying posts stop, the responses of "you're already sure it's failed and it hasn't happened yet" will stop.

Trilobyte's been picking on everyone with a suggestion for improvement or even the mention of a thought that things could be done better. All I did was point that out.

Trilo has been responding more than others because he's on the board more than others, but since it seems to you like he's the only one doing it, I'll try to do it myself more often. To be honest he's a lot nicer than I want to be when I see people getting all riled up about how the sky is falling before the lottery has even happened.

IF I was in Trilo's shoes I'd be tempted to say things like:

"You're right, all the people involved in designing this system get the standard 10 free tickets (so we and ours don't have to fret about going) and so we designed a system to allow for scalpers to get their hands on as many tickets as possible. This way, when scalpers are selling tickets for $1,000 each, we can easily sell our extra tickets for $750 each without people checking in to who we are. Each year we are going to raise the ticket prices by 30% of the difference between the average scalped price and the highest tier. IT'S A MONEY GRAB! You all figured us out. Now shut the fuck up and take what you're given. You've been a naughty naughty school boy, and deserve a spanking."

"Your ideas are without flaw and have never been thought of before. Also, they are going to be so easy to implement. I'm going to run over to Larry's office and stop this stupid lottery to put your ideas into place. It's simple, we kill the batman... I mean, we sell the tickets individually, print names on them, hire private security to run the gate with scanners and body cavity checks, widen 447, lie to the BLM about how many people there are, run the event for an extra week, and sell all the friggin' tickets people in the community want. The plus side is we can sell tickets at the gate this way, and no one will have to buy in advance. The line won't be that long, and there won't be that much traffic, we'll just have a couple of extra portos out there."

"It's so very helpful when people with a wildly limited understanding of the process and the scale of the issues involved come in with half baked ideas. Because if there's one thing that Burning Man needs, it's more people offering suggestions that haven't been thought out all the way. The only way to solve the scarcity problem is to get three stoned burners in a room, and tell them to brainstorm a solution for 15 minutes. Then they can do awesome things like come up with ideas that have already been examined for a week by a room full of people who actually do the ticketing, and suggest those. Hey, maybe it would be really easy to just write names on the tickets. I can't think of any reason that wouldn't work, and I don't think that the Org has thought of this idea. I should go tell them right now!

I try to apply this sort of helpful thinking to all sorts of things on the playa. It's really nice when you go up to someone who built a 45 foot tall sculpture and say, 'Hey, this would be a lot cooler if you had an observation tower on the top.' Or 'you should have made her eyes green. I like green.'

I know the people at Gayte LOVE it when I drive up to the gate and say 'You guys should have a few lanes on the side for people like me that don't really need to be searched. It would be like an express lane, and take much less time. Also, you should have another entrance on the other side of the playa.'

I have helped out DPW by saying, 'You guys are all wearing black, and it's hard to see you at night. You should wear these disposable glow in the dark necklaces!'

I almost got a special award from the Rangers once. I told them, 'Instead of being dicks who are only concerned with telling people what they can't do, you guys should be nicer. You have literally the easiest job on the playa, all you do is walk around with radios and hang out in other camps shade. Also, there's no reason we shouldn't be allowed to do anything we want. You know, there are no rules at Burning Man.'
Really, all good innovation has always come from people who aren't involved in the process they are trying to change."

Or maybe

If you whine this much pre-event, you must be the worst person imaginable on Playa. I hope you don't get a ticket.

Yeah, that last one was a bit rude, but he can always just wait a little while and say

I feel bad for getting angry at Trilobyte ... but I've been watching people get smacked down for months and I was getting very frusterated.

Trilo doesn't say any of these things. He says

Your lengthy post makes a number of inaccurate assumptions, starting with the subject line. The lottery has not failed. 40,000 tickets will be awarded next week.

I can see how you're a very special person, a pony that sparkles maybe. I will send Trilo a telegram and tell him that he can't be rushed with his responses to you. He should refrain from quick posts, because those might seem rude. If he does something that might seem rude, the only reasonable response is going to be for you to tell him off. Because the only way anyone to keep a conversation on the internet civil is to quickly put people in their place with witty retorts and ad hominen attacks.

These tactics are especially effective when they are used on someone who donates their time. With any luck, enough people will tell our Mods to fuck off, and then we'll have a glorious and free board! Full of spam and misplaced posts. I guess the misplaced posts wouldn't really bother anyone with a shiny new solution to any kind of ticketing problems, since they clearly don't bother searching the board to count how many times their brand new idea has already been discussed.

Hey, wait. What if we just print everyone's name on the ticket! That would solve everything! I'm going to go into "Greeters Station" and put a post in there about it, so everyone can see it!

TL:DR - It's very helpful when people who don't get off their ass to donate their time to solve a problem stand on the sidelines and criticize to those who do.

The playa is fucking huge I don't understand the need to limit ticket sales. If tickets don't sell out there is no benefit to scalpers.

OMG! That's the solution! Let's go tell Larry to not limit the number of ticket sales!
THANK YOU KIND CITIZEN, YOU HAVE SAVED US ALL!

[The CO]

aJester-Brilliant writing. Let's see more of it.

BBadger, I love your idea.

I think we ought to just deny tickets to people posting their "ticket-solution manifestos" and/or "lottery damnations" on this board before the lottery has even occurred--especially if it's their first post. Those tickets can then go to the scholarship ticket program or something. It might be arbitrary, but I'd still support it nonetheless.

[trilobyte]

@karma_cat - sorry if my post came off as condescending, but it's difficult to take such a lengthy rant that's essentially pre-failed a system that hasn't done its thing yet. The initial test run went incredibly well, and so far the main sale has been doing the same. We'll have a much better idea on how well the system works on Tuesday/Wednesday when the drawing takes place. Where the system seems to fail you is that it's not magic. It can't magically make sure that there are enough tickets for everybody. It can't magically limit the number of people who register. If you look at the multitude of info on the site posted since November, it's clear that it was impossible to predict with any kind of accuracy how much demand there would be for tickets in January. Because of last year's sellout, there was not only the risk of professional scalpers, but the very real risk of very significant hoarding. Artists who might want to grab a few extra tickets for fundraising purposes. Camps that might want to do the same. And burners who have campmates that are great people who never seem to get their act together until the last minute. The number of new burners, while generally a pretty steady growth kind of number, is still something of a wildcard - one viral video and those numbers can shoot right through the roof. The whole idea of registration and a drawing was designed as way to deal with excessive demand, as well as a way to limit scalpers. Those who were bent on hoarding always had the option of getting friends/family/campmates to register for more than they needed. Unfortunately since there are only so many tickets to be had that comes at the expense of other burners, but people have a tendency to think 'fuck you, me first' in times of scarcity. Going the route of fc/fs would eliminate the panic-driven hoarding (ppl who double register to make sure they get at least what they need), but it doesn't prevent all the rest of the hoarding and it has zero in the way of protection against the scalperbots and proxies. The registration/drawing route does a fairly solid job of blocking scalpers, but leaves the door open for panic-driven hoarding (IMO, I'd much rather block the pro scalpers). Avoiding a repeat of first day server issues (as we've seen in past years) was only a side benefit, the system was re-worked and designed to deal with the environment of scarcity. It's doing what it was designed to do.

@vargaso - well said. Crashes, while a pain in the ass, wasn't the big issue. Sure, even the guys at Ticketmaster/LiveNation have server problems when big events go on sale, and if you've ever experienced a kick-out on a fast selling event it SUCKS… but server issues are fairly addressable with technology (ie cloud computing). As for tiered prices, they reduced the number of tiers this year and I expect they'll eventually go away completely - we'll see how things go for next year.

@Jennifersteppat - we don't yet know just how many people were doubling up (or worse) on registrations. Yes, the average was for 1.7 tickets per registrant, and the suspicion is there's a lot of hoarding… but we don't yet know how things will break down. Remember, there was a massively awesome video about the event going completely viral during registration. It put the event in the hearts and minds of veterans and virgins alike. But hopefully you get good news in the week ahead

@socks - those who plan…burn. You enter the main sale and hopefully get tickets (not everybody who registered for tickets will get them, but there will be 40K tickets awarded). If that doesn't happen, you look into the secure ticket exchange thing or go for the secondary sale. I don't think that people who sell extra tickets at or below face value are stupid at all, I think they're good people.

@burntjburn - well said with regards to having the extras in the community rather than in the hands of scalpers. Unfortunately, once the ticket has been sold the state of Nevada (whose laws govern the event) says scalping's legal. There'd be a lot of other technical/logistical issues with that plan too, but the legal one is a showstopper.

@mofessor - I believe there are different types of hoarder…. those covering for campmates or an art project, profiteering, and panic-buying. The first two aren't going to even consider the ticket exchange, they had other plans for those tickets from the start. The third group was worried about not being able to get tickets, so they doubled up (some even boasted of tripling up) their chances. The ticket exchange, IMO, gives people who end up with extra tickets (whether it's because of panic buying or somebody just couldn't go after all) an easy way to do the right thing. I also think that the registration process does a fair job of blocking scalpers. Will it block everything? Most likely not, but it throws a massive wrench into the works of the bots and proxies, which in itself makes a registration/drawing system worthwhile over a first come, first serve system.

@The Bruce - there was a reduction in the number of tiers this year, and we may very well see no more tiers in 2013. The cap, however, will not likely be dropped anytime soon. As others mentioned, it's a road capacity thing. Hopefully over the next few years either the great state of Nevada sees fit to widen it, or some gracious benefactor offers to pick up the tab.

[karma_cat]

@karma_cat - sorry if my post came off as condescending, but it's difficult to take such a lengthy rant that's essentially pre-failed a system that hasn't done its thing yet. The initial test run went incredibly well, and so far the main sale has been doing the same. We'll have a much better idea on how well the system works on Tuesday/Wednesday when the drawing takes place. Where the system seems to fail you is that it's not magic. It can't magically make sure that there are enough tickets for everybody. It can't magically limit the number of people who register. If you look at the multitude of info on the site posted since November, it's clear that it was impossible to predict with any kind of accuracy how much demand there would be for tickets in January. Because of last year's sellout, there was not only the risk of professional scalpers, but the very real risk of very significant hoarding. Artists who might want to grab a few extra tickets for fundraising purposes. Camps that might want to do the same. And burners who have campmates that are great people who never seem to get their act together until the last minute. The number of new burners, while generally a pretty steady growth kind of number, is still something of a wildcard - one viral video and those numbers can shoot right through the roof. The whole idea of registration and a drawing was designed as way to deal with excessive demand, as well as a way to limit scalpers. Those who were bent on hoarding always had the option of getting friends/family/campmates to register for more than they needed. Unfortunately since there are only so many tickets to be had that comes at the expense of other burners, but people have a tendency to think 'fuck you, me first' in times of scarcity. Going the route of fc/fs would eliminate the panic-driven hoarding (ppl who double register to make sure they get at least what they need), but it doesn't prevent all the rest of the hoarding and it has zero in the way of protection against the scalperbots and proxies. The registration/drawing route does a fairly solid job of blocking scalpers, but leaves the door open for panic-driven hoarding (IMO, I'd much rather block the pro scalpers). Avoiding a repeat of first day server issues (as we've seen in past years) was only a side benefit, the system was re-worked and designed to deal with the environment of scarcity. It's doing what it was designed to do.

Hi Trilobyte,

Thanks for taking the time to respond to this. For my part I apologize for acting like an angry little prick earlier on the board, but I hope that you understand where my feelings are coming from.

I'm actually not at all opposed to the lottery and I understand the desire of BMORG to change things and have a new system set up. My frustration was with the way that this particular lottery was set up (specifically keeping the tiered pricing system). It essentially created multiple mini-lotteries and encouraged people who wanted tickets to apply multiple times (and to multiple lotteries) to get better prices and increase their odds.

If anything I think the fact that the Pre-Sale went so well is because there was ONLY ONE PRICE (and yes it did ... the Pre-Sale WORKED).

I was trying to offer a solution that would allow a Pre-Sale-like lottery environment that would still benefit some people with tiered prices if they needed them. This was not meant to be a solution THIS year. But rather in the future.

I do hope that it was burners who got 'extra' tickets and that they go back on sale via STEP. But I also stand by my initial remark that the design of this lottery was inherently flawed and that both this sellout and the over-requesting of tickets were direct impact of the design of the system.

Thanks again for the response.

-Karma_cat

[A Jester]

@Karma_cat

For what it's worth I may disagree with your opinions, but I don't hold anything against you as a person.

We have differing ideas, one of us is right and one is wrong, and it's possible that whomever is wrong may never fully acknowledge this. That's how life works, we all have our own viewpoint, right?

I appreciate the tone of your last post, and offer an olive branch (or heck, even a free shot if you feel like it).

I can assure you that lots and lots of coffee had as much to do with the tone of my words as any post I was responding to.

[liz-lemon]

I have seen a ton of RV’s and Party buses that are just there to spectate. The tourist buses are huge eye sores… and most of the people are not on vibe with the culture.

I think we should create a new rule before tickets go on sale:

NO standard RVs or tourist buses… They must be artistically modified or tailored to the event.

The only exception is you apply to bring them, much like how art cars work. Some people might need them for projects, so in those cases they could be allowed but for the most part people should be living in spaces designed for the event. I think this would discourage a lot of people who just bus in to party and eat up all the tickets. It would also really add to the artistic environment and culture.