by dejavu on Wed Mar 17, 2010 9:28 pm
EDIT: Holy crap I had no idea I typed this much.
I think half the reason why people drop out so quickly into longer scenario games is because of poor hydration practices. People don't understand how important it is to be well hydrated before, during, and even after the game. With longer ops/scenarios, this becomes a major factor because there is less down time due to objectives, larger AOs, and the demands made by each squad leader.
I would be 100% down with a multi-day event, though as Kiley points out, and as I have realized through years of hopes for such an event, the prospect of actually making such an event a reality is grim due to the physical demand it makes on each individual.
I think that, were such a thing to be planned, there would need to be certain safeguards scripted into the rules of the event in order to reduce as much risk of this "drop out" as possible. For example, requiring hydration bladders/carriers would be an adequate means of addressing the hydration and "drive" issue.
Mandating an 18+ only rule and enforcing the notion of the event being primarily a MILSIM event and secondarily and airsoft "game" would be one strong step towards filtering the "serious" players from the recreational players. This isn't to say that minors can't hack it, as I know I could at 17, but enforcing an 18+ rule would help reduce the number of drop outs from people who thought they could handle 36+ hours of non-stop scenario play but found that they couldn't make it past hour 12.
One of the biggest problems with such a game is that, due to the "drop out" rate, the game would inevitably start with balanced, large teams, but by the end of the first day or night, a good portion of participants would be "too tired' to go on and would pack it up early, thus leaving the dwindled and unbalanced teams. There's no use in denying this reality because I see it each weekend when, after the second game, anywhere from three to six or seven players leave because of assorted reasons. When I started airsofting as TAC was coming into existence, we played for four-six hours with maybe 2 10-minute breaks tops.
In addition to all of these factors, there are also the issues of mechanical issues and drained batteries. Unless someone is going to take out a rapid charger that can been connected to a car battery, there is no way to eliminate the prospect of dead batteries. In addition to this, there's also the risk of AEG breakage, both from internal problems and from any external problems caused by operator fatigue and low-light conditions (i.e. "I tripped in the dark and landed on my gun and snapped it in half).
This leads me to my last main concern, which is the prospect of playing at night. There would be no point in camping, in my opinion, if gameplay was going to be stopped at night and resumed during the day. If there were to be a multi-day op, it would need to span continuously, with a constant eye-protection requirement except in designated areas.
Once you consider all of these factors, including all of the factors that I am not factoring in due to the fact that I am hungry and want to stop typing, and you begin to realize that actually putting on a camping-type, multi-day operation would be one of the most complicated, frustrating, and potentially disappointing endeavors one could undertake.
Needless to say, if someone could do it (not me!), I would sure as hell sign up, even at the risk of having it all crumble. (this happened with a particularly memorable TAC operation at SASCO back in circa 2006, which involved a torrential downpour that cut the operation down from three days to just one and a half).