"Nothing is changed with or without locks" is a very much disingenuous statement. "Well they're just going to win two matches anyways" is a pretty glib way of looking at it; in that scenario you're giving people a way to almost always stay on top of their advantage.
That said, I think there's equally as poor ones coming from both sides of the argument. The only thing I see in this argument the more I think about is insufficient information to make an educated decision. We have examples of games that have gone both ways in similar situations - when Haketh brought up Arcana Heart for example, it was to discuss that they started one way and
changed it later. Bringing up those scenarios was one minute way to highlight how additional information is going to make a huge difference in this decision; note that the scenarios I presented
are not even mutually exclusive.
To be honest, it seems the closest thing to a good piece of information in the whole thread was this, which got glossed over (possibly because the man himself did not independently verify it):
And I should say, the only reason I feel it's even worth considering is because it
implies that NRS is trying to make every variation stand on its own two feet and be complete enough to win any match in the game. Without any underpinning reason given, that inference is the best insight we have, and let me be clear: having to go off guessing what someone else might be thinking based on one tiny piece of information is as deficient as it gets.
@GGA 16 Bit, since I haven't seen you ring in at all here yourself, can you confirm or deny what Tortoise said? Are you allowed to give us any rationale either direction about what's being considered in-house?