A Different Way to Play Limited / Unlimited Paint Tournaments

[AGD]

Guys,

Laying in bed last night this idea came to me so I am coming to you for feedback. Limited paint has always been a bad idea because most guys don't like it and the promoters want to sell paint to make a profit. But what about this idea, your team can go into a game with any amount of paint it likes, no restriction. HOWEVER, each of your kills is worth so many points discounted by some formula for the amount of paint you started with. This would mean a pump team with 50 rounds each could theoretically take out one guy and score as many (or more) points than the other team winning with a full paint load.

This would lead to some interesting strategies because if your team was down on points, you might make the strategic move to switch to low volume pumps or similar. Highly aggressive full paint teams could not just go "stab" a guy behind the bunker because if they were taken out simultaneously it would give the other team a boat load of points. It would make the games last longer and require more strategy than just force on force. I would be interested myself in seeing such lopsided firepower games where everything is on the table.

Discuss.....

AGD

[going_home]

The most fun I've had playing was hopper ball, limiting paint to one hopper.

Makes you pick your shots instead of just spraying.

I tried pump and just couldn't get into that style of play.

[Patron God of Pirates]

I played a similar scenario before. Rather than use a formula, we just had to "buy" pods of paint using our teams points. I thought it was a great idea but the implementation was a little wonky. One kills was worth enough to buy one pod. With re-spawns and 20 a side, both teams quickly had enough points to where pod cost was not an issue. It never ended up being lopsided.

Coming up with a formula that works and prevents a dominant strategy from taking hold would take allot of play testing.

[boo]

The most fun part of paintball is getting eliminations. I think people would just forgo points just to spray the field and get eliminations.

[Patron God of Pirates]

I think it was being asked with tournaments in mind. Sure in walk-on play people care more about their own success, but if the objective is to win a tournament then the focus is points, not kills.

[athomas]

If I was ahead on points and knowing the other team had to come at me, I would switch to a low volume of paint, just knowing that I am going to maximize my elimination points when the other team is forced to be aggressive. If the other team also comes out with a low volume of paint, the game will equalize, and it will be more of a standard paint limited game, except its voluntary.

It would be advantageous for any team to calculate exactly how much paint they think they will actually use in the game and only carry that much. Any extra above the amount needed could cost you elimination points. I think you would see teams changing from dumping paint, to a more calculated shooting technique to maximize their scoring by figuring out how to use less paint. It would be an interesting game change and would add another level of complexity that would have to be accounted for. The promoters would probably notice a drop in paint useage at these events, so I don't know if local tournaments would go for it.

[BigEvil]

Very interesting. I would imagine that something like that would make things very difficult to judge though..

[zulubravo44]

Very interesting. I would imagine that something like that would make things very difficult to judge though..

I feel like it might need some sort of extra equipment to get going... A sort of paint distributer that counted each ball "withdrawn" by each team in order to get an objective count.

But then eliminations could be judged the same way, and a really simple calculator/app could be used to tally total points per match.

Seems like a cool idea to me. I always thought the arms/money race to have the most paint in the air for a solid ten minutes was a huge turnoff to tournament style play. This could, with proper testing and calibration, be an interesting way to equalize. You could even have different formulas for different levels of play if necessary.

This also could lead to a sort of team handicapping system that might (I say might because it's a long shot) allow for less well equipped teams to compete with more well equipped teams more on the basis of actual skill rather than just the amount of money spent on ramping electros and cases of paint. That said, I don't think think it'd be really feasible to somehow come up with a system that was actually fun for everyone where a team of all pumps could take on a fully loaded speedball team. One side or the other would be pissed off about the result, and the two styles are too far from one another to bridge the gap with math.

[skipdogg]

Not crazy about the idea, but totally geeked that Tom is thinking about paintball again when he goes to bed! Made my week start off great!

[going_home]

Very interesting. I would imagine that something like that would make things very difficult to judge though..

Just have to have a loader with a counter on it that that officials could reset.

[cockerpunk]

more overhead i don't think is necessarily a good idea. X ball already requires more infrastructure than most fields have, and that causes problems. that being said i think most players do have a few different setups in the gear bag so maybe it is a wash. I have a hard time buying that this doesn't, depending on the point shift slope as it relates to firepower, turn into either the current hose-fest, or just pump only. or just folks with electros 1 balling (which is fine too).

paintball already hits them where it counts in terms of reducing firepower, and thats in the wallet. its unpopular but the solution to the hose-fest should become clear given that fact.

[SeeK]

I think it was being asked with tournaments in mind. Sure in walk-on play people care more about their own success, but if the objective is to win a tournament then the focus is points, not kills.

Scenario games have a similar strategy. Kills (shots) don't count but objective points do.

The problem is that the game/tournament/scenario designers don't do any modeling to try out the game balance for the various point awarded for objectives. As everybody has probably seen, some smaller objectives may be 1 point but larger ones might be 5 points. But the larger objective isn't necessarily 5 times harder to achieve.

It's like playing the line in Craps. Some numbers are harder to hit and so they pay out more.

If we had someone that is good with Stats programs like SAS, SPSS, or R or a finance person to build a Monte Carlo simulator, we would run the different strategies for 6 iterations.

Team A B
1 - Unlimited Unlimited
2 - hopper pump
3 - unlimited pump
4 - hopper Unlimited
5 -
6 -

Then assign the proposed point system to each matchup to see how teams would gain points. More importantly you would see the boundary limits (ie. could all pump play gain enough points to defeat unlimited?)

[snoopay700]

I think I remember people putting forth a similar idea before, where the total amount you bring onto the field is how score is based, or the total amount fired, which would make more sense to me. Personally it sounds like a cool idea, and I'd be down for it.

I'm not convinced it would change anything definitively, but it would be interesting to see the dynamics of this sort of tournament play. Like most things, there would likely be patterns that emerge and that people just follow, but until that point is ultimately reached i think it would be a fun time and interesting to see the combinations people come up with for their teams.

I feel like there should be some sort of objective, even if that is just total elimination. That nets you a certain amount of points on top of each elimination and follows a similar formula. It could lead to instances where one team loses the match in terms of number of eliminations, but they win on points. I feel like that would cause a ton of controversy though.

[going_home]

National Speedball League

You guys have probably seen this new format, NSL :

http://www.nationalspeedballleague.com/videos.php

[luke]

Interesting idea, keep it simple just weigh the paint of each player as they come off the field. No need for fancy counters, each player dumps his left over paint in a bowel after the game, it wouldn't take long to process both teams after a game in a tournament situation.

Weighing paint for a count is the simplest solution in lieu of counting, that's they way I did it when I was renting markers and selling paint in the early 90's...