The downfall of paintball?

[ilikePB]

At the fields I play at they try to keep the high end guns seperated from the low end guns in play. That generally means that those with fast electros play on the airball fields and the others play in the woods. That is if there is enough people.

[mag-hatter]

thats too much of a hastle though what if someone with a crappy gun wants to play tourney and a guy with a good gun wants to play woods ball? i just say take away all electros :)

[vonort]

jetgirl.. I was around when CA first came into play. And at the time I was one of the young guns telling the old timers nah CA won't ruin the game. Guess what the Ole Timers were right. Think about it this way. With out constant air... There is no way the semi's would have taken off. Can you imagine trying to shoot a Timmy, Angel, Trix or other high end gun using 12 grams. That would be great.


And as far as ILikePB,, Why would you quit? You can play airball with a pump or a tippy. The gun doesn't determine the game that is being played. When speedball first started pumps were the only thing available.

[jetgirl]

vonort,
I haven't figured out how to stop the march of time and technology. I believe the evolution of paintball guns and the way it's played will continue. How and where we choose to play, though, is still relatively under our individual control. I made a conscious choice to fire less paint and improve my skills, but I like the HPA and semi-auto features too. If players have a choice of field owners, they can choose their favorite method/style. If not, they can set the example when they play. That's the beauty of paintball; guys and gals, moms and dads, kids and professors, just about anyone can have fun playing this game.

[Jeffy-CanCon]

... Regarding tech, well, I remember when people were concerned that constant air would ruin the game. Obviously, it didn't. ...

I know some people who STILL think c/a ruined the game.

Stock play, or pump, or mech-only semi, are all still viable options.

I tottaly agree. I say they only sell tippmanns or pumps so we can see who really has skill and not just thier gun.

No. The cool thing about paintball is the flexibility - you can play however you want. You just need to find some other people who want the same thing as you. All styles of paintball takes skill, just different skills. The modern equipment allows for a much faster learning curve, but that's about it.

[rabidchihauhau]

so MUCH bs to respond to and so little time...

'hiding in the woods' - one of you folks disparaged 15 man woodsball with a comment like that.

It was anything but 'hiding' in the woods. There was running - lots of it - over broken terrain, into gullies, off cliffs, into swamps, across streams and creeks, down streams and creeks, into pine groves, through rhododendron and blackberry brambles.

Crawling? yes. How about over 100 yards of crawling, uphill, in the mud?

Can't do that on your primped and pampered grass covered wimpball fields, now can ya sonny?

Physical? Ok - serious play-related injuries personally suffered by myself: separated shoulder from leaping across a gap and landing on ROCK (thought it was dirt); fired the ONE shot needed to distract the center bunker, at which point the push went through (successfully). Split open scalp from rhododendron branch; destroyed right knee from overly fast impact with (another) rock (this happened before they invented knee pads). Not to mention becoming intimate with the look and smell of every variety of mammal crap native to the north american continent.

Running. Lots of running. Not 15 feet from one 'taco' to the next mexican cornmeal product, but 1500+ feet down an exposed riverbed, covered on one side by 40+ foot high cliffs and anchored at the end by bunkers, taking heat all the way, dodging all the paint and still taking out the players (plural) in the bunker.

Climbing. Climbing up said cliffs in order to back door the other team.

Jumping. Jumping down a 20-30 foot drop, and incidentally flying (well, for a couple of seconds anyways) over several players in a bunker.

Woodsball was the thinking man's game; deep mental analysis and psychological profiling of the other team at the same time: were they going to blitz or be defensive? Which side of the field would they choose to push hard on? Can we suck them down into the valley? Can one player on the left side of the field hold them off long enough? Would they forget their game if it looked like they were getting a lot of eliminations?

Speedball/airball is SO easy these days. Field - 150 to 200 feet long x 80 to 120 feet wide. 24 positions on the field (ONLY 24) - and half of those are yours at the start. Peek out and you can actually see the WHOLE field - not just some rhodos, a pine tree and the edge of the stream bank. Yell out and your whole team can hear you. Relay messages across the field? What the heck for, I can see the guy I need to talk to!

Geez. The ONLY way possible for someone to think that woodsball wasn't as fast, furious, challenging and demanding as air ball (appropriate name: wind bag, filled with hot air, etc - are all expressions denoting emptiness and nothingness) is that they never played it and are speaking from total ignorance.

Imagine playing airball when you can only see two teammates, the three of you can only see a tenth of the playing field, you can't see the field boundary, you can't talk to anyone else on your team (except by sending a runner to look for them), the other team is moving on you and you have to stop them from advancing down the field while still executing your job, you suspect that somewhere way over on the other side of the field the other team has gotten behind your team and might be backdooring your position at any moment...

Airball - bah! Its a game for people who want to be able to say they play paintball, but don't want to really be challenged.

[SlartyBartFast]

so MUCH bs to respond to and so little time...

Superbly written. :)

[rabidchihauhau]

I was one of the folks who successfully held the introduction of CA to tournament ball at bay for three or so years. Once Tom introduced the 6 pak that argument was over and done with (I and my guys played with 6paks - they were a LOT more versatile than CA).

The idea was to keep TOURNAMENT ball to some kind of logical, easily determined equipment standards; its much easier to tell if a 12 gram has been doctored than it is a tank.

Besides, hardly anything is as satisfying as telling the ref who's dogging your butt that he needs to move, the ref refusing to do so (cause he heard you cheated) and then clonking the next expended 12 gram off his forehead, accidentally, of course.

Same thing goes for stick feeds versus hoppers. Stick feeds could be any length you wanted (most guys kep them to 20 rounds), but hoppers could have forcefeed mechanisms in them....

Let's face it: the guys who want to make money rule the day now; sense and sensibility have been sacrificed to the dollar. Its no wonder that the real game of paintball has been perverted into a trigger pulling contest.

I shouldn't even bother going into a comparison of skills between todays game and yesterday's game, but I will.

Skills required today: trigger pulling, sprinting, cursing, cheating, clock-reading. gun throwing, showing off for the camera.

Skills required yesterday: terrain analysis, timing, distance estimating, motivational analysis, cogitation, communication, deception, running, sprinting, trotting, walking, duck walking, crawling, swimming, wading, basic math, climbing, rolling, cryptoanalysis, psychological profiling, mechanical engineering, statistical analysis, logistics, smelling the woods, listening to the woods, tracking, 'sense-of-direction'...

And one last thing I KEEP harping on but no one seems to take it into consideration: while the players may be youngsters with lots of hormones and speed these days, the people showing them HOW to play are all - every last one of them - woodsball refugees.

Equal skills - equal ages - woodsball team vs airball team on an air field, the woodsball guys win: in the woods, the woodsball guys win. Young puppy airball only players 'got no game'.

Its nothing to be ashamed of - its really not their fault. After all, they're playing what they THINK is paintball.

[jetgirl]

Whoa, I didn't realize there was such a huge chasm between woods and air players. Too bad, though. Both can learn from each other. It appears most of the "problems" are at the pro level. If that's true, then I have nothing to worry about, because it's economically impossible (or almost) for anybody in Hawaii to attain that goal. JT and Dye aren't gonna spend money on players that have to fly in order to participate in a major tournament. I've seen the "advanced" players in action, and it's scary how much paint flies, as well as the coordinated moves. Some fields will have their share of whining, cheating, and swearing, but at least it's minimal or nonexistent where I play.
As far as the "he who has money" concept goes:
I've seen beginning kids with Angel markers, but so what? The type of equipment owned doesn't determine the level of skill or ranking. Some are more fortunate than others, and some make a deliberate decision to use certain equipment. Paintball, statistically, has been a growing sport. The real threat to the sport is bad legislation and poor sportsmanship.

[EverlastPaintball]

the only reason I would quit is because they need to drop paint prices........it costs to damn much!

[rabidchihauhau]

jetgirl,

I don't mean to be insulting but...

you can only be making the observations you make due to limited experience/exposure.

I've been at this 21 years come this October and my commentary wasn't just based on the past couple of seasons.

The 'money interests' have controlled this sport for at least the past decade. They are the reason why there are no real controls over electronic guns, they are the reason why limited paint events don't really exist, they are the reason why Chuck Hendsch had to 'steal' the NPPL away from its controllers, they are the reason why paintball has a bad name in the television industry (just ask Ron Simeo at ESPN)...

They are the reason why so many companies can market crap and get away with it - spend $ on advertising hype and not on production quality. They are the reason why the industry has so far failed to come up with an non-special interest based industry organization. They concentrate on profits now, let the future fend for itself, rather than identifying a goal and doing what's necessary to get there, even if it means giving up a few bucks along the way.

There is also a HUGE divide between players then and now; age is not the only issue. If this were based ONLY on the fact that players now come into an established industry where everything is laid out for them, that would be enough, but (sad to say) its generational as well. Those coming in now play a 'hobby' or a 'sport'. Those of us who started this thing years ago were 'inventing' paintball and we had to fight - hard - in order to do it. We did all the sacrificing, made most of the mistakes (think about it: imagine the first guy who had to say "fellas, shop goggles aren't cutting it...") and hand delivered an entire industry to those playing now. To see it turned into such a turd in order to have 'youth appeal' is sickening...

[Jeffy-CanCon]

rabidchihauhau, my experience doesn't go back as far as yours, but while I agree with much of what you say, I don't agree with all of it.

I too think that money-considerations and industry involvement in rule-making have been bad for paintball as a sport. I think there would be better competition and more credibility if all tournaments had limited-paint, and some technological controls on the markers. But I think that the bright-coloured jerseys, the standardised field layouts and the possibility of spectators are all positive developments. Those changes, as well as the improved technology (HPA, motorised hoppers) would not have happened without the industry's profit motivation, so I think we have to take the good with the bad.

I recognize that the learning curve for people starting today is an easier one than we faced. I also think you give air-ball players too little respect. It's not my style or yours, but their game does take a little more skill than you seem to think. The break is more important now, and the use of cover is different, just to name two things I have noticed. And not every old-school woodsballer posessed all the litany of skills you described, either.

[rabidchihauhau]

Hey Jeff,

Please take everything I say with a bag of salt; I'm being over the top these days in a deliberate attempt to stir things up vis-a-vis woodsball.

I will, however, argue a few points with you: technological advancement in the industry's beginnings was just as monumental, and none of it was done for profit motive: it was done so guys could say 'hey, look what I did to my gun': we went from hand cock to pump in two years, from tilt feed to gravity feed in two years and from 12-grams to CA in two or three years. Those advances are just as profound as adding HPA (kudos to Tom for identifying it as a cleaner power source, but its really just another gas...). Some of the advances were developed in an anti-profit motive manner, my own AmmoCans cardboard loaders being a good example: at the time, 70 round plastic, fliptop lid loaders were just becoming available at about $15.00 per loader. I created the 75 round cardboard loader (you could stand on mine, they were waterproofed and opened faster than anything else out there) and sold them for $2.00 apiece, down to 75 cents in quantities. Why? because I wanted such a thing and wasn't about to spend 200 bucks on plastic. So.

Spectators? Hey, you're talking to the guy who INVENTED spectators at paintball games. I told everyone that it would have as much influence over the game as it did in football - none. I got over 1000 folks to pay 5 bucks for the priviledge of watching paintball at PaintFest 2000 (I think that's still a record). That's not innovation. ANY sport needs spectators. My god, the only way a sport could be successful without spectators would be if everyone played it, and that doesn't happen. No, that's not innovation, that's just the numnutzes who run things finally getting it pounded through their thick heads that unless someone watches paintball, there is no television.

Jerseys? Hey, if players want to look like nascar drivers, fine. They make great things to wear around campus and yet another thing to use to show speedball players they can't cut it in the woods (I wore my yellow, red and orange Scott jersey to a major scenario game AND hid from people, color makes no nevermind, its the movement). Just because some rapper wants to show everyone his underwear doesn't make it a fashion statement. Oh, wait, yes it does. I think I just made my point...

Style? I was not aware that there was a 'style' to playing paintball. There are basic skills and there's judgement based on experience. Put the two together and you have a paintball player. I played woodsball when that's all there was. I played indoor at the first ever indoor field. I played speedball on one of the first courses built in this country. Up until two years ago, I played hyperball, airball, and supair, I played in hotels, around lakes and everything in between. I've yet to see an airball field that offered anything but 'shoot down this lane, move to that bunker, cross cover, shoot shoot shoot. At least in the woods I could find a crawling lane or a shadow to use as cover. I could take one location and convince my opponents that I was actually behind a different piece of cover. I could duel long distance over open areas and play gotchya in the thick stuff. I could win games by getting the other team to commit to the slow side of the field and then push, basing my plan on knowing they'd be physically slower to react. Sometimes you could even see and talk to opponents but not be able to shoot them. Airball is nothing but 3 minutes of yelling, ten cases of paint launched into space and incessant doink, doink, doink. Its idiotic. Everyone said, ooo, artificial fields, the spectators can see so much more, and then they go and erect a tower in the middle of the field. Idiocy. Sheer idiocy.

Standard field layouts? Yah, right. Not when one field is 180 feet long and its nextdoor neighbor is 175 feet cause the '*' trailer needs to be right there. Not when the people staking in the bunkers need a calculator to do 2+2=4. Not when the bunkers are all different shapes and sizes. Everytime I've sat in an audience with the uneducated, its the bunker layout that confuses them. Not the fact that there's a 'snake' on one side and a 'diamond' on the other, but 'why' one bunker is cylindrical and another is triangular. "Its not fair that one player has to hide behind that dinky thing and another gets that big pillar to stand behind" is a literal quote.

That's why all of the bunkers at PaintFest were 4' x 7' beercans lying on their sides; all the bunkers in one zone were the same color and every one of them was numbered. The audience could see 90%+ of the entire field, no matter where they sat (No big 'Q' in the middle of the field) and I didn't get any questions about the field. (Not to mention how easy it was to direct people to the action by saying 'check out white 7'. Oh, look. Big and white with a 7 printed on it, hmmm, that MUST be what he's taling about.)

As for players who didn't cut it in the woods: guess what? the game was so difficult to find and so relatively expensive to play that those people who couldn;'t cut it eliminated themselves by opting to design men's boxer shorts instead...

[Lee]

RabidC: what do you think about the new world paintball alliance or whatever the name is? i forget the actual name.

i think it's interesting that one of the intitial meetings was held at the same hotel in tampa that the nppl people were staying at on the wednesday night before the tampa super 7 was held.

as for your opinion on woodsball: i have been at it for 16 years. all i had in the beginning was woods as well. we went to speedball in about 91, but still played massive amounts of woods and forts.

i got out of it about 8 years ago. my hiatus was about 5 years. when i about 3 years ago i noticed a great difference in almost all aspects of the game (yes, to me it's still a game, we have not reached the legitamacy of a sport).
i now prefer airball, though i use a pump most of the time. i like my electro too, don't get me wrong, but, different tools for different jobs. i disagree with you about airball and the associated skills. i don't agree with the assertion of the average hype saturated player that a high rate of fire is good from a playing perspective. i've found that most don't expect one single ball to be coming at them. several in a row gives them a chance to see them and react. not one though.

as a ref at the super 7 in tampa, i saw things and attitudes that made me want to puke. i wanted to snap the neck of more than one "pro" player due to thier superior attitudes and thier ability to power whine as well as thier disrespect for event personell and rules. most players i had an issue with didn't even know that there was a rule against doing what i pulled them for doing. a simple thing like "out of bounds" was beyond a couple of them. so where things like playing on and wiping too. denied it to the bitter end since arguing, cheating and rule bending have become valuable skills. as a result of the experience, i'm not sure i would do it again. i've wanted to ref at that level most of my paintball life. be careful wha you widh for people, you just might get it.

i personally play my own game, because thats all i want to do....play.

[ilikePB]

Skills required yesterday: terrain analysis, timing, distance estimating, motivational analysis, cogitation, communication, deception, running, sprinting, trotting, walking, duck walking, crawling, swimming, wading, basic math, climbing, rolling, cryptoanalysis, psychological profiling, mechanical engineering, statistical analysis, logistics, smelling the woods, listening to the woods, tracking, 'sense-of-direction'...

Damn, if I wanted to do all this stuff I would join the Army.

Equal skills - equal ages - woodsball team vs airball team on an air field, the woodsball guys win: in the woods, the woodsball guys win. Young puppy airball only players 'got no game'.

Then why the hell don't all the scenario teams play a couple seasons in the NPPL to make some extra cash. The reality is that this statement is NOT true. I've been to a couple scenario games with some friends and owned the woods players. There tipmans and "covert" moves just don't cut it in tight, small spaces. To me airball is way more fun, it's more of an adrenaline rush. Like I said before, it's preference. You aren't gunna change the tournament scene and there's a reason for it. Once a person plays tourney style the majority ditch woods for airball.

Airball =
CA =
fast electros =
force fed hoppers =
technology =
progression =
change =
my opinion =

= friggin awesome