Interpret this Rule

[elpimpo]

you dont play tournaments do you?

the incentive for calling yourself out is that if u dont u get a 1 for 1. that means you have a lower chance of winning.

[Lohman446]

Ok.. the rule as I understand it is quite clear.

When hit in anything but an unobvious hit - only those hits to the pack of your pack - you are required to immediatly see if it broke yourself, if you cannot easily verify you must call paintcheck. While confirming you may not make any forward movement, and you may not fire - doing so is playing on and is cause for a penatly.

Its just the enforcemetn sucks.. I have some ref stories, some at major events, that are nearly unbeleivable on what I have got away with with full ref knowledge.

[hitech]

I don't like the idea of instructing the refs to wait for two seconds. It seems too much like setting the players up. Why two seconds? A player could find a hit within that timeframe, or may take longer. As long as he does not "play" it should not be playing on. The only reason I can see for waiting is to determine if the player will cheat. I'd rather not give them the opportunity if possible. I realize that technically this could give an "advantage" to a player with a ref standing near them. But it also makes it much harder to cheat with a ref standing next to you, so I don't see it as a bad thing...

Obviously, I'm all for making players responsible for calling themselves out. I don't like the idea of setting them up.

[elpimpo]

umm dawg i dont know who told u bout that two seconds but it aint true... we call um when we see them. now i myself have waited on one call cause i couldnt believe my eyes. this dude dives into the right 50 taking one to the gogs... emiediatley he turns his head inside and kind of glances at me, but he wouldnt call himself out... im stupified, i was like wtf, then i was like oh shizzle hes going to try and wipe this crap, so i kind of looked over and then i was like this is messed up and i 141 him

[rabidchihauhau]

rules, rules, rules.

You guys are arguing over the specific rule sets when the entire framework has a couple of major problems.

If they are going to work, a set of rules must be:

demonstrable
enforceable
effective (within the context of the stated purpose of the game)

and take place within the game itself.

Demonstrable: you have to be able to clearly define the boundaries to which the rules apply.

I would submit that this has not been accomplished yet. You can say 'observable/non-observable' etc., but I know of many instances in which a hit that 'looked' obvious to one person was NOT obvious to the player in question. I saw one just two days ago: a skater came off the top of a bunker, barely clipped the edge of the goggles and splooged all over the guy's hair - which was big and poofy. Result - it was PLAINLY obvious that he did not know he had a hit on him, while it was equally plainly obvious to everyone else that he was hit.

So, with this one example, we see that we're in difficult territory, because any set of rules we devise are going to penalize players for things which are outside of their own control. If that's the way it has to be, so be it, but recognize that we have not adequately defined the situation for it to be clear cut.

Enforceable: its great to have a rule, but now you have to put it into official's hands and give them the tools needed so they can USE the rules.

THIS has not been accomplished either. When a player can run down the field with a penalty waiting, mark other players, hang a flag, etc., and all the ref can do is chase him and then try to pick up the pieces afterwards, you don't have enforcement.

To be more real world about it: there are many game situations in which taking a one-for-one (or 2-4, 3-4, whatever) will give you the win with penalties. Example. I get hit bunkering someone; I keep running and shooting at another defender, just long enough to get his gun to turn my way, so my teammate can grab the flag and shoot him as well - game altering continuing to play, but he's gone and the flag is hung.

No control. In reality, as many people stated, enforcement of the rules depends upon the cooperation of the players - and there's NOTHING in the rules that will force a team to grant williing cooperation if they don't want to cooperate.

Effectiveness: again, drawing on the previous example: we used to have 'penalty points after the game' systems, where the penalties were assessed against your earned points. Big deal. If I posted 100 after cheating to a win and the refs took away 6 points for a player who had actually been eliminated, I still have 94 and my opponent only has 6.

The same is true today, although its not as dramatic. I get a two for one, but we still won the game. Points still go on the board, we still advance.

In this instance, we have a penalty, but it is not effective enough to curtail the cheating; there is still a major advantage to be had (given the right circumstances) in making the cheating move.

So, on all three of the major requirements for a proper rule system, the existing paintball rules fail.

There is one solution, very radical, but its the only thing that will work, and that is to give the referees the right to stop the game in order to make MAJOR calls. This restores the effectiveness, gives enforceability and the circumstances under which it can be done is definable.

Until this or a similar system is evolved, no one playing paintball is doing so under a set of rules that can define it as a sport.

Its like playing Monopoly where the rules state 'anyone can steal money from the bank so long as another player doesn't catch them' - if a player is caught stealing from the bank by another player, they must pay the other player $50.00' (keeping the thousands they stole)

[hitech]

Its like playing Monopoly where the rules state 'anyone can steal money from the bank so long as another player doesn't catch them' - if a player is caught stealing from the bank by another player, they must pay the other player $50.00' (keeping the thousands they stole)

It's only funny because of how true it is...

[SlartyBartFast]

you dont play tournaments do you?

the incentive for calling yourself out is that if u dont u get a 1 for 1. that means you have a lower chance of winning.

umm dawg i dont know who told u bout that two seconds but it aint true... we call um when we see them.

I don't like the idea of instructing the refs to wait for two seconds. It seems too much like setting the players up.

You guys are arguing over the specific rule sets when the entire framework has a couple of major problems.

If they are going to work, a set of rules must be:

demonstrable
enforceable
effective (within the context of the stated purpose of the game)

and take place within the game itself.

You can say 'observable/non-observable' etc., but I know of many instances in which a hit that 'looked' obvious to one person was NOT obvious to the player in question.

Result - it was PLAINLY obvious that he did not know he had a hit on him, while it was equally plainly obvious to everyone else that he was hit.

When a player can run down the field with a penalty waiting, mark other players, hang a flag, etc., and all the ref can do is chase him and then try to pick up the pieces afterwards, you don't have enforcement.

28.05Players who are in motion while hit in obvious locations, which are easily verifiable, will immediately turn their motion away from the opposition, and stop.

there are many game situations in which taking a one-for-one (or 2-4, 3-4, whatever) will give you the win with penalties. Example. I get hit bunkering someone; I keep running and shooting at another defender, just long enough to get his gun to turn my way, so my teammate can grab the flag and shoot him as well - game altering continuing to play, but he's gone and the flag is hung.

In reality, as many people stated, enforcement of the rules depends upon the cooperation of the players - and there's NOTHING in the rules that will force a team to grant willing cooperation if they don't want to cooperate.

Cooperation of the players is gained through tough enforcement of the rules and application of penalties.

Effectiveness: again, drawing on the previous example: we used to have 'penalty points after the game' systems, where the penalties were assessed against your earned points. Big deal. If I posted 100 after cheating to a win and the refs took away 6 points for a player who had actually been eliminated, I still have 94 and my opponent only has 6.

Two solutions: better enforcement to catch the cheat quicker and tougher penalties to make the risk not worth the cheat.

In this instance, we have a penalty, but it is not effective enough to curtail the cheating; there is still a major advantage to be had (given the right circumstances) in making the cheating move.

There is one solution, very radical, but its the only thing that will work, and that is to give the referees the right to stop the game in order to make MAJOR calls. This restores the effectiveness, gives enforceability and the circumstances under which it can be done is definable.

[rabidchihauhau]

First of all, you seem to be confusing my statements regarding the 'writing of rules' with specific examples from within an already flawed set of rules.

Secondly, your statements about 'tougher enforcement', 'more vigalence' etc., on the part of referees again exemplifies the fact that you are speaking of specific rules and not 'the system' within which those rules are found.

Third, when speaking about other sports (in response to the observable/unobservable) situation, again - other sports have systems in place which paintball is missing - all of which pertain directly to my 'three rules for rules writiing'; the primary difference between other sports and paintball is that in other sports, the 'cheat' is simply missed by the officials, whereas in paintball, it is seen by the officials who are essentially powerless to do anything about it.

Fourth, since paintball is a 'game' (as are the other sports) and since all games take place within a defined boundary, (an artificial reality defined by the objectives of the game and the rule set) it IS possible to eliminate gray areas and define all rules in black and white - without making players responsible for cooperating with the rule system in order to make it work.

Fifth: we did the game stop at PaintFest. We only needed three basic rules to cover it: 1. (as you asked) when can an official stop the game? 2. what are players required to do when the game is stopped. 3. how do we re-start the game after a stop.

The game was stopped under two conditions and two conditions only: A. if the referees had lost control of the game and B. if a referee called a 'major' penalty. (Major penalties were illegal forward passes, continuing to play on with an obvious hit, physical violence, etc.)

Players were required to either stay in their bunker if they were in a bunker, or, stop all forward motion and head to the nearest bunker in the direction of their goal line if they were not. All players were required to stop shooting. Various appropriate penalties applied for non-compliance.

To re-start, players crouched behind their bunker, facing in the direction of their goal line. When the referees indicated that everyone was in the 're-start' position, the game was whistled back into play.

Referees were allowed to: inspect ALL players during a game stop. move players if their location was the result of illegal forward progress and assess other, additional penalties for infractions discovered during a game stop.

It all worked very smoothly, it proved to be very easy to tell who was where when the whistle blew and, I will tell you, the ability to inspect all players totally curtailed the 'playing on' habits.

We had other major tools to work with - yellow/red flag penalty system (penalties increased if the team accumulated more than three majors), a penalty box, the ability to move a team or their flag back down the field AND

every single infraction had an associated penalty that forever removed the possibility that someone could cheat and gain an advantage, because the result of the infraction led to on-the-field penalties that put the offending team in a position that was less advantageous than their position prior to the infraction.

This is not rocket science - its all game design and game theory stuff, based on the fact that when people play games, if there is a hole in the rules, they WILL find it and they WILL exploit it. This leaves the game designer (a good one anyway) in the position of having to design a workable game around those things that can't be subject to the rules of rule writing. The folks who invented paintball NEVER designed a game, and we're stuck with that legacy.

[hitech]

You know, I'm all for making the player responsible for calling themselves out for ALL hits. I'm all for not allowing a player to continue playing once hit, PERIOD. I also have no problem with a single penalty for playing while marked. Actually, that is the way it should be. If players wore properly fitting clothing and equipment (i.e. not designed to promote bounces) they would feel 99.9% of the paintballs that hit them. It would also help encourage such clothing and equipment.

ANYONE who plays fair would GREATLY benefit from this rule. If you play fair you currently are FAR more likely to be negatively affected by those how play on after they are hit that you are to be penalized when you didn't know you were hit. Playing while marked should be a major penalty. The distinction between obvious and non-obvious shouldn't exist within the rules.

BTW, the player who took the shot to the top of his goggles in the above example most likely knew a paintball hit him. He was possible not sure if it broke, but he knew he took a hit. I have no problem requiring him to find out before continuing to play.

The problem is that if we can't get anyone to enforce existing rules, how can we get them to enforce tougher rules? It has been my experience that the greater the penalty the less it is awarded.

I all for rules discussions. It's one of the favorite paintball subjects.

[SlartyBartFast]

- all of which pertain directly to my 'three rules for rules writiing'.

Me thinks you're being confrontational for the sake of it. Which is it? Rules for rules writing or rules for "game design".

You're wasting bandwidth on that argument because you yourself seem to be jumping between the two 'definitions' and what your saying is exactly what I'm looking at.

It's just you seem to take the premise the baby needs thrown out with the bath water. I on the otherhand would like to see what can be kept and what the current salvageable "vision" of the game is.

- the primary difference between other sports and paintball is that in other sports, the 'cheat' is simply missed by the officials, whereas in paintball, it is seen by the officials who are essentially powerless to do anything about it.

But there you're wrong. Paintball Refs DO have the power to something about it. But, they lack the courage, training, and backing of the organisers. In some cases they even have too much power where the rules are vague and can be interpreted and enforced as they see fit.

[rabidchihauhau]

Slarty,

I'm not being confrontational - maybe my choice of words came across that way, but if we were sitting in a room together talking this bs, it wouldn't have come across that way.

I respect your opinions and insight and sometimes 'respectfully disagree'. Please take anything I might say in response within that context - unless I say otherwise. (lol)

I maintain the refs in paintball don't have the ability to enforce because the pace of the game frequently takes them out of the running: someone doing a bunker move can be hit on the run-in, shoot the target and perhaps even shoot another player before a referee can make the initial call; rather than being able to address the situation (he was hit before he hit the player in the bunker, he's out, you're in) the referee is forced, because of game pace, to send both players off the field.

(Not to mention the fact that players will deliberately try to take a referee out of the game - and can do so under the present rules. I need to move down a tape, will probably get hit, but to win the game I need to take a guy out; there's a ref right there, which means I'll probably get called before I can mark the opponent, so one of my teammates fries the ref (excusable, he was giving me cover), the ref dips and dodges out of the way and I make my move; no rules to curtail this that are effective.)

Furthermore, it does not even have to involve actual hits; merely taking up the attention of an opposing player for a split second can change the course of a game - the guy is shooting left mid when he ought to have been shoot left...

This is known to the nth degree by good players who look for opportunities when a referee is out of place or distracted; the problem exists for two reasons: - mishandled reffing AND a set of rules that confer advantages on cheating moves under the right circumstances. Ref's, no matter how well-trained, will make mistakes, so its up to the rules to cover them, which means you can't allow a cheating move (one that's caught, regardless of when its caught) gain a team or player an advantage.


Rules writing is a part of game design...

(Its my bandwith, I'll waste it if I want to...)

Hitech:

the player most decidely DID NOT know the ball hit his upper frame; it was a bouncer off the bunker, most likely already cracked, and it left barely a mark on the lens frame before exploding on the hair. Perhaps a better example would be a ball that fully breaks on a twig before spraying a quarter-sized or larger hit on the player himself; no force of impact is felt, but the player is clearly marked under the rules if a referee turns around and sees it.

I do agree that the baggy clothing, rubber logos 4 inches in diameter, mutliple layers, and etc. complicate the issue greatly; I remember when we made one well-known player drop his signature three-piece suit for a 'regular' uniform - but it seems that that was the last serious attempt to gain control of the clothing issue. Players NEED appropriate padding (one destroyed knee and one separated shoulder is all I need to know that), but it should be more controlled and reasonable.

[trains are bad]

rabidchihauhau for NPPL president!

[SlartyBartFast]

I maintain the refs in paintball don't have the ability to enforce because the pace of the game frequently takes them out of the running: someone doing a bunker move can be hit on the run-in, shoot the target and perhaps even shoot another player before a referee can make the initial call; rather than being able to address the situation (he was hit before he hit the player in the bunker, he's out, you're in) the referee is forced, because of game pace, to send both players off the field.

the player most decidely DID NOT know the ball hit his upper frame; it was a bouncer off the bunker, most likely already cracked, and it left barely a mark on the lens frame before exploding on the hair. Perhaps a better example would be a ball that fully breaks on a twig before spraying a quarter-sized or larger hit on the player himself; no force of impact is felt, but the player is clearly marked under the rules if a referee turns around and sees it.

[SlartyBartFast]

rabidchihauhau for NPPL president!

He got shunted out once already. Not sure you could convince him to try again.

[hitech]

The player most decidedly DID NOT know the ball hit his upper frame; it was a bouncer off the bunker, most likely already cracked, and it left barely a mark on the lens frame before exploding on the hair.

I'm still okay with a penalty for playing on in that situation. It will happen very infrequently and sometimes players will be penalized when they did nothing wrong. However, that will happen far less frequently that the opposite does now. Also, he quite possibly knew that the paintball might have hit him. Regardless, I'm still all for a penalty for playing on. It would also encourage players to be aware of hits, and to have equipment (and haircuts ) that allow them to detect them. It would encourage players in discovering when they are marked, rather than discouraging it. Making an "unobvious" hit less of a penalty encourages the player to ignore those hits which they believe they can successfully argue are "unobvious". And we all know the lengths a player will go to stretch the rules.

I remember when we made one well-known player drop his signature three-piece suit for a 'regular' uniform...

Really?!?! I didn't think anyone ever did that. I complained bitterly (as a ref, not a player) that he should not be allowed to wear his "harness" under his clothing as it was clearly against the rules. I was told that because of "who he was" he was given special treatment. I thought it was wrong, but there wasn't anything I was going to be able to do about it. Glad to see someone did, even if only once. Wish I could have been there!