Originally Posted by
Nobody
uv_halo: i only stress to protect the walkons in that, when you have a birthday partt group or some preteens that have rentals and a hopper, they need protection from those that will dump half a case a game. No one wants that or needs to bunker a kid in a pickup game for nothing more than saying they did that. So yes, they need protecting because if you leave it up to the players, then you will have rental players not ahowing up because they will get murdered. Constantly slaughtering them does not foster an atmosphere of nurturing development in the sport. Picking on 12y/o children is not fun, and it should be up to the field to make sure they come back again, not only for their financial benefit but to build upon their player base.
Now, you must understand that in the 90s, paintball as a sport, wanted to get mainatream, to get into the realm of X-games. You can not do that in the woods. How else can you bring the sport to the spectator? You need to get out of the woods for that. You need to be able to present the game to the viewer. Being held in the woods, though part of where the game started l, does not lend itself to that. Remote woods means its hard to get to. So they did need to do speedball.
Also, speedball is what sold. Whether it was the Rate of Fire wars, where everyone was trying to hold the fastest gun, or the simple fact. In that era, you had guns of the month, proshops having the latest and greatest new guns, some by manufacturer, some by what was hot. Why, because that is what sold.by selling someone a $1200 gun, you know they where going to spend money on new packs, loaders barrels, etc. With that, they were good for cases of paint. You can only, normally sell one gun to a person, but you can sell hundreds of cases of paint to that 1 person. The faster the gun was , the more paint he ahot, the more money you make. Paintball economics.
Now, you did have a movement away from mil-sim in the beginning. It only made sense. Even if the field banned camo, it was because they wanted to sell you something. Do you realize why camo was used because it was cheap and it worked well in the woods. So, why not look like a paintballer? Its not a bad thing, becUse that proshop, that field want to make money off you.