What needs to happen to speedball to keep it relevant?

[PBSteve]

Any professional sport that wants to bill itself as athletic should be brutal to play.

[d0cwho]

Just an idea I came up with while reading this thread. Just going to lay it out in bullet points for simplicity

- Same field dimensions as a current Xball field
- 5 on 5
- 20 minute game timer that is constantly running unless a point is scored
- Each team has it's own flag that it must bring to the opponents other side
- Players will respawn from the current penalty box after 1 minute (time can be altered). However, a player shot off the break cannot respawn back into the game (you can keep an air station and spare pods behind the giant red bunker to load back up while you wait to respawn)

From what I was thinking, the respawn encourages teams to play fast once they get an advantage during the course of the game play instead of just sitting and blowing through paint. However, teams cannot get too aggressive off the break as they permanently lose a man. Could create some interesting strategies and general clock management issues for teams.

Any thoughts?

[Jaccen]

Example of UAPL 3 on 3 footage.



In regards to "watchability," I think speedball will need to make a choice: is it happy with it's niche customer base or does it wish to expand into the mainstream? If it's the first, focus on organizing tournaments so that their players are happy. If their major complaint is cost, find ways to minimize it (ie. limited paint, bps, etc.). If it's the latter, attempt formats that are easiest to view to expand mainstream interest.

Some speedball "mods" people are trying out do involve flags:

http://www.nationalspeedballleague.com/

Basically, it's speedball with endzones ala football. Check out the videos for a quick idea of how it plays. The footage is extremely amateur, but I'd definitely be interested in trying it out. I would recommend watching some of the older, outdoor ones as they're much clearer.

Though, with that being said, the pro's of today would be able to lock down this type of play no different than the race-to format played now. So..........square one.

[cockerpunk]

that NSL actually sound pretty fun. but i hesitate to have so many game play stoppages, they are tough to do in paintball in general. im sure they could be smoothed out without effecting the fundamentals of the flag into endzone format.

[vijil]

I'm a fan of what the nsl are trying to do, but think they've massively over complicated the game. Endzones whether with or without a flag is something I've always pushed for.

I like the idea docwho.

Hmm I'll have to go home and read the whole thread, it's turned into a beast...

[Nobody]

To me, the point isn't slowing down the game so much as it is to keep costs down and introduce the new blood into the port. Whether that are the bunker-monkey kids with their parents credit cards, or trying to rope in the periphery players that play more mech. That is more important to me. To adjust the style of play(limited paint, but not limited RoF), on a "dying" sport is stupid. You are throwing good money after bad. You need to introduce an entirely new demographic to the sport and remove the stigma of needing stupid amounts of cash to play with. And do not even bring up the idea of no one has mech guns, cause i am sure that every poster here has at least one. Its like the Ion did for electros, in that now you can have Enmys and Empire cockers going at it.

[vijil]

The speed of a game in itself has little to do with watchability. Cricket is *incredibly* slow (games take up to five full days to play out) yet is watchable for a surprising number of people. It regularly fills stadia in India, for example. Basketball is faster than paintball, and on a per-down basis american football is faster again in terms of actual action time. 100 metre sprints at the olympics are a marquee event for a reason - likewise F1 racing is slooww. None of that affects watchability.

Watchability is complex, but seems to be a mixture of the following factors among others:

1: can you tell what the hell is going on? can a newbie at least grasp the basics? (no and no)
2: do we get to watch feats of skill or athleticism?
3: is the game overly predictable, or is there a good amount of uncertainty in the result?
4: Are we invested in the result - do we care who wins or loses? The narrative around characters and teams is just as important as how we film. Probably more so.
5: Focal point. I think Gordon is wrong here, focal point is key for a few reasons.

Regarding focal point yes, events elsewhere on the field may matter. NFL is a great example, as are screens in basketball and so on. But in there is still one point which matters *more* than others in all these sports. Enough more that missing something else isn't a huge deal and you can at least understand the majority of the situation. With RaceTo as it stands there simply isn't that. A watcher can't gain a real understanding of the situation in their head until we're down to a 2v1 or 2v2. If somebody at least had a flag it would start to matter, but that hardly happens. Sports like NFL have significant depth, but you don't need to understand that depth to have a surface appreciation of what's going on. That comes with time as you learn the game. Paintball drops you in the deep end rather than building up the depth, which kills newbie watchability. Paintball's watchability learning curve is steeper, so to speak. I'd also argue that it lacks depth at the top end so you end up with the worst of both worlds. There is some depth to what coaches are doing with players in PSP but we don't get to appreciate that to any great degree.

There are examples of moments in paintball when it's become genuinely watchable. I point to buzzer hangs under fire such as JRab at Chicago 2011, and there are others such as "Oliver Lang Best Team Movement" on youtube. It works because the commentators are able to walk the audience through exactly why that was so awesome, or not, and we get an insight into what's actually going on. JRab's move involved distraction by other players and awesome timing. When we saw that on the replay it was a "hell yeah" moment. Ollie's move likewise - we could watch the replay and appreciate the genius. The problem is that these moments hardly happen, and when they do the filming and commentating isn't up to the task. That's largely because the commentators are dealing with the lack of focal point just as much as the rest of us.

And it's EASY to fix. If TD lines are added and the flag is removed from exising PSP and all you had to do was cross the line to score, that's an instant improvement to the game even if no other rule is changed. The focal point becomes whichever player is most likely to score, and the tactics become clearer because you can see where they are moving to try to do so. Other players may get shot but that becomes secondary, massively lightening the edit and commentary load. The key of course is to make scoring before eliminating everyone likely and desirable, and this is easily tuned by moving the TD lines relative to the field. Not enough scoring during games = move them closer to the middle/decease team size/increase field size/increase field density. Too much crazy rushing = exactly the opposite. Have one team start with the flag and you further increase watchability.

We've test played that here in NZ and it's hella fun.

I think my point is that almost anything is better than what we got.

Cost to play and broad player appeal: do the above with mixed markers solves that problem

[Unfated33]

I want to go play the "Cross the Field" version now. That could be fun to decide if you want to try to rush all, some, or none of your team against an opponent. So many strategic options to think about: "Is it better to push someone all the way down to the far corner and hold him there for cross-field pressure, or have them go ahead and step across the line for points?" "Can we put most of our team on one side of the field and defend the other with a clutch shooter or two?" It might also make going up to 7-man or 10-man more viable if some of your team is solely there to run fast across the field. It could also make pistols a more useful piece of equipment - just in case you absolutely have to shoot someone on the run but you want to stay as fast and light as possible.

[Lurker27]

Some thoughts:

Mixed markers remain stupid to me. Solution looking for a problem, at best. Most players don't own multiple marker types, and it increase complexity.

I LIKE the idea of End Zones, and I'm wondering if combining it with shorter game times would provide the best balance. My concern with the End Zones would be that the initial stages of the game would still be "feeling out" for eliminations. Some sort of time based incentive is still the best way I can think of to combat that. Otherwise, I think you run the risk of teams just trying to choke each other out with numbers advantage.

I wonder about making the end zone a centralish feature ("base") players have to touch to score (like centerflag). A single overhead camera here might be beneficial, since one can imagine a lot of controversy over points scored versus eliminations right at the line. Is a player still active after they score? Or are they removed from the field of play, having "scored a run". You are incentivizing, in that case, overwhelming victories on bodies, since that will allow the most players to score.

The alternative is "Ender's Game" rules: The game is over when one player reaches the end zone, or "gate" without being shot. Coupled with decaying points for the game in a short finite time, this seems like the best compromise yet. You get:

1. An implied focal point.
2. Non-zero probability for a single player to "ninja" his way to victory
3. Incentive to push the action with minimal regard for risk of damage to one's own players (higher risk play is more exciting)
4. Deep, offense/defense oriented strategizing - Do you try to overwhelm one side of the defense and trade out players to get a quick, highly incentivized score, while leaving one of your sides weak? Do you have "offense" players probing for opportunities while a couple "defenders" have primary responsibility to prevent easy gate pushes?
5. Evolving relationships between teams over the ocurse of a match - defense and stalling, within reason, is incentivized for the winning team, while pushing and risk taking is incentivized for the team that's behind.


The gates or end zones themselves are the problematic part - the location and accessibility have to be balanced or things will devolve into deathmatch. If it's too easy, then I tihnk too many cheesy points will be scored. And, scoring/controversy remains problematic.

[Jaccen]

Agreed on the end zones potentially being problematic to call.

Bonus points for mentioning the work of Orson Scott Card

Perhaps Millennium style buzzers in the endzone? You probably need at few (ie. 3 at least?) The Millennium buzzer, I think, has the potential to stop the "deathmatch-y" nature of speedball. However, since it only has 1 buzzer per "endzone" currently it's not worth the risk to just go push it usually (unless there's a 2 on 1 and even then people usually just go for the elimination.......see the Greenspan and Rau example). Add a few more (perhaps one not out in the open) and you have potential. The electronic buzzer being pushed eliminates some of the difficult for the refs calling a "down."

Heck, get creative with their placement. Put a buzzer at the end of a ladder snake, one at the dorito corner, and one at the god. You think people flew down the ladder at Cup? Watch what they'll do if that's how they could win the game in 10 seconds.

Focus would shift from what the players are doing/shooting to what they're trying to get to. Static points where the camera could focus in on.