Making paintball more fun for veterans and newbies alike
Given that the...other thread...was a complete nonstarter, I thought I'd try again for what that thread should have been. There were some great points sprinkled in, but I think the signal to noise ratio became untenable. I want to frame this thread right off the bat with one thought:
Paintball is a game.
If paintball is a game, then it is imperative that me maximize the amount of fun people are having. This has all sorts of lovely effects for the industry since our player retention will be higher and there will be more participation.
Point 1: The gear we play paintball with has been formed largely due to evolutionary path dependency - loaders are on top chiefly because better loaders kept compatibility with gravity loaders, and adoption is more difficult as solutions become more entrenched. Leaving the ammunition alone for a minute, is there a FORM FACTOR that would be more beneficial to paintball than what we have now. The fundamental assumption here is that we're shooting 10bps+ of .68 caliber paint, which necessitates a rather large on gun volume. I looked extremely hard at shifting around the positioning of the loader, but the truth is the hopper on top method, while not ideal, is not completely awful.
Point 2: Ramping is a result of cheating. I think a rational Rate of Fire discussion is warranted.
High ROF:
+ Adrenaline in speedball
+ Margins for fields who sell lots of paint (a bad business model, I'd argue)
+ Integral to strategy of speedball as currently constructed
- Discourages movement in speedball
- Discourages new players (fear factor)
- Increases costs to players
This is obviously not a complete list, but ROF is pretty foundational to the state of the game today. New players need to be nurtured, not scared away. That brings us to the next issue.
Point 3: The rounds (no pun intended)
There was a lively discussion around this topic, and I think it behooves us to consider a few major factors:
Fun/Range/Accuracy - shooting ball paint is not at all fun - you can't score eliminations you feel you deserve - if a guy is hanging half his body out from 40 feet, I should be able to easily eliminate him. A hopper from 30 feet should take a reasonable number of shots to score an elimination, etc. When paint is completely scattershot (and today, it often is) it really affects my enjoyment of the game. However, I'm not sure First Strike rounds would be significantly more fun than paintballs. A better tool? Certainly. Given a belt fed DAM and a few grand worth of FSR to burn through at a Big Game, you could score HUNDREDS of eliminations, no problem. But, whether those result in more fun (as someone said, the range of FSR makes for kills you can barely SEE!) is questionable. I think for speedball, While FSR would still be an advantage to someone using them over current paintballs, I'm unsure if the industry as a whole would derive benefit.
I should note that if we were building paintball as a SPORT, FSRs are a logical choice, since to separate skilled players out, the stochastic forces such as ball inaccuracy should really be minimized.
b. Cost - FSRs are expensive. Anything requiring hard fins rapidly becomes prohibitively expensive. It's interesting to think about "footballs" or "teardrops" or other such shapes that could still be molded, but given the tumble drying process etc, I'm not sure we ever get away from balls reasonably. Hydrotec appeared to be a tray molded PLA solution, which would enable high quality shells in a variety of geometries, but the fill is prohibitively lacking in density, which gives a poor ballistic coefficient. Something like a Hydrotec FSR in 50 caliber would, perhaps, have a balance of accuracy, payload, and cost. I would also recommend they orient the seam along the front of the ball rather than their current top and fin motif - the breakage from a lighter round would be improved significantly with a seam always hitting first.
Point 4: The format(s)
Does the 'sport' of speedball need to be tuned for spectators? For Players? Our own vijil has posited an interesting concept:
http://kiwigat.blogspot.com/2011/10/vball-pt-2.html
What are your thoughts on this and other "non-intuitive" game formats?
Cockerpunk also has mused about mixed technology formats - imagine a game in which you can have some combination of 43-50 caliber pistols (of high quality), 'normal' 68cal ramping pb guns, and pumps with FSRs. That feels inherently difficult to police, but I think his original point was that we are a group of smart guys, let's not "see things how they are and ask why"; let's "see things as they could be, and ask why not"!
Ryan
I fear I got ramble-y somewhere along this line.