Systems approach to the paintball player population
Warning: This is somewhat a philosophical question about what you feel the "best" form of paintball is. Personally, I design things with "speedball" in mind and prefer that playstyle, because I think it's the biggest, purest "rush", and the closest thing to a competitive sport. I enjoy "big games" and sneaking about in the woods, but oftentimes woodsball fields that haven't been well thought out stall games easily, and you're left trying to make long shots work, which, FSR excepted, they just don't. I also think that woodsball and Milsim play are an itch that can be scratched nearly as well by airsoft, which is somewhat problematic given the much lower costs of entry and play for airsoft.
So, when I think about how paintball has contracted since 2007, I tend to think, first and foremost about the speedball player population. Generally, most people who are introduced to paintball actually are introduced to woodsball, and then cut their teeth there for a while, and maybe eventually try speedball. However, I tend to suspect that for many players their first speedball experiences involve getting run over by more experienced players.
My feeling is that improving the initial exposure in paintball to speedball with build a more vibrant player base. But, how to accomplish this? My mental model is roughly as follows:
LEVELS
0. People who have never played and have limited information to paintball.
1. Introduction to paintball (groupons, outlaw ball, birthday parties, corporate team building, lessons?)
-------Initial Interest and Positive experience, retention, maybe buying beginner gear----
2. Recreational Players - woods, milsim, biggame, speedball
-------Buying some gear, playing a few times a year ----
3. Habitual/Tournament Players
----Playing every weekend, joining a team in most cases, spending a lot of money but may be partially sponsored----
4. Burnouts
----Players who have quit or scaled back to 2. based on time and financial commitment.
The question is, how do we improve the experience of players, at every level of experience, to make paintball's 'player ecosystem' healthier?
Suggestions:
Initial Exposure (recruiting more players):
I think lessons are a great idea - talking about angles, walking the field, body control, etc. I think that the more people recognize competitive paintball as a complex strategic game, the more intriguing it will be to them. I also think that rec-ball should probably decrease the ramping ROF to something like 8 bps, just to reduce the fear factor.
Also, having GOOD rental guns, that's huge. No one is going to have a fun time with a chopping marker. I don't know what the best solution is, but the closer you can approximate, right away, the feeling of using a NICE setup out on the speedball field, the more players are going to want to re-live that experience.
Placing players in competitive games of roughly equal skill seems important too. I don't know how to codify this because it seems almost like a 'picking teams' in recball problem.
Rec Ball level (helping players that play some now play more):
I find this to be the trickiest one, because it's the category I fall into myself. I think part of the problem for me is that often there is little middle ground (around here at least) between casual woodsball, which is OK, and playing with teams whom are practicing, which can be significantly above my skill level. This seems like a local field level issue; if there were more places I felt were 'about my speed', I suspect I'd play a lot more. Then again, people int his category are also usually pretty busy.
Tournament Level (keeping the players interested and playing):
Fields need to be improved to encourage movement, somewhat, at all levels, but I think that this would particularly be helpful to people who play very frequently. I hesitate to artificially limit paint consumption beyond the ROF reduction we already see, but the stagnant nature of certain PSP layours is encouraging people to shoot a LOT of paint. There's always something to be said for 'rolling your guns', but I can't help but wonder if incentivizing movement would help players avoid burnout. Proposed format changes (like vball) could be interesting, but I also think maybe a system where winning a game FASTER awards more points would help. If you could score 3 points by blitzing the other team, that would make comebacks more likely, and discourage the "up-off-the-break, choke them out" style some teams have used very successfully.
Anyway, what do you guys think of thinking in this way? can we, by breaking down the populations into transformative steps, gain insights on how to grow the sport?