No I am not doing any sort of field breakdown or analysis. At least not for publication here at VFTD. What I am doing is one of my favorite pastimes--one that regulars will instantly recognize--I am disinterring one of the dead horses buried in the back yard so I can beat on it some more.
When the PSP extended the field dimensions and announced a general intent to be more all inclusive in the sense that the league hoped to attract a broader pool of players--kinda like back in the day--with more large props, etc. for the older, fatter & slower players I didn't much care for the idea--and said so--repeatedly. Even though I understood the reasons why, and still do, I thought it was contrary to what the league had become. And was unlikely to succeed anyway.
And it hasn't. Succeeded, that is. And it hasn't succeeded in large part because it hasn't ever been fully implemented--and it hasn't been fully implemented because of a significant failure in communication and cooperation between the PSP and the kids at Sup'Air who unilaterally created a snake this year that is beyond "technical" for most players and shrank the rest of the props by some percentage. Yet Sup'Air's vision of the game is the perpetual run through, treating it like the paintball equivalent of the dunk. (Of course more difficult props means faster eliminations which provide numbers opportunities which encourage--you guessed it--run throughs.) And as the layout designers for the league routinely failed to design layouts last year, or this, that coincided with the PSP's stated goals. (I'm dangerously close to digging up another dead equine.) At the end of the day that is on the PSP. It was their policy. It's their layout and their league. But--
There are consequences. And they are predictable as day follows night. (And vice versa.) The new snake requires lots of supporting props to be marginally playable in a 5 up scenario. It also requires a preponderance of low elevation props--no stand-ups. Since the Pins (trees) are supporting the snake the stand-ups do double duty as lane blockers and are incidentally pulled above the 30's making the Cans in particular easier eliminations--and leaving no larger props in the back as the PSP (once) wanted. Another consequence is to divide the layouts into halves. What I mean is that designs with these characteristics tend to play up and down with much less emphasis on the cross field play often until one wire or the other is blown. Each wire tends to be dominated by gunfighting. On one wire it's played on your feet and on the other it's on your knees.
One complaint of xball oft repeated is the repetition of plays and points. It was a complaint aimed at the layouts but was more correctly seen as a lack of imagination or understanding on the players and teams part. It is a complaint that today could be more accurately aimed at layouts, whatever the features, that more and more reflect recurring patterns, standardized modules of thought and another failure of imagination.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
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8 comments:
I agree with your above comments. As a fatter,older and slower player, I have found the smaller field size was easier to play than the newer larger field size. The space between props was closer together, hence easier to bump. Now it seems harder to make the secondary bumps because of the increased distance between props. And as you stated the props have gotten smaller.
I found it mildy amusing that MS still has 5 MD's for their "run-through" game, and for the "fatter,slower players" game they took away 2 MD's from the PSP.
Anon
Not only that but on all three layouts the 5 MDs are in nearly the same place on all of them with Cannes & Bitburg varied only by prop orientation.
In some strange way I actually like the NPPL layouts... maybe it's just the larger 7man field (assuming it's larger?!?). But the center and both wires get played a lot... and in that league you can still see old fat guys on the field -- probably because they get an hour break in between games!
In reality, I think that latter comment makes more of a difference than the field. Old and quasi in shape guys miss the days of being able to show up, play a good game, have a long break, and go at it again.
Genie is out of the bottle. Old fat guys who would prop up the sport with constant streams of cash replaced by yoots who don't realize they may be throwing away some of the most important wealth generating years of their life.
Seeing a lot of the guys who've been running this grind starting to ask themselves - was it worth it?
Keep pushing this boring sit behind a box and shoot at air style of paintball it looks like it's really working out well.
Do the leagues actually have any control over the layouts, or is it all submitted by Supair?
Of course, it's just been convenient to have Sup'Air do it because nobody really spent any time thinking about what sort of difference the layouts might make other than would the teams like them or not.
I'm actually looking forward to see the new layout in play. Should be awesome.
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