Thursday, December 18, 2014

Millennium Series Changes for 2015

In the past I have both applauded and been critical of various aspects of the Millennium Series effort. They do a number of things very well and, in my estimation, a couple of things, er, not so well. However for the 2015 season I can find no real faults because those items I might object to in a perfect world are included for reasons that are self-evident and which do harm elsewhere. The following comments are in the same order as the league's statement.
3-man play will be an added option on its own unique field that will also be used to give visitors/spectators an opportunity to try paintball if they'd like.
Each venue will have a camping option to help make the event more affordable.
The league hopes to use their webcast in more creative ways to expand paintball's outreach as well as improving their effort to reach outside of paintball within the local venue area. (Sounds swell though exactly what it will mean isn't clear. It is however consistent with other efforts.)
A new rule will require new high visibility shell colors only for event paint.
Addition of a new open D3 that will play a RaceTo-2 format and their reduced entry fee will include 10 cases of paint.
Players of the 3-man won't need player IDs.
Locked division rosters will be slightly reduced but the active roster will be raised.
Rosters for open division teams will remain unlocked all season long.
Player IDs will now be available at reduced cost for single events. (No more buying season ID in order to play only a single event.)
And on the prizes front the CPL will award prizes at each event now instead of a single end of season series prize.
The changes made this season are focused on making the league a more attractive and accessible competitive paintball event. It's a series of sensible moderate steps aimed at bringing in new players and new teams and perhaps some old teams and players too. The only place I can see some of the regulars objecting is the new reduced rosters for locked division teams as this will in effect shove the last couple of bench players off their current teams. It may also raise the cost of competition for individual players as well and if the goal was the see if those players cut loose would reform into new teams I think it highly unlikely. More likely they will join existing teams that probably don't play Millennium events.

The statement also addressed the recent PSP changes. The Mills 'no coaching' policy remains as formulated and seems to work. For one thing bleachers in Euroland all seem to be elevated and at the MS events I've attended were also separated from the playing field by a greater distance than is normal at PSP events. The Mills will continue a 4 week pre-release of their event layout(s) and will continue to use a 10 bps cap in the current mode of operation as the league has serious concerns about enforcing semi-auto and continues to believe all teams and players should be playing the same basic game. (Something the PSP used to tout as well until ... they didn't.)

On the whole a cautious thumb's up to the Millennium this time around though only time will tell on how well the roster changes are received.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think all the changes are nice. I think their snide stab at the PSP was completely unnecessary and unprofessional.

In general, I think the PSP should just make everything semi-auto capped to 10bps, and as long as people don't have their guns setup to blatantly and instantly ramp to 10 you're good to go. It will always be impossible to standardized debounce settings, etc.

The aim would be to keep the rate of fire low and make the player have to do some work to achieve it.

If the gun just flies off into 10 right away, the player is risking a penalty.

For people who say that's crazy, well, the PSP mode can basically be "cheated" by making the gun bounce into PSP mode right away already.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, bouncy semi is more controllable and still fast. Guys that played nppl know all about locking in a lane with one finger. I can shoot almost 10 with one finger, since they don't check bounce anyway (do they even know how anymore?) My gun just does as it likes (from the first shot on). I hit 12.5 with one finger and get more control. If you don't like that then start checking bounce at psp LOL.

Anonymous said...

10.2 "semi-auto" is just another name for 10.2 ramping. It takes a trivial amount of bounce for virtually anything to ramp up to 10.2.

ScotchMonster said...

Changes sound reasonable and thanks Baca for the overseas update. Seems the Northern neighbors could benefit with similar adjustments...then again league mentality always reminded me of the slogan...Dyslexics Untie! Merry Christmas VFTD!

Anonymous said...

Yeah it is ramping.. ramping that kicks in on the first shot. Best part is refs don't care to check or probably even know how. It is definitely an accepted loophole in their "ramping negates cheaters" argument.

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