Since it's the weekend I'ma try something a little different. I'm going to propose a topic and let y'all have at it. More amazingly, the subject is paintball gear. Guns in particular. (I know! I never talk about gear. And I'm not gonna start now. You are.) While I don't talk about gear it is a subject some people (who will remain nameless) that I talk with do talk about. Every damn chance they get--or so it seems. That being the case I'm (vaguely) aware that in recent months there's been news of some new guns coming to market; Zodiac (blah blah blah) Renegade, Machine Vapor and a gat from Thin Air Sports. Feel free to toss in a GOG gun too or whatever else strikes your fancy.
Say whatever you'd like but I'm (vaguely) interested in pricing, perceived value & perceived marketplace considering the Crome kids called it quits recently. (Yes, somebody told me that too.)
That's it. It's all yours now.
Showing posts with label guns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label guns. Show all posts
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Monday, April 4, 2011
HB Day 2: Tournament Interrupted
This post requires a short preface. I wasn't at HB on Sunday. I don't know who won. I don't care. I tuned in to ESPN3 but didn't watch even five seconds of the coverage. I am not a happy camper. (I am an enraged camper.) In part because we failed to go through on Saturday--as the defending series champions--which is a [expletive deleted] embarrassment of epic proportion but mostly because of the way we failed. (Warning: cliche imminent.) A team, any team, is only as strong as it's weakest link. [This is where everything I'd like to say, to get it off my chest if nothing else, would go except it's team business and that doesn't get aired out in a public forum.] Unfortunately we only had seven players for the event including guest Scott Kemp of the Ironmen otherwise we could have and would have made appropriate substitutions. On a positive note I'd like to thank Scott for filling in. He did everything asked of him like the pro he is. And I'd like to commend Jacob (Edwards the Younger) on stepping up and playing like a man in a totally unfamiliar role because somebody had to and he was chosen. [More stuff I shouldn't post. So, as wiser (calmer, anyway) heads prevail, I won't.]
The rest of this post will be about the scoring system, the refs and the rules. I'll cover the latest TV stuff in the Monday Poll in Review post.
Let's talk chips. Apparently one is enough (despite what the old commercials used to tell us.) Far as I know they worked as intended. Everybody had one and, as far as I know, they were installed in every gun that was used during a pro game. What was also clear was that some guns reached and maintained a higher BPS average with less effort than other guns. Were any of those guns exceeding the cap? Perhaps on occasion but I didn't hear anything that sounded either obviously or outrageously over the limit. It is less clear to me how effective the chip was in the role of policing guns for rules violations. The semi-auto rule to be specific. Some guns that may not have exceeded the BPS cap may have otherwise been ramping up to the cap.
Regarding the gun rules. There was, as I suspected, no real definition or even formula for action in place for the weekend. The intent was to notify teams of guns exceeding the limit and give them a warning--with the implicit (if not quite real) threat of actual penalties "next time" or "tomorrow." I have no idea how many teams, if any, received a warning--or were penalized on Sunday. I know we didn't receive any warnings. (And I sincerely doubt any of our guns ever got close to the BPS cap.) And if any team was penalized, and objected, I don't see how the league could justify assessing the penalty because the rules are simply insufficient as they currently stand. At best this may be a step in the right direction but it is far from a done deal.
Now for the referees. This is where I gain (no) friends and influence (no) body. The layout for HB should have been a referee's dream field. Few blocking obstructions. No confluence of props in the middle of the field. Clean lines of sight nearly everywhere and only a couple of areas on the field where the action might come fast and furious--and still the refs were only borderline competent. 95% of the calls were easy and most of those were probably made correctly. (I'ma giving them the benefit of the doubt.) But the remaining 5% reminded everyone--or should have--that problems, serious problems remain, in officiating competitive paintball and those problems can be divided into two camps. Inconsistency and a lack of a standardized routine. The inconsistency is most often seen in penalties called--and penalties not called. Guy dives into bunker, gets hit but doesn't check or call for check. Ref throws flag, penalty called. Guy runs through half the field gets blown to pieces shoots somebody with no penalty called regardless of how egregious (and obvious) the playing on might have been. Or vice versa. The point is the calling and assessing of penalties continues to be as diverse and unpredictable as the number of refs on the field. And in bunkering moves or run throughs the standard call is the simo because even with 5 refs standing around watching nobody wants to make a definitive call because nobody seems to know or want to know exactly what happened. But I can help.
Since NPPL mythology supports voluntary assistance I am volunteering to fix the reffing issues, free of charge. I will come a day early to the next event if the league will bring the refs in early as well and I will get everyone on the same page and teach them how to work together to make the instantaneous calls that are sometimes required. I will even work out the guidelines for making calls to improve consistency. Trust me, it ain't rocket science. The offer is on the table.
The new format; brackets, scoring, tie-breakers, etc. worked pretty much as predicted. It was a dreary mess that was nearly as incomprehensible to the players and teams as it must have been to the people trying to follow on ESPN3. (I explained what was happening and why to more than one team on Saturday.) Also, as predicted, 3 of the 4 prelim brackets went to tie-breakers as 3 teams in each bracket went 2-1 in their best of threes versus three opponents. The score page posted by the league was also woefully inadequate as it simply showed set wins and losses and never explained why one team or another either moved on or didn't. It may be possible to argue that the new format is an improvement or at least no worse than the old format but the results, and the way they were reported (or explained) (or not explained) (or posted) (or not posted) currently isn't serving the interests of the league or, it seems to me, outreach to a new TV market of potential fans who don't already know the game.
[For those who watched how did Matty do explaining the brackets and the results?]
Lastly, the boom camera. Snake side. Has got to go or the operator has to use some common sense or have some guidelines devised for its use. As it played out over the weekend it bird-dogged players all weekend long, frequently giving away positions in the snake to players otherwise unaware. Think sideline coaching. It was effectively the same thing, except worse. The operator could, if so inclined, tilt the game balance by pointing out some players in the snake and not others. Did that happen? Yes. Was it on purpose? I don't know.
In the small frame of competitive paintball HB was a marginal event; no better and probably no worse than lots of other events. In the Big Picture of the league's future with ESPN (or TV in general) the jury is still out.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
The Lazy Slacker Re-post of the Week
Kinda.
The following piece was written for and previously appeared in WELT digital magazine, the short-lived project from the folks who brought you PGi.
Moonbats, Drillbits & Semiauto
There is one subject that drives me to the brink of gleeful homicide--the blindly willful utter nonsense spouted by the "semi-auto" advocacy crowd. This includes a few friends of mine so y'all please feel free to delude yourselves that little bit more and believe I mean everybody but you.
It started when I was skimming a long thread at the Nation–yes, I realize I brought it on myself-- devoted to speculation about the (then) upcoming changes at the PSP. A few posters just had to toss in the opinion that what the PSP needed was preferably uncapped semi-auto. Everybody is entitled to an opinion–even an idiotic one–but this particular brand of paintball superstition is like being a member of the Flat Earth Society and really believing the Earth is flat. Or participating in Renaissance festivals because you are convinced you really are Richard the Lionheart reincarnate.
Hey Tulip, you're nutty as a fruitcake!
If you've been living in a cave maybe I better explain. Like Knights of the Round Table (or in this case, Empty Head) there are some die hard fantasists forever chasing the semi-auto Holy Grail of one pull, one shot. True semi-auto (as if such a beast existed in the era of the micro-processor and electronic gun) is a swell dream but fails to correspond with reality. The truth is the majority of diehards don't actually understand how their guns work even if they can use the right words to construct a coherent sentence. If they did they wouldn't be Knights of the Empty Head. For starters their trigger pull doesn't actually discharge their marker. The proprietary software in the micro-processor on their board 'reads' a signal from the switch – which can be any one of a number of different types of switches – and decides what to do about the received signal and the result can vary as widely as the parameters of the software allow. And, of course, within that process the micro-processor tells the gun when to shoot, not you. Then there are the assorted forms of actuation that are 'mistakes.' Stuff like bounce, both mechanical and switch. Every software package in the business has filters designed to minimize, to varying degrees, the 'mistakes.' But guess what. All you semi-auto is a skill clowns set your filters to the lowest possible 'legal' setting because, miraculously, your skill improves when the filters interfere as little as possible.
And it's even worse than you know because there are manufacturers who swear on your mother's life that their software is pristine and innocent and would never intentionally add a shot or three or six. After, of course, offering the standard pious disclaimer about user error. Yet it does–and many of you like it that way because you've worked ever so hard to develop your "skill." Still, these disciples of the true semi-auto continue to insist that semi-auto is pure paintball and that ramping is an evil corruption despite the indisputable evidence that all electronic guns add shots and the only real quibble is over the definition of intentional and unintentional.
One thing we can agree on is that if such a thing as true electronic semi-auto existed in the modern game it would be better than capped, ramping guns. But the place you gotta start to see that happen is with sufficient standardization across the manufacturers so that the gun you're shooting is essentially identical to the one Joe Bob is shooting. At that point you can reintroduce the idea of skill again. And trust me, most of you semi-auto worshipers wouldn't like that one little bit.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
The Gun Whore Effect
I have a new theory on the decline of the industry. Like all the other theories it's short on verifiable facts but there is at least a certain logic to it--unlike some of the others, for example, oh, I don't know, say the trickle down theory of robotic hordes of ballers shooting mad paint because that's what the insignificant One Percenters do. (Not to be confused with the punk ass tourney wannabes swarming unwary fields across the country like a plague of locusts. Shooting mad paint. At high ROF.) And while I wouldn't give this theory a primary role in the decline it could have served to make matters worse after the fashion of what repackaged mortgage debt did for financial institutions during the real estate collapse--and beyond. I call it the Gun Whore Effect.
It might more properly be called the Turnover Effect but that doesn't have the panache of The Gun Whore Effect. Gun whores, in fact, have been with us almost as long as the game has been played. Once different kinds and brands of markers hit the market the gun whore soon followed. The gun whore is, of course, that select group of ballers who can't resist the next hot gat and will buy as many of them as possible--sometimes selling older guns in the process, sometimes not. There is also a gun whore lite group that may not have a stash of markers but must have the latest and greatest and as a consequence goes through guns faster than Tiger Woods does cocktail waitresses. The result is gun whores churn the turnover rate in gun sales well above the norm.
It used to be that gun manufacturers made guns and aftermarket shops customized them. Eventually manufacturers began to try and tap the custom market and in no time at all the cycle of "new" gun introductions was annual. In creating an annual turnover cycle manufacturers overheated the marketplace (although since this first occurred during the big growth years it went unnoticed.) Amongst gun whores the effect was to accelerate the rate of turnover; both buying more guns faster than the average but also dumping more used guns back into the market as well. When demand was still rising it didn't matter but as soon as demand flattened (and/or declined) the result was a market glutted with used guns of virtually identical performance and nothing like enough newcomers to sop up the excess and still buy new at anything like the volume the manufacturers had come to expect.
Today that glut continues and continues to depress new sales while manufacturers are stuck trying to differentiate their latest gear from last year's and perhaps even incongruously relying on the gun whore portion of the market for even their reduced sales. And since player numbers have been calculated based on new sales nobody really knows how the numbers stack up, only that the sales aren't there. The one thing I would be willing to bet is that there are a lot of guns collecting dust in a lot of closets.
It might more properly be called the Turnover Effect but that doesn't have the panache of The Gun Whore Effect. Gun whores, in fact, have been with us almost as long as the game has been played. Once different kinds and brands of markers hit the market the gun whore soon followed. The gun whore is, of course, that select group of ballers who can't resist the next hot gat and will buy as many of them as possible--sometimes selling older guns in the process, sometimes not. There is also a gun whore lite group that may not have a stash of markers but must have the latest and greatest and as a consequence goes through guns faster than Tiger Woods does cocktail waitresses. The result is gun whores churn the turnover rate in gun sales well above the norm.
It used to be that gun manufacturers made guns and aftermarket shops customized them. Eventually manufacturers began to try and tap the custom market and in no time at all the cycle of "new" gun introductions was annual. In creating an annual turnover cycle manufacturers overheated the marketplace (although since this first occurred during the big growth years it went unnoticed.) Amongst gun whores the effect was to accelerate the rate of turnover; both buying more guns faster than the average but also dumping more used guns back into the market as well. When demand was still rising it didn't matter but as soon as demand flattened (and/or declined) the result was a market glutted with used guns of virtually identical performance and nothing like enough newcomers to sop up the excess and still buy new at anything like the volume the manufacturers had come to expect.
Today that glut continues and continues to depress new sales while manufacturers are stuck trying to differentiate their latest gear from last year's and perhaps even incongruously relying on the gun whore portion of the market for even their reduced sales. And since player numbers have been calculated based on new sales nobody really knows how the numbers stack up, only that the sales aren't there. The one thing I would be willing to bet is that there are a lot of guns collecting dust in a lot of closets.
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Monday Poll
For the rare few actually paying attention, yes, I pulled last week's poll early. What really happened however is that last week when I set it up I neglected to take into account I was posting it late. What can I say? You get a little older and it takes more than 24 hours to get the Vegas out of your system. Anyway, it wasn't a high interest poll for reasons I'll get into in the review below.
This week's topic is easy, highly speculative, probably partisan and so simple a squid could do it while sleepwalking. Which teams will be playing semi-pro in the PSP next season? Lots of talk and not much substance out there right now. Just the way we like it so now is the time to test your ability to prognosticate (sounds better than blind, dumb luck guess, doesn't it?) and/or your insider knowledge with a Monday Poll. You can pick as many teams as you like from the list--so you get to cast more than one vote (if you're from Chicago that'll seem normal)--and if you pick 'Other' please include who you had in mind in the comments. I feel compelled to remind you that many teams, particularly in the higher divisions, when arbitrarily propelled upward by the PSP tend to fall apart. (Okay, it isn't arbitrary but it might as well be since the primary purpose isn't about merit or excellence or earning it.) And that the notion currently floating around that some NPPL Pro teams are considering joining the used-to-be-called-xball fun makes competitive but not business sense (to me) but who cares? I say run with it while the running is good. The list is ridiculously long but if it only included the obvious it wouldn't be much fun, would it? There are some CPL teams and some NPPL teams not already playing in the PSP. And of the lower division PSP teams only Fierce and CEP players will be reclassified from D1 to semi-pro but who knows who else might jump in. Oh, and I've included last year's regulars too. Will they be staying, bumping up or fading away? You decide.
Monday Poll in Review
I'd like to say this poll ruffled a few feathers 'cus I'd come off as edgy and dangerous (and maybe even cool) but so much for wishful thinking. A look at the total number of votes is a clear indicator the poll didn't attract much attention. I think there's probably two principle reasons why. Many aren't that interested in the NPPL 3.0 (the league formerly known as the USPL) and most are hesitant (even anonymously) to offer an opinion on technology that frequently isn't all that well understood. Even by serious ballers. I'll leave it to you to decide which had a greater impact.
Of those that did vote on the idea of a league certified gun board the results were 31% generally positive and 64% generally negative. Of particular interest in the negative votes was the fact that the potential for added cost to the player wasn't a significant factor as it garnered only 8% of the votes. For those of you scoring at home that's 2 to 1 who broadly don't see a league certified board as a step in the right direction. But while it's all well and good to test which way the wind is blowing (it must be 'cus everybody in DC does it all the time, right?) public opinion doesn't tell us anything about the actual merits.
So is a league certified board a good idea or isn't it? Before that can be answered we need to know the intended purpose. If , for example, the notion is to standardize gun performance as a further measure for leveling the playing field that's one thing. If the idea is seen as a method to improve enforcement of the rules that's something else again. In either case the predicate is the highly dubious (if not outright delusional) notion that modern electropneumatic markers can be regulated (and policed) for "real" semi-automatic functionality as the state of the art currently stands. Or if, at some point in time, tamper resistant technology can effectively monitor the operating technology in such a way that the benefit outweighs the cost and complexity involved. Regardless the primary objective is preserving so-called semi-auto play and that is the crux of the problems all the versions of the NPPL have had with consistent rules enforcement and/or the perception of fair play when it comes to gun performance.
This week's topic is easy, highly speculative, probably partisan and so simple a squid could do it while sleepwalking. Which teams will be playing semi-pro in the PSP next season? Lots of talk and not much substance out there right now. Just the way we like it so now is the time to test your ability to prognosticate (sounds better than blind, dumb luck guess, doesn't it?) and/or your insider knowledge with a Monday Poll. You can pick as many teams as you like from the list--so you get to cast more than one vote (if you're from Chicago that'll seem normal)--and if you pick 'Other' please include who you had in mind in the comments. I feel compelled to remind you that many teams, particularly in the higher divisions, when arbitrarily propelled upward by the PSP tend to fall apart. (Okay, it isn't arbitrary but it might as well be since the primary purpose isn't about merit or excellence or earning it.) And that the notion currently floating around that some NPPL Pro teams are considering joining the used-to-be-called-xball fun makes competitive but not business sense (to me) but who cares? I say run with it while the running is good. The list is ridiculously long but if it only included the obvious it wouldn't be much fun, would it? There are some CPL teams and some NPPL teams not already playing in the PSP. And of the lower division PSP teams only Fierce and CEP players will be reclassified from D1 to semi-pro but who knows who else might jump in. Oh, and I've included last year's regulars too. Will they be staying, bumping up or fading away? You decide.
Monday Poll in Review
I'd like to say this poll ruffled a few feathers 'cus I'd come off as edgy and dangerous (and maybe even cool) but so much for wishful thinking. A look at the total number of votes is a clear indicator the poll didn't attract much attention. I think there's probably two principle reasons why. Many aren't that interested in the NPPL 3.0 (the league formerly known as the USPL) and most are hesitant (even anonymously) to offer an opinion on technology that frequently isn't all that well understood. Even by serious ballers. I'll leave it to you to decide which had a greater impact.
Of those that did vote on the idea of a league certified gun board the results were 31% generally positive and 64% generally negative. Of particular interest in the negative votes was the fact that the potential for added cost to the player wasn't a significant factor as it garnered only 8% of the votes. For those of you scoring at home that's 2 to 1 who broadly don't see a league certified board as a step in the right direction. But while it's all well and good to test which way the wind is blowing (it must be 'cus everybody in DC does it all the time, right?) public opinion doesn't tell us anything about the actual merits.
So is a league certified board a good idea or isn't it? Before that can be answered we need to know the intended purpose. If , for example, the notion is to standardize gun performance as a further measure for leveling the playing field that's one thing. If the idea is seen as a method to improve enforcement of the rules that's something else again. In either case the predicate is the highly dubious (if not outright delusional) notion that modern electropneumatic markers can be regulated (and policed) for "real" semi-automatic functionality as the state of the art currently stands. Or if, at some point in time, tamper resistant technology can effectively monitor the operating technology in such a way that the benefit outweighs the cost and complexity involved. Regardless the primary objective is preserving so-called semi-auto play and that is the crux of the problems all the versions of the NPPL have had with consistent rules enforcement and/or the perception of fair play when it comes to gun performance.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
The Mech Warrior
The following post appeared originally in Baca's Blog over at the Big Bullet.
No, this piece isn't about some new manga fad or a fantasy combat game posted here by accident. It's also not about some new scenario game or the latest spec ops gear intended for the mil-sim crowd. It's about tournament paintball, sort of. But maybe it has applications that are bigger than just tourney ball. So you can either surf over to the next page or site or kill a couple of minutes and keep reading. What could it hurt? (Don't answer, that was a rhetorical question.)
Some of the big players in industry and tournament promotion have become concerned that the base for future tourney players has been shrinking and high ROF guns have received the lion's share of the blame. One of the "answers," though not aimed at tourney play, is Billy Ball which revolves around using a gun with very limited ROF capability. I'm not altogether convinced that high ROF is hurting paintball but I am convinced a failure to properly control high ROF is a significant danger to paintball.
Lately, the tourney world has seen a growing, if still relatively modest, interest in pump events. The PSP, which promotes a national series and hosts the World Cup, has resorted to incremental limits on ROF at their competitions in an effort to make introductory play less intimidating. The league is also hopeful that their changes will trickle down to regional and local events and encourage regular recreational players to be satisfied with something less than the ultimate performance of the modern electronic markers. Will it work? If ROF is the core issue maybe it will. Some have suggested bringing tourney play back to the woods as an alternative solution and that's just what SPPL and the new UWL (Ultimate Woodsball League) are doing. The UWL has gone so far as to offer a separate division of play based on limiting the number of electronic markers used. So how about a mechanical marker only tournament? If tourneys can go back into the woods and be played by pumps again, why not? If the biggest, most competitive league in the world is restricting the ROF of the almighty electros, why not?
This is hardly an original idea. I read a comment somewhere a week or two ago talking about using mechanical markers and I liked the idea but dismissed it almost immediately. Players buy and shoot what they want and even with the recent resurgence of pump and the Old Skool interest in some of the classic markers the mech guns aren't going to supplant the electros in the foreseeable future. And organizing a whole event around the hope that enough tourney-oriented players who want to play with mech guns would support it sounds like pie in the sky to me. But there is one way it might work in the current environment. As a separate division of play. A few years ago the PSP was talked into adding the Masters Division of play at World Cup. (Their only error was insisting it be xball instead of 5-man but even so it has continued every year since its introduction.) What if the PSP offered divisions of play with the only restriction being the use of mechanical markers? Say an Open division and an Amateur division. If available in conjunction with a massive event like World Cup if nobody wants to play mech warrior there's no harm done. Even the current PSP rulebook addresses the use of mechanical markers so that wouldn't be an issue. And who knows, it might get a new group and an old group back into the tourney game.
Could a move to encourage mechanical marker play in competition then spread to other parts of paintball?
No, this piece isn't about some new manga fad or a fantasy combat game posted here by accident. It's also not about some new scenario game or the latest spec ops gear intended for the mil-sim crowd. It's about tournament paintball, sort of. But maybe it has applications that are bigger than just tourney ball. So you can either surf over to the next page or site or kill a couple of minutes and keep reading. What could it hurt? (Don't answer, that was a rhetorical question.)
Some of the big players in industry and tournament promotion have become concerned that the base for future tourney players has been shrinking and high ROF guns have received the lion's share of the blame. One of the "answers," though not aimed at tourney play, is Billy Ball which revolves around using a gun with very limited ROF capability. I'm not altogether convinced that high ROF is hurting paintball but I am convinced a failure to properly control high ROF is a significant danger to paintball.
Lately, the tourney world has seen a growing, if still relatively modest, interest in pump events. The PSP, which promotes a national series and hosts the World Cup, has resorted to incremental limits on ROF at their competitions in an effort to make introductory play less intimidating. The league is also hopeful that their changes will trickle down to regional and local events and encourage regular recreational players to be satisfied with something less than the ultimate performance of the modern electronic markers. Will it work? If ROF is the core issue maybe it will. Some have suggested bringing tourney play back to the woods as an alternative solution and that's just what SPPL and the new UWL (Ultimate Woodsball League) are doing. The UWL has gone so far as to offer a separate division of play based on limiting the number of electronic markers used. So how about a mechanical marker only tournament? If tourneys can go back into the woods and be played by pumps again, why not? If the biggest, most competitive league in the world is restricting the ROF of the almighty electros, why not?
This is hardly an original idea. I read a comment somewhere a week or two ago talking about using mechanical markers and I liked the idea but dismissed it almost immediately. Players buy and shoot what they want and even with the recent resurgence of pump and the Old Skool interest in some of the classic markers the mech guns aren't going to supplant the electros in the foreseeable future. And organizing a whole event around the hope that enough tourney-oriented players who want to play with mech guns would support it sounds like pie in the sky to me. But there is one way it might work in the current environment. As a separate division of play. A few years ago the PSP was talked into adding the Masters Division of play at World Cup. (Their only error was insisting it be xball instead of 5-man but even so it has continued every year since its introduction.) What if the PSP offered divisions of play with the only restriction being the use of mechanical markers? Say an Open division and an Amateur division. If available in conjunction with a massive event like World Cup if nobody wants to play mech warrior there's no harm done. Even the current PSP rulebook addresses the use of mechanical markers so that wouldn't be an issue. And who knows, it might get a new group and an old group back into the tourney game.
Could a move to encourage mechanical marker play in competition then spread to other parts of paintball?
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Semi Semi, Semi Auto and Full Semi
The NCPA held their annual championship event this weekend at our regular practice field. In between our sessions and after we were done on Saturday I spent some time checking out the college teams. The NCPA allows semi-auto play and I was curious to see how their set-ups would play.
At the recent Huntington Beach event our team's general manager coined the semi-auto distinctions in the title of this post. (No, we're not such a big and powerful organization we have a GM like a pro football team but I call him that because he does everything from coaching to logistics to sponsorships so that I, like you, can be a lazy slacker.) In the electro-pneumatic marker era semi-auto is so broad a term as to be almost meaningless but it is possible to make distinctions. When a gun's electronics aren't very sophisticated or the player has made a real effort to prep a gun that really only shoots one ball per trigger pull the result is semi-semi. You may hear brief bursts of slightly higher rates of fire but mostly it sounds pretty slow. A "true" semi-auto set-up easily delivers higher rates of fire with greater consistency though you may hear a noticeable difference if/when the player switches hands. A full-semi gun is capable of firing one ball per trigger pull but once a sustained ROF has been achieved it starts roaring like a machine gun. At HB the majority of guns were semi-auto and full-semi.
Interestingly the majority of the guns I heard at the NCPA were semi-semi set-ups with some guns operating in the semi-auto range. There may have been a full-semi or two in the competition but I didn't hear one. The guns in use were, more or less, exactly the same guns seen at HB.
From that totally unscientific anecdote I draw a couple of conclusions. Either the average national level collegiate player has an arthritic trigger finger or else that same player has a much less flexible definition of how semi-auto ought to operate than the norm or the collegiate officials are able to maintain and enforce very strict standards. Personally, I tend to discount the trigger finger explanation and I find super refs kinda hard to believe.
So, what's the point, you ask? No point really.
At the recent Huntington Beach event our team's general manager coined the semi-auto distinctions in the title of this post. (No, we're not such a big and powerful organization we have a GM like a pro football team but I call him that because he does everything from coaching to logistics to sponsorships so that I, like you, can be a lazy slacker.) In the electro-pneumatic marker era semi-auto is so broad a term as to be almost meaningless but it is possible to make distinctions. When a gun's electronics aren't very sophisticated or the player has made a real effort to prep a gun that really only shoots one ball per trigger pull the result is semi-semi. You may hear brief bursts of slightly higher rates of fire but mostly it sounds pretty slow. A "true" semi-auto set-up easily delivers higher rates of fire with greater consistency though you may hear a noticeable difference if/when the player switches hands. A full-semi gun is capable of firing one ball per trigger pull but once a sustained ROF has been achieved it starts roaring like a machine gun. At HB the majority of guns were semi-auto and full-semi.
Interestingly the majority of the guns I heard at the NCPA were semi-semi set-ups with some guns operating in the semi-auto range. There may have been a full-semi or two in the competition but I didn't hear one. The guns in use were, more or less, exactly the same guns seen at HB.
From that totally unscientific anecdote I draw a couple of conclusions. Either the average national level collegiate player has an arthritic trigger finger or else that same player has a much less flexible definition of how semi-auto ought to operate than the norm or the collegiate officials are able to maintain and enforce very strict standards. Personally, I tend to discount the trigger finger explanation and I find super refs kinda hard to believe.
So, what's the point, you ask? No point really.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Rockstar
I'm sitting around McCarren airport in Vegas waiting for my San Diego flight and besides all the bad news in the gaming industry--Sands (Is that ironic, or what?) is apparently already on the brink of bankruptcy--the place is dead. And that's with a big fight in town tomorrow night.
The latest gimmick from Planet is about your only shot--at having the word, rockstar, associated with you in any way, shape or form. Or you could buy a Dynasty jersey and say, Look at me! I'm a human billboard! And by gimmick I mean it's a pretty clever idea and nicely executed. (I first saw it in one of the insufferable NPPL email press releases that seem to arrive daily. Which, sadly, must mean they have some degree of effectiveness even though I hate getting them and only continue to tolerate them on the off chance I receive something I need to know and might otherwise miss. Take a deep breath.)
Actually the part about the Rockstar guns I find interesting is the nature of the deal made between Rockstar and Planet. Who approached who? And if any remunerations were part of the deal which way did they go--to Rockstar or Planet? Inquiring minds want to know but chances are I'll have to kidnap Nicky T. and threaten to tell him my paintball stories in order to find out. C'mon, Nicky, spill the beans. I got a million stories and all the time in the world. Let's start at the beginning. My first pair of goggles were ...
The latest gimmick from Planet is about your only shot--at having the word, rockstar, associated with you in any way, shape or form. Or you could buy a Dynasty jersey and say, Look at me! I'm a human billboard! And by gimmick I mean it's a pretty clever idea and nicely executed. (I first saw it in one of the insufferable NPPL email press releases that seem to arrive daily. Which, sadly, must mean they have some degree of effectiveness even though I hate getting them and only continue to tolerate them on the off chance I receive something I need to know and might otherwise miss. Take a deep breath.)
Actually the part about the Rockstar guns I find interesting is the nature of the deal made between Rockstar and Planet. Who approached who? And if any remunerations were part of the deal which way did they go--to Rockstar or Planet? Inquiring minds want to know but chances are I'll have to kidnap Nicky T. and threaten to tell him my paintball stories in order to find out. C'mon, Nicky, spill the beans. I got a million stories and all the time in the world. Let's start at the beginning. My first pair of goggles were ...
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
More on Buffalo NPPL
Aight, this isn't gonna be pretty but then neither was the Buffalo event. Across the street from the shambling hulk that is the Bill's Ralph Wilson stadium the event looked, from a distance, like a set from some apocalyptic distopian straight-to-video horror flick. But enough about the good stuff.
Let me share a novel thought with y'all. If you're gonna design fields that encourage interior action and/or regular cross field eliminations it's not particularly helpful to place the majority of the refs on the sidelines like ranks of bored ushers. Doesn't matter how many of them there are. I'm just saying. If the league feels some embarrassment over past missteps how does it look when nearly everybody in attendance (okay, other than Buffalo 'cus you could count them on your fingers and toes) except the refs routinely see hits that go blithely unnoticed? And trust me, it happens way too often. It sometimes looks like the refs are trying not to see anything.
And the guns! Okay, I know this one has been done to death and I'm pretty well convinced the plan is to continue the Big Bluff policy of the past NPPL ownership mixed with the occasional arbitrary and utterly subjective egalitarian suspension. Look, we suspended a Pro player, nobody is above the law! Rules? Er, the rule is I know an illegal gun when I decide it is. It would simply be a bad joke if it wasn't contributing to the deterioration of the league. Everybody knows the rules are a joke and that enforcement isn't by rule but by fiat. And everybody knows that everybody else knows it. And that there are more "illegal" guns than legal ones.
I could go on for quite awhile on this subject but why?
Instead let me close this post by suggesting the league needs to re-think its priorities. The days of the NPPL being the party league are over. There is no more bigger, better, flashier, cooler left to bust out at the next NFL parking lot. Where once peeps bought into the hype and the hope it's just tired now, symbolic of a faltering vision. Nobody is buying into the fantasy any longer. It's time to start running a paintball league instead of a vehicle for paintball domination or the generation of a gigantic marketing list targeting a key demographic. It's not good enough to paper over the generic weaknesses with dozens of press releases and propaganda media mouthpieces. And the place to start running a serious paintball league is with real enforceable gun rules and a priority focus on officiating. Or maybe not.
Let me share a novel thought with y'all. If you're gonna design fields that encourage interior action and/or regular cross field eliminations it's not particularly helpful to place the majority of the refs on the sidelines like ranks of bored ushers. Doesn't matter how many of them there are. I'm just saying. If the league feels some embarrassment over past missteps how does it look when nearly everybody in attendance (okay, other than Buffalo 'cus you could count them on your fingers and toes) except the refs routinely see hits that go blithely unnoticed? And trust me, it happens way too often. It sometimes looks like the refs are trying not to see anything.
And the guns! Okay, I know this one has been done to death and I'm pretty well convinced the plan is to continue the Big Bluff policy of the past NPPL ownership mixed with the occasional arbitrary and utterly subjective egalitarian suspension. Look, we suspended a Pro player, nobody is above the law! Rules? Er, the rule is I know an illegal gun when I decide it is. It would simply be a bad joke if it wasn't contributing to the deterioration of the league. Everybody knows the rules are a joke and that enforcement isn't by rule but by fiat. And everybody knows that everybody else knows it. And that there are more "illegal" guns than legal ones.
I could go on for quite awhile on this subject but why?
Instead let me close this post by suggesting the league needs to re-think its priorities. The days of the NPPL being the party league are over. There is no more bigger, better, flashier, cooler left to bust out at the next NFL parking lot. Where once peeps bought into the hype and the hope it's just tired now, symbolic of a faltering vision. Nobody is buying into the fantasy any longer. It's time to start running a paintball league instead of a vehicle for paintball domination or the generation of a gigantic marketing list targeting a key demographic. It's not good enough to paper over the generic weaknesses with dozens of press releases and propaganda media mouthpieces. And the place to start running a serious paintball league is with real enforceable gun rules and a priority focus on officiating. Or maybe not.
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