Brave New (Limited Paint) World

The last post, 'Peak Performance', spurred some "the game's gotta get cheaper" comments and as should be plain to even the average paintballer that means restricted paint usage, perhaps heavily restricted. (I prefer "restricted" to "limited" because all paint usage in a competitive or recreational setting is already limited and what is really being debated is restricting the amount of paint a player or team may use on a per point basis.) The other costs associated with playing and even competing are available at a variety of prices and are purely discretionary--for the most part (some safety equipment notwithstanding) and allow balling on a budget for those so inclined. While paint usage isn't mandatory it is necessary to compete and in a similar volume to your competitors. And while I am sympathetic to the desire to reduce the cost of participating I remain unconvinced that radically altering the game we play at present is the best (or only) alternative. While competition costs are high the costs that are onerous and impact a team's development and ability to compete are practice costs. And these can be reduced in two ways; one easy and one (admittedly) kinda time-consuming. First, event layouts aren't released in advance of being set-up for an event. This removes the easy practice option of simply scrimmaging the layout endlessly--or as long as your dollars allow--and begins to force teams to rethink how they approach preparing for competition. Secondly, fill the educational void created denying teams the opportunity to scrimmage the event layout in advance. In other words, teach them how to effectively prepare a team to compete without knowing the layout in advance. Without the layout serious teams will be highly motivated to find other ways to get better and the-once-a-season-just-for-fun-hope-we-do-good teams won't be compelled to spend heavily trying to get ready.
Now is that the answer? Probably not but it would be a reasonable incremental step to take and see what happens. It could reduce costs to teams by varying degrees but in all likelihood would probably just shift expenses--and by that I mean teams would likely still spend the same amount but instead of having practice absorb a large portion of their resources perhaps as a team they attend additional event(s) instead.
But if the movement to restrict paint gains momentum there are some easily foreseen ramifications nobody has mentioned (at least that I've heard.) If you've been around for more than a blink or two you should recall that in the last decade a number of paint-making companies have either gone under or been bought out leaving an ever dwindling number of paintball manufacturers. And also keep in mind that in today's marketplace the paint manufacturers are working on smaller profit margins by (hopefully) selling volume. [Although year-to-year sales have been down of late and rumors of the squeeze beginning to seriously pinch have been repeated for a while now. What the major manufacturers need right now is a way to raise prices but they've put themselves between a rock and a hard place with past practices.] So if we all start suddenly shooting (and buying) a fraction of the paint what's gonna happen? Manufacturers who survive the transition re-purpose their tooling and ultimately produce less paint. But in order for the new "normal" volume of production to be profitable the price is going to go up. How much is an open question. Do we see the return of $100 cases? If we use enough less paint shot than today in a restricted paint future we could still be saving some money but if anyone expects vastly less paint to be shot without prices rising they are deluding themselves.
Okay. Maybe. But there's lots of other sorts of paintball out there being played. And if tourney ball really is a tiny fraction of the whole then the paint tourney shoots--even as extravagant as it is--is not that much in the grand scheme of things. Which may be true but won't matter. A quick review of the majority of successful fields and typical scenario games, etc. should demonstrate that paint prices in those environments is already higher than tourney paint, sometimes much higher. In which case tourney paint prices would simply be catching up with the rest of the market. (Which begs a very serious question: Are wholesale prices the same across the board? In which case the retailers are making the bulk of the profits from paint and the volume sold directly for tourney use is largely irrelevant.)
Under those circumstances the next question might be: Do current prices in the rec environment inhibit the growth of the game? In trying to solve a tourney problem we may be missing a larger problem and in any case, the sorts of fields that cater to the low volume low intensity brand of paintball aren't conducive to growing the sport side of paintball any more than Airsoft or laser tag are gateways to hardcore paintball.
It's easy to offer solutions. A little more more difficult to calculate the unintended consequences of decisions made.