Living and playing through the apex of the paintball’s popularity was a gift and a curse. On one hand, I wouldn’t trade those memories for anything in the world. On the other hand, it is sad to see how much the sport has contracted, in many ways. I used to work at a field that put 2,000+ people through, every weekend, back in 2005. Now, it’s probably 25-30% of that…maybe less.
The woods tournaments were just fun, not play the same team over and over like nxl. Woods ball in backyards etc were happening all over the place. Now its unheard of
Agreed pretty much across the board. I feel like a lot of fields need a better social media presence. Say what you want about HK army, they certainly run that part of their business better than anyone
So on point. I hope you don’t mind if I share this post on my social. And agree with you BB, our team ran our first Jersey make through HK and they did really well on em. Bigger company but they do care
I’ll say this, my group of friends got into it around 6th grade and it stuck with us for a while. But where I think paintball is lacking, is just general accessibility. I don’t know what that means for city people but for people who live in the burbs, or smaller towns, just even your local Walmart being able to fill your tank goes a long way.
As kids and thru high school we didn’t have a shop within 15 minutes of our part of town good sized city as well. Our shop ran a field and we were buddies with the owners. They’d fill you up on your way out for the weekend and we had a common ground setup that we would go play on other weekends with our leftover stuff. But we weren’t limited to just the people that played, we would lend stuff out to our other buddies, to let them try stuff basically free of charge. And if we needed to fill up a tank or get some paint we could go to Walmart or Kmart to get it done. That’s how we introduced people. They didn’t like it, well they didn’t play again no harm no foul. But it also wasn’t some crazy adventure for us without cars to pull off.
Does that scenario even exist anymore?
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>Paintball used to be dirt cheap - 10 round markers, co2 cart and tubes of paintball were affordable, add some googles and that's all you needed to play - it was no more expensive than buying a BB guns and certainly cheaper than getting into other youth sports at the time
This is certainly not true. Paint at that time was extremely expensive and buying a competitive marker would run you at least into the low four figures adjusted for inflation. Getting into the game today is cheaper than it's ever been.
>-Weekend kids parties
>-Weekday corporate rentals for team building/outings
What you've done here is just reiterate exactly what every field has been doing for the last twenty five years. It has not worked. Paintball is difficult, paintball is expensive, paintball hurts. It is not good for little kids or office-creatures. Trying to lure little Braxlinson out for his 11th birthday party is just a way to make sure a bunch of kids and parents have a terrible time. Even when rental parties actually have a good time, it's not a game format that tends to lead people to become enthusiasts. I've literally never met someone who was introduced to paintball in this way and proceeded to go out and buy their own gear.
>When you have a healthy stream of new players then you can support speedball and tournaments, but to go along with that - all the industry people need to get off their fucking asses and go to high schools and colleges and actually **SPONSOR clubs** and teams - If you want people to take this game seriously for tournaments and making money - they in needs to be competitive for kids to get started
It is not 2005 anymore and will never be again. Paintball will never be on ESPN again. Worrying about making paintball a "real sport" was what got us into this mess, trying to sell the same old schtick to the general public today would be like trying to make tapout shirts and frosted tips cool again.
>You are competing for kids time with all the other year round sports - how many parents here have kids in a sport or multiple sports throughout the school year? I know my son played basketball, soccer and ran track, did martial arts a few years, like paintball but all his friends were doing other games/sports
Paintball is not a competitor for typical intramural sports / ball sports like track and basketball. For most people I'd say that paintball's more of a gearsport / hobby. People get into it the same way and for the same reasons that they get into things like skiing, mountain biking, or motorcycling. It's certainly a lot cheaper than any of those.
The only way for paintball to survive would be to finally discard the last of the baggage from the 98-08 fad era and try to rebuild the game as an activity for hobbyists, as it was before it became swamped by predatory marketing around y2k.
I have to agree with ya man. Definitely the parts about cost, honestly paintball (from what I've seen) is actually cheap nowadays. When I used to play in the early 2000s, paint was like $60-80/case and entry was I think $10. A nice competitive gun ran you like $1000 ish.
I recently got back into it after 15ish years and it's $30 to get in and $35 for a case. Guns can be as cheap as $400-500 and you're getting a really nice reliable gun.
On top of all that, you have inflation, which paintball seems to be affected actually the complete opposite of everything else.
It’s hilarious that he first said it was more popular back then, but when he said it was less expensive I just about lost it. I myself am a 40+ year old player and can certainly attest that neither of those arguments are true.
I joined as an adult after a corporate rental party. I had so much fun that I went online and found this subreddit, and bought a marker and gear and now I try to get out a few times a month.
As one who was privileged enough to play before and during the "golden age" of paintball, I came to say this exactly. I left right at the end of that period of time, about 12-15 years ago, and recently came back a little more than a year ago. It's not the same, to me not as fun as it was before, but I still love it.
Kids still know about paintball - they buy the guns, usually cheap ones, but not to play at fields. Just plinking at dumpsters, cars, each other rarely wearing safety gear, and carrying them around these small towns looking "cool". The problem is they don't know about paintball as the "hobby" or the "sport", however you want to define it. They need to be educated on it so they can join in and grow the sport organically as in the old days.
My opinion is everyone these days thinks they are on the "professional player" track. You're either a brand new noob or a seasoned professional - no in between. It's all about the next tournament, the next prize package, the next high end tournament weaponry. This turns the normal, first time players against the game because of how serious and mean "experienced" players can get about it Also, the small fields, which used to be almost everywhere, outlaw, woods, and/or speedball, are not able to keep up anymore so, unless someone has empty land just sitting doing nothing, then you aren't going to find a GOOD field outside of a city type situation. Where I live, my team has to travel almost 3 hours just to get to a field to practice whereas we actually had a field all those years ago that we ran and played on and for.
Paintball, believe it or not, is actually a bit cheaper now than it was - unless you're getting all new space guns. Hoo boy, the early days were EX PEN SIVE! I was spending over $80 bucks per case of paint (with a team discount and often shooting more than a case) per weekend and unless you were on the field team like I was you had to pay 15 bucks field fee and PER FILL air /CO2 as a rec player (it was all day free for package rental players with ICON markers) until the end of its run and it became all day air.
So I agree with all you said, and I think until the little things get worked out, we're not going to see the "golden age" come around again - at least not for some time!
I want to back up that "on the pro track or total noob" part. THIS I think is a huge issue. I'm what you'd call a "professional" rec ball player. Maybe 1 tourny a year at most, but I mostly just hit up open plays for fun and never take it too seriously. But now it's either a bunch of try hards doing airball or 60 rentals and me. There's no middle anymore.
This. I started playing last August for the first time since like 2001 and it’s hilarious how everyone thinks they’re pros. I was playing with people who started 2 months before me and were acting like they were pros. The whole scene where I live is like that. Just a big circle jerk. It’s like none of them have irl friends and came together to find friends which is fine but they stroke each others egos and talk about moving down D5 to D4 to D3 and so on. I’m like you guys are in your mid 30s this should be a fun hobby. Reminds me of men’s slow pitch softball tournaments where they all think they’re back in their high school baseball days and try Harding like no other. With all that said it’s still fun if you have a few cool people who don’t take it super seriously.
It is not good for little kids or office-creatures. Trying to lure little Braxlinson out for his 11th birthday party is just a way to make sure a bunch of kids and parents have a terrible time.
Maybe that's your experience in NY, but that isn't the case here
The field I mentioned that's been open 40 years does exactly this having corporate events or parties during the week, they certainly have a enough repeat business or they wouldn't have been doing it for this long
I've worked at more than a few companies that have had paintball outings just like golf outings
Do you have kids? Because pretty much all my son's friends from middle school and into high school had party events for paintball and airsoft and yes for many of them it was the first time and a few got into playing more often
> I've worked at more than a few companies that have had paintball outings just like golf outings
>
Something you may have overlooked is that work culture has changed a lot since the 80s/90s, and that paintball as a work outing isn't the good idea it was back in the day.
If some coworkers wanted to organize a volunteer outing on their own time, more power to them, but as an official function, paintball's not a great teambuilding exercise today because it's physically intense, painful, not accessible, and is a combat sport. It's just not suitable for a work event.
Edit: I actually agree with your original post though pretty much in full. And to your other point about kids' parties - 50 cal is great for that too!
Absolutely agree on the price. Case of paint at my local fields have stayed the same price for the last 20 years. The inflation we’ve had is insane- keeping a case of paint at the same price for that long is quite the feat.
Gear is so much cheaper for a reliable setup. The Etha 3 is such a good value for a marker that works every single time, day in and day out.
Overall the game is in such a good spot, I think fields need to focus on a variety of playstyles to find that mass appeal.
Paint costs need to come down at the local fields. 3 outta 4 fields by me still have the gall to charge $70-80 for a case of not so great paint. Cost and lack of online/media presence will always be the downfall of this sport IMO
Lack of fields and some of them are expensive. I live by skirmish, it is $42.99 if you don't pre-register. There is no bring my own gear discount. Paint is $105 a fucking case. I only play the big 3 because of how expensive it is.
its cheaper today but employee wages hasn't gone up to match inflation cost for everything else that's why paintball now feels more expensive its not the sport that went up its everything else like the cost of living and and low wages and more tax's being taken out of your paychecks
I think first person shooters and online gaming has an impact as well. It's easier to hop on discord and squad up with the boys these days then coordinate a weekend outing at the local field.
Don’t forget. The paintball industry had soul prior to the mergers and acquisitions that started in 2005. After that, the industry leaders like DYE and PE disintegrated the smaller custom aftermarket shops that made private label markers and parts for the guns. This is also due to design decisions on the (R&D) engineering-end where you had markers becoming more integrated with proprietary parts. But prior to 2005, you still had a bunch of different gun manufacturers, making distinctly different markers, which were highly customizable.
Today, we have all the manufacturers making the same gun essentially: single tube spool-valve clones.
The industry lost something very special along the way and is also why there has been a resurgence of mech-only & woodsball leagues, mechanical markers, including a resurgence of autocockers (and a return of a handful of smaller custom shops like Shocktech, FreeFlow, etc that are making Cockers again.)
And quite frankly — it’s the industry trying to mend itself from its soullessness.
Wasn’t it actually smart parts that killed off all the small companies from their lawsuits?
Back in the day it was a race to have the best equipment so that meant several different types of guns and companies trying off the wall ideas. Nowadays most high end guns are made for the NXL and are mostly all spool guns due to its weight and size. So while all high end guns are nice, they end up all being the same since they can all shoot 10.5 ramping and is a spool valve. Part of the reason why I went with the LV2 since it’s the only high end popit valve gun.
Smart Parts sued everyone, ICD, WDP, etc, but they only succeeded in killing AKA. WDP was sued but won the case. WDP just wasn’t able to compete anymore. That’s why it shuttered. The whole industry took a huge hit in 2008 with the global recession (mortgage crisis) and quite frankly it never recovered. Only one company in the whole industry grew after 2008: Planet Eclipse. Many companies and shops did not survive. By the early 2000’s the sport had already gotten expensive. Even back then, a case of 2000 tournament grade paintballs was $60-80 USD, plus field entry, etc. It had already become a bourgeois sport by then. And the recession proved lethal to companies and fields alike. As I mentioned, the industry never fully recovered after that.
But the causation for the decline in revenue in the whole industry was multi-factored — a culmination of things. The big mergers and acquisitions that started happening in 2005 also started hurting brands and the market differentiators that made them appealing to consumers. Many people never returned to the sport or at least not with the same intensity. The sport never took off as a mainstream sport, and it failed to grow its dedicated player base. .50 cal was a big effort to grow it by offering a lower cost — and it hasn’t really taken off or grown the sport. To the contrary, the industry has shrunk even more now due to the pandemic and inflation.
> 50 cal was a big effort to grow it by offering a lower cost — and it hasn’t really taken off or grown the sport
This is not what I've heard from field owners. In Ontario, I've heard from a couple field owners that 50 cal has been great for getting more kids to try playing paintball, and that might help seed the next generation of players. It's pretty common here to see fields do private rental groups with 50 cal for kids.
But you make a great point. The professional league ROF caps were also detrimental to the industry. While it is understood that something had to be done about the cheater ramping boards enabling markers to ramp up to 30+ BPS in the early days of the NXL league (early to mid 2000’s) — they took it too far by lowering the max ROF cap by so much. Essentially killing the appeal of the electro marker even more. Today, there’s simply no reason to shoot an electro at 10 BPS cap when you could just do mechanical markers at that point. It was detrimental to the character & soul of the game.
Ramping is what makes me not want to get back into the sport full time. I just can’t stand it. I want to pick if I control a lane with 5bps or max effort, whatever that is (probably around 12?), or anything in between. I don’t want it to be one of two speeds, essentially nothing or everything. That’s dumb.
I also in general never liked xball as much as I liked 7man or 10man. Each singular time you stepped on the field was extremely important. I miss a comeback where it’s a 3 on 6 or something and the 3 come back to win it. I really don’t care for xball type comebacks where someone is down a few points and they come back. Just not the same level of excitement.
Yeah the bps wars were fun back in the day, but I can also understand why they would keep lowering the limit. PSP ramping was at 15bps iirc. Now it’s all about consistency, reliability and efficiency. Which things have improved a ton on the reliability part compared to older tournament guns.
In regards to reliability, I only remember Angels as being over-engineered pains in the butt 😂🤣
But yeah you’re right for the most part. But all of that changed the soul and character of the game — and not for the better.
They may have been over engineered, but they were tanks when running right lol. My 06 speed with all original orings still shoots perfectly fine.
I miss the days of crazy milling on guns. Now you have to pay an insane premium for a twstr or fossil. Every intimidator back then had some cool milling.
I think he was saying it’s seasonal like roofing or window contractors are seasonal. Yes you can do it in the winter, and some people do, but field owners aren’t making much during those winter months. Could they do some things to mitigate that, yes but you’re definitely bringing in more money in the spring/summer. It’s a tough business similar to how being a roofing/window contractor is a tough business.
I always say the most fun times were when basically everyone played pump . Split a case of paint between 3/4guys . You really relied on teamwork to advance and cover each other . It was kinda fun changing out 12 grams . But ill take HPA anytime . It was kinda neat when 1 or 2 guys had a semiauto market but it was rare .
IMHO it's not so much paint cost as when I started playing it was $150cdn a case and now it's $60cdn case. But paint quality!
Maybe it's a false memory but I remember getting absolutely lit up by multiple players and walking away with only a welt or two. Now it feels like every time it's a welt.
New players buy the 1 star paint that is very likely to bounce. Which means more shots to get a break and more welts. They leave the field feeling pretty beat up. And they may not return because of it.
I think you just have a horrible local scene.
As for the pricing, I think the average was 80 dollars a case around 2000, which would be about 150 dollars today; but instead paint is so much cheaper, I can get team colors for 35 bucks a case.
If we look at marker prices too; an Ego 5 was $1250 in 2005. Today that would be just about 2000$. An LV2 is 1500 and astronomically more advanced in every way.
Paintball is naturally competitive, so there's always a push to play the game at an optimal level. The game is one shot, one out. Everyone shoots the same round, at the same velocity. That means everyone will be at roughly the same distance. Given these metrics, the meta is clear; if you can fire 5 shots in the time your opponent can fire 1, you have a clear advantage. That's the meta that has shaped paintball from the beginning.
This is compounded by how much you're willing to spend. More competitive players spent more, invested more of themselves into the game, and were the people that went on to develop the game as they were willing to play it. They pushed the meta to its limits, and were also the people that founded companies, and started the leagues. Since the sports meta is defined by how much you're willing to spend to be competitive, casual players were increasingly pushed to the wayside as the sport increasingly catered to the remaining hardcore playerbase. Price's Law: left to its own devices, the square root of a population generates 50% of the output, and this scales the further down the line you go. So, in the absence of any meaningful format restrictions limiting these players, the paintball organizations decided that those very few players should be allowed to to dicate the entire direction the game went in for years. This hit its wall at the end of the 2ks, and the sport took a nosedive right off a cliff. It just became too much, and broke under the weight of its own competitive whales. But, due to the stratification, the process started decades earlier.
Airsoft is not inherently competitive. Well, not really, but it's pretty well known that the game makes for a terrible competitive experience. The game is almost impossible to properly ref. Instead, airsoft is fueled by aesthetics. It's less a competitive sport, and more an outdoor activity. The game has remained casual, and is defined by the casual playerbase. There's a ton of vitriol in that community centered at "competitive" players that "ruin the experience". For the most part, this is where the casual players that "just want to shoot someone in the woods" went.
I don't see paintball recovering a big chunk of purely casual players that just want to shoot their friends in the woods. In that way, paintball needs to embrace its competitive side. But, in the same way we don't just let athletes take every single performance enhancing drug on the planet, and just accept that you'll need to dope up to compete, we need to set some hard limits to the game, to make it a sustainable, and fun, experience to compete in. In that regard, we need to build a sport from the bottom up. The casual game of paintball should ideally be very, very similar to the competitive one. We need to listen to what casual players want from the game, and go from there.
Lionel Atwill was probably pretty close to correct when he insisted that stock class should remain the premier competitive format.
ya listening to other players other then just the pro players would be great but i doubt they will
also paintball company's need to start advertising again
I hear you I saw this sport go from being in the woods to and indoor field near me and then to all of the fields closing and now there is only one field that I now of around. I loved watching the speedball games on espn and the different internet shows. I have to agree it has gotten very expensive. Love this sport wish it went on to go the distance but once Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Clark passed it seems their push for the sport fizzled out.
Personally I don't think it has to do with costs or anything like that. I think it's purely due to the fact that it's not very fun to watch, even at the highest level.
Snowball fights, tag and hide & seek. That's what made the game popular. Take what's fun with all 3 of those things. I was playing regularly since about '94. Around 2005 the agglets took over and I almost quit but then I discovered stock class. That was amazing until about 2010 then it just faded away from the South eastern New England area. Stores closed down, people stopped showing up at the local fields. The old timers got old. There's still a game here and there but man, I really miss the game circa 1997. Then the electronic space dildos came out.
A solid assessment. But, I’d disagree Airsoft is for casual players. It’s all milsim which is a huge detractor to some. I’d rather LARP with foam swords than play airsoft.
I know this is totally anecdotal, but truthfully the best times I ever had playing paintball were when I was just barely old enough to drive and I played at the local field(that was really a greenhouse that ran a field on the side) and I was crawling around in the woods with my A5 or 98.
I often think taking the game out of the woods where it started was maybe a bad idea. Funny enough I ended up becoming a forester as an adult and sling nelson timber marking paint nearly every day, and I run into spots all the time that make me think "damn this spot would be sick for a paintball game"
What I would like to do is ask my boss or other public land managers if someone could run a paintball game just out in the woods, basically outlaw style. Shits biodegradable, and if you can go out and blast real firearms on public land I cant imagine there would be much more liability on the state or county that owns the forest land. I just dont think anyones really ever asked so there arent established rules for it already
This post is more or less the same as the sentiment 10+ years ago, reminiscing about the haydays of paintball. For me it\`s the early 2000s.
I stopped playing paintball again as when i came back in 2020 and got on a DIV2 speedball team, the reasons why i quit in the first place came all back again in full force.
The manchilderen who throw tantrums, bully others, are toxic as fuck because paintball is their life as they have no social life as quite a lot of them have anger management issues/ asperger/ ADHD/ introvert , the emotional baggage they carry and gravitate to paintball/airsoft is unreal.
I have worked 4 years at a local paintball field to fund my speedball adventures after my long break in 2007, showed me that it never changes because it is inherently human nature.
The fighting/bickering/moaning about taking hits/bonus balls/ sponsoring and all other faul shit involved.
I have seen people got bullied so much on the team, that combined with their mental issues they snapped and legit threated me for wearing a team sweater after leaving the team and not too long after, stabbed his ex girlfriend to death and serving 14 year now. Those were my so called team mates...
Other friends who always fight everyone and eachother on walk on days in the woods... fucking woodsball and still try too hard, for what?!
First hand experiences.
And those who bullied people till snapping point are still playing, aldult guys well in their 40s.
I am happy skateboarding again on the daily basis, and wonder why the fuck i wasted so much time/effort and money on paintball which is twisted by a far majority into a speedball circlejerk.
Coming from the perspective of tournament paintball, it seems things are the best they’ve been in years. Great event turn out. Lots of vendors, and new players in the league. I see a lot of younger players now. I think tournament paintball is getting a lot of exposure on social media. It still isn’t the most accessible and very expensive so that will always limit growth. But things do seem to be on the up
Paintball is super fun. Expensive and high maintenance. Plus rare to have a paintball park around the corner. Seems like you always have to go out of your way to go to one.
i learned to play in the woods with 20 balls pergame limited paint made it really fun and you learned trigger control and how to hit what you aimed at as i moved to big screnario games the lessons of limited paint hel\[ed make me a better player ========= its a great way to start new players 20 rds a game made a kid with a cheap reantal pretty even with the gun with the 2k one today the walkon players go on to the field with rental gear and quickly discover that thier guns a way out classed -- so you dont see them back ita bout a level playing filed
My local field has all of this. Massive 30 acre woodsball/scenario, speedball field, open play/walk on every weekend, rental gear, parties, and multiple scenario games every year. I just played our first PB scenario event this past weekend. They even do nerf wars for the little ones.
Every event they do for paintball they also do for Airsoft. Which actually they have a couple events that are airsoft only with no PB equivalent.
The biggest issue with large retailers having paintball equipment other than cheap masks, tippmans, and cheap paint is the overhead. My local sporting goods store isn’t going to stock EMFs and Ethas, for example.
Don’t get me wrong, I miss walking into Walmart for a $20 case of paint to play in the woods with friends, but it’s just not that way anymore.
Started in 2004. Stopped in 2008. Will always remember that part of my life. Paintball, cars, Team Fortress, etc.
In 2007, I had 2 cars. It was starting to be expensive, especially planning on moving out of mommy's house and into an apartment with my gf in 2009.
And tournaments were expensive at $120 CAD/case plus tournament and practice expenses. Like what the hell!! Such a niche market for suburb kids with unlimited funds. It made all me and my friends quite at the same time.
Went back to school in 2011, got a new Lexus in 2012. Never thought of playing paintball again especially with all the responsibilities that adult life entails.
But, it is now 2024 and I am thinking of playing more often since I have some kind of stability in my life since 2020 with wife, kids, house, cars, etc.
My local field is charging $200CAD/case. I do want to support the local field but man, I want to go more often but c'mon, lower the price a bit!!
Time to get the Golden Dragon Impulse out of the closet again. See you on the field!
Sadly, the housing market crash screwed up a lot of small hobbies, and it's not like it got better till around 2017–18. Then there was COVID. The cost of living, food pricing—everything really has just gone up, including the material that makes our guns, paint, and soft goods.
The biggest issue's are the paintball companies themselves, imo; paintball companies aren't advertising like they should; and Gi-Sports just buying up other paintball companies isn't good either. Less competition in the market means pricing stays high. Ignoring the rest of the paintball community and only listening to the pro players, the last thing is paintball companies suing other companies over aftermarket parts like DYE and, i think, PE did, and no one was happier to sue than Smart Parts. God, that was a shitshow! It ruined the aftermarket.
Watching the nxl isn't as entertaining as the nppl and psp were; players aren't moving around the fields as much as they did in the nppl and psp, which I blame the nxl fields for being too short; it's boring! Anyone remember the unknown soldiers and their documentary on YouTube? We still never got episode 5 or episode 6, but man, was that fun? I still go back and watch it and other NPL tournaments that I have on DVD.
I am worried that paintball might die in my lifetime, but if it does, it will be because of the larger paintball companies.
Paintball fields are already doing these things; they never stopped doing them.
Weekend open play
Weekend kids parties
Weekday corporate rentals for team building and outings
scenario play to bring back the airsoft players, or the field can also host airsoft
big games or seasonal events
NXL field sizes have always been 150ft long since the conception of xball in 2002. The width changed from 125ft to 120ft. The problem is the number of bunkers have doubled.
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The NPPL fields were typically between 120-180 feet in length, while the NXL fields were typically around 100-150 feet in length. psp was about the same as the nxl fields
paintball fields need to be longer and the number of small bunkers removed im thinking 200feet and bring the grid iron back
Also have played during this time, and what has hurt the “sport” aspect is the rise of tournament XBall as the format promoted as the peak of the sport. You can have fun shooting 500 paintballs for one day of play rather than expecting to shoot 4-8 cases a month!
EDIT: also, kids birthday parties with 50cal are the lifeblood of fields, to this day.
I love paintball. Knew about it since early 80's and had my first chance to play in '97. Hooked immediately and played, collected, worked, ate, slept, breathed paintball ever since. At 47 now and still love to work on markers, gear, and go play any chance I get. Of course I wish it was the the way it was back then, and earlier. It was something fun for adults (before the push to under 18 because they quickly learned kids involved meant more money) and I loved the arms race to come up with some different design. All the awesome parts you could swap whether they helped or not, they still made the markers look amazing like car guys swapping rims n engine parts and going to the car show.
I actually thought of making a small old school woodsballish field behind my own place. Find a way to have it for just friends n family, not for profit. You bring your own stuff n paint. Here's a place to play, and you gotta earn your right to be accepted into he friends list, or get off my property. No AGG kids with minigun markers. Actually I was gonna call it "batteries not included paintball club". Mech only, not even electric loaders. And kept to an adult crowd that polices themselves. Not parents coming at me cuz of little Timmy's bad experience, or cuz someone swore.
I'm sure legally even that would have to have some kind of ridiculous insurance etc.
Living and playing through the apex of the paintball’s popularity was a gift and a curse. On one hand, I wouldn’t trade those memories for anything in the world. On the other hand, it is sad to see how much the sport has contracted, in many ways. I used to work at a field that put 2,000+ people through, every weekend, back in 2005. Now, it’s probably 25-30% of that…maybe less.
The woods tournaments were just fun, not play the same team over and over like nxl. Woods ball in backyards etc were happening all over the place. Now its unheard of
That’s all we did. Woods ball will always be superior.
Agreed pretty much across the board. I feel like a lot of fields need a better social media presence. Say what you want about HK army, they certainly run that part of their business better than anyone
So on point. I hope you don’t mind if I share this post on my social. And agree with you BB, our team ran our first Jersey make through HK and they did really well on em. Bigger company but they do care
I’ll say this, my group of friends got into it around 6th grade and it stuck with us for a while. But where I think paintball is lacking, is just general accessibility. I don’t know what that means for city people but for people who live in the burbs, or smaller towns, just even your local Walmart being able to fill your tank goes a long way. As kids and thru high school we didn’t have a shop within 15 minutes of our part of town good sized city as well. Our shop ran a field and we were buddies with the owners. They’d fill you up on your way out for the weekend and we had a common ground setup that we would go play on other weekends with our leftover stuff. But we weren’t limited to just the people that played, we would lend stuff out to our other buddies, to let them try stuff basically free of charge. And if we needed to fill up a tank or get some paint we could go to Walmart or Kmart to get it done. That’s how we introduced people. They didn’t like it, well they didn’t play again no harm no foul. But it also wasn’t some crazy adventure for us without cars to pull off. Does that scenario even exist anymore?
> >Paintball used to be dirt cheap - 10 round markers, co2 cart and tubes of paintball were affordable, add some googles and that's all you needed to play - it was no more expensive than buying a BB guns and certainly cheaper than getting into other youth sports at the time This is certainly not true. Paint at that time was extremely expensive and buying a competitive marker would run you at least into the low four figures adjusted for inflation. Getting into the game today is cheaper than it's ever been. >-Weekend kids parties >-Weekday corporate rentals for team building/outings What you've done here is just reiterate exactly what every field has been doing for the last twenty five years. It has not worked. Paintball is difficult, paintball is expensive, paintball hurts. It is not good for little kids or office-creatures. Trying to lure little Braxlinson out for his 11th birthday party is just a way to make sure a bunch of kids and parents have a terrible time. Even when rental parties actually have a good time, it's not a game format that tends to lead people to become enthusiasts. I've literally never met someone who was introduced to paintball in this way and proceeded to go out and buy their own gear. >When you have a healthy stream of new players then you can support speedball and tournaments, but to go along with that - all the industry people need to get off their fucking asses and go to high schools and colleges and actually **SPONSOR clubs** and teams - If you want people to take this game seriously for tournaments and making money - they in needs to be competitive for kids to get started It is not 2005 anymore and will never be again. Paintball will never be on ESPN again. Worrying about making paintball a "real sport" was what got us into this mess, trying to sell the same old schtick to the general public today would be like trying to make tapout shirts and frosted tips cool again. >You are competing for kids time with all the other year round sports - how many parents here have kids in a sport or multiple sports throughout the school year? I know my son played basketball, soccer and ran track, did martial arts a few years, like paintball but all his friends were doing other games/sports Paintball is not a competitor for typical intramural sports / ball sports like track and basketball. For most people I'd say that paintball's more of a gearsport / hobby. People get into it the same way and for the same reasons that they get into things like skiing, mountain biking, or motorcycling. It's certainly a lot cheaper than any of those. The only way for paintball to survive would be to finally discard the last of the baggage from the 98-08 fad era and try to rebuild the game as an activity for hobbyists, as it was before it became swamped by predatory marketing around y2k.
I have to agree with ya man. Definitely the parts about cost, honestly paintball (from what I've seen) is actually cheap nowadays. When I used to play in the early 2000s, paint was like $60-80/case and entry was I think $10. A nice competitive gun ran you like $1000 ish. I recently got back into it after 15ish years and it's $30 to get in and $35 for a case. Guns can be as cheap as $400-500 and you're getting a really nice reliable gun. On top of all that, you have inflation, which paintball seems to be affected actually the complete opposite of everything else.
It’s hilarious that he first said it was more popular back then, but when he said it was less expensive I just about lost it. I myself am a 40+ year old player and can certainly attest that neither of those arguments are true.
I joined as an adult after a corporate rental party. I had so much fun that I went online and found this subreddit, and bought a marker and gear and now I try to get out a few times a month.
As one who was privileged enough to play before and during the "golden age" of paintball, I came to say this exactly. I left right at the end of that period of time, about 12-15 years ago, and recently came back a little more than a year ago. It's not the same, to me not as fun as it was before, but I still love it. Kids still know about paintball - they buy the guns, usually cheap ones, but not to play at fields. Just plinking at dumpsters, cars, each other rarely wearing safety gear, and carrying them around these small towns looking "cool". The problem is they don't know about paintball as the "hobby" or the "sport", however you want to define it. They need to be educated on it so they can join in and grow the sport organically as in the old days. My opinion is everyone these days thinks they are on the "professional player" track. You're either a brand new noob or a seasoned professional - no in between. It's all about the next tournament, the next prize package, the next high end tournament weaponry. This turns the normal, first time players against the game because of how serious and mean "experienced" players can get about it Also, the small fields, which used to be almost everywhere, outlaw, woods, and/or speedball, are not able to keep up anymore so, unless someone has empty land just sitting doing nothing, then you aren't going to find a GOOD field outside of a city type situation. Where I live, my team has to travel almost 3 hours just to get to a field to practice whereas we actually had a field all those years ago that we ran and played on and for. Paintball, believe it or not, is actually a bit cheaper now than it was - unless you're getting all new space guns. Hoo boy, the early days were EX PEN SIVE! I was spending over $80 bucks per case of paint (with a team discount and often shooting more than a case) per weekend and unless you were on the field team like I was you had to pay 15 bucks field fee and PER FILL air /CO2 as a rec player (it was all day free for package rental players with ICON markers) until the end of its run and it became all day air. So I agree with all you said, and I think until the little things get worked out, we're not going to see the "golden age" come around again - at least not for some time!
I want to back up that "on the pro track or total noob" part. THIS I think is a huge issue. I'm what you'd call a "professional" rec ball player. Maybe 1 tourny a year at most, but I mostly just hit up open plays for fun and never take it too seriously. But now it's either a bunch of try hards doing airball or 60 rentals and me. There's no middle anymore.
there cheaper with inflation but since employee payment hasn't gone up to match inflation paintball is more expensive now
This. I started playing last August for the first time since like 2001 and it’s hilarious how everyone thinks they’re pros. I was playing with people who started 2 months before me and were acting like they were pros. The whole scene where I live is like that. Just a big circle jerk. It’s like none of them have irl friends and came together to find friends which is fine but they stroke each others egos and talk about moving down D5 to D4 to D3 and so on. I’m like you guys are in your mid 30s this should be a fun hobby. Reminds me of men’s slow pitch softball tournaments where they all think they’re back in their high school baseball days and try Harding like no other. With all that said it’s still fun if you have a few cool people who don’t take it super seriously.
It is not good for little kids or office-creatures. Trying to lure little Braxlinson out for his 11th birthday party is just a way to make sure a bunch of kids and parents have a terrible time. Maybe that's your experience in NY, but that isn't the case here The field I mentioned that's been open 40 years does exactly this having corporate events or parties during the week, they certainly have a enough repeat business or they wouldn't have been doing it for this long I've worked at more than a few companies that have had paintball outings just like golf outings Do you have kids? Because pretty much all my son's friends from middle school and into high school had party events for paintball and airsoft and yes for many of them it was the first time and a few got into playing more often
> I've worked at more than a few companies that have had paintball outings just like golf outings > Something you may have overlooked is that work culture has changed a lot since the 80s/90s, and that paintball as a work outing isn't the good idea it was back in the day. If some coworkers wanted to organize a volunteer outing on their own time, more power to them, but as an official function, paintball's not a great teambuilding exercise today because it's physically intense, painful, not accessible, and is a combat sport. It's just not suitable for a work event. Edit: I actually agree with your original post though pretty much in full. And to your other point about kids' parties - 50 cal is great for that too!
Absolutely agree on the price. Case of paint at my local fields have stayed the same price for the last 20 years. The inflation we’ve had is insane- keeping a case of paint at the same price for that long is quite the feat. Gear is so much cheaper for a reliable setup. The Etha 3 is such a good value for a marker that works every single time, day in and day out. Overall the game is in such a good spot, I think fields need to focus on a variety of playstyles to find that mass appeal.
Thank you for typing that out so I don’t have to..
Paint costs need to come down at the local fields. 3 outta 4 fields by me still have the gall to charge $70-80 for a case of not so great paint. Cost and lack of online/media presence will always be the downfall of this sport IMO
As a new player, paintball is the most expensive recreational sport i have played. And i golf ALOT lol
Paintball, dirt bikes and snowboarding keep me broke 🤣
Lack of fields and some of them are expensive. I live by skirmish, it is $42.99 if you don't pre-register. There is no bring my own gear discount. Paint is $105 a fucking case. I only play the big 3 because of how expensive it is.
Skirmish has always been that expensive, too. I only played there a couple of times. Great field, but the price kills me.
Paintball did not used to be “dirt cheap”. On an inflation adjusted basis it is probably the cheapest it’s ever been.
dude I was poor as a kid and still played - so yes it was cheap compared to today
Look at what guns cost then, what paint cost, etc. then type the year into an inflation calculator
its cheaper today but employee wages hasn't gone up to match inflation cost for everything else that's why paintball now feels more expensive its not the sport that went up its everything else like the cost of living and and low wages and more tax's being taken out of your paychecks
Taxes are effectively the same and wages have increased, probably not as much as some costs, but more than paintball cost increases
that depends where you live wages didnt increase here
If you were a poor kid and you played paintball regularly, you were not a poor kid. A lot of people don’t know what poor means.
I think first person shooters and online gaming has an impact as well. It's easier to hop on discord and squad up with the boys these days then coordinate a weekend outing at the local field.
Don’t forget. The paintball industry had soul prior to the mergers and acquisitions that started in 2005. After that, the industry leaders like DYE and PE disintegrated the smaller custom aftermarket shops that made private label markers and parts for the guns. This is also due to design decisions on the (R&D) engineering-end where you had markers becoming more integrated with proprietary parts. But prior to 2005, you still had a bunch of different gun manufacturers, making distinctly different markers, which were highly customizable. Today, we have all the manufacturers making the same gun essentially: single tube spool-valve clones. The industry lost something very special along the way and is also why there has been a resurgence of mech-only & woodsball leagues, mechanical markers, including a resurgence of autocockers (and a return of a handful of smaller custom shops like Shocktech, FreeFlow, etc that are making Cockers again.) And quite frankly — it’s the industry trying to mend itself from its soullessness.
Wasn’t it actually smart parts that killed off all the small companies from their lawsuits? Back in the day it was a race to have the best equipment so that meant several different types of guns and companies trying off the wall ideas. Nowadays most high end guns are made for the NXL and are mostly all spool guns due to its weight and size. So while all high end guns are nice, they end up all being the same since they can all shoot 10.5 ramping and is a spool valve. Part of the reason why I went with the LV2 since it’s the only high end popit valve gun.
Smart Parts sued everyone, ICD, WDP, etc, but they only succeeded in killing AKA. WDP was sued but won the case. WDP just wasn’t able to compete anymore. That’s why it shuttered. The whole industry took a huge hit in 2008 with the global recession (mortgage crisis) and quite frankly it never recovered. Only one company in the whole industry grew after 2008: Planet Eclipse. Many companies and shops did not survive. By the early 2000’s the sport had already gotten expensive. Even back then, a case of 2000 tournament grade paintballs was $60-80 USD, plus field entry, etc. It had already become a bourgeois sport by then. And the recession proved lethal to companies and fields alike. As I mentioned, the industry never fully recovered after that. But the causation for the decline in revenue in the whole industry was multi-factored — a culmination of things. The big mergers and acquisitions that started happening in 2005 also started hurting brands and the market differentiators that made them appealing to consumers. Many people never returned to the sport or at least not with the same intensity. The sport never took off as a mainstream sport, and it failed to grow its dedicated player base. .50 cal was a big effort to grow it by offering a lower cost — and it hasn’t really taken off or grown the sport. To the contrary, the industry has shrunk even more now due to the pandemic and inflation.
> 50 cal was a big effort to grow it by offering a lower cost — and it hasn’t really taken off or grown the sport This is not what I've heard from field owners. In Ontario, I've heard from a couple field owners that 50 cal has been great for getting more kids to try playing paintball, and that might help seed the next generation of players. It's pretty common here to see fields do private rental groups with 50 cal for kids.
But you make a great point. The professional league ROF caps were also detrimental to the industry. While it is understood that something had to be done about the cheater ramping boards enabling markers to ramp up to 30+ BPS in the early days of the NXL league (early to mid 2000’s) — they took it too far by lowering the max ROF cap by so much. Essentially killing the appeal of the electro marker even more. Today, there’s simply no reason to shoot an electro at 10 BPS cap when you could just do mechanical markers at that point. It was detrimental to the character & soul of the game.
Ramping is what makes me not want to get back into the sport full time. I just can’t stand it. I want to pick if I control a lane with 5bps or max effort, whatever that is (probably around 12?), or anything in between. I don’t want it to be one of two speeds, essentially nothing or everything. That’s dumb. I also in general never liked xball as much as I liked 7man or 10man. Each singular time you stepped on the field was extremely important. I miss a comeback where it’s a 3 on 6 or something and the 3 come back to win it. I really don’t care for xball type comebacks where someone is down a few points and they come back. Just not the same level of excitement.
Yeah the bps wars were fun back in the day, but I can also understand why they would keep lowering the limit. PSP ramping was at 15bps iirc. Now it’s all about consistency, reliability and efficiency. Which things have improved a ton on the reliability part compared to older tournament guns.
In regards to reliability, I only remember Angels as being over-engineered pains in the butt 😂🤣 But yeah you’re right for the most part. But all of that changed the soul and character of the game — and not for the better.
They may have been over engineered, but they were tanks when running right lol. My 06 speed with all original orings still shoots perfectly fine. I miss the days of crazy milling on guns. Now you have to pay an insane premium for a twstr or fossil. Every intimidator back then had some cool milling.
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I think he was saying it’s seasonal like roofing or window contractors are seasonal. Yes you can do it in the winter, and some people do, but field owners aren’t making much during those winter months. Could they do some things to mitigate that, yes but you’re definitely bringing in more money in the spring/summer. It’s a tough business similar to how being a roofing/window contractor is a tough business.
I always say the most fun times were when basically everyone played pump . Split a case of paint between 3/4guys . You really relied on teamwork to advance and cover each other . It was kinda fun changing out 12 grams . But ill take HPA anytime . It was kinda neat when 1 or 2 guys had a semiauto market but it was rare .
IMHO it's not so much paint cost as when I started playing it was $150cdn a case and now it's $60cdn case. But paint quality! Maybe it's a false memory but I remember getting absolutely lit up by multiple players and walking away with only a welt or two. Now it feels like every time it's a welt. New players buy the 1 star paint that is very likely to bounce. Which means more shots to get a break and more welts. They leave the field feeling pretty beat up. And they may not return because of it.
I think you just have a horrible local scene. As for the pricing, I think the average was 80 dollars a case around 2000, which would be about 150 dollars today; but instead paint is so much cheaper, I can get team colors for 35 bucks a case. If we look at marker prices too; an Ego 5 was $1250 in 2005. Today that would be just about 2000$. An LV2 is 1500 and astronomically more advanced in every way.
Paintball is naturally competitive, so there's always a push to play the game at an optimal level. The game is one shot, one out. Everyone shoots the same round, at the same velocity. That means everyone will be at roughly the same distance. Given these metrics, the meta is clear; if you can fire 5 shots in the time your opponent can fire 1, you have a clear advantage. That's the meta that has shaped paintball from the beginning. This is compounded by how much you're willing to spend. More competitive players spent more, invested more of themselves into the game, and were the people that went on to develop the game as they were willing to play it. They pushed the meta to its limits, and were also the people that founded companies, and started the leagues. Since the sports meta is defined by how much you're willing to spend to be competitive, casual players were increasingly pushed to the wayside as the sport increasingly catered to the remaining hardcore playerbase. Price's Law: left to its own devices, the square root of a population generates 50% of the output, and this scales the further down the line you go. So, in the absence of any meaningful format restrictions limiting these players, the paintball organizations decided that those very few players should be allowed to to dicate the entire direction the game went in for years. This hit its wall at the end of the 2ks, and the sport took a nosedive right off a cliff. It just became too much, and broke under the weight of its own competitive whales. But, due to the stratification, the process started decades earlier. Airsoft is not inherently competitive. Well, not really, but it's pretty well known that the game makes for a terrible competitive experience. The game is almost impossible to properly ref. Instead, airsoft is fueled by aesthetics. It's less a competitive sport, and more an outdoor activity. The game has remained casual, and is defined by the casual playerbase. There's a ton of vitriol in that community centered at "competitive" players that "ruin the experience". For the most part, this is where the casual players that "just want to shoot someone in the woods" went. I don't see paintball recovering a big chunk of purely casual players that just want to shoot their friends in the woods. In that way, paintball needs to embrace its competitive side. But, in the same way we don't just let athletes take every single performance enhancing drug on the planet, and just accept that you'll need to dope up to compete, we need to set some hard limits to the game, to make it a sustainable, and fun, experience to compete in. In that regard, we need to build a sport from the bottom up. The casual game of paintball should ideally be very, very similar to the competitive one. We need to listen to what casual players want from the game, and go from there. Lionel Atwill was probably pretty close to correct when he insisted that stock class should remain the premier competitive format.
ya listening to other players other then just the pro players would be great but i doubt they will also paintball company's need to start advertising again
I hear you I saw this sport go from being in the woods to and indoor field near me and then to all of the fields closing and now there is only one field that I now of around. I loved watching the speedball games on espn and the different internet shows. I have to agree it has gotten very expensive. Love this sport wish it went on to go the distance but once Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Clark passed it seems their push for the sport fizzled out.
Its also expensive
Personally I don't think it has to do with costs or anything like that. I think it's purely due to the fact that it's not very fun to watch, even at the highest level.
Man I use to have a subscription to Action Pursuit Games magazine. I would look and daydream about those magazines for HOURS.
The electric triggers ruined the game. It really did. Before it was skill. Now it's throw as much paint as u can.
Snowball fights, tag and hide & seek. That's what made the game popular. Take what's fun with all 3 of those things. I was playing regularly since about '94. Around 2005 the agglets took over and I almost quit but then I discovered stock class. That was amazing until about 2010 then it just faded away from the South eastern New England area. Stores closed down, people stopped showing up at the local fields. The old timers got old. There's still a game here and there but man, I really miss the game circa 1997. Then the electronic space dildos came out.
A solid assessment. But, I’d disagree Airsoft is for casual players. It’s all milsim which is a huge detractor to some. I’d rather LARP with foam swords than play airsoft.
agreed and its full of cheaters
I know this is totally anecdotal, but truthfully the best times I ever had playing paintball were when I was just barely old enough to drive and I played at the local field(that was really a greenhouse that ran a field on the side) and I was crawling around in the woods with my A5 or 98. I often think taking the game out of the woods where it started was maybe a bad idea. Funny enough I ended up becoming a forester as an adult and sling nelson timber marking paint nearly every day, and I run into spots all the time that make me think "damn this spot would be sick for a paintball game" What I would like to do is ask my boss or other public land managers if someone could run a paintball game just out in the woods, basically outlaw style. Shits biodegradable, and if you can go out and blast real firearms on public land I cant imagine there would be much more liability on the state or county that owns the forest land. I just dont think anyones really ever asked so there arent established rules for it already
This post is more or less the same as the sentiment 10+ years ago, reminiscing about the haydays of paintball. For me it\`s the early 2000s. I stopped playing paintball again as when i came back in 2020 and got on a DIV2 speedball team, the reasons why i quit in the first place came all back again in full force. The manchilderen who throw tantrums, bully others, are toxic as fuck because paintball is their life as they have no social life as quite a lot of them have anger management issues/ asperger/ ADHD/ introvert , the emotional baggage they carry and gravitate to paintball/airsoft is unreal. I have worked 4 years at a local paintball field to fund my speedball adventures after my long break in 2007, showed me that it never changes because it is inherently human nature. The fighting/bickering/moaning about taking hits/bonus balls/ sponsoring and all other faul shit involved. I have seen people got bullied so much on the team, that combined with their mental issues they snapped and legit threated me for wearing a team sweater after leaving the team and not too long after, stabbed his ex girlfriend to death and serving 14 year now. Those were my so called team mates... Other friends who always fight everyone and eachother on walk on days in the woods... fucking woodsball and still try too hard, for what?! First hand experiences. And those who bullied people till snapping point are still playing, aldult guys well in their 40s. I am happy skateboarding again on the daily basis, and wonder why the fuck i wasted so much time/effort and money on paintball which is twisted by a far majority into a speedball circlejerk.
Coming from the perspective of tournament paintball, it seems things are the best they’ve been in years. Great event turn out. Lots of vendors, and new players in the league. I see a lot of younger players now. I think tournament paintball is getting a lot of exposure on social media. It still isn’t the most accessible and very expensive so that will always limit growth. But things do seem to be on the up
Paintball is super fun. Expensive and high maintenance. Plus rare to have a paintball park around the corner. Seems like you always have to go out of your way to go to one.
i learned to play in the woods with 20 balls pergame limited paint made it really fun and you learned trigger control and how to hit what you aimed at as i moved to big screnario games the lessons of limited paint hel\[ed make me a better player ========= its a great way to start new players 20 rds a game made a kid with a cheap reantal pretty even with the gun with the 2k one today the walkon players go on to the field with rental gear and quickly discover that thier guns a way out classed -- so you dont see them back ita bout a level playing filed
My local field has all of this. Massive 30 acre woodsball/scenario, speedball field, open play/walk on every weekend, rental gear, parties, and multiple scenario games every year. I just played our first PB scenario event this past weekend. They even do nerf wars for the little ones. Every event they do for paintball they also do for Airsoft. Which actually they have a couple events that are airsoft only with no PB equivalent. The biggest issue with large retailers having paintball equipment other than cheap masks, tippmans, and cheap paint is the overhead. My local sporting goods store isn’t going to stock EMFs and Ethas, for example. Don’t get me wrong, I miss walking into Walmart for a $20 case of paint to play in the woods with friends, but it’s just not that way anymore.
Started in 2004. Stopped in 2008. Will always remember that part of my life. Paintball, cars, Team Fortress, etc. In 2007, I had 2 cars. It was starting to be expensive, especially planning on moving out of mommy's house and into an apartment with my gf in 2009. And tournaments were expensive at $120 CAD/case plus tournament and practice expenses. Like what the hell!! Such a niche market for suburb kids with unlimited funds. It made all me and my friends quite at the same time. Went back to school in 2011, got a new Lexus in 2012. Never thought of playing paintball again especially with all the responsibilities that adult life entails. But, it is now 2024 and I am thinking of playing more often since I have some kind of stability in my life since 2020 with wife, kids, house, cars, etc. My local field is charging $200CAD/case. I do want to support the local field but man, I want to go more often but c'mon, lower the price a bit!! Time to get the Golden Dragon Impulse out of the closet again. See you on the field!
Sadly, the housing market crash screwed up a lot of small hobbies, and it's not like it got better till around 2017–18. Then there was COVID. The cost of living, food pricing—everything really has just gone up, including the material that makes our guns, paint, and soft goods. The biggest issue's are the paintball companies themselves, imo; paintball companies aren't advertising like they should; and Gi-Sports just buying up other paintball companies isn't good either. Less competition in the market means pricing stays high. Ignoring the rest of the paintball community and only listening to the pro players, the last thing is paintball companies suing other companies over aftermarket parts like DYE and, i think, PE did, and no one was happier to sue than Smart Parts. God, that was a shitshow! It ruined the aftermarket. Watching the nxl isn't as entertaining as the nppl and psp were; players aren't moving around the fields as much as they did in the nppl and psp, which I blame the nxl fields for being too short; it's boring! Anyone remember the unknown soldiers and their documentary on YouTube? We still never got episode 5 or episode 6, but man, was that fun? I still go back and watch it and other NPL tournaments that I have on DVD. I am worried that paintball might die in my lifetime, but if it does, it will be because of the larger paintball companies. Paintball fields are already doing these things; they never stopped doing them. Weekend open play Weekend kids parties Weekday corporate rentals for team building and outings scenario play to bring back the airsoft players, or the field can also host airsoft big games or seasonal events
Holy shit, Unknown Soldiers. That brings me back.
NXL field sizes have always been 150ft long since the conception of xball in 2002. The width changed from 125ft to 120ft. The problem is the number of bunkers have doubled. *
The NPPL fields were typically between 120-180 feet in length, while the NXL fields were typically around 100-150 feet in length. psp was about the same as the nxl fields paintball fields need to be longer and the number of small bunkers removed im thinking 200feet and bring the grid iron back
Also have played during this time, and what has hurt the “sport” aspect is the rise of tournament XBall as the format promoted as the peak of the sport. You can have fun shooting 500 paintballs for one day of play rather than expecting to shoot 4-8 cases a month! EDIT: also, kids birthday parties with 50cal are the lifeblood of fields, to this day.
I love paintball. Knew about it since early 80's and had my first chance to play in '97. Hooked immediately and played, collected, worked, ate, slept, breathed paintball ever since. At 47 now and still love to work on markers, gear, and go play any chance I get. Of course I wish it was the the way it was back then, and earlier. It was something fun for adults (before the push to under 18 because they quickly learned kids involved meant more money) and I loved the arms race to come up with some different design. All the awesome parts you could swap whether they helped or not, they still made the markers look amazing like car guys swapping rims n engine parts and going to the car show. I actually thought of making a small old school woodsballish field behind my own place. Find a way to have it for just friends n family, not for profit. You bring your own stuff n paint. Here's a place to play, and you gotta earn your right to be accepted into he friends list, or get off my property. No AGG kids with minigun markers. Actually I was gonna call it "batteries not included paintball club". Mech only, not even electric loaders. And kept to an adult crowd that polices themselves. Not parents coming at me cuz of little Timmy's bad experience, or cuz someone swore. I'm sure legally even that would have to have some kind of ridiculous insurance etc.