General

[PJ]

Originally Posted by Drachen

Wow, can you be any more rude b to the a to the k? If you're going to be playing a sport professionally, and have so many people watching you, you'd think that the refs, and players would push themselves to help give the sport a good reputation. More than half of the players now-a-days cheat any way they can get away with. They "play the gray" to try to get the best of their opponent. BY CHEATING. Yeah, go ahead and act like we're making a big deal out of something small. Cheating is hardly frowned upon anymore. "It's a part of the game". Yeah, good job on that one. It makes me proud to be playing in the same sport as people like you.

[soapbox]
And the other pro sports (football, basketball, baseball, etc.) don't cheat? Have you ever watched the NFL linemen (heck, even in college)? Every single play they hold, trip, hit, smack, whatever the opposing player to throw them off their game. I'm not saying cheating is good - IT HAPPENS. It just doesn't always get caught. Should they do it? Heck no!!! I personally do my best to play clean and to play fair at all times in whatever sport/game I'm playing.

If you don't like the cheating that as you said, "More than half of the players now-a-days cheat any way", go play some woodsball or scenario ball. Oh, wait, they cheat too. Seen it personally on several occasions. Perhaps we need to change it from the inside out. Maybe, just MAYBE, you need to get a team together and make it a team rule to not cheat. Advertise that fact at every game you play, but heaven help you if someone on your team does. Maybe, just maybe, others will join you and have their own teams that don't cheat. Or, maybe you need to become a ref and catch the cheaters in the act, so they can have a 2 for 1 during the game to let them know it's not going to happen on your shift. Maybe it's just a matter of correcting a player at the local field you see cheating and letting them know that's not going to be tolerated around here. It's got to start somewhere!!

There's a lot of ways to help the situation yourself. Now get off your high horse and do something about it.
[/soapbox]

[Mr. Furious]

I walked off the field after being shot out the other day and a young player who looked to have just come from renegade ball with his buddies in the woods said "I just wipe 'em off if nobody sees me." .

I said "It kind of defeats the purpose of the game if everybody just wipes off the hits and ignores whole idea of the game." I added that when you try so hard to get an elimination and somebody just wipes it off it's really frustrating and that he should put himself in that person's place and think how he would feel if he made a great shot on a really good player and the guy just wiped it off like it never happened.

He said: "I guess I never thought of it that way."

I'd like to think I just saved another soul but my cynical side says that he'll be they guy I have to shoot 3 seperate times every game before he leaves the field.

[PJ]

Originally Posted by Mr. Furious

I walked off the field after being shot out the other day and a young player who looked to have just come from renegade ball with his buddies in the woods said "I just wipe 'em off if nobody sees me." .

I said "It kind of defeats the purpose of the game if everybody just wipes off the hits and ignores whole idea of the game." I added that when you try so hard to get an elimination and somebody just wipes it off it's really frustrating and that he should put himself in that person's place and think how he would feel if he made a great shot on a really good player and the guy just wiped it off like it never happened.

He said: "I guess I never thought of it that way."

I'd like to think I just saved another soul but my cynical side says that he'll be they guy I have to shoot 3 seperate times every game before he leaves the field.

But it's a start! At least you got him thinking about how the other person feels aobut it. Great job!!!

[kodiak61]

Originally Posted by b to the a to the k

My opinion: Reffing is reffing.

Basically, losers blame the reffing.

Winners don't let the refs impact the game.

This Tony Robbins statement I couldnt disagree more with.

When the ref's bad decision changes the course of the game, and directly hands your team defeat due to a bad call. There is nothing you can do to change that.

UNLESS... You are a pro team or your dad owns SC Villiage.

I had one complaint about reffing during KC and it was in a game we won.

My entire complaint against the NPPL is I want consistency and better reffing. I want better pay and training for the refs. I would like to see experienced, happy and taken care of refs on the feild. So when they are making their 64k per division calls per day, they are made correctly and consistently.

You having played the last 5 events have to admit you have seen something fly on feild yet not fly on another. Or even better when you are scouting the feilds you see a cetain side of a feild where the ref's are being "nazi" with 1 for 1 calls some might say while the other is letting things slide. Your telling me this doesnt affect the outcome of the game? Or it doesnt influence your teams decision on the coin flip?

I again am not bashing refs. I want them to be treated better and taken care of more. I would love it if being a ref in the NPPL was a prestigious position like it is in other "pro" sports. I want all the fluff money the NPPL uses for other things to be directed and instituting a real ref training program to make things more consistent.

I am not for cheating, but its apart of the game. I look at NPPL cheating like getting a 5 yard holding penalty in football, or any other for that fact. The big thing that many "honor code" screamers miss is that in EVERY OTHER MAJOR SPORT its called a penalty. And each penalty has a punishment. Yet paintballers call it cheating and get into big battles questioning honor. It has nothing to do with that in my opinion. If you skirt the rules, you get a penalty.

But I digress back to my original statements. I just want higher paid, quality trained ref's that are all on the same page. I want their to be no special treatment given to pro's or other people of influence in the paintball world. Whats good for Ollie Lang is good for the first timer D3 player.

Consistency.

[AngelChaser]

Originally Posted by b to the a to the k

Winners don't let the refs impact the game.

This is the only thing I am going to get on you about.

Refs should never impact the game. Period. If a ref is impacting game play he/she should not be on the field.

As a member of a professional reffing team I have learned to do the job without impacting the game, and there is no reason why the refs at the so-called 'Pro' level of play can't do the same.

[big jim]

I was thinking about the jumbo-tron issue from KC this afternoon and I think the big screen could be a big asset to paintball tournaments. As in other sports where fans a distance from the action are given the opportunity to see things better, so paintball can give the fans a better view of the action and enhance their experience. All you have to do to stop a team from using it is to have a rule stating that any team being caught with active team members watching the screen will find the cameras focused only on their team members. As long as the screens are above or to the sides of the fields it should be apparent if someone is using the screen. Then just train the cameras on that team for the next 60 seconds. Not only does this now give the opponents the chance to take unfair advantage, if they should look, but it would guarantee that any player committing an "infraction" deserving of a "penalty" would get caught.
It is the duty of the promoters to learn from past experiances and use them to improve the game.

[cockerpunk]

well, all this talk about what refs should and shouldn't do is kinda BS. we live in the real world, where players do cheat, where players want to cheat, and where refs have to impact the game, or they can;t get in fast enough, and that impacts the game. so while we can bicker what should and should be done by refs, its what they have to do that matters. if it were my kinda world, players would be so afraid of cheating due to extreme consequences that they would be paranoid that they were hit and be constantly checking to make sure they are clean. thats my world, not the real world. brent is right on talking about 99% of the time, the refs are clearly right. and thats just the way its gonna be, ref training or not. untill players respect the rues enough that they refuse as whole to cheat or push the grey, the refs are gonna have to make tough calls.

so far, my support of NPPL is solely contingent upon the lack of any competition IMO. no other league is even close to what the NPPL is, and as bad as the scandles in NPPL, what normal the field of a regular PSP event, is far worse IMO. COFA is joke, and NCPL is good but, still not professional. also, i tend to be a bit prejudice against PSP/NXL beucase the gun/board rules. also sideline coaching ruins the game, and X ball as whole is a pretty dumb format. and unlike PSP/NXL where they simply made cheating legal, NPPL at least says they have real rules.

so, ill continue to support NPPL and Air Assault Factory!

personally, i think this is just JOY getting a bit pissy about things. people in this whole argument seem to take JOY as being perfect and totally justified. but i question this simply becuase of last years event where they were ROBBED of winning by a dumb reffing call. why now? why not when they lost gobs of money last year? i question JOY motives in all this. this move doesn't make much sense IMO.

[Mr. Furious]

Originally Posted by kodiak61

I am not for cheating, but its apart of the game. I look at NPPL cheating like getting a 5 yard holding penalty in football, or any other for that fact. The big thing that many "honor code" screamers miss is that in EVERY OTHER MAJOR SPORT its called a penalty. And each penalty has a punishment. Yet paintballers call it cheating and get into big battles questioning honor. It has nothing to do with that in my opinion. If you skirt the rules, you get a penalty.

Attitudes like that are why it's "part of the game". This whole mindset that you cannot be successful in paintball while playing with integrity is a total BS copout. If the penalties were stiff(and I mean like expulsion of the team from the event) and they had a ref on every player to see the infraction, wiping would be gone by the end of the second game of the first tournament. Acceptance of the cheating is what's undermining the sport, not the cheating itself. Cheating always happens in any sport but the way the governing body responds to it is what determines whether it flourishes and becomes a joke(like tourney ball is today) or withers and dies. If the behavior is accepted and the penalties are so slight that they are worth the risk then cheating becomes part of the game. They could stop cheating at the next event, they just don't want to.

[b to the a to the k]

What is with this obsession with cheating? It seems like allot of people here @ MCB are really hung up on it?

This thread is about the perceived deficiencies in the NPPL.
IMO: The NPPL has and is continuing to provide a superior product when compared to the PSP. The things I personally witnessed in the PSP drove us to the NPPL. Thus far, my personal NPPL experience and my teams overall opinion has been positive.

That said: There is ALWAYS room for improvement.

[kodiak61]

Originally Posted by b to the a to the k

What is with this obsession with cheating? It seems like allot of people here @ MCB are really hung up on it?

This thread is about the perceived deficiencies in the NPPL.
IMO: The NPPL has and is continuing to provide a superior product when compared to the PSP. The things I personally witnessed in the PSP drove us to the NPPL. Thus far, my personal NPPL experience and my teams overall opinion has been positive.

That said: There is ALWAYS room for improvement.

You definitely have that on me, I have never played the PSP. I started with XPSL and then moved into the NPPL. I was actually looking at going to the PSP as an alternative, but you comments and those of many more who have been there lead me to believe that "fixing" the NPPL (room for improvement as you put it) is a better alternative.

I myself too wonder what the deal with the hang up cheating is. Look at any other sport played. Its a penalty. I dont hear the millions of fans scream "CHEATER! YOUR WHATS WRONG WITH THE GAME" when a lineman gets a 5 yard holding penalty. Its the same thing, its changed the outcome of the game. Its against the rules and its not the right thing to do. Sound allot like diving a hit off to me.

My issues are not with cheating per say. They are with things like on one feild XYZ is a penalty as the rule book states, yet on another feild its "refs discretion" and no penalty assessed for the same thing. My issue is consistency.

This is from D3 to PRO.

My (as mentioned many times) consistency gripe is that whats good for the pro's is not good for the D3-Semi Pro guys.

Pro's wear metal spikes, pro's get games replayed, pro's break certain uniform rules that the lower divisions inconsistently get hassled over.

It just drives you nuts to one game have a penalty assesed to your team because of ref's discretion and then in the next game on a different feild the opposite team does that same infraction to you and you try to argue it to no avail because of a different ref's discretion. This is the type of inconsistency I am speaking of.