[Amac]

@anticastropgeon Yet again like I posted before I wasn't writing specific things directed towards you. If me saying that players who don't have enough drive to limit their lifestyle to save up enough to attend national events is offensive towards you then sorry but it isn't directed to you. Stating you held off on personal attacks is a bit untrue seeing that you called two random kids who attended a national event rich for just being able to attend I used them as an example of what events/leagues need not a lighting rod for you to say hey they must be rich since I cannot afford to go but they can. Who knows maybe they deliver newspapers and cut grass all the time to be able to afford paintball I dunno nor do I care but leagues need younger players to be attending actual event to get the experience and maybe even the chance to get spotted by coaches to advance their careers. I'm glad that you have some passion in replying to what I type but honestly like I said before in my initial post No amount of debate and discussion in a thread that will sooner be forgotten and be archived will it greatly change the direction of the sport or that of a league. Being at the event being a paying customer and giving feedback to Tony or anyone else who has the ability to change things will be what will curb any missteps and improve the quality of the events which are put on.

The drive to have paintball on ESPN to grow paintball was the only reason the NXL existed and where did that end up? A huge amount of players being told that at some point they will be paid and promoted like other sports via broadcast TV but that day never came at all. Tons of money spend by the paintball industry hoping it would happen but yet again that could have been used to support the players/teams attending events/series better.

Do players ***** about the Millennium Series not being live webcasted? No because European paintballers actually travel to the events instead of going online to ***** about not being able to sit at home, eat chips on the couch and say that is how the sport of paintball will grow and how industry dollars should be spent.

I will say having feedback and input from all levels of players is important but a league is only really concerned with those players who play and support their event. Not the ones who are upset about not being able to watch their favorite pro team at a national event from the comfort of their homes.

Jimmy I'd love to see you do coverage for every event to help push out high quality content. If your going to be in DC and want to shoot our team I'd certainly be willing to set something up with you.

[anticastropgeon]

Originally Posted by Amac

@anticastropgeon Yet again like I posted before I wasn't writing specific things directed towards you.

Hm. You used a second person pronoun with regularity:

Originally Posted by Amac

Allowing barriers like money and distance to events be the excuse to why you or other people cannot attend (either to play or watch) are just that excuses. An easy way to deflect that you don't have enough drive to ensure that your able to make it happen.

Sounds personal to me.

Originally Posted by Amac

If me saying that players who don't have enough drive to limit their lifestyle to save up enough to attend national events is offensive towards you then sorry but it isn't directed to you.

It's not that I couldn't accumulate the necessary funding to attend. As I said, I choose not to because I have other priorities in my life. I wonder, why even question my commitment to paintball? Are you my coach? No. What would I care if I don't meet your arbitrary standards of commitment? Not very much. So why do it in the first place? Because it's a chance to needle me as less of a "man" than you are and simultaneously be able to throw up your hands and say "I didn't do anything". Good for you, you provoked a reaction. You win, I lose.

You know what "limiting my lifestyle" would mean? Playing less paintball. Which means I don't buy nearly as much paint. So my home field gets less money. I'm sorry, but if I have to choose someone to support here, it's my home field. I support paintball at a local level, because without local fields, we'd have no place for new teams to form, compete, and eventually feed into national tournaments. In fact, if we had to stop holding national tournaments to save paintball at the local level, I'd lead the charge myself.

Originally Posted by Amac

Stating you held off on personal attacks is a bit untrue seeing that you called two random kids who attended a national event rich for just being able to attend I used them as an example of what events/leagues need not a lighting rod for you to say hey they must be rich since I cannot afford to go but they can

That's a lot of ramble to unpack, but I think you're saying it's a bad thing I pointed out that a group of kids happened to be from families affluent enough to take a long-weekend vacation to a place that's some 9 hours from where you live. The word "rich" carries no venom unless you assign some yourself. "Rich" is a much more efficient way to say "of suitable means to make the trip", though less specific, and in this case, potentially wrong. I misspoke again. That being said, to whom is "rich" an insult?

Additionally, I only once pointed out your statement that grammar is indicative of some sort of business knowledge. I had ample opportunity to further dress you down, but did not take it. I see you're Canadian, and since it's possible that French is your native language, I didn't want to make cracks about your English, which is one of the more difficult romance languages to master. Would you like me to waive that courtesy and get out my red pen?

Originally Posted by Amac

Who knows maybe they deliver newspapers and cut grass all the time to be able to afford paintball I dunno nor do I care but leagues need younger players to be attending actual event to get the experience and maybe even the chance to get spotted by coaches to advance their careers.

I agree with this statement. I don't understand where the confusion is. But not every person watching the webcast is going to be capable of playing at a national tournament. Either that, or I vastly overestimated the level of competition there.

Originally Posted by Amac

I'm glad that you have some passion in replying to what I type but honestly like I said before in my initial post No amount of debate and discussion in a thread that will sooner be forgotten and be archived will it greatly change the direction of the sport or that of a league.

See:

Originally Posted by anticastropgeon

How else will our voices be heard? Sure, this thread will quickly be forgotten. But if no one voices their complaints in the ways afforded to them, how will the powers that be recognize that the masses are unhappy with the product presented to them? I can't just call up the NPPL and say "Hey, random person here, but you should think about raising your profile so that your fans can get excited about your product" and expect anything.

But then again...

Originally Posted by Amac

Being at the event being a paying customer and giving feedback to Tony or anyone else who has the ability to change things will be what will curb any missteps and improve the quality of the events which are put on.

…apparently the NPPL only listens to paying customers for suggestions. No wonder their product is consistently lagging. And I sincerely doubt that, were I a paying customer, he would value my opinion any more than he would reading it on a Pbnation thread. I might get glad-handed a little for my troubles, but I'd still get ignored. However, you get a thread full of people complaining, new threads will form. Eventually you have an outpouring of disregard and somebody has to wake up and pay attention. Or have the NPPL fold.

Originally Posted by Amac

The drive to have paintball on ESPN to grow paintball was the only reason the NXL existed and where did that end up? A huge amount of players being told that at some point they will be paid and promoted like other sports via broadcast TV but that day never came at all. Tons of money spend by the paintball industry hoping it would happen but yet again that could have been used to support the players/teams attending events/series better.

At no point have I advocated blindly throwing money at a problem. I assumed that the NPPL would be smart enough to find a group capable of pulling off a webcast of professional quality with money they raised through whatever means (Kickstarter, for example) and spend their money wisely. Plus, all they have to do is lay the groundwork for an event and the teams will show up. I'm under the impression that pro teams receive no support from events beyond the purse for winning. Am I incorrect? If so, pro paintball just got a lot more crooked than I thought.

Originally Posted by Amac

Do players ***** about the Millennium Series not being live webcasted? No because European paintballers actually travel to the events instead of going online to ***** about not being able to sit at home, eat chips on the couch and say that is how the sport of paintball will grow and how industry dollars should be spent.

I bet you'll find people who'd love to watch Millennium Series events. You're reading a post by someone right now who would like to watch them. But I can't reasonably fly to France and take in an event, so I assumed that we didn't even have to bring it into the discussion.

Originally Posted by Amac

I will say having feedback and input from all levels of players is important but a league is only really concerned with those players who play and support their event. Not the ones who are upset about not being able to watch their favorite pro team at a national event from the comfort of their homes.

So the league doesn't care about its fans unless they pay money.

Look, the point to a webcast isn't necessarily just to be able to see the outcomes of games. There's a lot more to it than that. If I see it live, I can't pause it, rewind, and watch something again. I can't study what's happening on the field. Do you think other professional sports teams watch their rivals play live? No, they do film study. I want to develop a deeper understanding of the game, and to do that, I have to watch as much film as I possibly can. You can only see so much from a single angle when you watch it in person. A well-directed webcast has plenty of cameras stationed around the field to capture everything. They might not get it all in as it happens live (again, see Fedorov's dive/flip thingy), but they'll get it on the replay because cameras are pointed to capture everything that happens. If I was looking one way and something cool happened, I missed it. Forever. With a webcast, I can watch it over and over. I can study it. I can begin to train my brain to respond to certain situations with specific actions that I might not have picked up just by playing.

How does a webcast grow a sport? It gives players this opportunity. People new to paintball can see what the fuss is all about. Your random rec-baller walk-on who plays twice a year can get excited and decide to make it to the field more often because this balloon bunker stuff looks pretty cool. The player who just bought his first electro can start to see the basics of body positioning or start modeling their game after a certain player. More experienced players can study a field and see how various tempos of play work on a given field. And, hey, maybe there's a player who got hurt, had surgery, and wants to watch his teammates play and scream into the phone to a coach on the sideline that they're doing it all wrong so he has some sort of connection to what's going on. All of these situations are rendered impossible when there's no webcast.

At the end of the day, when the feature that everybody lauds about your rival is absent from your product, you're in trouble. People who go to PSP events apparently like playing in the tournament series. The rest of us like the PSP because we can watch it, connect with teams and players, and maybe learn a thing or two about paintball from the commentators that we wouldn't have gotten watching it on our own.

[anticastropgeon]

Part 2 of 2, damn this arbitrary character limit nonsense...

Dear NPPL: I tried. I really, really did. I wanted to get into your series. I wanted to see the teams that don't compete in the PSP play. I wanted to see new players with different play styles so that I can continue to refine my game. Only, I didn't want to have to pay hundreds of dollars for the privilege. If you leave me no opportunity to develop some sort of intrinsic connection to your product, any connection whatsoever, then I fail to see how I'll ever have the opportunity to get excited enough to want to go check out an event. This is why you're dying.

[=DaveP=]

About the last several PSP/PaintballAccess webcasts...

Wasnt it great hearing the commentary? Didnt you learn ALOT from it in regards to how to play the game strategically. Or individual player stats? Anybody else find it refreshing and interesting to be getting high quality commentary and Live webcast?

We are ALL part of this industry. PSP treats us like we are (in regards to the webcasts). NPPL treats us like DISPOSABLE consumers.

And finally now they get to pay for that. Finally the truth is so obvious that even the fanboys and connected ones cannot deny it. Burn fools!

[overshot01]

Originally Posted by Amac

Do players ***** about the Millennium Series not being live webcasted? No because European paintballers actually travel to the events instead of going online to ***** about not being able to sit at home, eat chips on the couch and say that is how the sport of paintball will grow and how industry dollars should be spent.

1. Prove it. I would like to see numbers on this.

2. Traveling in the EU is 10x cheaper due to the rail system and commuter air traffic. Also, Europe as a whole only takes up around a third of the entire size of the USA. Your argument comparing players who travel to see events in the EU compared to USA players is completely pointless an holds no weight because of the enormous cost and time necessary to travel from the east coast, to the west.

[Amac]

Well yet again the obvious part of me taking anytime to write is wasted so this will be the last post on this. Any posts I put are generalized unless I put @(Username) so yet again thanks for taking up a huge amount of space on the PBNation server for littler or no additional merit aside from that you play local paintball and will always support local paintball and I guess will be the one who takes down every national series to ensure that local paintball is the only thing that exists...

Honestly you have to go to the length to assume I'm French because I'm Canadian and you think that English is a hard language? I guess the next thing you'll state is that you are also a trained linguistics major who does film internships on the side. Yes this last statement was meant as a tongue-in-cheek way to say that you always have the answer to everything that I post @anticastropgeon

Also side note that if your going to say that the quality of language/content of social media is low for the NPPL I'd suggest that you step things up a bit with your teams own FB fan page...

On a totally different side note I guess having so many views to the thread is a great way to ensure that the PBNation ads which were NPPL related get the exposure needed since there was no webcast. @John you can thank me later for driving traffic...

[SNAKESNIPER (Banned)]

Originally Posted by anticastropgeon

How does a webcast grow a sport? It gives players this opportunity. People new to paintball can see what the fuss is all about. Your random rec-baller walk-on who plays twice a year can get excited and decide to make it to the field more often because this balloon bunker stuff looks pretty cool. The player who just bought his first electro can start to see the basics of body positioning or start modeling their game after a certain player. More experienced players can study a field and see how various tempos of play work on a given field. And, hey, maybe there's a player who got hurt, had surgery, and wants to watch his teammates play and scream into the phone to a coach on the sideline that they're doing it all wrong so he has some sort of connection to what's going on. All of these situations are rendered impossible when there's no webcast.

I completely agree, because I first became excited about paintball through the PSP webcasts of the last few years, and I watched and still watch the archived webcasts to help me with my form and general strategy when I play.

[tremis]

Paintball was better before webcasts of the events. Could be a coincidence.

[SNAKESNIPER (Banned)]

Originally Posted by tremis

Paintball was better before webcasts of the events. Could be a coincidence.

"Better" how?

[tremis]

In every conceivable category with the possible exception of equipment reliability.

[soccerguy243]

Originally Posted by tremis

In every conceivable category with the possible exception of equipment reliability.

talk about generic crystal ball answer...

[Deimus85]

Originally Posted by tremis

Paintball was better before webcasts of the events. Could be a coincidence.

That is an extremely subjective statement and should be disregarded in this discussion.

Originally Posted by tremis

exception of equipment reliability.

I would agree with this, except it's not relevant to this particular discussion.

[tremis]

Correct, the one area that I could think of that has improved in the era of "webcasts" has nothing to do with webcasts.

The simple point I was making.... regardless of what people hope these webcasts will do, no part of the game has been improved, so whats the big deal about them? People get so fired up about the most trivial of things. Webcasts rate up there with splash anodizing, sometimes it's cool to see, but it isnt worth the cost (and yes, I know it's free to watch)

[EPluribusUnum]

Originally Posted by Deimus85

That is an extremely subjective statement and should be disregarded in this discussion.



I would agree with this, except it's not relevant to this particular discussion.

what are you the discussion police?

[Deimus85]

Originally Posted by tremis

The simple point I was making.... regardless of what people hope these webcasts will do, no part of the game has been improved, so whats the big deal about them? People get so fired up about the most trivial of things. Webcasts rate up there with splash anodizing, sometimes it's cool to see, but it isnt worth the cost (and yes, I know it's free to watch)

I would argue the exact opposite.

Free, well broadcasted, reliable, and live webcasts has made paintball accessible to those without $1000 to blow on traveling to a national event. Staying at home, watching the pros from your computer, so you can afford to go play that Sunday, or go play that weekend long local event is what our sport needs to grow. Getting your coworker or buddy stoked on paintball because you sent him a link to a FREE well filmed depiction of our sport is what is going to grow our sport.

It fuels paintball in getting people excited to pick up their gun and go play that Sunday.

It gives paintball, albiet digital, a tangibility that was never known before. A good analogy would be how stories and tales were passed down via word of mouth, and then one day, some schmo invented the printing press and made those same stories accessible to an exponentially greater amount of people.

It gives paintball a measure of greatness to achieve. You WANT to play on the webcast field.

Granted, the game itself has not changed much since 2006, but it's digestion by the masses has grown leaps and bounds.

Arguing otherwise would be similar to arguing that only true football fans go watch the Superbowl in person at the stadium.

Originally Posted by EPluribusUnum

what are you the discussion police?

Why yes, why yes I am.

[tremis]

I would have thought that argument might have been made when we got on tv those few times. I'm probably abnormal, because when I saw myself playing paintball on tv, I didnt care. As for a webcast thats not even known outside of our tiny community, I just dont see the relevance. I remember kids being excited if they made on a derder dvd, I thought it was silly to get excited over that and it seems silly to care if you are on a webcast too.

Maybe the webcast is the holy grail that everyone aspires to be on, and without it the game isnt worth playing, I dont know. It's not important to me nor is it to anybody I would normally associate with. I guess it's just hard for me to digest what some people think is important and how they get to that conclusion.

[Deimus85]

Originally Posted by tremis

I would have thought that argument might have been made when we got on tv those few times. I'm probably abnormal, because when I saw myself playing paintball on tv, I didnt care. As for a webcast thats not even known outside of our tiny community, I just dont see the relevance. I remember kids being excited if they made on a derder dvd, I thought it was silly to get excited over that and it seems silly to care if you are on a webcast too.

Maybe the webcast is the holy grail that everyone aspires to be on, and without it the game isnt worth playing, I dont know. It's not important to me nor is it to anybody I would normally associate with. I guess it's just hard for me to digest what some people think is important and how they get to that conclusion.

Why are you wasting your time posting on a paintball forum then?

[tremis]

My time hasnt been wasted, apologies if yours has.

I like to play, I like to win. It makes me smile to know that those who I beat know that I won. I couldnt squeeze tv or a webcast into that equation anywhere. I dont feel that spectators (that would be people not playing in the event) add anything to the game either.( I know, I know. That's a different argument and should be ignored at all costs, because it couldn't possibly tie in to this discussion under any fathomable condition) I was just offering a different perspective to those who are clamoring that without a broadcast quality webcast it's the end of the world and we should all just stop playing.

I assumed that players priorities went something like this:
Win this gunfight.
Win this game.
Win this match.
Win this tournament.
Win this series.

Adding something superficial like getting on tv/webcast seems irrelevant at best, counterproductive at worst.

The entire discussion has been two camps A: no webcast they suck and B: It'll get better, give em time. I was just trying to add something outside of the "Accepted Arguments" with, C: It's no big deal, one way or another.

I understand that it doesn't fit in with your plan for how the discussion should go and should be discounted out of hand, but it is a real argument that even has some thought behind it.

[anticastropgeon]

Originally Posted by tremis

I assumed that players priorities went something like this:
Win this gunfight.
Win this game.
Win this match.
Win this tournament.
Win this series.

I would argue that anything beyond "win this gunfight" requires a certain level of strategy tailored to whichever team you happen to be playing. With the ability to study film of successful teams playing particular fields (ones you know to be fast/slow/counter-punch/whatever) you can begin to develop general gameplans. Obviously, breaking down tape on a specific team playing a specific field is the best way to prepare for a game, but that can be quite frankly impossible.

Now, watching tape of yourself to prepare for a field only tells you so much - you need to watch others. When I started playing lacrosse many years ago, I would certainly watch local players who were good, but I'd also look to see who the best players were and what strategies they used to defeat matchups. Why watch the best guy play near me when there were games being broadcast of the best players in the world? I would say that holds for paintball - I want to watch Damage sit back and eat teams alive that run into their guns, or watch that Shock/Vicious match from Cup last year with all the crazy stunts up the middle. Without a webcast, I'd never have thought to do that.

Webcasts are a resource for players everywhere. Saying that paintball used to be better before webcasts came around is strange, because coincidence is quite different than causality. "Better"? I wouldn't know. "Bigger"? Certainly. I would very much be interested to see your reasoning on why webcasts have made paintball worse.

[anticastropgeon]

Originally Posted by Deimus85

I would argue the exact opposite.

Free, well broadcasted, reliable, and live webcasts has made paintball accessible to those without $1000 to blow on traveling to a national event. Staying at home, watching the pros from your computer, so you can afford to go play that Sunday, or go play that weekend long local event is what our sport needs to grow. Getting your coworker or buddy stoked on paintball because you sent him a link to a FREE well filmed depiction of our sport is what is going to grow our sport.

It fuels paintball in getting people excited to pick up their gun and go play that Sunday.

It gives paintball, albiet digital, a tangibility that was never known before. A good analogy would be how stories and tales were passed down via word of mouth, and then one day, some schmo invented the printing press and made those same stories accessible to an exponentially greater amount of people.

It gives paintball a measure of greatness to achieve. You WANT to play on the webcast field.

Granted, the game itself has not changed much since 2006, but it's digestion by the masses has grown leaps and bounds.

Arguing otherwise would be similar to arguing that only true football fans go watch the Superbowl in person at the stadium.




Why yes, why yes I am.

[tremis]

I never said that they were bad for the sport, my opinion is that they are trivial and dont matter.