Time Machine to change something in paintball?

[Cunha]

If you could magically change one thing about paintball history, what would you change?

I can think of a lot of things, but the inspiration for this thread was the powerfeed. I would Un-Invent the powerfeed that taints so many otherwise great blowbacks from the 90's and 00's

It doesn't have to be an un-invention. Just any single thing you would change one way or another to make it better today.

[Cdn_Cuda]

Oh, Smart Parts? You know, the whole sue everybody thing they pulled…

[autococker04]

I’d overshoot an 11 year old Billy Gardner to scare him away from paintball and see a 2021 EMag.

[MrBarraclough]

A simpler solution would be to prevent Smart Parts from getting a patent on the ridiculously simple concept of the total area of porting being equal to the area of the bore. That would have impeded but not stopped their growth, and more importantly would have avoided them getting the idea that they could patent fairly obvious "inventions" and use those patents to bully the rest of the industry.

[Euphie]

To fix the bouncing and cheater modes I would have made tournaments mechanical semi auto only. Ramping was the wrong solution.

[punkncat]

Yeah, and now we are seeing "trigger mods" that you can slap in your Eclipse or (Shocker) that allow even mechs to shoot well over 10. Everyone gets to shrug and say "well I can't cap it". Early on in paintball capped ramping was a fucking blessing compared to the electronic bounce and cheat modes that came before it. I also felt that 15BPS ramping was FAR more fun than 10 is.

[Euphie]

I am cool with 20bps if someone is actually pulling it. Thing is even on a pneumatic trigger you aren’t going to be rolling your gun that fast very often assuming you even can, especially doubtful you are going to do it left handed. Nowadays though anyone even left handed gets the max fire rate all the time, it really feels like it took a big aspect of skill away.

Also anything over like 8 scares many renters so it didn’t solve that problem either 10bps ramp in rec play is still probably enough to drive people out who are new.

[Jordan]

If you could magically change one thing about paintball history, what would you change?

I can think of a lot of things, but the inspiration for this thread was the powerfeed. I would Un-Invent the powerfeed that taints so many otherwise great blowbacks from the 90's and 00's

It doesn't have to be an un-invention. Just any single thing you would change one way or another to make it better today.

Only problem with that is Tom Kaye invented it to fix feeding problems on RF Automags.

[Tinybear]

Outlaw batteries in the sport.

[Ecapnation]

I'll go back to when Gino was conceived kick down the door to his parents bedroom and just start screaming to ruin the mood.

Bam. So much greed solved.

[Siress]

so many ideas in here were just pussy footing around... then you go and drop a tactical plan like this

[Ecapnation]

To kill a weed you pull it out by the roots.

[wunderbarsafari]

I wish the Pan-Am Circuit had gained traction beyond the west. Limited paint events, usually BYOP, rookie and young gun divisions, and affiliated tournaments for small, local fields.

That’s the only tournament paintball I ever played and it was awesome. Really welcoming, affordable and accessible to more people.

[gabe]

I would take an EMEK or Shocker CVO and drop it off in about 98 so that there would be no reason to ever invent an electronic paintball gun

[Brokeass_baller]

They still would've been invented. The Matrix was originally mechanical, but was changed to electronic to compete. Every body wanted an electro. I don't think it could be prevented.

[gabe]

I would like to think that if the mechs we have now at the blazing rates of fire, impressive reliability, and the paint handling would have nullified any advantage the electros had then. Imagine taking an Emek to the field along side a Rainmaker or shoebox Shocker and really wanting to tote around a big old electro when the mech shoots just as fast and is far lighter plus you don't have to mess around with it.

[Jordan]

Both those markers operate off of bolt systems developed for electronic control, initially, and neither would have been if not for the resurgence in mech popularity.

[Grendel]

Establish prior art with office of patents to defeat the Gardner Brothers at their game before they even started.

[cfos00]

This was my immediate thought as well. A lot of stuff would have happened no matter what. But the overly broad, ridiculous patent being granted didn't have to happen.

[Grendel]

I figure if we short circuited their efforts it would have allowed more innovation and money for R&D instead of dealing with them. Some companies like WDP, AKA (original) and AGD (original) might have survived and continued to develop and research.

[Paintslinger16]

This pretty much what I said in the similar post from a few weeks ago

[Jordan]

Establish prior art with office of patents to defeat the Gardner Brothers at their game before they even started.

Why not gain employment in the patent office, work your way up to the top, then be in a position to deny said patent?

Since we're talking hypothetical scenarios.

[Grendel]

If I remember correctly that was an office of 1 employee at the time. Might be hard to arrange but not a bad idea.

[Jonnydread]

I would change the sexualization of women in the game that was rampant in the late 90s/early 00s. It turned a generation of women away from paintball and it certainly didn't help with the mothers of young boys trying to get into it.

[bassninja]

I would make all tournaments limited paint right from the get go. Hopper-ball only, no extra paint whatsoever. The current problem (at least at my field) is that the majority of players are very closed-minded and are not even willing to try any kind of limited paint format. I think that limited paint is the best way to "fix" paintball, since it makes the whole mech vs electro, ramping, etc. debate pointless.

[Siress]

Limiting ROF to 13bps as soon as trigger assists (RT, electronics, etc) hit the market. I think the ROF wars did far more damage to this sport than the patent trolls.

[gabe]

Well ROF was defacto limited to 12bps because that's the max a 12v revvy could feed until the Halo came out in about 2003 or so

[Jordan]

13bps was an arbitrary gentleman's agreement amongst the manufacturer heads at one point, IIRC... Tom Kaye, Aaron Alexander, Bud Orr, Jerry Dobbins, etc. They all agreed ROF was getting out of hand.

Someone decided to break the agreement (BE, maybe?) and the rest is history.

[Brokeass_baller]

^^Yup. Bill Mills mentions the agreement under the "Super-Semi" section.

http://www.warpig.com/paintball/technical/turbo/index.shtml