Opinions on blind layouts?

[iamthelazerviking]

This is more of a tournament/air ball thing, but I am seeing the blind layout format being used more and more. Someone pointed out that team Dynasty proved they are really good when they know the layout but didn't do well when it came to not knowing the layout at all.

I don't really follow "pro" stuff, but in general I think a blind layout is awesome. Especially for tournaments. It's also really fun playing new places and not knowing the layout yet.

[jokers]

I appreciate the blind layouts and as long as they remain totally blind for everyone then i think they could showcase the skill of the players. I do think there should be a practice layout that is similar to the blind layout that all teams can practice think something similar, not the actual map that will be played but a major feature of the map like short snake or open middle or even d side has 1 bunker on either end whatever the major feature is should be in the practice layout that would allow for team practice and keep it blind.

[Falcon16]

I'm in favor of the idea. it makes things more interesting not knowing the layout beforehand. Really separates the crappy teams from the good teams.

[alpha_q_up]

Personally I prefer watching people play a blind layout cause you can see in real time people adapt to new angles, it would be interesting to see if all leagues to did blind layout, it forces teams and players to be more self reliable, and have more field awareness.

[Ecapnation]

It forces the players to adapt and learn in real time not with hours of practice.... Modern players have no gun skills but are great at blind angles

[Euphie]

I love it, but I don't think it is appropriate for the pros, because someone will always leak it in big events to someone. Everyone in the paintball industry high up has friends on teams that play in those high end events so I don't trust it

[BrickHaus]

Id like to see bunkers moved between points. So the pros can't watch and learn each point.

That would also prevent leaks.

[Euphie]

Now this is an idea I can get behind, also if there are different multiple simultaneous layouts even better, like the older events did

[Trbo323]

So now the pro circuit is experimenting with what it's like to go to a random field on a random weekend?

I would have figured they would be more in touch with the sport by now

Honestly, it's not far enough. Here's my ideal "pro" circuit

2 week notice for any changes, details of the field may be given but never layouts

Event 1) let's say "as is" with a blind layout

Event 2 ) teams must consist of 2 pumps, 2 mechs and 1 electro

Event 3) reset markers, urban field. Lots of walls, small buildings etc

Event 4) reset field, use any marker y want, must be powered by 12g carts

Event 5) 7 man format (remember, 2 week notice)

Etc etc

I'm looking for the best "paintball" team, not the best group of players with rules A, B, C, D in play and who know the field

To me, so much of paintball is about reacting to different scenarios, why not make the pro circuit reflect that?

This would also make it way more interesting to watch

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[Euphie]

I like this too, the reason we started playing tournaments in the first place was so we could get different competition than what we had available at our local fields not so that we could play a totally different game with totally different rules

[martix_agent]

It sounds a lot like scenario game play.

[Chuck E Ducky]

It really doesn’t matter. It just makes walking an reading the field that much more important. Knowing your shots is key especially in 5 man ware you can kind of keep track of all the players. 7 and 10 man has always been more heads up crap shoot. The best plan really goes out the window after the a few bodies drop. It’s more about communication and working together then anything. You could drill a 5 man layout over and over on a gridded field show up to an event and more often then not it’s different. Maybe some top tier players have a hard time and one might do better statistically. But your talking about the top players in the game the Pinnacle players of the sport. With 95% of teams that compete it’s not gonna make a difference regardless of what they do. I always liked getting the layouts because it forced teams and players going to an event to show up to practice to learn the lay out. The practices were just as intense as the events themselves. The few travel practices just before an event were always the best and you learns the most from truly good players who put the work in. Not knowing the layout seems lazy to me. I like the incentive it creates to go and practice.

[Rainmaker]

Not paintball related, but the concept sounds similar to how some of the rock climbing competitions i climbed were set up. The whole climbing gym was cordoned off for a couple days before the comp, and they would set brand new routes. On the day of, everyone would wait their turn in a holding area, unable to preview the routes or watch anyone else try to climb them. On your turn, you had a limited amount of time and attempts to climb each route.

A blind format like that really promotes critical thinking and problem solving, and spectators love it because it lets you see how different competitors approach the same problem.

[punkncat]

If you have a few moments to walk a field layout with your team, know how to read a field, it really shouldn't matter if you have seen it before or not.
The one aspect I do really like about blind field format is that the first few rounds are always crazy with people trying things that might or might not work out. After the first few rounds (and anyone not playing SHOULD be watching) it really doesn't matter.

[Chuck E Ducky]

The issue is how do you make Paintball appealing to watch. Without negatively affecting the game. I don’t believe in making the sport more fun to watch, I believe in making it more fun to play. With 20+ years in the game the only ones I want to watch are the Pros playing finals on the same layout I just got done playing. I know they have a small following of people who keep track of the stats and players. But out of all the people I have met in paintball I know Very few people who follow pro paintball religiously they are all pro / semi pro refs. I don’t think it’s smart to focus on how to make it more visually appealing. They need to focus on making them fun for the players and the rest will come.

Perfect example The Iron City Classic for example in its prime when Tim was still running it. Had to be the most fun I have ever had playing paintball. It had massive crowds, Big teams, all kinds of vendors. You knew the layouts it’s a woodsball field they aren’t moving those mounds and structure. That wasn’t the important part. It was exciting to watch the jousting with bright pink fill. The massive run threws. The arguments that were settled over a beer after the game. No name teams putting the boots to big name teams because they made a good play. That’s what made it fun to watch even if you have never played a game of paintball in your life. It was fun to watch.

Pro paintball is just boring to watch. I don’t feel Blind layouts are important to the sport at all. I think the negatives of it far outweigh the positives from a player perspective. It really depends on how much value you put in the commercialization of paintball. I personally put very little value in that. So Blind or Not in the words of our great rulers “what difference does it make“.

[Jonnydread]

Well said. I've been playing all formats of the game for years and even I think most paintball is boring to watch. Mask-cam footage can be fun, especially with aggressive limited paint players, but that's a niche within a niche.

[MrBarraclough]

Been thinking about this issue some lately, as it happens. On a recent road trip I listened to some paintball podcasts, specifically two interviews with Tom Cole (president of the NXL for those who don't follow pro paintball) and one with Rich Telford (GoSports webcast commentator for the NXL and former pro player). The Cole interviews were from last Fall and this past February, and the one with Telford was about a year and a half or two years old. Blind layouts came up in all three. Somewhat to my surprise, Tom Cole's take was that blind layouts actually favor the already dominant top teams, based on his observations when various leagues have experimented with them. He thinks that having to quick adapt to a new layout advantages the more experienced and well-resourced teams and that giving teams a couple of weeks to analyze and practice a layout helps to even the playing field a bit for the lower ranked teams. That struck me as a little counterintuitive, since the top teams' advantages include the ability to replicate an upcoming layout on their dedicated home practice field and play it to death prior to the tournament. I would think that blind layouts would narrow the gap between teams who can afford to pay players to be full time paintballers and those who cannot. Cole's view appears to be that even the 20th ranked pro team in the NXL is going to be able to practice the layout for a couple of weeks prior to the event. The discussion was limited to the context of the pro division of the NXL, so I'm not sure what Cole's view would be with regards to the amateur divisions.

Rich Telford's take is more in line with my expectations: He believes that published layouts advantage the more well-resourced teams who can afford to practice the layout over and over in the run-up to an event, and that it masks differences in ability to quickly read fields, an ability that he thinks competitive paintball ought to test. And as someone who watches every single pro match at every major NXL event, he argues that it makes paintball less interesting. Teams will essentially "solve" a field like a puzzle and determine the optimal moves for every likely situation, so the outcomes of matches between top level teams will be determined by the minutiae of execution. Whether someone got their gun up in 0.3 seconds instead of 0.4, whether they took one too many steps before sliding, or one too few, whether they turned their head at just the right moment or just the wrong one, etc. And he thinks that gets kind of boring. The top players will have run 60 or 70 points on that layout before the first match of the tournament, and someone who has analyzed that layout can pretty reliably predict what each player is going to do.

While I have a lot of respect for Tom Cole, the tremendous effort he puts into promoting the sport, and his long experience as a player and event manager, and I think that his observations are not to be dismissed or taken lightly, Rich Telford's take makes a lot of sense to me. I watch a fair amount of NXL on GoSports and YouTube, way more than a strictly recreational woodsballer has any good reason to. And I find that the matches between top teams are often a little duller. You see far fewer big, explosive plays that dramatically change the momentum of a match. For the very top teams, the outcomes seem almost (not quite, but almost) random, because they have controlled all the controllable variables and only the uncontrollables are left. Watching some of the upper level amateur matches (D2 or D3 semis and finals) is often more interesting. Players make mistakes that their opponents capitalize on and it blows the game wide open, or they do something crazy that by rights should be horrendously stupid but they get lucky and it works. You see more situations where players are obviously trying to think on their feet, because they haven't played this layout five dozen times and they don't know precisely where their opponents are going to go. So I kind of favor bringing some of that uncertainty and chaos back to the top tier matches.

For those who don't follow the NXL closely, we got a dose of this very recently. The Lone Star Open at the end of April was a blind layout. Teams got to walk the field on Thursday before play started on Friday. Some teams reportedly stayed out there for up to five hours that afternoon. And not only was it a blind layout, it was the first NXL layout in forever that was not mirrored, but rather had rotational symmetry. As in, the snake was to the right and the doritos to the left for both teams at once, with each side of the field switching dorito/snake-snake/dorito at the center line. That certainly introduced some chaos. Lots of players quickly made it to the 50 and then promptly got shot after crossing it into the other type of bunker layout. It made for some interesting matches, as well as some upsets and near-upsets. I hope we see more of this in the future, and I suspect we may. In the February 2022 podcast interview with Tom Cole, he pointed out that nothing in the NXL rulebook actually requires there to be a snake side and a dorito side, nor does it even require that the sides be mirrored. Given what we just saw in Texas, it looks like the NXL is willing to at least experiment with breaking field layout traditions.

[Cunha]

Maybe a book of layouts that is literally chosen from a ball raffle device the day of the event, and setup and announced to everyone so finding out layout details that are exclusive is not possible.

And making them all play stock class.

[Trbo323]

Pro paintball is just boring to watch. I don’t feel Blind layouts are important to the sport at all. I think the negatives of it far outweigh the positives from a player perspective. It really depends on how much value you put in the commercialization of paintball. I personally put very little value in that. So Blind or Not in the words of our great rulers “what difference does it make“.

I don't think about the commercialization as much as I think about growing the sport.

To me, golf is boring to watch, while I've played it before and have enjoyed it, I have 0 interest in going out and playing

Rock climbing is fun to watch, I do want to go rock climbing

So if paintball is boring to watch because.... Well for any reason you want, how will it attract the new players?

For those who don't follow the NXL closely, we got a dose of this very recently. The Lone Star Open at the end of April was a blind layout. Teams got to walk the field on Thursday before play started on Friday. Some teams reportedly stayed out there for up to five hours that afternoon. And not only was it a blind layout, it was the first NXL layout in forever that was not mirrored, but rather had rotational symmetry. As in, the snake was to the right and the doritos to the left for both teams at once, with each side of the field switching dorito/snake-snake/dorito at the center line. That certainly introduced some chaos. Lots of players quickly made it to the 50 and then promptly got shot after crossing it into the other type of bunker layout. It made for some interesting matches, as well as some upsets and near-upsets. I hope we see more of this in the future, and I suspect we may. In the February 2022 podcast interview with Tom Cole, he pointed out that nothing in the NXL rulebook actually requires there to be a snake side and a dorito side, nor does it even require that the sides be mirrored. Given what we just saw in Texas, it looks like the NXL is willing to at least experiment with breaking field layout traditions.

I caught a little snippit of this while I was at supergame.

My thoughts

"Wow, they finally had the balls to try something new"

For me though, it's just a baby step when they really need to be taking leaps in order to bring interest back into the pro levels. I'm cool with symmetry of some sort to keep things fair but hell, don't let the teams see the field before their first match when they line up. They also have 5 fields or so at any given event, why do they all need to be the same?

Some of the most interesting paintball for me was back before everyone was sponsored, seeing a cocker, a spyder and a bushmaster on the same team was awesome. Always made me wonder why that player decided on that marker. That's why I think it would be really really cool to throw some gear curve balls at teams. Get them out of their comfort zones, see who can adapt and who dies.



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[Chuck E Ducky]

“So if paintball is boring to watch because.... Well for any reason you want, how will it attract the new players?”

By getting people out to play and showing them a good first experience. You could watch all the paintball videos you want and none of them will give you the adrenaline dump like the first time walking on the field and having paint wiz by a bunker. Or that feeling you get when you place a good shot on an opponent. Or the smiles you get when you talk with friends about the game. That’s how you attract new players and keep them coming back.

Tournament paintball is a test of skill designed to be the most even playing field. It’s not fun for new players at all. It’s fun for people who are competitive.