Has Paintball "Peaked"?

[Pumps4ever]

as far as I can tell paintballs themselves peaked in 1990...

[SignOfZeta]

I agree that paintball gun technology has hit the limit. The best guns ever made are being made now…but they are deeply boring and too often designed for modes of play that ultimately are designed to sell paint. All the innovation is in speedball and magfed, both of which are deeply stupid.

The game itself seems way worse that it could be…or even worse than it once was. Games used to have flags and people would actually…aim their gun. Modern day ROFs mean people hiding all day.

Safety has a looooong way to go. Some of the stories I hear about new fields are horrifying. We have better gear but are stupider about it.

[Daltech]

Agreed, it’s always elimination, nobody even cares about the flag, kids taking off masks way too often.

To be fair, when the sport started they didn’t even have barrel plugs.

[iamthelazerviking]

To quote a random YouTube comment: Paintball feels like it lost its soul and character that made it what it was

[boomersruckus]

Im not sure. It seems like paintball divided itself into woodsball/recball playing war in the woods or tourneys. Left or right. I personally love to do it all. But I am one of the people smart enough to enjoy the lovely sport we all play. It seems to fit somewhere in my DNA. That too is the problem. You either play or you dont. I am sure they do exist, the people who dabble in paintball but never commit to it. I sure havent met any that I am aware of. You either dive head in and become it or you just dont. Thats what kills this sport. You either spend a ton of money to get gear to pay a ton of money to get paint to pay decent prices to walkon to your local field. Or you do the same first few steps previously mentioned to play outlaw ball. End of the day, its a sport that requires an investment in to enjoy.
Actually come to think of it. I have the solution.... No shitty rental masks. Give every player who walks onto the field a good double pane goggle system that actually lets them see whats going on as they play. That might draw more people in to come back. I and I am sure most of you have recommended goggles as the very first item to buy. How many shitty field goggles that get dunked into buckets as their cleaning method have you seen newbs take off in matches because they cant freaking see. There. Solved. Paintball would go viral if people could actually see paintball when they played it.

[Jonnydread]

One of the local fields changed their rental package to Emeks and double pane masks a few years back and they are absolutely killing it. Lots of birthday parties and it seems like all the kids are having a super good time

[Chuck E Ducky]

Two of my favorite field do just that. Offer good masks and emek rentals. They both do fantastic using this method.

[Refoogee]

There's always innovations to be made. We've probably hit a limit in what makes sense when it comes to how fast a marker can throw paint downfield, but there's always more you can do for easier maintenance, and reliability. I'd say there's more to be done until we get a marker that never has to be maintained, never breaks a ball, never has to be oiled, etc.

Masks could use some work. The Proflex is still considered the best mask ever made by a large group of the community, and it's from the 90's. Other revered masks (like the Profiler) are similarly old designs, are controversial in some way (Dye i4), or are more expensive (Bunker Kings CMD, Push Unite, etc.). I don't think paintball has a really, really solid budget mask, that fields can buy a fleet of for rental players, as of yet.

The paintball itself could stand to be innovated. But, as we've seen with the First Strike, really changing the round divides the player base even further. Manufacturing, and consistency, are areas that really need to be improved across the board for them though.

[Trbo323]

Idk, I thought this was well about 10 years ago and then the whole mech revolution came about and the designs that came out of that.

I'd still love to see a good mechanical hopper. The pals was a decent idea but just not reliable enough for me to consider good. I even have a pals emek and was loving the idea of playing without any batteries and once I tried a few times I realized it didn't feed reliably enough

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[Chuck E Ducky]

I feel like the JoLo design was more of a gravity fed hopper revolution than anything. It feeds way better than the PAL hopper.

[Drunkscriblerian]

Idk, I thought this was well about 10 years ago and then the whole mech revolution came about and the designs that came out of that.

I'd still love to see a good mechanical hopper. The pals was a decent idea but just not reliable enough for me to consider good. I even have a pals emek and was loving the idea of playing without any batteries and once I tried a few times I realized it didn't feed reliably enough

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I feel you bro.

Not to derail the thread but I've always resisted the idea of electric hoppers... and electric anything in general regarding paintball. Adding a third consumable to the mix, yeah I've always been against that. The current resurgence of mechanical guns, yeah I'm here for it.

The A-5's Cyclone feed had soooo much potential. I got back into the game after my SO found an A-5 at the hotel she worked at, no one claimed it so she brought it home to me rather than follow her boss's instructions and put it in the garbage. I was like "This, right here, is the answer to Teenage Me's wet dreams!" So, I bought some mods and tried to make the feed system work right. The big problem is, the Cyclone Feed system is hella abusive on paint and no amount of modding fixes that. Sure, with an A-5 you can throw paint at ridiculous rates (which most modern fields won't allow) but you're throwing cheap garbage paint that makes you a graduate of the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy.

I ended up buying a Nova N-1 and loving it, but now...well, I'm shopping for an electric hopper, because my ancient VL-200 cannot keep up with my gun. I sure wish there was a mech option I could buy. Because I still don't like the idea of adding a third consumable to playing paintball.

[mooman978]

That’s a cool hopper if never seen that before

[Drunkscriblerian]

I have never seen that design before but clockwork power would count as a "third consumable" in my book. Still, a neat idea...and WAAAAY better executed than any of the wacky clockwork-based feeding systems I saw in the 90s. At least it doesn't seem to chop paint like crazy (Tippmann F/A, take a bow here).

[Cdn_Cuda]

A guy at my local field had one. Found it’s winding mechanism to be super loud.

[boomersruckus]

A mech with an external moving backblock (cocker) could do an old trick I saw years ago. Dude drilled 2 holes into his shake and bake hopper, they were in line diagonally from the front of the hopper upper front nose down to the lower rear hopper. This was in line with the rear cocking rod of whatever gun it was. He put a rubber band through the holes and tapped a wad of paper to the rubber band inside the hopper. Every time he fired, the rod moved, pulled the rubberband, pulled the wad of paper and shuffled the balls in the hopper. Clever as all hell but ugly. I thought for certain something like this would be improved upon. I personally love electric hoppers with the egg being my favorite. Too bad the lids were so damn brittle. This pic is hella youger me playing the 2003 Toulouse Millennium event. That was a 98 Angel LCD with a THOR reg because even back then I knew drop forwards were lame. Original freak kit and the beloved hopper. Those were the days.

[nicmauro]

Norcal? That's the only folks I ever heard say "hella" 😂

[boomersruckus]

Originally from Oroville but my dad was in the military. Ended up in Texas. He grew up in Oroville and thats where I got it from.

[uv_halo]

A Pneumatically actuated Warp Feed? I think that could fit the bill.

[RhoXi]

APP made a pnuematicly actuated hopper but recently discontinued it. The only reason I knew about it was because I was cruising their site a while back. I've never heard it mentioned anywhere else. Probably because it only seems to work on blowbacks.

http://www.allenpaintball.com/turboloaders.html

[Jonnydread]

This is very similar to the air assist you used to see in old school Shockers and Angels. It actually works pretty well, at the cost of being a bit ugly and cumbersome.

[glaman5266]

There are MANY things that could change in paintball. Gun tech, mask tech, making stuff more player-friendly, the list is extensive. Other things could drive innovation and/or change as well, such as changing laws or material availability and/or material prices.

This thread will age like milk. Any time anyone says anything about something hitting it's peak is usually proven wrong. Most things need to be around for much longer than paintball has for it to truly hit their peak.

EDIT: Now in terms of popularity... There might be something to that. And that can be blamed squarely on 2008 and subsequent economic, social and legal events.

[Chuck E Ducky]

While I agree you can’t predict the future. Without a better ball marker performance has peaked. Manufacturers can claim anything and then could blame the paint. They are already splitting hairs and moving stuff around just for the sake of having something new to talk about. I could see battery operated like an oversized airsoft marker being something. Removing the need for HPA could revolutionize the industry. Pop up solar power generator for power supplies. Then again it’s interesting to see the Airsoft market steer towards paintball style play with HPA conversions.

[glaman5266]

Yeah, I was factoring in any/all possibilities. Raw marker performance peaked in about 2002. But there’s so much room in other areas to improve and innovate.

[The Hobbit]

I’ve been thinking. How long from the time the modern major sports were created, until they became what we have today. Baseball was being played back in the 1860s and didn’t become popular until the 1900s. At least in a fashion that we know today. How many years of refining rules and gameplay in the early days. We still see refinement in the game today.

Football, what started being played sometime around the turn of the century. It didn’t become popular till what the 50s or so, the superbowl started in the 70s(?).

im not worried about the future of paintball. At some point it may scratch out its mainstream corner like MMA has or it may not. Who cares, enjoy the game as you play it.

[Trbo323]

Let's go full MCB here.

12g powered force feeder

Brass drive cone

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[Drunkscriblerian]

Let's go full MCB here.

12g powered force feeder

Brass drive cone

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A separate 12g to power the hopper??

Part of me says "bro, not the point I was making".

Another part of me says "I...kinda wanna see that. Just, you know, because".

[TF_Aloha]

"I...kinda wanna see that. Just, you know, because".

I believe that is the foundational statement of this entire forum.

[Drcemento]

I still think there was something so fundamental to shooting one another with pump guns in the woods that drove the initial climb of paintball like wildfire - call it a primeval response - any of my friends that got out an played in that sweet zone of the mid to late 90's will still talk about those games with a fondness and recall that is amazing, and all of them will still make an effort to play whenever they can to this day. Most of those guys - me included never got a single elimination on that first day but all wanted nothing more than to come back and get their hands on a gun. We all dreamed of Automags and Autocockers someday, but when we finally got them we wanted to return to pump playing. The adrenaline of those games that came from the sneaking around and not being able to see your enemy for the first 5 minutes of the game, or being sniped without knowing where it came from really took it to another level.

I'd love to see innovation go in some crazy way to a more reliable pump gun - one that a newb can use without getting to frustrated with just figuring out how to use the thing where the pump is not loading the ball necessarily - only charging the valve. then make that super affordable and moddable. That, along with a concerted effort on the fields part to embrace paintballs roots and go back to the woods, slow things down, just might actually grow the sport.

[DocsMachine]

Okay, try this angle: What can change?

Will we see, for example, tanks that hold more than 4,500 PSI? Not impossible- none of this will be- but unlikely. Besides the feasability of producing much higher pressure air, there's the materials for the tank. We've already gone from solid metal to fiberglass wrapped, to carbon fiber wrapped, to thinner stainless steel inner bottles. There's a limit to what we'll be able to make, and, of course, what the player will buy. You might be able to go with a titanium inner bottle (not as strong as other alloys, but lighter so you can have thicker walls) with a wrapping of something like Spectra fiber, or even the oft-promised carbon-nanotube fiber...

But it might also cost $750, and offer no real benefit over what we already have.

Higher pressures mean more expensive compressors- in a market already low on cash- and more expensive tanks. And to what benefit? So you can go three rounds without topping up, rather than just two?

How about barrels? We've tried porting, rifling, "liner guides", air grooves, polyagonal rifling, and size adjustability down to the thousandth. The most exotic barrel we have today is still just a control bore back and a looser tip, with some holes drilled to make it quieter. I certainly won't say there's no room for improvement here, but I'd bet a paycheck that in 20 years, we'll still be using what's basically just a smooth aluminum tube.

Loaders? We have top-notch force-feed loaders already. They're not going to get much bigger (500-round Rotor, anyone? ) so the only thing I can think of is how they mount (I've always thought that something that clips to a sort of sight rail would be better) or where they mount- such as underneath the gun, like a box Rotor.

But again, even there, in 20 years there will still be plenty of people using the same hoppers we have today.

The ball is a big one. And easy- bring the size back up to .688-.690, and improve the quality to get them back to mostly round. But, I don't see anything going much beyond that. We've tried plastic shells, those... what were they, plant based shells? Dozens of different kinds of fills... And again, there's the cost. The main reason we see crap paint today to the manufacturers trying to keep the price down I suspect the correlation between price and the number sold is a LOT more direct than most of us realize.

People complain today about paying a nickel a ball. No one will bay 15 cents a ball. (First Strike, sure.)

Best we can hope for there is somebody starts up an encapsulator with the direct intent to make the best ball for the best price they can.

But don't hold your breath.

The same goes for almost everything else. Think we'll see some big advancement in pods? Pod packs? (That hasn't already been tried.) I can't see the goggles moving beyond a lexan panel held in a molded plastic frame. Fogging will always be a problem- that's one that NASA hasn't even fully solved yet- and simply from a cost standpoint, no one's going to go with exotic materials.

Don't hold your breath for a HUD either. I can see the eventual "augmented reality" glasses- like the old Google Glass- maybe seeing some incorporation, but really, what could it tell you? How many shots you have left? How much air you have left? That would require sensors and Bluetooth on the gun. Where the other players are? That would require an array of sensors on the field- or some sort of portable radar, or trying to convince all the other players to carry Airtags or something.

What's that leave? The gun mechanism itself? The modern spoolers are still seeing incremental improvements, but only incremental.

Again, I'm mot saying nothing can improve- there will always be improvements. But at the same time, I very much doubt the gear of 2045 is going to be all that much different than what we're using today.

If, that is, the sport is even still around. And that, in my opinion, is a considerably more important topic.

Doc.