For me… it’s just less parts.
if I need an elbow, I’ll forget an elbow.
if I need an elbow, I’ll forget an elbow.
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If you shoot ambidextrously then 50% of the time offset feeds are horrible because they make you hang the loader way out of your prop. You also have to go much further in 50% of the time in between snapshots, and present a target for more time.
If you tilt your marker in some positions, 50% of those times the target profile is even worse, AND your paint feeds worse since your feed tube is going horizontal.
Speedballers can quickly shoot someone in the face across a 150' long NXL field without sights, and roundball doesn't really break much further out than that, so it's hard to see how sights can actually help. Center feeds let you aim down the barrel easily by aiming down the side or tilting the marker slightly. Offset feeds kill that 50% of the time.
Speedball is not my favorite playstyle, but it IS the group that is 100% focused on what actually works best. Their criteria for gear is "what makes me win paintball more." If 100% of speedballers are using center feed even though the rules allow offset, box mags, Warp feeds, Q-Loaders, and even Maxxloaders, its a safe bet that center feed actually has the best performance.Comment
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Team left feed…Comment
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If I never played left handed or the left side of a bunker, right feed is best.
But for the variety of situations that arise on the field, a symmetrical setup works best for me.
Weight balance not an issue. Height not an issue with the better right feed setups.
Its just that switching hands is disruptive enough without the disruption of an asymmetrical feeding situation. Even slightly.Comment
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Speedball players follow dumb trends just as much as anyone. It is just as often "what someone else is doing" as it is "what makes me win"
I think centerfeed is superior but I wouldn't cite speedball paintballers as an example of good evidence based practices.Comment
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On the short term, sure, but the vertical feed is a 25 year old “fad” now that was mostly speedball driven originally. Every other alternative has been pushed with little success outside of speedball and none in it.
Paintball guns only had sights on them because they were based on BB guns and those had sights on them. The thing is BB guns have five times the range and are potentially SUPER accurate whereas I can throw a paintball about as far as I can shoot it with field level velocities so the idea that any sight or sighting at all is needed is just a mental block.
Do you need a scope to see a catcher’s mitt? Glasses maybe, but no, that’s a very short distance. You practice pitching a few thousand days and you just know where it’s going. You know what angle everything in your body has to be at to get the ball there. Meta glasses will never help. With enough elevation you can accurately piss that far and you wouldn’t need a scope for that either.
You can already tell where the gun is aimed just by the angle your human hands are holding it, some people might not realize it, but we all get this feedback. Practice that way, ditch the crutch of a sight, and be better at hitting targets. This is another thing that speedball has popularized and has stuck around for good reason. Without speedball we might have lasers and bipods and all sorts of dumb crap on our guns and be fooling ourselves into thinking it matters…it’s hard to justify that though when a speedballer can turn around and with zero time spent on sight acquisition shoot the second he gets the gun pointed at you because his body is the sight.Comment
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Technically it was always the norm until the advent of the hopper fad....🙄
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??
Competitive speedball organizations dictate 10.5 bps. They dictate round ball. They all together stiffle innovation and always have. The players follow industry trends that are just as often baseless marketing garbage as not.
Centerfeed is objectively superior.
Good players use gear that works for them within the limits of their imagination and the equipment available to them or their abilities to modify equipment, in all versions of play.
We have low price high performing guns because of China and the fact that we now know how to make them, again having nothing specific to do with speedball, the nxl, nppl, or any other single organization.
It's just the evolution of paintball. A symetrical gun responds to the ambidexterous requirements of the battlefield better than a non symmetrical gun. The majority of players discovered this, by playing all sorts of paintball.
People are still allowed to enjoy a right feed gun but it would be more likely to be made fun of on the speedball field than anywhere else. Not because of their total performance oriented focus on distilled optimization of the game but because on the speed ball field I would argue can be found the highest concentration of self conscious trend followers wearing just the head band they were told to, and no cool person they have heard of (and they're listening to all cool people) are using right feeds.Comment
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Yes competitive organizations put restrictions on ROF, layers, size of trigger guard ect. This is an attempt to keep the most level playing field. Nothing is stopping you from playing down. That bar is a limit set to keep competitive play competitive and eliminate advantages. Yes I agree “A symmetrical gun responds to the ambidextrous requirements of the battlefield better than a non symmetrical gun.“ that being said nothing is stopping you from using what you want. I personally encourage it, the majority of MCB does as well.
Consumer trends drive the market. They are a massive part of it and without that why would anyone buy new equipment with plenty of used gear on the market. If you are worried about being made fun of for your gear, perhaps you are the self conscious one.
Good players are good regardless of gear. Good players with good gear are that much better. Again you see “all the same”, I see a consumer culture & hype, that sells gear. Sales drive innovation, sales drive market trends. Sure there is an ego aspect of it, and you can hate on that all you want. However I’m not buying into the tribalism of paintball. It’s stupid, I don’t get the hate for a large portion of our sport. (Hate the player not the Game)
The idea that competition stifles innovation does not compute. Competition drives innovation in everything we do it’s built into our DNA. Paintball is no different.Comment
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No one said competition stifles competition. I don't enjoy right feeds except on the couch.
People were talking about innovation and speedball players like speedball was so high performing that it demanded certain things. That's not really how it works.
I'm also not saying that speed ball players aren't good players.Comment
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It is though that’s my point. At the top levels of the competitive side of paintball it’s extremely demanding the majority of paintball teams that dominate locally get eaten alive the minute they step on the national stage. The level of play and the game is much different at the top. Most players think speedball is about shooting paint holding lanes and ramping “ accuracy by volume right”. That might win you points locally but there is many levels to the game most don’t even have the luxury to experience on there particular home field island. That performance need is what made equipment what it is today. -
The best speedball players are the best players, its the only really competitive form of paintball.
But their interest in refining equipment is basically the same as all players. We all love gear and making it work better. Tim Kaye wasn't an elite tournament player when he invented the no rise. He was just making a design that works better with the halo. The halo is a Hopper that supports high rate of fire. Developed by a nerd who wanted to feed paintball guns faster. Not because speedball demanded it but because paintball gear nerds wanted to make shit work better. If there was no speedball your rec players would still have been reading APG and wanting gear that shoots faster.
We are talking in circles now. Hopefully this conversation felt friendly to you as it was intended to be. I don't get into nit picking points much these days because it becomes pointless pretty quick but I guess I was in the mood.
Signing off!
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I think it's a matter of priority. The first paintball guns were vert feed in that the 'stock class' feed tube opened up to the breach at the 12:00 position. However, at the time, you could put the sights on the top of the feed. When the feed tube was replaced for stick feed (before hoppers), the priority was for aiming your shots so, you moved the feed to the 2:00 or 10:00 position.
Eventually, the priority became rate of fire and, competitive players began to rely on accuracy through volume so, there was not longer a need for sites on guns and, eventually someone started putting the hopper straight on top. (with some companies even trying to have it both ways like the early Matrix).
The idea that a central hopper is easier to hide behind a bunker is misguided. It's a compromise between 10:00 and 2:00, period. A hopper at the shooters 10 is naturally better for shooting out the right side of a bunker. A 2:00 hopper is better for shooting out the left side. The problem with the compromise is that most folks ignore a very simple fact: If you rotate the gun along its barrel axis, sure, a vert feed hopper will tuck behind a bunker. But, what happens to the grip and the tank? They rotate outward, and if your tank is tucked, you arm/shoulder is coming out farther than it would need to. With a pyramid or Dorito style bunker, this is fine but, if your bunker has a vertical wall, this is a cost. Basic geometry.
The logical solution is to get the hopper off the top of the gun and bottom feed it. Your feed system can always be behind cover. There are many ways to accomplish this. A Dfender, a magfed gun with a box mag, a warp feed.... Depending on the solution you may get to a higher weight but, I'd argue that a magfed solution, trimmed down, or a Dfender would be a minimal weight increase, and easily manageable for most adults.Originally posted by Tom Kaye, in response to FS price critics:
Unfortunately all of you have played the one "speedball" game of paintball for so long you can't conceive of other ways to do this and hence any new ideas seem stupid.
External Ballistics | Rifled VS Smoothbore FS Barrels | My FeedbackComment
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I remember when powerfeeds suddenly were on every gun in the late 90s because we knew they were all "faster". Then guns started coming out with centerfeeds around 2000 because they were all "faster". This was during that time when paintball guns started to outrun hoppers, and it was a pretty big issue.
Before eyes and forcefeeds, centerfeeds just seemed logically that it would feed faster. Bill Mills (watpig) did some testing, and found no difference. I dont think speedball had that much of a difference. Not like in the early 90s when everyone cut there barrels down to 3 inches because that made them "speedball guns". lol. or everyone using vert tanks. Those were the glory days.
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i dont remember them being marketed as "faster" but i do remember hearing allot about how the "power feed" setup prevented the bolt from pressing the next ball in line from transferring the force down the line. That only the ball that is touching the top of the bolt is being affected. If it were a vert feed, each ball would press against the next in the stack. Weather there is any truth to that or not is beyond me but i always heard that an took it as truth.Comment
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Stack pressure is what made it feed better before powered hopers. I’m sure it was marketed as faster but I think it was more due to the bolt design of the markers that used them to stop clipping especially at higher rates of fire, and only having High pressure CO2 available as a pressure source at the time.
Thats why you had the super long feednecks back in the day. They fed faster. The massive stove pipes kept the balls stacked inline for shake n bake grav fed hoppers. Then hopper Tec improved to match the markers ability’s.
It’s why hoppers with cut feednecks like a Winchester go from feeding great to feeding like crap when you cut the feedneck down. Hopper position in the feedneck was important back then to. How the last ball in the stack sat at reset. If it sat to low the paint would sit against itself instead of falling freely into the hoppers feed neck funnel. JoLo solves this by adding dimples around the opening. That’s why the thing will feed like 9-10bps with no power. It’s got a long feedneck stack and room for paint to self agitate as well.
I think HPA played a big part as well markers became softer on paint as input pressures decreased and bolt designs changed to reduce clipping points and as regulator designs became better around the sametime.Comment
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The Powerfeed was marketed as faster than gravity because it supposedly used blowback air to pull the balls down. Complete bunk and the only instance I can remember of AGD selling us snake oil.Comment
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Blowback up a direct feed was legit, and the power feed did mitigate the impact of it. In an arms race without force feed hoppers, its true that even the most dubious feed enhancement was marketable. I don't consider it straight up snake oil. Despite defending its function, AGD did a lot of good but the powerfeed almost undoes that only because SO MANY good blowbacks of the era have stupid powerfeeds instead of decent right feeds. Oh well.
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