Paintball Standards

    Paintball is an unknown sport, but growing very quickly in popularity in the extreme-sport community. Studies in 2006 showed the player increase and support rate was growing faster than snowboarding. But one would possibly say, "What standards could there possibly be involved with paintball?". Well, the rule book is quite lengthy, and doesn't necessarily provide a set of standards per se. But as an active member of the paintball community, there are a few of the big regulation changes over the years that have stuck out to me. The most influential standards I have seen in the sport of paintball is: rate of fire, field size, and team size.

    The RoF, or rate of fire, has been a fluctuating variable ever since I have joined the sport. Back when I played in the New England Paintball League, official National Professional Paintball feeder league, there was no standard rate of fire. The guns, although electronic, were set to semi-automatic, and could only shoot as fast as the finger could pull the trigger. This lead to market competition: guns that could shoot the fastest everyone would by. Those with the best triggers and the easiest to shoot would prevail. Also back then, there were 3 man, 5 man, and 7 man divisions, with the professionals playing with 7 players at a time. But I do recall a time before I got serious about the sport, and was just a spectator, when the professionals were playing with 10 man teams: chaos. And obviously the size of the field is somewhat based on the number of players on the field, which caused everyone to redesign their field layouts when the standards changed.

   Soon paintball officials and players realized the problem in letting the guns be set to semi-automatic: there was no real way to control the rate of fire, and there was a clear advantage to teams with better guns. In an attempt to level the playing field, a standard  RoF of 15 balls per second was set. Although there must have been a difference of opinion amongst organizations, because the NPPL did not adopt the new "ramping" standard. Instead they set a cap on the max RoF one could achieve with just their fingers on semi-auto to 15 balls per second. So a new professional paintball league formed: Paintball Sports Promotions, that adopted this new 15 balls per second standard, and thus x-ball was born.

    Ramping is a technology used in paintball guns, where by if you start pulling the trigger at say, 3 balls per second, the gun will automatically "ramp" up to 15 balls per second, or BpS. X-Ball is the term used by paintball players to refer to this new game where all players would have their guns set to "ramp mode". And boy was it fast paced, the ability to shoot 15 BpS right of the break was invigorating, it suddenly became extremely difficult to survive out of the starting box into your first bunker. Front players would have to run for their lives to make it to the further bunkers while back players put up "ropes" for the opposing team to run through. Teams were going through cases and cases of paint and still, at the end of the day, the usual winner was the one who shot the most. Which I am sure was great for the industry, and fun for the players, for a time, but unfortunately that madness had to come to an end. I am just proud to say I was able to be a part of that era, a part of the effort to set appropriate standards for the game I love.

    When I got to college, The National Collegiate Paintball Association, or NCPA, was a little a head of the curve in terms of standard paintball RoF. Although they had adopted the new field sizes, layouts, and a team size of five that PSP had endorsed through x-ball, they did not support the 15 BpS standard. The NCPA had set a league standard of 12.5 BpS which may not sound like a big difference, but as a player going from one league to the other, the difference was very noticeable.

    Now, with the introduction of the 2014 rule book, PSP has become more tame and reasonable by enforcing a standard RoF capped at 10.2 BpS. I for one am a firm supporter in a standard RoF. Under the rules of semi-automatic, our guns would have to be tested before every game, for certain mods in the gun or tricks one could use called "bouncing" which would almost let you achieve a fully automatic paintball gun. Refs would get to take your gun and unload as much paint as they saw fit before deeming your gun "legal". Which, was frustrating, because a team would have to ensure someone was walking around with extra paint to top you off before entering the field. By enforcing a rate of fire standard, we can make sure that one team does not have an unfair advantage over another, while still keeping the original sport of paintball in mind. Although not everyone has adopted this standard completely, as the NPPL still exists as a separate (failing) entity. it is still believed to be the global standard by most players in the community. 

http://www.paint-ball.org/paintball/statistics.htm

http://ncpapaintball.com/

http://nppl.com/

http://pspevents.com/

http://pspevents.com/rules/#.VIkCUSvF98E