gmore70

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv0GKlrDZs8

From Crawdaddy (see original post below). He says it so perfect:

This video touched on a lot of things that have soured me on paintball and why I've sort of dropped out of it lately. It really all comes down to value for money and its the same thing that lets some restaurants charge $300 for a dinner and be booked for months in advance and why others can't fill seats at $10 a dinner. I mostly play pump so a day for me is never that expensive but the price keeps creeping up and what I get back keeps creeping down. I don't expect 5 star accommodations at a paintball field but a few little touches to look like a business that wants my customer loyalty goes a long way. I know a lot of fields are run as a hobby and that's fine but if I have a choice to play at a rundown dump of a field for $150 or the backwoods with my buddies for $45 it's really hard to justify the extra money for the sake of rotted out pallet bunkers or a parking lot full of mud. I totally get the point about new players being turned off because I've seen first hand the look on a newbies face when they see what passes for a paintball field.

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martix_agent

A lot of fields are not a place to make a living, it's just a place that somebody owns for the love of the sport. It's a second "job" where they can make a little bit of money and also supply the area with some paintball.

There are also man, many large scale paintball places with lots of money and marketing, and running water. They do great things as well.

These places are built with the intention of making enough to live off of. There's stark difference between the two and I think that's what you're getting caught up on. Not every field is going to be a 5 star type place because the start up cost is way too much for the average "joe paintall" to get going. A lot of fields are not run by people with a business mind because it's not a main source of
income.

If you want to have an interesting conversation about the cost of paintball, strike up a conversation with Horizion, over on pbnation.

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gmore70

Great points. I will go talk with him. Im over there as well.

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toXic

Last year there was a thread on PBN, where a person over a tournament and associated with a paintball manufacturer, was speaking about a "business plan" they were trying to push to help paintball PLAYERS and store owners.

What was the solution? Start selling paintballs in smaller quantities, AND raise the price by 15%(or something close). This would make it cheaper for the players to play AND make store owners more money.


Does anybody else see a problem with this, or is it just me? I could be terribly mistaken, and can't remember it, but I am pretty sure this was the big plan.

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tlmiller

Yeah, not sure how that would help anyone but the manufacturers. And I dare say it would cause the industry to lose even more players as people finally gave up on what's already an extremely expensive sport.

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Trbo323

problem is as martix put it the fields that are set up from the owners that just want to have some fun

what i have noticed is that when this happens, the field owner hires his friends to be the staff. Terrible choice, if its a job, make it a job, put some elbow grease into it. but i think sometimes the owners that have this mentality, and the fields that are not kept up very well, take a step back and see that they are not making enough money to keep the place afloat, then they decide rather than fix the place up (which is hard) lets just raise the prices (which is easy)

good fields take work nomatter the size and some owners are just not willing to do that

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Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, that makes a firearm better makes a paintball marker worse. They are 2 very different worlds with nothing except a trigger in common

toXic

I just remembered the other important part of the plan and this makes it semi-reasonable. They were going to push for all fields to enforce a lower BPS. It was between 8-10 bps, this is how they justified the extra cost for paint. So they charged more per paintball, but the lower bps limit would allow players to play longer on a case of paint and the increase in price would make the field owners increase their profit margin.

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martix_agent

I remember that thread. It had some interesting points for sure, but the concept never would have caught on.

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dprimmy

I sat down and thought on the info presented in this thread...


At first - of course..initial reaction is "Why would I want paint to be more expensive and want to shoot less??!?".


Thinking on it from a volume perspective though. Front/snapshooting won't really be impacted. You'll still be firing 2 and 3 round bursts. But comparing a snap-shooting front to a back is comparable to Airball vs. Pump. You're just..likely to shoot more paint..

Say a game is 5 minutes - and the back player stays on their trigger for 2 full minutes of that game:

12.5Balls/1 sec * 120 sec = 1500 rounds.
8 balls/1 sec * 120 sec = 960 rounds.

Savings - 540 rounds.

That's a bag of paint...in 2 minutes!


This has me re-thinking my ramping strategies for cost effectiveness.

Round spacing at 12.5 bps - 0.08
Round spacing at 8 bps - .125-.0
Difference - 4.5 hundredths of a second increase between rounds.


....I think I could live with that. Being charged more for 2000 rounds and sold less? I'd be upset. But reducing my rate of fire and ball spacing by 4.5 hundredths of a second? I think I can do that Time to program the ETEK!

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tlmiller

I shoot strictly semi and usually use just one finger. No problem with paint saving here. Can usually make an entire day of play on 1/2 case. If prices went up, I can guarantee it wouldn't make it any more fun for me, it would make me have to play less often.

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toXic

dprimmy, Go for it. It can obviously save you some money or let you play longer. If you notice people running through your lanes and they normally wouldn't just up the BPS a little bit.

Taken from HP lovecraft on here.

Space between balls:
5 bps: 56 feet apart
10bps: 28 feet apart
15bps: 18 feet apart
20bps: 14 feet apart
25bps: 11 feet apart

I guess my issue with that theory, when I was actually able to get people to play paintball around here(had a groups of 20-40 come to my house every other weekend) You could get a decent case of paintballs for $32. If you wanted cheaper stuff, you could get it for $25-30.

The prices were consistently going up, and players consistently kept dropping out. If you want more profits for the store owners, sell more paint. Lower the prices where more people are able to play. They are making paintball markers cheaper than ever, and they are selling like hotcakes. Maybe it will work with paint also?

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dprimmy

I'm wondering how that spaces when compared against ...someone running a perpendicularly intersecting pattern relative to my lane.

8miles...5280 feet...42240 feet
------ x --------- = ----------
1 hr.......1 mile.....1 hour


42240 feet.....1 hour........42240 feet
--------- = ------------ = ------------
1 hour.......3600 seconds....3600 seconds


Reduced = 828feet/45 seconds = 19.0667feet/1 second


I don't want to whip out the calculus here - but if an object is traveling with a 1 foot profile, at 19 feet per second..

Actually - it kinda seems like 12.5 is ideal for this..doesn't it? Math makes head hurt and I have accounting tonight...if anyone else feels like picking this up from here..I'd be more than happy to let them.

so - someone sprinting at 8mph is running 19 feet per second.

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Crawdaddy

This video touched on a lot of things that have soured me on paintball and why I've sort of dropped out of it lately. It really all comes down to value for money and its the same thing that lets some restaurants charge $300 for a dinner and be booked for months in advance and why others can't fill seats at $10 a dinner. I mostly play pump so a day for me is never that expensive but the price keeps creeping up and what I get back keeps creeping down. I don't expect 5 star accommodations at a paintball field but a few little touches to look like a business that wants my customer loyalty goes a long way. I know a lot of fields are run as a hobby and that's fine but if I have a choice to play at a rundown dump of a field for $150 or the backwoods with my buddies for $45 it's really hard to justify the extra money for the sake of rotted out pallet bunkers or a parking lot full of mud. I totally get the point about new players being turned off because I've seen first hand the look on a newbies face when they see what passes for a paintball field.

gmore70

Thanks for that. I have copied your comments and put them at the beginning of the thread. You just nailed everything I tried to say in the video.

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tlmiller

It all comes down to the old adage "you've gotta spend money to make money".

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martix_agent

but then you'll have players shooting more paint per game, potentially making it not fun for other players.

wait, are we talking about walk-on players, or tournament events?

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toXic

This discussion is focused more on walk-on players.



I am pretty sure this is happening already. Which is another reason why it is harder for new players to start. They get out there with their rental tippmanns playing against people with their Smigman3000 and 10 pods just spraying paint everywhere.

You can always lower the BPS, restrict pods per game, etc...

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martix_agent

In that case, you raise paint prices and sell an "experience", instead of trying to sell loads of paint. It'll cost roughly the same amount, but there will be MUCH less paint to shoot.

Like I said. Strike up a conversation with Horizon if you want an interesting conversation. The man knows what he is talking about, it's just a bit backwards sounding.

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Trbo323

I will take it on,

round spacing at 8bps = .125
round spacing at 12.5 = .080

running at 8mph = 11.7333 fps and a 1ft gap takes .085 to clear and if we are taking a 1ft profile into account that would mean you are essentially doubling that to .17 seconds to clear a body through one single point, 12.5bps makes a lot of sense considering accuracy but 8bps should still hit someone....i think

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Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, that makes a firearm better makes a paintball marker worse. They are 2 very different worlds with nothing except a trigger in common

snowboarder599

At the field I frequent the most, they split the experienced groups up, and the beginners. They'll ask people if they want to play with the more experienced players, and for the most part, they don't.

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