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Do people here care less about the major leagues these days?

Dusty

Don't run, you'll only die tired....
May 19, 2004
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Saw the 3 on 1 which was superb, we need more action like that to give people something to want to watch and something to aspire to :)
 

Impulse raider

RAMPAGE/SNATCH
Jun 4, 2008
1,925
118
98
HAMPSHIRE
Ash ,, as you know we played Elite last year and saw the season out but did anyone really care or notice...

Hate to think what our average age was but I'm sure @ 45 I managed to bring it well up in to its late 30's ;)

We struggled @ that level against the uk's best damn you boys are fast and feel being more of older school players found it hard going with whipper snappers running down the field at such pace..

I felt personally that fields are now designed in such away that are so open and unless you have youth on your side you are pretty much like a rabbit in car lights..

Don't get me wrong I loved the experience and probably the fact I was the oldest elite player of 2013 but fact is no one really seemed to care who was who..

I would love UK paintball to be more like PSP and webcast .

With the Rumours floating around about you guys ( Nexus ) of whiich as a professional I don't and respect you can't comment on and very few teams @ that level how big will the Elite division in the uk be next season.. ?
 

frobinson

#14 Din Eidyn
Oct 25, 2011
445
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Edinburgh
@Dusty I don't think it's just to do with the fact certain players don't view this as a sport. There definitely are plenty of players that see this as a sport, but just don't seem to have the interest in the major league tournaments. Do you think if more members maybe made a conscious effort to generate talk around events, it would make a difference?

I agree that milleniums will always be expensive and in comparison to the high level of domestic events on offer, it maybe doesn't have the same draw as you'd hope. But it just seems like players don't seem to care as much as to what's going on in the pro world. It just seems like there isn't that interest. Do you think it's due to the fact that there are so many teams popping up these days, whose entire focus is on domestic leagues? I'm not trying to discredit playing events like CPPS at all, but when you see teams solely focused around doing well at that series, with no aspirations to go higher, it's no wonder that players are being nurtured in such a way that they don't have an interest in the big leagues.

And I don't agree that there's nothing to talk about anymore! I implore you to go watch the 187 vs Aftershock game from WC when PBA put it up. Markowski charges down the snake, bunkers him, jams on the brakes in a deadspot so that he can work on the dorito player, and only then notices that the snake corner is still alive, so spins and shoots him before clearing the field! Yeah, I'm sure sideline coaching takes a whole lot of that away from the game, but surely it makes the game more intelligent? You need to be smarter to play. And then when you do see things like that happen, which do happen several times at each event, does it not just make it that bit more special?
 
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Kevin Winter

Well-Known Member
Dec 10, 2008
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I'd agree with the general feeling that sideline coaching has taken some of the spark from the game but, like ramping, it couldn't be got rid of altogether, and has been accommodated in the rules more.

I find I personally have more interest in the major tournies of late, and have watched the webcasts religiously this season, and seen some amazing games. But there seems a lot of players who aren't so interested as well. As said, the lack of a clear stream of information is a big problem, perhaps the millennium website needs a bit more news and gossip?

As for playing it? I would love to play a Mills event, but to play a whole season is financially impossible, even if you ignore the fact that my head is unlikely to approve of me taking a few days off to attend! There also (wrongly in some cases) a feeling that you run the risk of spending a big old chunk of money to play a couple of matches, get rolled over and then sit on your backsides for the rest of the weekend.
 

Ash - GI Sportz

GI Sportz
Jun 14, 2006
403
211
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38
GI Towers
Ash ,, as you know we played Elite last year and saw the season out but did anyone really care or notice...

Hate to think what our average age was but I'm sure @ 45 I managed to bring it well up in to its late 30's ;)

We struggled @ that level against the uk's best damn you boys are fast and feel being more of older school players found it hard going with whipper snappers running down the field at such pace..

I felt personally that fields are now designed in such away that are so open and unless you have youth on your side you are pretty much like a rabbit in car lights..
I dont think a lot of people did care or notice, but I believe they should have and I'd like to know how we could change that.

Look at all the stories from teams just in the CPPS Elite this season:
Nexus, return to form after 2012, top 4 pro in Europe (with some big names in the league this year)
Tigers, SPL champions, returning to pro after 7 year hiatus
Defiance, D1 champions
Firm, narrowly missed out on promotion back to SPL by 4 points, may still go up with the usual off-season movers and shakers....
Lucky 15s, D2 champions
Durham DV8, promoted to D1 (ok they only played 1 leg)
Entity, back after a few years absence and gave some good teams a run for their money at multiple events this year, potential to build on next year.

All of those are really good success stories that others can aspire to and appreciate.

I agree field layouts do lean more towards the physically able than they used to, but equally the field layout is the same for elite as it is for D5, so there is no reason why a lower level team can't just watch the Elite teams and try to understand what they are doing and how they could do something similar. Slightly off-topic, I like Ledz idea of having wider start gates in lower divisions, that way you arent messing with the actual layout, so teams can still copy the Elite teams, but means everyone is more likely to get in the game to start with rather than the one guy who spends a whole tournament getting shot off the break and still has to pay 1/5 of the teams paint bill...
 

jack-amo

Member
Oct 9, 2010
38
10
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Sandbach
Well, "people" may care less but I'm a complete PBA junkie myself, so much so that i'd rather watch PSP World Cup than actually play :p

I tune in to the mills webcast too, which is still pretty neat, but it doesnt get me hooked like PBA does.

I think there's lots of reasons people don't have interest in the major leagues, mainly attention span (who wants to spend a whole weekend watching?) and actually finding out about it in the first place.

Also, theres a pretty small target audience anyway (how many scenario/woodsball players tune in?). Another factor is people from both tourney and woodsball backgrounds are usually more interested in what new marker is on the market :D

That said, I think the shrink in interest for the major leagues probably happened before I got in to paintball (2010) becuase since i've been around its certainly been growing. More and more people I meet do tune in to PBA and the mills.

I think getting people in to fantasy paintball will help the interest grow. Any sport is more exciting when you're rooting for a player/team to do well. Potentially winning goodies adds to this, we are all a bunch of get-something-for-nothing kit whores after all :p

As for actual participation. Can't comment xD
 
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Aug 10, 2009
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-Lack of a glossy monthly publication to package all the relevant info up and feed it to us in a way we like
-Lack of any real media prescence in the UK that focusses on elite paintball .
Genuine question!

Apart from XPaint, PBScene magazine, and perhaps other magazines that have the odd article on elite teams. Is there a UK, or Europe based publicaton, digital magazine that focuses solely on following UK Elite teams?

eg. the same way ProPaintball.com and PBA do so for the US.

"Do people here care less about the major leagues these days?" I think ignoring the scale of the US we comparatively care less here about our elite compared to how they do in the US.

I think it is down to not having someone doing the Elite focused job that the mentioned guys do in the US. Alot of awesome content could be made from the examples of stories Ash mentioned about UK Elite teams.

I for one would be interested. Definitely not a fan of the lower division team stories unless it amounts to some kind of comical, charismatic or eventually they rise to the elite as an appealing pay off.
 
Last edited:
May 25, 2005
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Norfolk
www.jerseywarriors.co.uk
For me there a few reasons why I lost interest, a big one was sideline coaching, I know it's integral to xball but it just took a lot of the flair out of it.
I also agree with @Dusty that there doesn't seem to be the characters about that make you watch, the arrogance of Martinez, Lasoya, Lundqvist and many others on the field, great guys off it but they just had an air about them that they knew they could do whatever it took to beat you.
Another big one for me was losing the mixed division games at the millenium, having only got to SPL level I used to love playing the one or two games at each leg against the pro teams, it made me take more of an interest, it would attract me back now as an old fart if I knew that by going to a millenium I'd get to play a couple of pro teams.
 

Dusty

Don't run, you'll only die tired....
May 19, 2004
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Northern Ireland
For me there a few reasons why I lost interest, a big one was sideline coaching, I know it's integral to xball but it just took a lot of the flair out of it.
I also agree with @Dusty that there doesn't seem to be the characters about that make you watch, the arrogance of Martinez, Lasoya, Lundqvist and many others on the field, great guys off it but they just had an air about them that they knew they could do whatever it took to beat you.
Another big one for me was losing the mixed division games at the millenium, having only got to SPL level I used to love playing the one or two games at each leg against the pro teams, it made me take more of an interest, it would attract me back now as an old fart if I knew that by going to a millenium I'd get to play a couple of pro teams.
All of that I pretty much agree with, the younger generation won't have had the pleasure of playing against and being absolutely destroyed by the Pro teams though!!