Since when has tournament paintball had a direction? Since when has paintball had a direction for that matter?
Paintball isn't a sport. It's a hobby.
It isn't run by a National Governing Body.
Very, very few players train at all. Most muck about.
Realistically it's too expensive to ever become accessible enough (financially and culturally) to get the numbers into the game to allow it to develop into a sport.
You want to make tournament paintball "better" in the short term?
Listen to all of the players all of the time. Change stuff to please them. Then change it again in 3 months time. Fail to make money and close your series. End up in a seedy B&B pimping your daughters out to Stongle to afford your next meal.
You want to change UK tournament paintball in the long term?
No-one has the money or the level of control to make the required changes happen within the UK. Paintball has been and always will be a hobby in the UK. Not a sport. Therefore, tournaments will struggle to cater for the demands of the players. The views of the players are so diverse that no single tournament format can cater for everyone.
Run a number of events (not a series) where the format is different at each event and each event has prizes in it's own right. This will cater for everybody. People will pick and choose which events they attend. Some will enter and play the formats that they think they don't like and might surprise themselves and find that actually, at the end of the day, they're all fundamentally the same. Throw a woodsball tournament in there for the hell of it and you might attract a bit more crossover from the big game scene. Include a limited paint format event and push it with kids and students at local schools, colleges and shopping centres and you've got another talent pool. Run a punter tournament with mech markers alongside a 'normal' tournament by flyering local pubs, sports centres, gyms, 5 a side football teams, etc and you've got another pool of talent to pic from... Suddenly the tournament scene has a couple of more people and the events get a bit more exciting and the game starts to grow. Possibly into a sport.
I like the idea of NOT publishing the field layouts. You don't turn up to play Sunday League football knowing what formation your opposition is going to rock up with.
