Its just the same as wearing arm pads yet buying jerseys with more padding in them. When i wore the latest C8 jersey will my Dye Pads i was getting more bouncers off my arms than i was of my chest with a baggy jersey and some amour underneath
The make of pad/shirt is irrelevant because they are all offering a similar product, and they all feel they have to because others are..........
It would be very simple to sort this problem out and you don't need balls to do it. Just common sense and the desire to stop paintball becoming a game for girls only.
Remember "protection" the key word the marketing boys like use to sell the product to you does not have to consist of sponge type membrane you could get much better protection if you needed it by using different material that will not assist in you cheating your opposition by promoting bouncers.
And lets be completely honest, that is exactly what it is cheating.
A good quality ball will break on a baggy shirt, but come on how often do you see paint that good. Correct you don't well not consistently anyhow, what we see most of the time is a decent ball in the middle of the scale and that ball will break when it hits somthing with substance.
They reduced the rate of fire cap this year and one of the main reasons they said was behind it "we want to help to reduce the teams costs and reducing the cap will reduce the paint bill" The idiots never said they was going to nullify that potential reduction by making you shoot someone several times before you would eliminate them.
A T-Shirt and a single layer playing top should be the norm and some hard approved armour could be allowed for tournament use for arm-pads etc.
If you think the paint hurts then collectively the players could demand better paint from their suppliers or maybe some could take up speed knitting at the local pink pansy club.
Russ