Has XSV changed the face of tournament Paintball forever?

[Chicago]

My point was that Baca and Chicago are never going to agree with Duff and I on the issue that cheating is wrong.

Who says we don't agree with you? I agree that cheating is wrong.

But letting yourself be cheated is also wrong. So honest players have two choices: Be cheated, or cheat. Both wrong. It's not the players fault that they choose to do something wrong, because wrong choices are the only choices the league has left them with.

Actually, that's not entirely true: There's a third choice: don't play. And there are certainly people who choose that.

 

[Chicago]

Are you saying that the contestant should take no responsibility for abiding by the rules of the contest?

The contestant should not be expected to compete in an environment where his opponent is allowed an unfair advantage. When you allow a contestant's opponent to cheat, you are stealing a fair chance at competing from that competitor, which he can only regain by cheating themselves or not competing at all.

That's what NPPL has right now: Cheaters, people who the league is stealing the fair chance of competition from by allowing the cheaters to cheat, and people who are not playing at all.

You can't blame the player when it's the league that's limiting them to three ****ty choices.

Cheating is wrong. Letting people cheat your other competitors is MORE wrong, because you're basically saying "Come play my league, where the rules other people play under are different, and it's your fault".

 

[MissyQ]

to use a parallel of Locoic proportions.

If you have your car stereo stolen, and a few days later, a freind of yours offers you a stolen car stereo cheaply, to replace it, would you buy it?

See I wouldn't, and it has nothing to do with receiving stolen goods. if the stereo was in the wrapper I would happily accept, but if that stereo had come out of some other poor ****ers car, there is no way I would touch it.

You can only justify the eye for an eye mentality so far, and then your own moral code has to kick in.

Of course I have the option to not have a stereo, but I want one.

 

[MissyQ]

No-one is 'letting' anyone cheat Chicago.
The refs don't 'let' people cheat.
The nature of the cheating has accelerated extremely fast in the last 2-3 years and the rules and refs simply have not caught up yet.

and of course you can blame the player. Its the player thats cheating. Its the fact that the player is cheating that necessitates the need for better rules and refs. You make sense for a while, and then you make a statement like that!

 

[Fisz]

What I would like to see happen is for NPPL to adopt a standard, open, certified, semi-auto chip. 15 bps full auto or ramping is a cop-out.

The technology is here. One of the reasons Aaron Stephens of Lucky PB designed his un1chip boards was to allow leagues like the NPPL to be able to introduce official tournament software to be distributed to players at event registration.

Another way of approaching this from another end would be to introduce a software/hardware tournament lock activated by some gizmo directly on the field and thus limiting the ROF capability of guns.

But... Paintball as a sport is much more connected with the business side of it than any other discipline that I can think of. How a certain team fares can translate directly into success for the company that supplies the team with guns, paintballs and other equipment. If such a team loses because the markers that they use are not up to par with everyone else’s it means that the product is flawed - ergo, smaller sales.

Someone here stated that there's need for more severe penalties for cheating... Independent studies in regard to law enforcement show that it is not the severity of the penalty for committing the crime that causes less crime - It's the certainty of being caught and penalized that brings the crime rate down.

Since I'm not involved in any way with the leagues you talk about due to living in a distant country (Poland) it's hard for me to accurately judge whether the rules in place are ok or not. My countrymen say that that which is not forbidden is allowed... They also say that even if it's forbidden, there's a way to go around it. If you want a fair playing ground, first you need to make sure that there's no way of getting away with breaking the rules - that means good refs who know the rules and act accordingly when such are being broken. In practice that would in my opinion require a Corps of professional paintball marshals traveling around the world and getting paid a lot for being what they should be: an elite group of professionals who pride themselves in their work. And that means a lot of money to spend.

 

[Chicago]

If you have your car stereo stolen, and a few days later, a freind of yours offers you a stolen car stereo cheaply, to replace it, would you buy it?

That's not a locoic analogy. Baca would never offer that analogy because he'd know it was a bad one. It's a bad analogy because your 'analagous situation' provides a 'right' choice - the guy can buy a non-stolen radio. The players don't have a corresponding choice - their only choices are cheat, be cheated, or don't play. They are not able to pick 'follow the rules and have a fair competition', because the league has decided not to make that option available by failing to enforce the rules.

A Locoic analogy would be "If your radio was stolen, and the only replacement radios available to you were either stolen or did not work, would you buy a stolen radio, buy a broken radio, buy a new car, or not listen to the radio at all?"

And, if those were the only choices available, whose fault is it that it's not possible to buy a functional, replacement radio that is NOT stolen? Clearly the inavailability of a functional, non-stolen radio is not the fault of the guy whose radio got stolen - it's the fault of the car and radio manufacturers for failing to provide replacement radios.

and of course you can blame the player. Its the player thats cheating. Its the fact that the player is cheating that necessitates the need for better rules and refs. You make sense for a while, and then you make a statement like that!

I think you're missing a nuance of my point.

You can blame the FIRST player for cheating.

But once the league lets some players cheat without any penalty, they've taken away my ability to follow the rules and have a fair competition, and at that point, the ONLY entity at fault for having a league full of cheaters is THE LEAGUE - either they are going to get a league full of cheaters because the remaining players choose to cheat so they have a fair chance at winning, or they are going to get a league full of cheaters because the people who are honorable enough to not cheat will stop playing, leaving only the cheaters left to play.

Letting the cheaters cheat AND expecting the other players to PLAY HONEST *AND* keep paying you money to play is just plain stupid. They're not going to do it. They're going to cheat or stop playing. You can blame the cheaters for cheating all you want, but the fact is the people who don't cheat sto playing because you didn't provide what you, as a league, we supposed to: an opportunity for people who follow the rules to have a fair chance.

If the league is not providing players who follow the rules a fair chance at winning, the league won't have players who want to follow the rules. Period.

 

[Chicago]

accidentally doubled.

 

[MissyQ]

Yes, you can argue that 'he's doing it so I'm doing it'. Thats what I would expect you to argue, and it is exactly where where the erroded moral fibre I mentioned comes into play.
I am not arguing about the fact that the league needs to handle the problem. I have never said that the solution to the problem lies with the players, only the initial cause of the problem is with the players.
I too think that the NPPL gun rules are unenforceable and hugely outdated.
I too want to see sanity restored by introducing measures to better police the problem. I just would prefer to see it done in a way that does not put the league in jeapardy.

Also, as I have said many times, I just don't think it is OK for a bunch of people, who are cheating in every way they possibly can, to sit back and blame officials for not being able to successfully stop their opponents cheating. This is the area we seem to disagree on. You think its OK. I don't. I am simply explaining this difference away as a general ethical difference between the bulk of British people and the bulk of American people. I can even use Robbo as a bonifide example. A British team owner refusing to afford his team an 'advantage' (I use use the term with tongue in cheek of course) due to his beliefs that it is cheating, and cheating is not something he wants blackening his name. I 100% understand and respect his position, you mock it and even offer a suggestion that he cheats and then 'fesses up' tp prove a point, something that I can assure he won't do, as he has to cheat to do it, thus putting his name to it, and negating his ethical position altogether.
Its not your fault, or America's, but it IS a cultural difference, and one I think the Brits should be very proud of. Brits are taught that there is no honour in winning unfairly. Americans have a 'whatever it takes' attitude, hance my OJ reference. I'm not saying either are necessarily wrong, certainly not 'illegal' anyway.

 

[Robbo]

Yes, you can argue that 'he's doing it so I'm doing it'. Thats what I would expect you to argue, and it is exactly where where the erroded moral fibre I mentioned comes into play.
I am not arguing about the fact that the league needs to handle the problem. I have never said that the solution to the problem lies with the players, only the initial cause of the problem is with the players.
I too think that the NPPL gun rules are unenforceable and hugely outdated.
I too want to see sanity restored by introducing measures to better police the problem. I just would prefer to see it done in a way that does not put the league in jeapardy.

Also, as I have said many times, I just don't think it is OK for a bunch of people, who are cheating in every way they possibly can, to sit back and blame officials for not being able to successfully stop their opponents cheating. This is the area we seem to disagree on. You think its OK. I don't. I am simply explaining this difference away as a general ethical difference between the bulk of British people and the bulk of American people. I can even use Robbo as a bonifide example. A British team owner refusing to afford his team an 'advantage' (I use use the term with tongue in cheek of course) due to his beliefs that it is cheating, and cheating is not something he wants blackening his name. I 100% understand and respect his position, you mock it and even offer a suggestion that he cheats and then 'fesses up' tp prove a point, something that I can assure he won't do, as he has to cheat to do it, thus putting his name to it, and negating his ethical position altogether.
Its not your fault, or America's, but it IS a cultural difference, and one I think the Brits should be very proud of. Brits are taught that there is no honour in winning unfairly. Americans have a 'whatever it takes' attitude, hance my OJ reference. I'm not saying either are necessarily wrong, certainly not 'illegal' anyway.

I will say this much because I have always tended to steer well away from making relative cultural observations with regard to cheating because I am not sure what it actually achieves and I don't think it actually benefits the process...and in this case the 'process' as far as I am concerned is all about eradicating gun cheats.

I have played both sides of the Atlantic, been involved in playing for American teams at the highest level and I know what goes down .. and there is a cultural difference and I think this is an emergent property of the will to win that seems to be drummed into Americans.
The US is a country seemingly defined by its own success, it not only seeks validation from others in this respect but as a nation (and therefore as individuals) it also validates itself in terms of success or failure.

You can easily identify socio/ commercial markers littered throughout American society that reinforces this sometimes unhealthy obsession with 'winning'.

The irony is this, as a nation, the legislature that governs the vast majority of sports institutions etc is above reproach in that it sets out, leastwise in theory to play a straight game, to have equitable rules and punishments etc but as individuals, the cultural divide manifests itself in significant numbers in Paintball choosing to play the dark side.

And yet the moral indignation displayed when somebody is outed is sickening.
This too is truly ironic.
I will give you an example, a recent 'talk' by someone at PGI with one of the best known individuals in Paintball, and I am talking about one of the best known, made the following comments.
And before I mention them I will need to provide some background.
This guy is well known for being the virtual Antichrist when it comes to cheating, he has played the dark zone ever since I have known him.
I am not talking about just playing here, I am talking about trying every trick in the book, advocating gun cheating as a policy......you get the picture..
And yet this guy when asked about his team's propensity to cheat in the NPPL said, (not verbatim) , 'Yeh, we are the only team who do not cheat in the NPPL, they all do, even that Robbo's Nexus, they cheat, I have seen them shoot their markers and there is no way those guys ain't got gun cheats'.

The cultural environment in US Paintball is such that it provokes an almost knee jerk acceptance of the need to abandon fair play but the hierarchical legislation that governs Paintball and endeavours to provide a moral reference base in the form of a rule book and codes of conduct meant this same guy seeks to claw back the moral high ground by not only lying to his back teeth but dragging me and my team down to his level .. when I heard what he had said, I felt sick to the stomach with not only his hypocrisy and duplicity but also the absolute uselessness of my stance against cheating by not allowing the guys on Nexus to shoot cheater boards.

As for me painting any sort of picture that tries to suggest us Euros are further up any moral ladder, well, I think 'on average' we do actually cheat less but ........ the day any of us can say we are totally clean is the day we can begin to assume any moral high ground and just how you reconcile what I have just said with what I opened up with...well as my dad used to say to me..'pick the bones outa that one' ...in other words, I'll let you guys try to work out the rights and wrongs of it all coz sure as hell I can't.
All of us cheat in one form or another and I think it pretty arrogant of me or anyone else who thinks he / she can say that one sort of cheating is more morally reprehensible than any other (excpet where safety is concerned)..cheating is cheating..it's just that I choose to draw a line somewhere whilst others have a very different idea as to its position.

 

[Matski]

We can talk about morality and honour all day long, but the fact remains that rules and the enforcement of them should be designed so that rule breakers find it very hard to win. Currently, rule breakers find it easier to win and those who play by the rules find it harder. Therefore the system is obviously flawed.

All 'sportsmen' should respect the rules of the game/sport they play. The fact is though, some players have a lot more to lose than pride by being dropped from some teams, and for others pride is reason enough to cheat. When people have a lot invested in something and the smell of prize money on top of that, people are bound to try and cheat. It will remain part of the winning criteria in this game at the highest level until the system can make it either very difficult to get away, incredibly costly if caught, or both.

It is bad that people cheat and then try to scapegoat officials, but that's going to happen because people always find time to be hypocritical, self-centered *******s. If they can get away with it, they'll indulge more....so they do.