Now Driver Wood ceases Walkons too. What future for Walkons in the South East?

[James ECI]

Id written a long a$$ post the other day but didnt submit....

If you want more walkons then something needs to happen at a site level and player level.

Site Level - need to give good fields with easy to understand formats as well as making it as wide of a net as possible so in my opinion simple games capture the flag etc with 10bps semi gun rules

If the site is good and advertises a walkon then new prospects will emerge but they need to lead this.


Player Level - be a decent person, im not saying dont mug people out or get close, just there is no need for overshooting etc

Do the simple things loan out kit, give it away, spend time talking to people who want to speak to you.


We talk about old faces and im sure i could list 20 people i used to see at various sites - some i still have on FB and they have just moved on in life. Some probably left because they felt value for money had diminished. Its not that the majority went to play a different kind of paintball.

I honestly dont think its a consideration for team players, if you only have £xx to spend in a month you simply cannot go elsewhere.

Those of us who are fortunate enough to play when we want often do frequent walkons, as I and about 10 other UKWM players did this sunday past at Campaign.


If i was in a position / had the need to, id put a solution together but im already spinning plates.

 

[Missy-Q]

hey, I qualified my statement as 'being a dick', so I don't feel I have to apologise afterwards... I apologised beforehand!
Problem with walk-on play is that people just want to show up and play whenever they feel like it. If your local field ran walk-ons only once per month (last Saturday of the month for example) then everyone that wanted to play would be forced into that one weekend, which should give you more players, in theory, but also requires you to follow the structure and play on that weekend. If that weekend doesn't work for you, you are out of luck. As there are fewer players, the goal would be to condense those players so that there is a decent group to play with.

 

[PBHydro]

I guess it depends on what your idea of a good walkon is. we have 2 sites within 25 minutes of where i live in Southampton, and both of them offer a fun days woodland paintball once a month for walk on customers. neither has 50+ players attending, and neither offers big game style attractions (tanks, major story plots etc) but both of them do have a core of friendly people who go to play each month which keeps it interesting to go to.

There are quite a few big game style events that are put on over the summer which remove that requirement for full fledged productions to be put on by local sites.

Another thing is... some players will save up all month to go play supair... and wont play their local site because its not a tournament.


Social media means that we have seen every product inside and out before it actually gets released... no-one needs to post things like that because a shooting video of the new gun is already available. would be great to see people like PBHydro and the various anodizing studios posting more of their work here, and other people who make smaller paintball things.

Even Planet have to post their own guns on here.. and they barely get any response. are people too afraid to be excited about something?



one of the walkons here is run by the sites local team, and all of those players turn up to use the sup-air field too. perhaps that's just luck from where I am.

Like this Ant ? only found this forum and sorted a profile today lol.

 

[BOD]

Social media means that we have seen every product inside and out before it actually gets released... no-one needs to post things like that because a shooting video of the new gun is already available. would be great to see people like PBHydro and the various anodizing studios posting more of their work here, and other people who make smaller paintball things.

I'm pretty sure that's classed as advertising and there's a yearly charge to advertise on here, so if your like me who does create and make things but only on a small scale something like £250 to advertise on here is unfeasible.

 

[ant290]

I'm pretty sure that's classed as advertising and there's a yearly charge to advertise on here, so if your like me who does create and make things but only on a small scale something like £250 to advertise on here is unfeasible.

And that is a shame, but a shame that can be understood, i'm sure you don't want to see 100 posts a week about the next load of logo "apparel" a student has designed to try and start a fashion brand.

But, i'm sure fresh design items which have been bought by your clients, and posted up by your clients as a part of a - " hey look at my gear, i play at ___ and we're supported by BOD_Marker_Stands who sorted us out with these sweet new pit stands" - post would be welcomed?

I see those posts on Facebook, but they seem somewhat throwaway sometimes (like they had to do it and wont go back to it again later).

 

[echo34]

I think the problem is fundamentally UK paintball format. You play rental, you buy a gun and go to walk ons, with the goal of sup air and tournaments, do that for a while realise that it’s too expensive/life/other interests/work get in the way so you stop.
You can’t just go play some speedball here, it’s training/tournaments or in a dingy poorly laid out woods site, designed to entice the Milsim types who played CoD and want to shoot their friends, these guys have all gone to airsoft because it’s cheaper and you can actually use a realistic looking gun/tactics/etc. so what we are left with is a load of fields that are badly designed that aren’t fun to play on and no where to play speedball type games unless you want to commit to training.

In the US you can go to the field every weekend and play a speedball format (even if it’s wooden barricades or buildings etc) on a flat, open field. Too many UK sites are on extremely dense woodland that is very wet making movement and shooting hard and unenjoyable.

the best woodland fields I have played in the U.K.are generally very open, and dry, with open fields too, so you can move shoot and see easily.

there was a site a few years back thatbought a Sup air field for walkons and we played all day on that just rotating on and off the field as and when you wanted to play, it was great. Didn’t need to be “training” or on a team, you could just play the type of paintball that most people probably aimed to play when they started, but in a casual way.
Fields need to focus more on speedball rather than milsim to get the casual players back who want to play tournament style but casually, they will never compete with airsoft over the Milsim crowd.

for paintball to survive it needs to differentiate from airsoft, and sup air speedball fields for walk ons and rentals would do that.

 

[ant290]

This is a pretty interesting take on it all, and actually i think for some groups its not one that is seen because we are lucky enough to actually have a casual sup air field nearby.

have you looked into speedQB at all? looks like airsofters are also starting to feel the allure of a more intense style of play and so have started adopting the sup air rules into their games.