Philly Americans out of the NPPL

[MissyQ]

I've missed intelligent thought processes in Paintball forums. I like being able to have a differing opinion and not have the discussion descend into whether or not I have pubes.

I do, by the way.


...have pubes that is.


dammit, now I'm doing it!

 

[Robbo]

I've missed intelligent thought processes in Paintball forums. I like being able to have a differing opinion and not have the discussion descend into whether or not I have pubes.

I do, by the way.


...have pubes that is.


dammit, now I'm doing it!

I woulda thought youda Bic'd your big ass surely?
I mean, the stench from those rolls of fat don't need a hair-ball incubator to produce even more bacteria do they????

I feel somewhat billious .....

 

[Baca Loco]

Well my guess would be the answer lies within the realms of a preffered format ....

Yes and no, I think, Pete. Missy is actually (finally) onto something when she makes a distinction between the basics and the peripheries.
Clearly the format matters but I'm convinced the shift started when the perceptions were that the NPPL was cool and the PSP was struggling. NPPL took the paintball part for granted, perhaps unintentionally, but as a consequence the actual competitions suffered in various ways. The PSP said hey, we may not be a lot of things but we are committed to the best competitive paintball possible. More basic even than format preference is/was making the actual paintball played THE priority and I think that is were PSP found their advantage and retains their advantage.

 

[Robbo]

Yes and no, I think, Pete. Missy is actually (finally) onto something when she makes a distinction between the basics and the peripheries.
Clearly the format matters but I'm convinced the shift started when the perceptions were that the NPPL was cool and the PSP was struggling. NPPL took the paintball part for granted, perhaps unintentionally, but as a consequence the actual competitions suffered in various ways. The PSP said hey, we may not be a lot of things but we are committed to the best competitive paintball possible. More basic even than format preference is/was making the actual paintball played THE priority and I think that is were PSP found their advantage and retains their advantage.

No disrespect intended mate but I'm not so sure teams and players differentiate between the two leagues along the lines you suggest ... teams and players generally prefer XBall formatted games, it has the cool factor for sure as well as being more exciting to play.

Whilst I don't doubt the things you mentioned have taken place but for the life of me, I just cannot see that manifesting itself with teams selecting one league over another.

If you are right, then you should be able to document the symptoms of this change of attitude in terms of what it is that affects the actual players and teams when it comes to selecting one league over another.

 

[MissyQ]

I woulda thought youda Bic'd your big ass surely?
I mean, the stench from those rolls of fat don't need a hair-ball incubator to produce even more bacteria do they????

I feel somewhat billious .....

I used to do all that bullshxt, now I just 'go vintage'. The bush has now reached my belly-button and shows no signs of stopping there. Loco complained that I was too slippery before (I sweat a lot, especially in the Humidity), so basically I did it for him...

 

[MissyQ]

No disrespect intended mate but I'm not so sure teams and players differentiate between the two leagues along the lines you suggest ... teams and players generally prefer XBall formatted games, it has the cool factor for sure as well as being more exciting to play.

Whilst I don't doubt the things you mentioned have taken place but for the life of me, I just cannot see that manifesting itself with teams selecting one league over another.

If you are right, then you should be able to document the symptoms of this change of attitude in terms of what it is that affects the actual players and teams when it comes to selecting one league over another.

We're both right Pete (no surprise)

The format got people to look at X-ball, the attention to the fundamental aspects of paintball kept them there, while the spectacular 'events' of the NPPL got people to take a look at 7-man, but the fundamentals were farmed out by the league in an attepmt to distance the 'league' from the decisions that effect the players at the event itself, something that seemed a good idea at the time, but in hind-sight may not have been.

 

[Robbo]

We're both right Pete (no surprise)

The format got people to look at X-ball, the attention to the fundamental aspects of paintball kept them there, while the spectacular 'events' of the NPPL got people to take a look at 7-man, but the fundamentals were farmed out by the league in an attepmt to distance the 'league' from the decisions that effect the players at the event itself, something that seemed a good idea at the time, but in hind-sight may not have been.

OK I think we are homing in on what's important here because I think one of the fundamentals you infer (but don't specifically mention) is obviously the judging quality and on that point, the PSP kick ass.
I was just struggling to think of any other promotional infrastructures that the PSP could boast is better than that of the NPPL.

Mind you, from your last post, I think you are also saying that once XBall had gotten those teams across, the PSP didn't necessarily have to be better than the NPPL to keep them there, they just had to be better than the PSP had originally been...and this is exactly what they had achieved.

 

[Baca Loco]

No disrespect intended mate but I'm not so sure teams and players differentiate between the two leagues along the lines you suggest ... teams and players generally prefer XBall formatted games, it has the cool factor for sure as well as being more exciting to play.

Whilst I don't doubt the things you mentioned have taken place but for the life of me, I just cannot see that manifesting itself with teams selecting one league over another.

If you are right, then you should be able to document the symptoms of this change of attitude in terms of what it is that affects the actual players and teams when it comes to selecting one league over another.

Pete
I didn't discount format, I simply said it wasn't as simple as format.
What I did suggest is that things started to turn when the NPPL was the big talk in paintball and touted as the cool thing--and pure numbers will validate the beginning of the shift (a look at year to year, event to event registrations will show a consistent pattern beginning in 06 and in hindsight 05 can be seen as softening) and a brief perusal of old issues of PGi should suffice to settle the broad opinions as they stood then.

What teams are drawn to over the longer haul is a league that treats their game as seriously as they do. The NPPL didn't commit to the game, it sold an experience and it quickly reached a place where it couldn't provide brighter, flashier, cooler and when it couldn't the core divisional constituency stopped coming.

The time for choosing a format was 05/06. It's a done deal now--at least for the time being--but the PSP can't rest on its laurels either.

 

[Robbo]

Pete
I didn't discount format, I simply said it wasn't as simple as format.
What I did suggest is that things started to turn when the NPPL was the big talk in paintball and touted as the cool thing--and pure numbers will validate the beginning of the shift (a look at year to year, event to event registrations will show a consistent pattern beginning in 06 and in hindsight 05 can be seen as softening) and a brief perusal of old issues of PGi should suffice to settle the broad opinions as they stood then.

What teams are drawn to over the longer haul is a league that treats their game as seriously as they do. The NPPL didn't commit to the game, it sold an experience and it quickly reached a place where it couldn't provide brighter, flashier, cooler and when it couldn't the core divisional constituency stopped coming.

The time for choosing a format was 05/06. It's a done deal now--at least for the time being--but the PSP can't rest on its laurels either.

...but once again Paul, I'm drawn by the vagueness of your post and repeat my request for you to flesh out the symptoms of this NPPL malaise ...what was it that made teams drift away?
You talk about 'not taking their game as seriously' ... maybe so, but how did this manifest itself?.. I need flesh and bones before I can allow myself to subscribe to your ideas mate.

 

[Chicago]

So you're pretty much saying the NPPL are fcuked save an unlikely deal with the PSP?

I wasn't talking about whether NPPL was fcuked or not, I was talking about it's value in an integration. The odds are incredibly small that NPPL is anything other than a money pit in the near future (and please keep in mind that I'm talking about the business aspect of it, the cultural/promotional/whatever aspect is separate). If Pacific Paintball dropped NPPL and marketed PSP instead, that would be good for everybody. But if Pacific Paintball decides to give NPPL another year, I don't think PSP would be bothered by that either, so they're not going to accept any major cost/concession/whatever to try and make an integration happen sooner rather than later.

Whether NPPL is fcuked or not depends on whether Pacific Paintball figures out a way to run it without losing money before they give up. One way would be to be successful in the out-of-industry money quest. The other way is to run events that D2/D3 teams want to play, although it will take them a while to rebound from where they are. Another way would be to just run a Pro event and scrap the rest of NPPL and run that as a (much smaller) loss leader. Just take the Pros around to various locations throughout the year. I find doing that and maybe expanding XPSL to be a better idea than cutting NPPL to three events.