Pro 10-man nearing extinction?

[Red_Merkin]

Actualyl - paintball would stand the best chance of public recognition, if we all played one on one..... but to most of us, the game would then loose a lot of it's charme.

I understand your point, but i don't agree. I think basketball, is a good example of a sport where one player can stand out, and it's a five man sport.
Baseball works well too, because only one or two players are really focused on as part of the game, although when the play actually happens, the rest of the team becomes active.
golf, and tennis are both boring sports to watch because there's so much dead space between plays. What you need is several players that keep the action moving, but allow the star players to become the focus.

In paintball, as you've said before nick, there is no central focus with paintball. But with only five players running about, there's more chance for people to follow what's going on, more so than 10 man ball at least.. this is one reason why x-ball is good.

Without arguing the merits of x-ball further, what i am really interested in discussing is how to bring division 1 and 2 x-ball to the lower level players. I think after this season with x-ball and the Millenium series, players in europe are going to want to start playing x-ball form or another. At least i do.

So how do you bring x-ball to everyone? will it only be for sponsored teams? can we change the game lengths to accomodate for players? or is x-ball only for the elite, and will us lower level teams never get to play it?

 

[headrock6]

Originally posted by Red_Merkin

My bet is that 10 man dies (shame really).

Not yet..The only way 10 man dies is if the promoters cant make money off it anymore..And I still saw more than 80 teams in LA who still love it...It might die cuz PSP cant get thier **** together,but not outta lack of interest..

 

[Gyroscope]

That strikes me as an intelligent idea. Fans will propell outside sponsorship of paintball. It will also bring us a degree of respect, however well or poorly behaved we are, because people will associate it with "sport" rather than "aggression fantasy". I mean, "football is a hooligan's sport" as someone posted in here somewhere. Co-opt college football fans and you are in business.

How would a scoreboard impact the traditional format? I don't know if it could save ten-man, but it may help traditional paintball make more sense to spectators. I think smaller numbers of players on the field is a good thing, even though ten man is fun to play.

I think we are underestimating the sophistication of potential fans. I mean, ask young children to make sense of American Football, with or without a score board. What we need is something to make viewers care in the first place. Our girlfriends watch and make sense of it after a few times out, right?

 

[Baca Loco]

Kids,
If you're looking for the X-Ball stuff that side-tracked the thread it's all in "X-Ball for the masses?"
Otherwise, back to the subject---

 

[KillerOnion]

See, the great tragedy of this is that to me, maybe just to me, 10 man IS the form of the sport to watch. A win in 10 man seems to me a summation of competitive paintball's skills AND a work of art like history's classic battles such as Midway, Shiloh, Trenton, Jutland, El Alamein, the Bulge, etc. I loved watching 5 man Xball at Mardi Gras because of the skill of the people playing it and the intensity displaying, but that being the exception over 70% of 5 man games all really do look alike, just change the names of the particular people playing at the time. The minor leagues all run 5 man, and boy if you've been around those long enough it gets really old. Drop 10 man and PSP events will get boring REALLY fast, and people will start to question why other than maybe a shirt or two they should drop that much money in entry, travel, and expenses to play just another 5 man AGAIN.

 

[Gyroscope]

I get it now.

The thing is, 10 man is competing with X-ball. You can only play one tournament a weekend; it's either or. X-ball is not actually competing with S7, except artificially. If there were no exclusion contract, most pros would probably happily support both.

I believe that if 10-man were on another schedule from X-ball, the pros playing X would play ten as well. Give them a chance, they would play a different tournament every weekend. Ten man is just as sound as seven for spectators.

It seems kinda dumb to have everyone play X every tournament. It seems dumber to have everyone play so many X games at every PSP event. Not that I saw this coming either, but why not have each pro X-ball team play one other pro X-ball team at each event and have two other events that are concurrent with other extreme sporting events? Then all the pros could play ten and X and we get cake while eating it.

 

[sprayer62]

my opinion

i like 5,7,10, heck even 3, man competitions, well i tried watching x-ball and it just doesn't do anything for me, i like true teamwork and i think you get that from the normal tourny formats, sorry but for me x-ball blows, just my opinion though,



sprayer