The "bling" factor - A discussion

[Gair333]

With the current tournament scene there seems to be no need for a marker to shoot a bazillion balls per second or fire 8000 rounds per tank. How ever we insist on spending £1000+ on markers that do these things.

Why? Is my question, why do we spend this stupid ammount of money on somthing we could get for £300.

I know some of you are thinking it's light, fast etc then please take your head out of your ass. If you can't lift two and a half kilos there is somthing seriously wrong. But digressions will be avoided for the moment.

The reason why we pay these VAST and HUGE ammounts of money is the bling factor and in my opinion is in part the reason why the sport is is nowhere near as possible as it should be. The general public feel it's too expensive to take seriously.

I'll try and put the bling factor into some sort of "real life" perspective: Take for example the iPhone. No doubt three quaters of you have one or WANT one. A recent survey shows that people with iPhones are percieved as cooler even though the iPhone is possibly the most overpriced piece of **** on the market!

When I ask people why do you want an iPhone I get the same responses over and over again: "it's the apps" "the iPod" or "I just want one". And this transfers to paintball in more ways than one.

If you ask a paintballer why they want an EGO 10 or DYE NT etc, you get again the same responses over and over again: "it's reliable", "it's easy to maintain" to "it's pimping!" etc.
The reason why is because paintbll is lucky nough to have Brands as strong, if not stronger than apple!

The industry plays on this, pricing markers high and even higher! Hoppers, barrels and everything else too!

If we wish to attract the general public we must make the game more accessable. £300 is alot of money for joe average and he doesn't have it spare for a marker let alone a full set up. Yes the technology is great and there is alot of innovation however why can HTC sell a phone which is infinatley more technologically advanced than the iPhone for a fraction of the price?

Again marketing and branding, but the point remains clear. To gain the pool of players this sport desperatly needs we need to lose the astronomic prictags on everything and focus on getting the sport out there more and more. If we can buld the brand of the entire paintball community that the companies have built around themselves then I think that we may be onto a winner.

 

[Fisz]

Why do people choose to buy a Lambo over a Skoda? Or why do you give the example of an Iphone as relevant while all the time you're forgetting that for every fruity phone out there, there's millions of Nokias or Motorolas with or without extra functions.

People who want to get into paintball but can't afford the price tags of the markers you've mentioned have plenty of other markers to choose from, all of them electronic: Spyders, Dangerous Power, Tippmanns, Ions, Vibes, Inspire BFGs, SLGs and many more. Don't have the budget? Buy Proto goggles, a CO2 tank and a cheaper agitated loader from Invert or Viewloader and you're set. You don't have to spend a lot of money if you want to.

But if you do spend it, you will have a difference in experience - Less kick, more options integrated into the product, lighter, faster, more economic with air, more reliability, readily available manufacturer support at various events...

Basically you're advocating that the latest Lotus should cost the same as the new Fiesta.

 

[Gair333]

In a perfect world nothing would cost more than 99p but anyway...

I'm advocating that paintball is getting greedy, as with many other industries which in turn causes loss of sales and eventually players.

The iphone was an example of a product using the same technology being sold for a stupid ammount because people feel like they need it.

You need only to look at the classifieds to see players dropping out because of the cost, many of them have been close friends of mine. I'm saying lower the price to make it more accessable. Paintball is not some exclusive club where newbies should be shunned, and with all respect we help them through it but I've heard more than a few times "oh you've got a mini *scoff*".

There is not only high prices but undue pressure on newbies to upgrade as soon as they can under the illusion that a new marker will make them any better.

But these are the surface issues and if you scratch away the surface you can see the human condidtion of filling our lives with shi we don't need.

Enjoy the sport but don't remortgage your house doing it

 

[DJForbes]

i disagree.

i pay for a name. yes.

but with the name i pay for come the best support team. a super reliable marker, and yes it can if i need it to fire fast, for longer, and very accurate.

however i may not need every feature at a tournaments. but then do we just do tourneys? no i play other forums of paint ball. not to mention if you look at the rules you will find they change every year, i believe there was a very high cap and we have been reducing it. that could change leaving you behind.

try shooting poor paint into a cheep marker, i can fire pure crap through mine with no breaks. my BT couldnt fire 1 in 5

try fighting an hour long game on a steal tank with a poor marker. not only are you running back to refile but an hour with the extra weight on teh arms can be a killer.

the only thing i do that is pointless is a custom paint job. then again i want to stand out

 

[Aarron.]

I'll make my opinion short and sweet.

Paintball is like other sports, if you want to perform the best you buy the best. Personally I find getting the best stuff or best make stuff makes you play or feel better. Take football for instance, I wouldn't wear some Retro Adidas classics or some old Adidas F50+ because there are newer versions out which will be alot more comfortable, lighter weight and stylish.

So getting back to Paintball if you want to perform to your best while getting better, I suggest buying the more expensive stuff. As you won't need to upgrade sooner.

Also I think most people understand where your coming from when you say £300 is alot of money but that's the risk you take when you play a sport there's always brands/ Company's making the next best thing to out do one an other, which means putting more expensive kit into there product which inturn they sell for more.

All in all I would say your right & wrong in a sense.

 

[Bambulus]

i disagree.
i pay for a name. yes.

but with the name i pay for come the best support team. a super reliable marker, and yes it can if i need it to fire fast, for longer, and very accurate.

however i may not need every feature at a tournaments. but then do we just do tourneys? no i play other forums of paint ball. not to mention if you look at the rules you will find they change every year, i believe there was a very high cap and we have been reducing it. that could change leaving you behind.

try shooting poor paint into a cheep marker, i can fire pure crap through mine with no breaks. my BT couldnt fire 1 in 5

try fighting an hour long game on a steal tank with a poor marker. not only are you running back to refile but an hour with the extra weight on teh arms can be a killer.

the only thing i do that is pointless is a custom paint job. then again i want to stand out

You can get everything you just mentioned without killing the bank account...

My proto SLG, which I bought new for £120, has yet to ever fail me, has yet to break a single ball (Granted, I'm not using the most fragile of paint) and has the some of the best customer support around...

Sure, it has some weaknesses. I had to upgrade the feedneck and barrel pretty much straight out of the box, but that's all I've ever felt it's needed. Once I stuck my reloader B on there (£45 new) and my air tank (steelie, £40 new), I had a setup for around the 250 mark that shoots paint just as well as any £1500 setup would. If I'd gone for a fibrewrap, it would have been £350. All brand spanking new. Warrenties and all.

Then I bought my Starframed Etek second hand, and now have two reliable markers. The etek even ruins your efficiency argument, since it's a run of the mill poppet.

So, I have all of the features you mentioned, with pretty much no bling. And I still love my bank account.


Do I want a thousand quid marker? Hell yes.

Am I going to pay a thousand pound for it? Hell no.

I know I can get a better than average marker in the second hand market for less than a third of that, and I'd never have any gripes with it. It's all bling in the high ends, and the only reason people buy them is because they want the hottest thing out at the moment, and they're willing to pay for it. Is that bad? No, I'm guessing the industry makes a fair amount through high-end sales. But we're a vain bunch, most definately, and if people want to justify spending that much because it's the newest technology on the market, then go for it. I won't be.

(Unless it's the new angel gogs, my vanity can't resist them)


Quick addition: It doesn't cost nearly as much as you're suggesting to buy equipment, but it does cost a fair amount to play. If people are dropping out because they can't afford the sport, it ain't because they can't afford equipment, but because the money they're spending on playing is no longer worth it to them - which is an issue for an entirely different thread.

 

[ant290]

Gotta say i'm with Bam on this.

playing is the killer in the end.
Gear can be bought by people for presents.
playing normally gets paid for by the player. Which can end up being an awful lot if they do it regularly.

And with the minds of most ballers, they probably find something else that is pretty expensive to move on to without realising it.

 

[Gair333]

Bambulus makes some good points and I can see where some of you are coming from: Ther better my kit the better i hope ill play.

but we are neglecting the essence of this discussion. Joe Average goes out and plays a punter day. He decides he loves it and youtubes "paintball". The top result is a psp tournament, he watches and decides it's somthingwhich he wants to do. He goes on the net and searches for paintball gun and finds a tippman 98 for £120. Joe thinks this is really dear but is still interested so he searches the tippman 98 to find a review and finds out it's no good for tournamnet paintball. So he searches specifically one fore one. now lets say for srguments sake he comes up to just paint ball, clicks markers and starts seeing markers like the ones from the video. Then he looks at the price ,thinks f**k that and shuts the computer down.

Joe average does this because he is ignorant to the classifeds scene on here and other forums. He's having a look to see if his wife will let him play and if his kids can eat for the week.

People treat the the sport like some sort of exclusive club. A club that requires you to pay stupid ammounts and pretend that you're a superstar for a day a month.

Lowering prices of kit and playing would not only benefit us all but increase the talent pool and grow the sport. More people know about professional table tennis than they do about the sport of paintball. To them it's just a stag weekend or a team building exercise.

 

[jmelech]

Punter sites could do alot more to advertise the competitive side of paintball, imagine how many players a company like delta force could bring into the sport every month by just educating the punters about the sport and pointing them in the right direction if they do want to find out more. Obviously delta force would never do something like this as it may risk them losing a few quid about of their enormous profit margins but maybe some independent sites?

 

[Andy Duggan]

In regards to jmelech.

This something myself and another marshal down at Predator Sport were thinking about doing.

We both feel that we need to start running a Punter Tournament day to try and intise them into the sport abit more. The only problem with that is advertising.

If the advertising was right then someone could get say 20/30 players, split them up into 4/6 5 man teams, show them the basics then run a little tournament with a prize at the end for the winning team.