Back up a second...
Why shouldn't a player be penalized for a hit they don't know about?
That's one of the main problems with paintball rules: People who write them simply do not understand how rules are supposed to work. You penalize players for breaking the rules whether they meant to or not, period. The principle is simple: You want players trying very hard to not break the rules, not players trying very hard to make it look like they were not TRYING to break the rules.
If your foot is on the three point line, they don't give you the three points because you didn't "know" your foot was there. If you shatter your bat and cork flies out they don't let it slide because you didn't "know" your bat was corked. If you're offsides when you kick the goal they don't give it to you anyway because you didn't know that defender had moved up the field before the pass.
And if the other team has shot you, and you are still playing, not "knowing" you were hit doesn't mean you shouldn't be penalized. Honest players *WILL* be penalized, through no fault of their own, and THAT IS THE WAY SPORTS WORK.
Another way to look at it is this: Why should a team be penalized for a player playing with an INobvious hit? Because that team, whether they knew about it or not, has had an unfair advantage. One of their eliminated players was still playing. The penalty counters the advantage the team had from playing on, whether they KNEW they were playing on or not. Now, will the penalty sometimes exceed the advantage? Sure. BUT - it is far better to have a penalty which sometimes exceeds the advantage than it is to have a penalty which NEVER equals or exceeds the advantage. If your penalty is never worse than the advantage, then your players will always play to gain the unfair advantage.
Now, Baca, I could certainly say "Hits on the back are not self-verifiable" - but that doesn't solve anything. All it's done is make the refs decide which hits are on the back and which are not instead of which hits a player should know about.
As for penalties for calling for a paintcheck on a hit you can check yourself, and penalties for playing on with a hit you should know about, the NCPA, as a league, made the decision a long time ago that it is THE PLAYERS RESPONSIBILITY TO STOP PLAYING WHEN THEY ARE HIT. It is *NOT* the judges responsibility to pull you - it is the judges responsibility to PENALIZE you for not pulling yourself. If you can look at your arm and say "Hey, that broke!", you shouldn't be calling a judge over to tell you that. If you don't want to stop playing to look at your arm, then DO NOT GET SHOT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Why do we do it this way? Because it leads to better games. We don't have refs having to chase players down the sidelines, we don't have refs having to pull players away from bunkers, we don't have refs having to run from player to player physically removing them for hits the player knows about. That gets you better reffing, because refs who are not responding to unnecessary paint checks and chasing players are dig other things.
It also means that when you hit somebody, its far more likely that they are not going to shoot back.
Now, I know that players love to complain about "But I can't see it, it may not have broke, and that's taking me out of the game." Does that happen? Sure. But I think we all know that the reality is the cases where a player knows they are hit or can quickly check to see if they are hit FAR outweigh the cases where a player does not know about or can not self-check a hit. The rules work better when written for the USUAL case, not the UNusual case. Additionally, with the rules written with the obligation to verify that you're not hit on the PLAYER, instead of the player being motivated to postpone being effectively checked as long as possible, the player is now motivated to get checked as quickly and effeciently as possible.
It is far better to have people call themselves out when not hit 5% of the time than it is to have players keep playing when hit 80% of the time.
As for my rules as written, you ahve to read them and understand them for them to work. Tehre are three types of players: Live players, hit players, and eliminated players. When you're in the game, you're live. Any hits from a live player are valid. When you receive a hit, *ANY* hit, you're no longer live, you're hit, and any subsequent hits from you don't count. When you should know you are hit, or when a judge eliminates you, you are elminated. In the example rules, players who are playing when "Hit" are not penalized, and players who are playing when "eliminated" are penalized. You could just as easily make it so playing while "hit" is a small penalty and playing while eliminated is a larger penalty, which is the way X Ball is (2 minutes for playing when hit, 5 minutes for playing when elminated).
But all three classes are VERY clearly defined, it's VERY easy to tell when a player is in one of the three classes, and it's very easy to assess the appropriate penalty. All you have to assume is a judge can tell the difference between a paintmark that is a hit and one that is not, and that a judge can tell the difference between a paint mark a player should know is there and one they should not. And I can assure you that anyone who has been playing tournaments a reasonable amount of times can very accurately determine both, no matter how vehemently the player who just got shot in elbow pad denies feeling it.
As for what originally started this thread, the X Ball rules, we're both right. The text says you are not penalized for playing on if you call for a paint check, but the list of penalties says playing on with an obvious hit is 5 minutes and an unobvious hit is 2 minutes. Now before you go saying that that means only when you don't do what the referenced text says, note that it is NOT POSSIBLE to get a playing on with an unobvious hit penalty according to the text.
So someone needs to fix the X Ball rules.
- Chris
