What are the real rules?

[raehl]

Re: Back up a second...

Originally posted by gyroscope
The only problem I see is situations where the paint came from a player with paint on them... a la Ollie Lang at NJ NPPL.

Ah, but Ollie Lang put paint on others while he was hit because he faced no penalty for doing so.

If, in the vast majority of cases, you're still shooting with paint on you it's a penalty, there will be many, many fewer instances of people shooting with paint on them.

Even if you believe Ollie's hits were from an eliminated Rage player - the whole situation happened because you had a bunch of players who are accustomed to playing with hits until a ref pulls them - and the result is a cascade of people doing run-throughs while the refs try and catch up.


In the "new" way, if Ollie has obvious hits while he's shooting, you just pull two of his teammates and either it came out even or Ollie's team lost out.


- Chris

 

[Wadidiz]

X Ball rules:

Originally posted by raehl
10.2.2. Players with unobvious hits will be eliminated but will not be penalized for playing-on.


12.4. ASSESSMENT OF PENALTIES

12.4.1. Judges will assess penalties in accordance to the following schedule:

Playing-on: unobvious hit (Section 10.2) Minor


Go figure.


- Chris

Chris,

The latest NXL rules have clause 10.2.2. stricken through in red and replaced. But there are still a couple of contradictions left.

When you should know you are hit, or when a judge eliminates you, you are elminated.

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.

This goes back to what I've been saying all along: a competent judge can make a reasonable and fair determination about whether or not a player should have known about a certain hit and the benefit of the doubt goes to the shooter in such instances.

As for the total argument you are putting forth here, Chris, it is food for thought. I want to think it through for a while because it would make a substantial change in practice.

Paintball ain't an easy sport to regulate but I guess not many sports are.

Steve

 

[Gyroscope]

I think you misunderstood what I mean, Chris.

I am assuming that the refs made the proper call in the incident with Rage and Dynasty.

If a player is marker by another player who has already been shot (as I am assuming happened to Ollie Lang), they should be cleaned up. But if time is taken to do so, it alters the flow of the game. The better and more aggressive the team in question, the more it changes the actual play to take time to wipe them down. It probably needs to be done anyway, to prevent misunderstandings among the ref staff.

If a player (player A) is marked by a player (player B) who has played on after being marked, no penalties should be assessed to the team of player A. He was shot under unfair circumstances, by an eliminated player. Player B's team should of course be penalized, but player A should be left in the game, despite having been hit and marked.

 

[Steinar Tuft]

Back up a second...

Originally posted by raehl
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

I'm glad you were in a hurry when you wrote this, but you hit the nail and if we can work from here i think we are heading in the right direction.
This is so far the best i ever red about how we should enforce the rules as a marshal on the field (My point of view)

I know both Jørn (wrote/rewrote most of the millenium rules and did a good job so far) and Robbo (new member of the NPPL rulescommity) read the forum and i look forward to their point of views.

I altso think it strange that nobody asks us during or at the end of tournament as Marshals/headmarshals what we think about the rules

For those of you going to Miami next week look me up and we can discuss it over a few beers or more i think you find me on the NPPL field as the headmarshal.

 

[cjansen]

Ideas / Rant / Constructive Criticism

There are two ways that you can look at this problem, and there is no easy solution when you're talking about 5-7-10 man ball. Ok, IN MY OPINION…..

1- The best solution, and the fairest solution for the cheaters and the honest players, is to adopt X-ball style penalties. It doesn't completely eliminate the honest player who didn't know that he was hit, as he could come back in after serving his 2 minutes in the box (or 5 minutes, whatever the case may be). And it doesn't drop that team down 2 players for the rest of the game, which isn't really deserved. And it takes the dishonest player off the field. All penalties carry over to the next game, just like X-Ball, and that player serves the remainder of his penalty. And with these rules, it becomes much clearer to everyone, who the biggest offenders are. And you publish the stats by team/roster, giving players nothing to hide behind.

2- And the alternative is to punish everyone equally, yet somewhat unfairly, if in fact said player didn't really know he was hit. If you're hit in an unobvious place, and it is determined that it wasn’t from the ground, or rubbed off of the obstacle that your were next to, it's a 1-4-1, 2-4-1, etc.

With scenario #1, this would require more marshals, and better marshalling ability, inter-field coordination with a central site to keep track of penalties that will carry over to that teams next game, and better player identification. It would have to be real-time. If the series organizers bought 8 or 9 laptops, set up a wireless network (not as expensive as it sounds,) and had one marshal per field as the person who communicates with the central scorekeeper/organizer, they could have real-time penalty info, schedule status, scorekeeping, and could eliminate paper score sheets altogether. Players would have to have number-to-name match-ups on their roster, so that penalties could be administered and tracked. Basically the entire game would have to be reworked. And if you listen to the rumors going around, that may already be in the plans for next season. And obviously, this scenario requires more from the players, more from the marshals, and worst of all, more from the organizers. It ain't rocket science, and it ain't all that difficult to pull off. We can bitch and whine and make suggestions all day, but if the powers that be don't listen, ..........unfortunately we'll all still go play these events and nothing will change until we demand it. And I'm not trying to saying that I'm any better, because flaws or not, (insert your major series of choice here) is still the best thing going. They're all (NPPL, PSP, X-Ball, and (I hope) Millennium) trying to make them better. We can help, or shut our pie-holes when we don’t get what we want.

Scenario two is the easy way out. Punish everyone as if they were cheaters, and take any possibility of integrity out of the equation (this scenario cost us a finals spot in Amsterdam this year.) And you'd have to, because you can't always tell the cheater from the guy who really didn't know. This leaves way too much open to interpretation, and then add that to the fact that rules aren't always applied equally. You can be just as skeptical of the marshal who says that he ALWAYS applies the rules fairly to everyone, as you can about the player that says, "Geez marshal, I had no idea I was hit 5 TIMES IN THE BACK. IT'S A NO-CHECK ZONE!!!!!!

You can d!ck around with the rules all you want, but the bigger issue isn't the rules themselves, it's the equitable application of the rules, by non-biased marshals, who are actually watching the game that they're marshalling, not smoking weed in between games, and have actually studied the flawed rule book in question prior to the event, on players, many of whom, will cheat no matter what the is in the rulebook. Because the players sure aren't going to make it any easier for marshals. Cheating is a facet of this game that will never go away. Not really a news flash there. No need to alert the media Robbo.

As players, the onus is on us to offer credible solutions to work around the problem of cheating to the organizers, let them know that what’s in place isn’t acceptable, and hope they take the necessary steps to make it better, because I really don’t see the players boycotting in protest. The organizers know that the system is hosed up, and the fact is, big changes cost money. Whether it’s man-hours to re-write the rulebook, change the format, get the acceptance of the sponsors and the players, and (maybe someday) train the marshals. As for the players who are cheating, then why would they want to change a set of rules that works to their advantage when they do get caught?

I honestly believe that they (the series organizers) are trying to make things better, but from what I’ve seen so far, it’s not really working. When it comes to rules/penalties, X-Ball adapting the penalty structure used in hockey is the best system yet. Now let’s find a way to adapt it to 5-7-10 man, or come up with something better. But to adopt a system that blindly punishes everyone “equally”, and abandon any hope of player integrity, is not the answer.

But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong. See ya’ll in Miami.

 

[Wadidiz]

"I have a dream..."

Excellent points, Chris,

As for the tracking system I see changes coming that will minimize that problem. I personally hope we go away from having tournaments in the traditional way where we run from players' staging area to field and sometimes to technincal assistance, back to the air station, back to the shooting range and back through the cycle again. As good as Campaign Cup was all the running totally burned me out for that

I am looking forward to having it all right there in one place, X Ball style, at least for the pros. That's the way it should be.

I really hope for either X Ball or a new format in the Millennium series that will mean longer matches or a series of games. The speed and intensity of such matches will further necessitate a substantial improvement in judging.

If it's X Ball then penalty boxes and the statitical tracking will be fine. If it's another format some are looking at the individual games within the match should be fast enough that NPPL style 1-4-1s should work well.

While I'm posting I'll stubbornly go back and say that rules concerning obvious hits that a player can't check themself are clear enough. The player must very clearly call for a paintcheck and is still in the game while waiting for the paintcheck.

Concerning unobvious hits, I'll repeat: a competent judge can see by location of the hit, the presence or absence of spray on goggles, by the presence or absence of tell-tale sounds, etc. whether or not the hit SHOULD have been known about. And I'll repeat: the benefit of the doubt should go against the hit player and to the shooter. A hit on the very front of the hopper without the "whack" or the spray is an unobvious hit. A hit on the regulator or on the bottom side of a tank is an unobvious hit. Most hits on the mask are obvious hits for which a player should call a paintcheck.

We already have enough problem catching and penalizing intentional, concious cheating. I am dead against penalizing players for things they most likely don't know about.

The necessary improvement in judging and training of judges should take care of the competence issues. And better written rules will help too.

Steve

 

[KillerOnion]

Back up a second...

Originally posted by raehl
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.

<snip for the sake of keeping it to my point>

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.

<snip again>

So someone needs to fix the X Ball rules.

- Chris

Oh, but perhaps the people writing them DO understand the rules, and are putting in elasticity. Not to sounds like a conspiracy theorist here, but ya know the reason why the US Tax Code is so darned complex? So extraordinarily well educated accountants and tax lawyers have something to specialize in and make boatloads of money doing in a way that your average Joe simply cannot. No legislator is going to put thousands of extraordinarily well paid and influential people out of work--they can just as easily do the same to him and his entire party, and much, much quicker and nastier. Now, take this in the case of paintball. Is anyone in any position of power within these rules committees, all of whom are on and/or own teams, going to ever write a set of rules that can't be bent and greased and stretched as could possibly fit their needs somewhere along the line? Of course not. Houdini may have locked keys in a box somewhere or buried them, but he didn't weld the locks solid. You won't find simple, enforceable rules with clearly defined 100% consistently and clearly applicable penalties anytime soon when there's every interest not to do so.

 

[KillerOnion]

Or, perhaps...an alternative explaination: http://www.ilovebacon.com/102703/j.shtml

 

[cjansen]

"I have a dream..."

Originally posted by Wadidiz
Excellent points, Chris,

Steve

Yeah, the title of your reply says it all Steve. Doubtful that it will ever happen.

Now, take this in the case of paintball. Is anyone in any position of power within these rules committees, all of whom are on and/or own teams, going to ever write a set of rules that can't be bent and greased and stretched as could possibly fit their needs somewhere along the line?

That was partially my point. Would it really be "good" for everyone if the rules were so tight that NOBODY could slip through the cracks. Probably not.

Well, as Steve says, "I have a (pipe) dream." That, or I picked a bad day to quit sniffin' glue!

 

[raehl]

Originally posted by gyroscope
I think you misunderstood what I mean, Chris.

I am assuming that the refs made the proper call in the incident with Rage and Dynasty.

If a player is marker by another player who has already been shot (as I am assuming happened to Ollie Lang), they should be cleaned up. But if time is taken to do so, it alters the flow of the game. The better and more aggressive the team in question, the more it changes the actual play to take time to wipe them down. It probably needs to be done anyway, to prevent misunderstandings among the ref staff.

If a player (player A) is marked by a player (player B) who has played on after being marked, no penalties should be assessed to the team of player A. He was shot under unfair circumstances, by an eliminated player. Player B's team should of course be penalized, but player A should be left in the game, despite having been hit and marked.

I think you misunderstood the rules - the hits on Player A (Ollie in this case) are *NOT* valid hits, and wouldn't incur a penalty, so long as the refs make the right call and know that player B was playing on. The rules, when enforced correctly, do exactly what you think they should do.

Now, if it's ruled by the refs that player B was NOT playing on, then the hits on Player B are valid, and he gets the playing on penalty, even if player A thinks the hits are not valid.

- Chris