High ROF…L

There has been a lot of talk about ROF (rate of fire) issues in paintball. Speedball tournaments are reducing the allowed rate of fire at their events – a funny thing when you think about the term Speed-Ball. People that have been in the industry (John Amodea, Reiner Schafer) have talked about how high rates of fire have driven away new players since they come out to a field and rent a stock 98 and end up playing against players with Angels, Ego’s, Mini’s and other high ROF markers.

Woodsball has long been a place for those players that wanted out of the super high ROF arms race. Recently though, marker companies have made a big push into the woodsball market with advances that allow for insanely high rates of fire. Tippmanns and BT’s have their etriggers, Mini’s come in a camo finish, Ego just put out their woodsball marker, etc. etc. For me, I enjoy being able to shoot full auto, but I rarely do. I know what’s it like to get lit up with ten balls and it is not fun.

High ROF Markers – SP1 and TM7

At our field, we have started to institute a limited amount of balls per game. We usually go for about 300 rounds per player with heavy gunners being allowed to have double that. But is that enough?

I’d like to draw attention to the new players that come to our field. We have introduced or re-introduced a lot of players to paintball, and I think we owe it to them to try to make their experience a good one. We typically do that and have seen the growth of our community because of it, but can we do more?

I don’t know what the answer is, maybe we could do a max feed hopper situation like the SPPL, or reduce the amount of balls further. We currently admonish in our safety briefings the importance of limited rates of fire, but I know that I have been on the receiving end of high rates of fire, and at times have gone to high rates of fire in the heat of the moment.

Our community is in a weird place right now. We have grown very fast in the 10-11 months we have been playing (myself since the second weekend of our existence) and are now deeply involved in Supergame, planning our own scenarios, promoting our community, branding our product, and looking towards the future.

I’m not saying we need to adjust anything right now, I just think the topic is worthy of discussion and we can only benefit from bringing in new players to bolster our ranks. One of our biggest positives is that we are such a large group. It is already opening doors once closed to us. Unfortunately, we have to think about how we want to accommodate new players and work to grow ourselves, all the while keeping our spirit and foundation at the forefront of our community.

What is the answer? I think we need to keep doing what we have been, warning about overshooting and doing ball limits, but really taking a couple of seconds before each game to make sure everyone knows how many balls they can use in a game. I’m positive that there have been games where people have used too much paint, hopefully it was an accident…and we’ll leave it at that. If we make our field a fun and inviting place, people will want to come back, and that should only make our community stronger and open doors for some cool things in the future.