[robot0ninja]

Just a warning this will be long. There will be a tldr for the lazy people at the bottom.

To start off, I'm going to give my "credentials" so to speak. This will be my eighth year of playing. I personally witnessed what caused an entire reffing staff to be fired at Action Territory and why they no longer sponsor teams. I have been to great fields, and I have been to terrible fields. I know bad reffing when I see. And I know absolute stupidity and lack of common sense from a reffing staff when I see it. And trust me, I saw it at Paintball Explosion's big game, World at War. Now I personally witnessed what happened, I got the story from 2 refs, one head ref and one regular, I got the story from many allied players (I was on the allied team myself), from many axis players, and I talked to the owner TJ.

I am first going to start with what I saw. It all when down when the axis team pushed us all the way to our spawn the second time. There was one player left on the field on the allied side. Now there were at least 200 people shooting at him. He fought back vigilantly. After about 10 seconds, at least 5, probably closer to 10, axis players went to bunker him. Needless to say, he got lit up worse than I have ever seen in my life (a good comparison would be those youtube videos of guys letting their friends just unload their hoppers on them from ten feet away). Not a single ref, not a single one, tried to prevent this in anyway. In fact it looked to me they were trying to prevent themselves from being hit. Now every allied player was off the field. Every once in a while a brave soul would run out and try to hit as many as possible before getting lit up by 200 people (this is no way an exageration). this went on for about 5 minutes. The refs then decided to half heartedly make the axis players stop shooting. Only the people right next to the refs got the memo because of the refs failure to communicate. They then decided to just open the net to the safe zone (a zone where you can take off your goggles) and have a hot insertion. Somebody yelled kill them all. Well many allied players ran out shooting (probably around 30) so 200 guns from the axis team shot into the safe zone trying to hit the allied players. Players inside the safety zone without mask (myself included) were getting shot at. The fact that the refs took at least 2 minutes to stop this is beyond my comprehension. One kids only defense was to crawl away and go into the fetal position. He left the event with a sling. I forgot to mention, the 30 players that stormed out tried coming back in and they ended toppling over each other almost taking down the safety zones net. The refs finally got everyone to stop shooting. I went out they and expressed to all the refs how complete idiots they are and how they should all be fired on the spot. Not a single ref on the field at that time doesnt deserve to be fired. Me and my team left the field (alond with 90% of the allied team and many axis players). I doubt there was a single kid renting a gun left on the allied team after that.

Now from an axis players perspective: (this will be in first person, though I am not the axis player)
We pushed all the way up to the safety zone. The one kid left should have surrendered, but since no one asked him to and some dumb ***** when up to bunker him, there was little anyone could do. Now that the safety zone was surrounded, a random guy from the allied team would pop out from the net to take some of us out. Well obviously were not just gonna stand there and let him shoot us all day so we shot him accordingly. The refs told some of us to stop shooting so we did, all of the sudden a bunch of allied players rushed out from the safety zone shooting. We shot back. The refs explained nothing about what was supposed to happen.

My opinion on his story: I dont blame him for what he did. The refs told them barely anything. Once again, it was the refs' failure to communicate with the players and the general.

A ref's perspective: (once again in first person)
Well the first time they had the net surrounded (they referring to the axis team) we called a cease fire. We then pushed the axis players back about 100 yards. The allied team could then leave the safety zone safely and game resumed as normal. After that, one of the owners named Romeo yelled at us to never ever ever yell a cease fire again. So the second time we could only say stop shooting, which means the game is still on but we just need fire to be held. As soon as someone shoots, everyone would start shooting and we would have to tell everyone to stop again. We were supposed to do a hot insert where we would take the allied players behind the axis players and then they would take them out so the axis players would have to tag up their base again. The allied players ran out of the nets shooting so it was just mass chaos. We got everyone to stop shooting and got the injured player off the field.

My opinion on ref's story: Why didnt you tell us how the insertion was supposed to work? No one knew what the **** was going on because you refs wouldnt tell us what was going on. Because of your failure to communicate, many unmasked people were getting shot at, a player walked away from the event in a sling, and the allied players were getting lit up so badly they had to rush back into the safety zone almost bringing it down.

Field owner's story (TJ) after i expressed how unsafe it was to play in that game and how terrible his ref staff was: (first person)
Well im very sorry you feel this way and that these events happened. We definitely will be looking deeper into training refs and how to prevent a situation like this from happening again. There was supposed to be a hot insert behind the axis but I dont know what happened since I wasnt on the field when that happened.

My opinion: You should feel very sorry, and you shouldve given every person leaving early a full refund and invited them to come back to play for free with a free case of paint. You should also yell at these refs until youre blue in the face for how stupid they are and how could someone lack so much common sense. You also need to train your refs better for these events and get events more organized. The head ref on the field should be making command decisions not being more lost than the regular refs. Also, why the hell would your other owner ban the refs from saying cease fire. In situations like this, they needed to say cease fire, but they were afraid of getting in trouble from romeo.

My final opinion:
PBE's reffing staff is full of complete idiots. The owners clearly have trouble running big events and did not have enough refs to ref 500 players. I saw 10 on the field at a time at most. The fact that all of this could have been prevented by the refs communicating to the players makes me wonder why they didnt. The teams were unbalanced 2 (axis) to 1 (allied). Since most people pre registered for the axis team, everyone showing up was put on the allied team. Well like in all big games, most of the people who didnt pre register are renters and have little to no paintball experience. So the allies were out numbered and had an extremely large majority of renters. People were also switching teams. They registered to be an allie and would say they registered for the axis at check in. Why dont you have the team they registered for next to their name???? They tried to balance the teams before the game started but that failed miserably. I am also wondering why you didnt cap each teams pre registration numbers at 100 and then when both teams get full add another 100 spots to the teams and keep going like that. Or when they saw that only 100 people register for the allied team and 300 for the axis, why they didnt switch players over or cap the axis registration. Also, many of the rules went unfollowed and some were just stupid. No other field or big game have I gone to where bounces count as outs except at a night game. If i wanted to play airsoft, i would, but no, im here to paintball. There is no way to ref bounces and theres no point in having medics if there is nothing for them to wipe off. Paintball players have been taught from their first game that if the ball doesnt break youre not out, i dont know why they tried to change that. Now i believe they made this rule because of the paint. The paint they had for the event was extremely hard. Let me give an example. I hit a hard wooden hut in vietnam from 20 feet away. the paintball bounced off. My good friend and former ref at my home field chucked a paintball on the concrete in the parking lot and it bounced off. Why make rules to cater to the paint? why not just get good paint that doesnt bounce off hard surfaces. It was very frustrating for me as a medic to run to places under heavy heavy fire to wipe a hit that wasnt there. I got bounces off of my lense for gods sake. Also, there was a rule that when a team has a helicopter going, the other team cannot run back to where they are going to drop to just light them up. That happened every time there was a helicopter drop. Also, their field is just too damn small for 500 players. It needed to be capped at 300, maybe 350.

I am probably not coming back to this field until both owners send me an apology for their unsafe event and that they made radical changes to how refs run things there. TJ already knows that. I feel very sorry for everyone in this game, it was complete bull **** and i dont think anyone should feel safe going there.

TLDR: The refs allowed a kid to get bunkered by ten people at one time while another 200 were shooting at the kid from no farther than 50 feet. The refs also opened up safe zone netting allowing people without goggles on to get shot at by the same 200 players. The event was very unorganized.

Still TLDR: Refs sucked, people got injured.

[smoke14]

If that happened to me I would have left also... I'm not playing at a field where refs think it's ok to let 10 people bunker 1 kid at once and open up safety netting so people without goggles on can get shot at.

[jimbob23929]

This is completely ridiculous. I would never come back to this field if this happened to me.

[Deceiver]

I was at this event and on the Axis end their were a few refs that were clueless, but others that were working their asses off to try and fix this. The situation was hard to work out. That being said, it would suck to be on the Allies =P

EDIT: The refs tried their best on our end, they took a bunch of our teams and top players and put them on your side. They moved us back SEVERAL times. I just think that when they saw the team imbalance for preregistration they should have done something about it

This post has been edited by Deceiver: 02 July 2012 - 12:17 PM

[robot0ninja]

Deceiver, on 02 July 2012 - 12:13 PM, said:

I was at this event and on the Axis end their were a few refs that were clueless, but others that were working their asses off to try and fix this. The situation was hard to work out. That being said, it would suck to be on the Allies =P

EDIT: The refs tried their best on our end, they took a bunch of our teams and top players and put them on your side. They moved us back SEVERAL times. I just think that when they saw the team imbalance for preregistration they should have done something about it

i know that they did try to balance teams, but they should have never allowed 200 players to be shooting at one kid, and they should have never allowed 200 players to shoot into a safe zone. theres no excuse for that.

[cockerpunk]

this is a good reason to go to a name brand, well run, from an experienced producer event ... like a viper event!

[robot0ninja]

cockerpunk, on 02 July 2012 - 12:30 PM, said:

this is a good reason to go to a name brand, well run, from an experienced producer event ... like a viper event!

very true. they were totally unprepared for the amount of players that showed up. thats what i like about living legends. when something went wrong they fixed it before it went bad. like the rippers. they saw the third faction wasnt working so they fixed it. here, they saw many times the axis team pushed all the way to our spawn and every time it got uglier and uglier. Glad im going to blast camp in august for the viper game there.

[jake t]

for some reason, i feel like i am the only person who did not hate this event. sure, the refs fucked up. But it puzzled me why the allies kept running out of the netting.

If PBexplosion does this next year, and i hope they do. they will learn from their mistakes. And hopefully have a solid scenario.

[Irish725]

I can't imagine many people going back to this event, just reading about it would make me want to boycott their park.

But then again, my teammates were at this scenario trying to unfuck things for the Allies side, so might just be a little biased.

[robot0ninja]

jake t, on 02 July 2012 - 01:21 PM, said:

for some reason, i feel like i am the only person who did not hate this event. sure, the refs fucked up. But it puzzled me why the allies kept running out of the netting.

If PBexplosion does this next year, and i hope they do. they will learn from their mistakes. And hopefully have a solid scenario.

For the record, I was having a blast until the refs let this bullshit happen. I do realize they didn't have the great refs I experienced during walk on play, so I may be back for walk on but if they don't change up training for these refs for next years event I won't be attending. Like my team mate Irish said, me and the rest of brew city bomb squad worked really hard with some other players keeping us in the game going on suicide helicopter rides

[jake t]

Irish725, on 02 July 2012 - 02:03 PM, said:

I can't imagine many people going back to this event, just reading about it would make me want to boycott their park.

But then again, my teammates were at this scenario trying to unfuck things for the Allies side, so might just be a little biased.

this is true, me and my team switched sides to the allies near the end to help out.

well, sadly, we had to switch back to the axis because someone on the allies side shot one of my buddies point blank. and said "fuck you"

[spisla]

The two biggest things I agree with you on, that would make me not want to come back are 1) they lifted the safety netting up when people had their goggles off, and aloud the other team to shoot inside it. That was completely the refs fault for not completely explaining what was going to happen, and a danger to people without their masks off behind the safety net, as well other things.

2) the teams were really unbalanced. However, while it is a big game (for fun) it is very difficult to convince people to go to a team that is getting dominated


Here's what I disagree with..
IMO, the thing where the kid (I'm assuming he was an experienced player if he chose to be out there by himself) stayed out alone against the 200 players, he should sure as hell expect to be hit a couple hundred times. Think about it, even if everyone there is a PUMP player, I can get 5 bps on a pump, and that's easy, that's 1000 rounds a SECOND being shot at him. So, while yes, it might have been extremely brutal to watch and experience for the kid, he should know what's coming to him, and IN A WAY (Please don't flame me or get angry at me for saying this) it was his fault. It's not up to the refs to even suggest surrendering. And with 200 guns rolling at you, I would imagine it could be difficult for you to hear someone yell surrender.

[jake t]

^^^ exactly, what do people people expect when they run out, guns blazing, with all those people ready to shoot them.

However the refs should have stopped it before it started.

[XxLOPERSxX]

Honestly, props to the kid for sticking it out with 200 people shooting at him and not surrendering Spartan style.

[robot0ninja]

I'm not blaming any players here. Yes there were idiots and ass holes on the allied side as well as the axis. I'm just saying this could have been prevented with communication, good judgement and common sense from the refs. It also didn't help the refs weren't allowed to call a cease fire. It makes me wonder what would happen if somebody's mask came off, the refs would be afraid to call cease fire even though it would be very necessary.

[robot0ninja]

These are the last things I am saying. One, if anyone has video on what happened here, please please please post it up. Two, I hope TJ, Romeo, and anyone that had anything to do with planning and running the event learns a lot from this. I mean a lot. Situations like this can easily get a field to lose their insurance. Lastly, Im sorry if i got heated at the event and in my first post. I am still very upset over this but Im sorry for belittling the refs and the owners. I was just trying to get my point across. So for now, im just waiting to see what the owners do. I hope it involves some type of compensation, especially to the allied side, and if they dont do anything at all, at least compensate to the two injured players. I seriously think they should be given free entry and paint for a year to compensate. But im just gonna wait and see, until then good day folks.

[Ben Stanczik]

I hear lawsuits... But I would've left also. Sounds terrible

[nighthunter]

I've had bad days, but this takes the cake. People with no masks getting lit up is a great way to get the fields insurance revoked and the field shut down.

[Jarz]

robot0ninja, on 02 July 2012 - 12:40 PM, said:

cockerpunk, on 02 July 2012 - 12:30 PM, said:

this is a good reason to go to a name brand, well run, from an experienced producer event ... like a viper event!

very true. they were totally unprepared for the amount of players that showed up. thats what i like about living legends. when something went wrong they fixed it before it went bad. like the rippers. they saw the third faction wasnt working so they fixed it. here, they saw many times the axis team pushed all the way to our spawn and every time it got uglier and uglier. Glad im going to blast camp in august for the viper game there.

I'll be at Blast Camp's game as well.

[Rival]

Assuming we have all the facts here then this is without question shocking and frankly appalling, and that is a reflection on the site owner just as much as it is on his idiotic staff. I've seen some pretty suspect officials in my time but that would make me look twice if you get my meaning. To lift up a safety net in the middle of a game is so unbelievably stupid that more adequate words of vilification escape me. If a site cannot guarantee my safety then I'm taking my business elsewhere, its as simple as that. And so should everyone else. If I were you I would seriously keep this fresh in the owners mind. His business is going to suffer if he continues to employ idiots like the one's described, and he also should understand that legal implications are bound to follow if this type of behavior becomes common.

This post has been edited by Rival: 02 July 2012 - 11:33 PM