There were several reasons. Not sure if you remember the old ball flight and how slow the balls were - you had to aim at the sky half the time. That was due to a limit on the max velocity. We figured out how to get by that and I researched the velocity of real paintballs, which several sites listed as 300fps, so we set that as the ball speed. At the time, of course people complained (I think mostly because the vets didn't have a huge advantage over new players anymore). I think some referred to it as a railgun. But I just figured that's the way it was supposed to be, not that familiar with real paintball. I've been playing real paintball a lot recently, and noticed that the range of real paintballs vs the ones in the game are significantly different. Balls will bounce off of people halfway across a small speedball field as opposed to the game where you can pick people off across the map that are up on a 20-story high ledge. I was also annoyed at times where players could shoot all the way across a medium to large sized map and pin people in the base. Kind of ruins the gameplay and takes away from the spirit of the game. Paintball is more about close-range combat. There are plenty of other games you can play if you want to shoot people across the map.
Anyway, I started looking at the code some more, and not only was the base speed high (300 fps vs 280 fps), but with the barrel upgrades, the velocity went over 400 fps. I figured it was time to tone things down a bit, but I didn't want to have a drastic change, so I just dropped the base velocity down to 285fps for now. I'm not sure if I'll go any further since I've been catching some flak for changing things. I think ultimately it's better for the game overall, though.
The game is fun. It doesn't have to be real.
People who are used to the nuances of the old physics and who spent hours figuring out maps don't want to have to redo all of that. I was never that great at aiming to start with but over time I did at least learn ways to shoot in various settings etc. Why should we have to relearn all of that?
I want to just play the game and know what to expect. I don't want fundamentals to change every time someone figures out something new about real paintball.
I hadn't seen any earlier posts on this subject until I went searching on several terms because I couldn't figure out what was different. I kept telling my wife something changed about the game, and she thought I was nuts. Then I came across the thread linked to above.
If the feature vote is important why not use it when making a change that effects the gameplay of all of us? Maybe it was there and I missed it. That is quite possible. That is why I am asking.
Now if I am living in the past, fine. But it is a waste of my time to re-learn old habits and who knows if it is worth it if it may even change again in the future. People liked the game the way it was. And every time you tweak it for some one half percent more realism you force all of us to have to change old habits, change the way we play, and invest more time.
