Mixing airsoft in a competitive environment

[Long_Bong]

Hi,

We had a CQB tournament last week end and I wanted to share the outcome with ASC at large for your feedback, advice and also to provide field experience for peoples who consider doing this type of event (and provide a starting point for rule to be use if you like them).

As organizer, I was fearful about the fact that airsoft and competitive play don t go along well (the I hit you, I did not hit you rhetoric among other thing…). One of the key factor I see in the airsoft I play over the last 10 years (In France and Canada) is the lack of competition, there is no winner/looser at the end of the day just peoples who had fun together. The tournament formula was steering away from this.

Concept:

In any case, we when forward with this approach:
Location: The Mills in Quebec
8 teams of 5 men
6 refs, 2 per floor, 1 coordinator (compiling result, planning, trouble shooting, etc).
Each game took place on one floor, opposing 2 teams.
A game consisted of 2 rounds, each lasting 25 minutes. Team switched side after the first round.
Winning a round = 2 Pts, Draw = 1 Pts, Loss = 0 Pts.
Each team had a yellow balloon deployed on his side, with no clear line of sight (you had to be very close to engage it). Each team knew where both team balloon were.
To win a round, you either have to wipe out the other team, or blow his balloon, while not getting your blow within 25 minutes. If both team had member alive after 25 minutes and no balloon were blow (or both team balloon was blow), the round was a draw.
Each team played 3 games (6 rounds total), plus a final game opposing the 6 best team base on score.
Real Cap rules were in effect (all mags had to have the real amount of BBs as the real weapon, with extra BBs for hop up loss if needed). 2 nades max per player per game
We provided the BB, 2000 BBs per team per game (2 rounds). BBs left over from previous game could be use for the next game. BB required for grenade were not included in the 2000 limit per game. We use black BB for 2 reasons: quickly spot player who are not respecting the 2000 limits (if they use white BBs). Also, black BB force player to aim, not guide there fire with the "tracer" effect of white BB. In a competitive environment, I wanted to reward people who aimed.
Smoke nades were permitted.
"Standard" CQB rule were in effect (350 fps, no blind fire, red rag / glow stick, no shower launcher, etc).

Execution:

The day when well, no mayor issue encountered, the refs made a big difference in solving issue right away. It was interesting to note how the duration of the round augmented during the day. The first round for all team was over in 5 minutes (out of 25). At the end of the day, we had match that ended with the timer ringing 25 minutes. It was great to see the change in mindset, player were less reckless, they started playing with the usual I will respawn anyway attitude in mind, moving to a my life is precious as the day progressed (which explained longer game).
The ranking of each team was on purpose kept hidden, this to reduce pressure and competitive attitude (I was afraid of people getting too serious / intense as they saw chance to be the best team). This helped keep the ambiance friendly and relax. We had at least one HD camera per floor, with some funny moment on tape.
Result were very close, Team in first place had 12 pts, 2 teams had 11 pts, one had 10…
We had a price ceremony at the end, where the 3 best teams had nametape stating the position in which they finished. Combine with nametape for different perk / action in game. Exemple, one player managed to shoot the other team 5 players on hiw own during a round, getting the One man army 2011 name tape. Another guy walked in wearing his CIRAS in reverse (with the pulling handle right below his jaw…), ended up with the Geardo 2011.

Conclusion:

After running this edition, change for next year will be:
A game will consist of 4 rounds of 15 minutes (more, shorter round)
Having 8 refs, in order to have all team play all the time on the 4 floors.
1000 rounds per game per team (not 2000).
No smoke grenade (some players got "intoxicated").
I m very happy with the outcome, the notion of mixing airsoft and competition turned out great, with no sportsmanship issue at all. Seeing people playing in a more cautious (no respawn) way was great. Team with experience and good comm performed better too. It great to see that there is already some friendly feud between team that will last until the next edition!

[SuperHog]

Shouldn't this be in the events section?

Anyways, any videos to get us excited?

[FOX_111]

No. It's a presentation of an airsoft experiment that proved a concept.
One of many steps toward sport evolution.

[Blackthorne]

Brilliant. Glad it went well and can't wait to see the video.

BB Bastard is hoping that more events like this happen and is looking forward to sponsorship.

[Long_Bong]

Originally Posted by Blackthorne

Brilliant. Glad it went well and can't wait to see the video.

BB Bastard is hoping that more events like this happen and is looking forward to sponsorship.

We use Bastard on that one, thanks Drake the real cap rule do reduce BB consomption

[Dirtbag]

Interesting, but the admin/ref count is very high. This is to be expected as it needs to be that way to reduce the possibility of cheating.

But that would likely require a very high admin count to keep going forward, if your admins also want to compete.

9 to 10 per event doubled to have trade offs between events is a lot.

It is however an interesting idea, and the balloon as a target is excellent I know from experience they are a lot harder to burst than most people think. The real mag limits are also a good idea although I would suggest dropping the bb count to as low as 500 for the day.

Not surprised about the smoke, it tends to be a little over powering. All in all a nice idea. Keep the thread updated as you go forward, I am thinking I would like to give this a try out west here.

[L473ncy]

The only thing I'd be concerned about is if this does take off you could potentially attract less than savory players who's goal is to only win. It sounds like when you did the original test these were all "known" players who wouldn't cheat.

Now introduce some players who may have played maybe 3 or 4 times and the attitude they bring might be more "play to win" rather than "vets" who might play to see how well they do but don't get caught up in the whole winning aspect.

Interesting nonetheless though and its good to see a positive after action report on testing a new gameplay style/type especially one that people say won't work out.

Also, from what I've been told, when there's bigger prize purses or such at stake cheating goes up exponentially. (eg. Winner of the tournament gets a $1000 prize purse or winner gets team sponsorship). It seems like this is a problem in Asia especially with speedball type airsoft games where everyone just shoots strings of plastic going at 700 FPS and lots of people ignore hits (I've seen a few videos on youtube of speedball type games and the pretty blatant cheating).

[Long_Bong]

The high ref to players ratio is a major draw back, a once a year event frequency will i hope mitigate this factor

Player having a bad attitude is scary. The high ref to players ratio aim at dissuading bad sport. The fact that a player doing a bad action will penalize his whole team also help. A good player quality control during inscription is also critical

I won t have $$$ for the best team next year, again to reduce competitive behavior

Aar of the event, with team result:

http://www.airsoftcanada.com/showthread.php?t=132661

[Wrath144]

A possible solution to cheating would be to have a team 'try out' for one event, play a few exhibition games and then have the other teams vote on whether or not to keep them in the tournament. And at any time teams can vote to remove a team.

[R1ghty]

I'd love to see a big game with many different objectives mixed into the combat. Each team has objective going while still maintaining presence on the field. At the end of the day, the team with the most objectives completed wins.

If elimination is the determining factor, you will have problems with hit calling. If objectives are the determining factor, it would discourage dishonest play.

I think many objectives on top of regular play would intensify play, without having to increase ref/admin presence too much.


Rhino did this, but in a first gen kind of way: 'hold this building for the next 4 hrs" vs something like "find the briefcase in this building in the next 30mins" "the enemy have taken an informant with sensitive info, recover him in the next hour"

Calculating objectives completed and buildings held/duration would determine the winners.

This is coming from someone who hasn't even hosted a game, so the logistics of which may be impossible. I'm just typing what I think would be good.

[Long_Bong]

Great concept, but hard to apply in a competitive framework i would said. Would be like trying to find who is the best skier by comparing a slalom performance with mogul and grand g. Ski is involve, but it too different to assess who is the "best"...

I m gonna stick to tournament approach for next year on my side, it easier to balance the challenge and minimize unfairness. Each team will play 2 rounds and swap side for the 2 other rounds. No bitching that one team was better off because of deployment and so forth... Minimize outside factors as much as possible, result are team driven, with minimal deployment, field, mission advantage and so forth. Again, we are talking competitive airsoft here.

[Long_Bong]

Hi,

So we just had the Olympic 2012, again aiming at putting a competitive edge into airsoft game.

I planned on having it at the same place as the 2011 edition (The Mill, CQB), but a major fire inside the site a week end prior to the game made me change the planning.

So, I when for a competitive game, outdoor.

3 teams (mixing of the 2 to 3 five mans team that were planned for the CQB). Team of around 14 players. No BDU rules in place.

The game was 3 rounds of 1.5 hours, each team had a specific objective with point related to it, and each team changed base after each round, in order to have a shot at each objective. During the 3 rounds, all team also had the objectives of capturing enemy from the 2 opposite force (2 Pts per capture, each player could be captured 4 times during the day).

Objective 1 was to travel across the field, to retrieve a specific item (with location on the map), all this while going across the 2 other teams fighting it out. 2 respawn per player during the round.

Objective 2 and 3 were simply to capture as much enemy as possible, while stopping the team having objective one from making it.

All these using the following basic rules:

Limited ammos, 500 rounds per player per round (Black BBs, 0.25, supply by admin), Real Cap in effect, all mags had to be loaded with the real life capacity of the weapon.
One medic per 5 players, one revive possible before needing to go to the respawn at there base (expect player wearing replica armor plate (5 pound each), in that case, 2 revives were possible).

Day when along very well, my main concern was the pause in between scenario (30 minutes each), slowing the game progression and momentum. Turn out it was not too bad. Players had a lot of positive feedback at the end.

This event actually made me reconsider how to organise game (rather then have a long continuous day, having sequence and alternating objectives, this to compare team performance and please skirmisher and milsimer alike (with easy and hard objective).


Post mortem for next year:

Find a way to encourage players that are ready to roll right away to go back in the game (rather then wait for the 30 minutes pauses).

Reduce the amount of ammos per player per round. Use white BBs.

Reduce the advance deployment rule for specific scenario, from 5 minutes to 2 minutes to reduce how much ground a team can cover before the game on).

Design 3 different scenario with 3 levels of difficulty.

The no BDU restriction turned out well, no much friendly fire, players knews who they were with (90% senior player with lot of experience, which is mandatory IMO for this type of game).

I m also considering having a league system in place in the Montreal area for next year, using a scoring system for each team, we have about 4 actives outdoor teams, with a couple of year of existence each, within 90 mins of game site (Wendigo, Smokerz, Black Spade, Napkins, ANV, Ghost, Deux de pique, FAQ, Silverback, Invasian Crew) they all mix along very well, so they can all have a separate league score and play with different team on a given side as the season progress. More to come on that : )

[Jimski]

from 5 minutes to 2 minutes to reduce how much ground a team can cover before the game on).

I believe this is specific to the Rawdon field

The no BDU restriction turned out well,

I believe it is somehow better to ask for a choice of two mandatory camos for each team

[DrDoUm]

Due to the circumstances, teams were combined into 3 opposing forces. From a player point of view, I felt less "competitive tension" than last year while we were about 8 different teams on the Roster.

Conclusion, IMO more teams equals more stress and a bigger rush.

On the other hand, there's something we can learn and apply in regular or milsim games. When every single player is forced to enroll as a team player in a game, the quality of the players and the cohesion of the squads steps up FAR BEYOND what we're used to (as opposed to open roster where people simply choose their side). No offense to independent/freelance player...

[PrIeSt]

I like it!
On a note. If you slow down a bit. 6 teams with two games at a time. Simply use the other two teams. Or parts of them. As additional refs.