by Steve » Sat Dec 16, 2017 1:23 pm
I chased obscenely high ROF in CQB AEGs. But I also kept my velocity target at 330 FPS or lower. For me, I wasn't looking to bleed somebody out or make people cry. I mostly wanted enough pellets in the air that I could legitimately advance behind ballistic cover. And, occasionally, point out when people were egregiously not calling their hits.
The thing that sorta kills HPA for me is that it's too paintball. I liked that the platforms were incredibly similar to actual firearms, that I could use my real-steel tactical gear, and in most instances, use the same tactics and skillset that I'd developed in the Army. Hoses and spare tanks and the rest of that nonsense just kills it for me. On top of that, most of the kids I ran into that ran HPA systems were looking for shortcuts. Higher ROF, higher velocity, bigger air tanks. And that "looking for shortcuts" mentality _felt like_ it transferred over into their game play.
I don't know that they were any less likely to call their hits, or more likely to repeatedly rope people, or just generally act more like jerks than anyone else. I do know that it stuck out in my mind more when I saw it happen. And, to my discredit, and on multiple occasions, I'm positive that once I observed bad faith behavior on the part of an HPA user I would spend the rest of the day actively looking for chances to light them up like a Christmas tree rather than finding a polite and appropriate way to try to correct the issues I had observed.