I was deep into paintball too in high school and college, nothing national but traveled with the university club to other universities.
It's been a while since I played any serious paintball, but to me the biggest downside at the time was the arms race. Obviously the tippman full auto was banned from competitive play, but after that it was pretty much up to your wallet. I remember getting my Bob Long Autocoker and feeling invincible. Then some guys started showing up with Angels and holy crap I was intimidated. Compressed air vs CO2. Quality of paintballs. Even some of the gear with neoprene to give you a bit more 'bounce' it all added up.
Paintball was the most fun when we started, everyone with a tippman rental.
After our group started diverging on total spend it because obvious it was getting unfair. Eventually we all bought tippman pro carbines and required the same paintballs be used and all on CO2. Not getting CO2 freezing was part of your strategy! We had much more fun after we removed the arms race, even at the expense of not being able to tinker and customize.
The Angel guys could go to pub games and light up the poor schleps if they wanted :P
Funny enough - when I was entering High School around 2002, paintball was in the middle of a big growth phase, and as part of it, the NCPA seemed to have enough traction that there almost seemed to be a chance that players might start to have a hope to get college scholarships to play ball.
Definitely relate to you about the arms race. Though I enjoyed the tweaks to my Autococker including the Eclipse E-Frame, by the time I got out of the sport in '04 or '05, Intimidators and the DM series really took it to the limit.
Technically they were "semi-auto" but were walkable up to 14-15 shots per second and in the X-Ball style play, people were literally going through cases of 2000 in single matches.
Insane price ramp. Crazy to think it all happened within the span of a decade.
It is a small world. I was the president of The Ohio State paintball team for a few years. I also helped the NCPA with a website refresh back in the day. I would have never though that topic would come up on HN.
I spent more money on paintball in college than I care to think about. I has one of the first "new" shockers. It was one of the first red ones, the serial number was below #50 if I remember correctly.
Sadly no, NCPA wasn't around when I was playing. Looks like I _just_ missed it, though I'm not sure if my school was one of the original schools involved, so maybe I had no chance anyways.
I hear you on the tinkering/tweaks, that was extremely satisfying.
For a while, we told all our friends they could only tippmanns, preferably just the 98 custom. Some trigger upgrades were allowed as well as any barrel, no e triggers. It was actually really good, since most people would end with relatively equal equipment, and people wouldn't get pissed off at the new guy going full auto.
It's been a while since I played any serious paintball, but to me the biggest downside at the time was the arms race. Obviously the tippman full auto was banned from competitive play, but after that it was pretty much up to your wallet. I remember getting my Bob Long Autocoker and feeling invincible. Then some guys started showing up with Angels and holy crap I was intimidated. Compressed air vs CO2. Quality of paintballs. Even some of the gear with neoprene to give you a bit more 'bounce' it all added up.
Paintball was the most fun when we started, everyone with a tippman rental.
After our group started diverging on total spend it because obvious it was getting unfair. Eventually we all bought tippman pro carbines and required the same paintballs be used and all on CO2. Not getting CO2 freezing was part of your strategy! We had much more fun after we removed the arms race, even at the expense of not being able to tinker and customize.
The Angel guys could go to pub games and light up the poor schleps if they wanted :P