Krapman killed my inner child.

[matteusz]

So I talked a player from last weekend's team and a dude from work into playing a tourney with spyder's this weekend (yes it was the spyder cup and despite your very engaging thread Bryce I need to vent about an issue far greater than whatever team rivalry you would like to discuss). I will openly admit there are better kingman markers than what I had to supply my team with. I will also admit there are lots of people that can tech a marker better than I can.

All the same I have torn down and rebuilt many a spyder. I have seen everything from "can't be rebuilt" to "just needs oil and cleaning." For what they have done to bring people into the sport (and for footing the bill for a decent tourney at which we got rocked) I am grateful to kingman. My start in paintball came from trading these markers on ebay, the forums etc. Without spyders and clones I doubt my silly cheap self would have ever gotten into the game. I have owned and had working up to 20+ kingman markers at one time. One day I rented out a whole fleat of the things to a local group of MP's and ran several games for them. I have kingman stuff shoot reliably and played several great day's of paintball with the stuff. Today was not one of those days.

The brand new VS1 and used very little VS1 and super upgraded can't fail spent 3-5hrs on the blasted thing imagine we were rolling over and getting owned with this weekend couldn't have disappointed me more. Chopping with eyes, jamming, won't recock, . . . We all but had an invite to thanksgiving dinner by the time we were done stopping by the tech booth for a quick fix or begging Bryce for a loaner (thanks a million btw You kept me in there to get owned again).

And don't even get me started on when they actually did work how much of an annoyance it was to aim one direction and not have your ball go in the immediate area you were shooting. After what has been a year or so break from ever bothering to shoot one of these I can see why when I first got my hands on a mag I never wanted to look back. Sure I didn't have barrel kits for the spyders, the guns don't have quality regulators, the paint match was bad and the stuff was cheap and breaking in hoppers, barrels, the breach, the air . . . you know everywhere except on the opposing team. But common. You can't seriously expect me to shoot something that is no more reliable that a bitter x-girlfriend on crack. I am fine with a gun, the hopper something going wrong every so often but when it is everything all the time (and most of it my fairly new super improved this year's model stuff) I get the feeling it is time to be done. The technology has been so much better for so long besides being cheap I fail to see the allure. In fact this experience may well have made me more willing to spend hard earned money on better built gear for EVERYTHING I do for the rest of my life! Unless you are looking for the challenge of making something inferior perform at superior levels why on earth would you shoot anything less than the plethora of better designed and built markers out there?

For the 300$ I would have to drop on the spyder top of the line (which I also saw was giving people fits all day long) I would rather shoot a mech mag in ANY game ANYWHERE. You would be insanely hard pressed to find any way on earth to get me to believe that dollar for dollar (no matter how much faster no matter how many more niftly things you have the poor chinese slaves squeeze into those markers) that anything like a spyder is the better investment for any player over a marker of slightly greater expense but that is put together well. Give me the choice between a new RSX and a new RT or Pro classic and I will take the mech mag every time. Introduce me to any new activity with anything less than quality gear and I doubt I will be back :wall:

How on earth can you justify the poor performance with hype? When it comes down to actually using the stuff. I want to be out having fun not sitting in shame trying to fix something. I have a day-job for that if I want to seek it out. The kid in me needs to let out some aggression and have some fun. When it comes to paintball I just can't see the fun in playing with gear that is just not gonna work right. Sure it is cheaper but the bitterness of poor quality . . . killed my inner child today.

Ok gotta go. I have some weeds to kill and a bunch of gear to clean before I sell it off on ebay. :mad:

[mostpeople]

To be honest, I have lived by this philosophy my whole life and I think you just learned the lesson there: Buy top of the line! Honestly, I don't care if it takes you an extra 6 months to save up the cash to do so... just do it, it's worth the wait. I wouldn't ever buy anything else but top of the line for exactly the reasons you saw right there.

I'm glad you learned an important life lesson though - if you stick to it you will have a lot more fun I'm sure!

:wthumpup:

[matteusz]

To be honest, I have lived by this philosophy my whole life and I think you just learned the lesson there: Buy top of the line! Honestly, I don't care if it takes you an extra 6 months to save up the cash to do so... just do it, it's worth the wait. I wouldn't ever buy anything else but top of the line for exactly the reasons you saw right there.

I'm glad you learned an important life lesson though - if you stick to it you will have a lot more fun I'm sure!

:wthumpup:


It is tempting to say something condescending regarding your self-congratulations for buying quality gear but I'll assume you meant the best when telling me how great that is for both of us to do. My point simply put is this:

The guys who didn't go because they didn't "want to play with spyders" showed a better understanding for the game. I want the field to be level but not dumded down. Succumbing to using inferior markers in order to play in a cheap event didn't teach me to buy top of the line. If I hadn't learned that what am I doing with mags and now a viking? Why do you think it has been so long since I have used a spyder?

It taught me that once you have used quality gear it is really frustrating to go backwards. It taught me that even if the event is well promoted people won't take it seriously if you aren't playing for the sake of the game. I was willing to go backwards and use a spyder under the pretense that they could, that they had in my hazy memory worked just fine when it really mattered. The point is they didn't/ couldn't? and that took the fun out of it for me. In fact I remember a time when paintball suddenly got to be more fun (it was when I stopped using spyders). Before today I was hanging onto a spyder and a bunch of parts. Before today I was building up my uber dream spyder with which to blow people's minds. Now I realize that like letting go of cheating we as players need to let go of companies and products that aren't helping the sport. The ones that are we need to throw ourselves and our money behind. Most importantly it reminded me that despite the mighty advertising and cool prizes blah blah blah the people there were not thinking about the event as a paintball event. It was a spyder event and to be good guests we all ran around :wall: with a smile. I had a blast playing the couple of games where things worked (and no I didn't really mind losing one in particular). It would have been more fun if the company putting it on had more that it's own interests in mind (cause cooperation makes things grow). It would be more fun if the players taught the companies this with their behavior so the companies could respond in kind.

[Z-man]

I have a slightly different comment to make in a different direction Matteusz. Had you been a Spyder/clone guy and had lots of them but pretty much JUST that design of marker? Or, did you have several different types of markers (maybe a tippmann, Mag, Angel etc)?

I have typed this out before in other threads but I really think that paintball for the bulk of is is many things but one of them is that it's a fun thing to throw some money at and buy little addons and gizmos for now and then. It's fun to tinker to a degree (when you are tinkering because you want to rather than HAVE to).

I like that I have several markers. I don't need several because any one of them is particularly unreliable or problematic. I have several because sometimes I just want to shoot something else for no other reason. Now I chose the different markers for the traits they have (air efficient, fast, smooth cycling) but they are all very different designs with their own quirks, weaknesses and fickle aspects but I didn't skimp on parts and components for any of them so 2 really could go down and I have a complete 3rd setup (tank, hopper, barrels and marker) that is setup working regardless of the other 2 complete systems.

Personally I don't understand owning several of the same kind of marker (no offense to that amazing collection A-Tach). I guess I was getting at, did you have lots and lots of Spyders and now you have a Mag and Spyders? Do you like having the fail-safe in varieties of markers or just really happy with the Mag?

[TnDeathInc]

i had a few spyders in the day they went through orings like crazy. every couple outings i had a leak. Had a tippman prolyte from the same time that never needed anything but a tad of oil, never an d oring or nothing, thats when i first learned about quality

[bryceeden]

First let me preface this by saying that my team didn't have a gun problem all day short of having to lower the velocity on one like every game. THe teams we loaned our E-Spyders to when we gave up and decided to go all Mech really didn't short of one of the brand new RSX's being defective.

The cup however I was very disapointed in(and called Spyder telling them so) The Spyder cup is usually done as a big event, well run and staffed. This was litterally held in some guys field(as in farm field) The reffing sucked to put it extreamly mildly(that little"player" kid was about to go down). The anouncer was some guy with a megaphone that noone could hear. The fields were not even nettet on all sides. The list goes on and on.

The Reffing sucked bad. In one game my team had one player pulled because he might have steped out of bounds with one foot(the boundry was not painted nor marked outside of the end zone) Another pulled for a hit to the shoulder that didn't break, but the ref said he saw it hit him so he was still out. And I was called out after the player I bunkered in the back spun and shot me in the leg. All day I was watching players with obvious hits keep playing and not even bothering to wipe because the refs weren't going to pull them anyway.

Now for the guns, taking into account that I play for a Spyder sponsored team and we take consistant great care of our Spyders. We actually loaned out so many of our Spyders to other teams with ones that had broken that we all ended up using Spyders which we had built out of parts from broken Spyders left in Desega's store for 1+ years with no owners we could find(we did have some cool frankenspyders) Like I said, our markers worked flawlessly all day, but clearly if I've loaned close to a dozen markers people are having real problems.

The Techs at most Spyder Cups are a tech team in a nice trailer who can fix everything in like zero time, this was some guy in a tent who couldn't fix crap.

I was not impressed, this was my teams last Spyder Cup as due to this years Spyder Sponsorship we are no longer eligible to play, if we did still qualify to compeate I don't think that I'd go back.

[RogueFactor]

Very good post matt. I appreciate being able to read how things went from your perspective.

Interestingly, Spyders just a mere 5 years ago were a decent low-end starter marker. I had friends who owned and used them for rec play, without issue. Over the last 5 years, the landscape of this industry has changed dramatically...for the worse.

It seems that, for the most part, crap-in-a-box markers are the name of the game.

One thing you said I have practiced for nearly the entirety of my playing...

I would rather shoot a mech mag in ANY game ANYWHERE.

[Desega]

This thread is bringing up a lot of good points. The RSX Spyder that I bought for this event broke down in the first game, and the tech didn't know how to fix it, so I used what I've affectionately dubbed my "Franken-spyder". It's a marker I've built out of 8 different spyders, all of them older markers. The interesting thing about that is that all of the parts I used were from guns at least three years old, before spyder started it's "tourney marker" hype, and it worked flawlessly. Sure, I'd take my Bob Long any day, but this gun was actually a lot of fun to use, and it worked well.
I understand where you're coming from on the step backwards thing, it's frustrating to go to an event for a fun day and then spend all of that day trying to fix gear that shouldn't need to be fixed. This spyder cup was definately a let down from last year.

[matteusz]

I have a slightly different comment to make in a different direction Matteusz. Had you been a Spyder/clone guy and had lots of them but pretty much JUST that design of marker? Or, did you have several different types of markers (maybe a tippmann, Mag, Angel etc)?

I have thrown money and time at it and to the dismay of my wife have a never ending thirst for more. As far as owning a variety of markers goes I have not branched out as much as I would have liked to. What have I tried?
Viking, Tippmann, Almost all forms of spyder or clone (I think I may build up and keep a piranha), Angel, Mag, Cocker, Nelson brass, phantom, and yes even an °°°.

I would love the chance to shoot every marker ever made. It would be awesome to own one of every platform/ valve system. DP stuff looks interesting. manwe33 found me a first viking and converted me to expensive electro super markers. I think I will never be without one again. I love having 2-3 mags sitting around and working.


I have typed this out before in other threads but I really think that paintball for the bulk of is is many things but one of them is that it's a fun thing to throw some money at and buy little addons and gizmos for now and then. It's fun to tinker to a degree (when you are tinkering because you want to rather than HAVE to).

I have tinkered so much I should be given an honorary spyder tech degree and free tuition to airsmith school. If it has threads I can probably strip them for you. If you can buy an upgrade for it and it has come to my house in a box I have considered it.



I like that I have several markers. I don't need several because any one of them is particularly unreliable or problematic. I have several because sometimes I just want to shoot something else for no other reason. Now I chose the different markers for the traits they have (air efficient, fast, smooth cycling) but they are all very different designs with their own quirks, weaknesses and fickle aspects but I didn't skimp on parts and components for any of them so 2 really could go down and I have a complete 3rd setup (tank, hopper, barrels and marker) that is setup working regardless of the other 2 complete systems.

Personally I don't understand owning several of the same kind of marker (no offense to that amazing collection A-Tach). I guess I was getting at, did you have lots and lots of Spyders and now you have a Mag and Spyders? Do you like having the fail-safe in varieties of markers or just really happy with the Mag?


I started with spyders (after observing the headache that tippmans are), got into mags by way of nelson stuff a cocker and an angel or three. Most the stuff I get into I do so by buying a broken one or 20 of whatever it is. After learning how to fix them I figure I am ready to shoot it. The Viking is the one exception to that and I am told I may never get the chance to fix it. Hmmmm

Now I like the multiple marker full set up back up system I am just not that far in my gun whoring. I have noticed if you do minimal maintenace (and leave the blasted things alone) a mag will shoot nice for seemingly neverending periods too. I have a theory that if you build it tune it and leave it in a box for 3 months a mag will function great. Skip the time in a box and they seem to be finicky for a few outings.

Currently I have a mech mag and a viking as my main markers.

I plan to add:

a piranha to the lot (could the massive striker spare me the :wall:?) as a loaner and such. A sniper for the rare day when I get newbs to show up for a game and I am actually considered comparatively skilled (instead of being the newb). And finally a small group of mags to loan out at family games.

[Steelrat]

I love that the Spyder cup probably did more to hurt their sales

[bryceeden]

I love that the Spyder cup probably did more to hurt their sales

Last year it helped alot, and many people walked away with a new respect for the VS2 and 3. They worked very well. This year alot of people had isues with them, however the RSX and Electra seemed to work very well for the most part. It seems it may be a longevity issue. Also from what I've heard they didn't really have these issues in Vegas last month so they weather may have had some bearing on it.

[matteusz]

Last year it helped alot, and many people walked away with a new respect for the VS2 and 3. They worked very well. This year alot of people had isues with them, however the RSX and Electra seemed to work very well for the most part. It seems it may be a longevity issue. Also from what I've heard they didn't really have these issues in Vegas last month so they weather may have had some bearing on it.

Now you are just grasping at straws. "The weather" seriously it was 65 degrees. Was it too nice for the spyders to function? Do they only have harsh weather orings? Are the tolerances only set for 85 and up? Maybe they need warm batteries?

They broke down because of poor quality control and a weak design. Tippman's have the same problem (and how can you not group them in together? Same platform similar price point and on and on they are the same class of marker. Tippmann only differntiates itself with milsim upgrades and the flatline barrel.). Sooner rather than later the things need more than just normal maintenance. Sure there are plenty of them that turn out to be workhorses but that large of a number of markers giving people fits has got to signal to you that something is amiss . . . and it wasn't the weather.

[bryceeden]

Now you are just grasping at straws. "The weather" seriously it was 65 degrees. Was it too nice for the spyders to function? Do they only have harsh weather orings? Are the tolerances only set for 85 and up? Maybe they need warm batteries?

They broke down because of poor quality control and a weak design. Tippman's have the same problem (and how can you not group them in together? Same platform similar price point and on and on they are the same class of marker. Tippmann only differntiates itself with milsim upgrades and the flatline barrel.). Sooner rather than later the things need more than just normal maintenance. Sure there are plenty of them that turn out to be workhorses but that large of a number of markers giving people fits has got to signal to you that something is amiss . . . and it wasn't the weather.

I totally agree that it was strange to see that many Spyders break down. I've used my RSX and never had an issue, I've used a VS2 alot and never had an issue, I've used about every Spyder ever made and never had an issue. I may just be lucky(or it may be the Tadao boards in my E-Spyders) but I've never seen so many problems with Spyders, shoot up untill last year they were the staple of teams at my tourneys. I agree that there was something very wrong and that many problems is 100% unacceptable.

[matteusz]

I totally agree that it was strange to see that many Spyders break down. I've used my RSX and never had an issue, I've used a VS2 alot and never had an issue, I've used about every Spyder ever made and never had an issue. I may just be lucky(or it may be the Tadao boards in my E-Spyders) but I've never seen so many problems with Spyders, shoot up untill last year they were the staple of teams at my tourneys. I agree that there was something very wrong and that many problems is 100% unacceptable.

I am so glad we can understand each other on that point. :wthumpup:

[Desega]

My RSX that I bought for the event commited suicide when the air was turned on. It was just weird.

[bryceeden]

My RSX that I bought for the event commited suicide when the air was turned on. It was just weird.

Your RSX worked good(except for the feedneck breaking) Dillan unscrewing the ASA untill the front depressor part fell off and he lost it isn't the guns fault.

[Desega]

Was it Dyl-weed's fault? Okay, I didn't know he messed with it, so I won't blame it for that problem.

[mostpeople]

It is tempting to say something condescending regarding your self-congratulations for buying quality gear but I'll assume you meant the best when telling me how great that is for both of us to do. My point simply put is this:

The guys who didn't go because they didn't "want to play with spyders" showed a better understanding for the game. I want the field to be level but not dumded down. Succumbing to using inferior markers in order to play in a cheap event didn't teach me to buy top of the line. If I hadn't learned that what am I doing with mags and now a viking? Why do you think it has been so long since I have used a spyder?

It taught me that once you have used quality gear it is really frustrating to go backwards. It taught me that even if the event is well promoted people won't take it seriously if you aren't playing for the sake of the game. I was willing to go backwards and use a spyder under the pretense that they could, that they had in my hazy memory worked just fine when it really mattered. The point is they didn't/ couldn't? and that took the fun out of it for me. In fact I remember a time when paintball suddenly got to be more fun (it was when I stopped using spyders). Before today I was hanging onto a spyder and a bunch of parts. Before today I was building up my uber dream spyder with which to blow people's minds. Now I realize that like letting go of cheating we as players need to let go of companies and products that aren't helping the sport. The ones that are we need to throw ourselves and our money behind. Most importantly it reminded me that despite the mighty advertising and cool prizes blah blah blah the people there were not thinking about the event as a paintball event. It was a spyder event and to be good guests we all ran around :wall: with a smile. I had a blast playing the couple of games where things worked (and no I didn't really mind losing one in particular). It would have been more fun if the company putting it on had more that it's own interests in mind (cause cooperation makes things grow). It would be more fun if the players taught the companies this with their behavior so the companies could respond in kind.

damn dude.. I was just trying to compliment ya, I would reccomend to EVERYONE out there to do the same! I am not thinking I am 'holier than thou' or anything along those lines so get off it.

And absolutely congratulations to me for not buying/playing with °°°° markers/loaders. All it means is that I wont be the one °°°°°ing about my equipment because I saved my $, instead of grasping for instant gratification.

[Turbo Chicken]

wow! not sure what to say bout this one.

er.. i won't comment on the equipment as there's too many variables that effect the equipment. I'll leave that one alone.

Now the event... reports of how it was run are appauling. I really hope kingman learns from this year and gets back to they way things were run in previous years.


Did anyone play with a hammer?