September 23, 2011

How Difficult Is It to Enter Nerf?

This is more of a philosophical question regarding the current state of the NIC. Putting aside things like Humans v. Zombies and stock wars where the entry level is pretty easy (aka grab a blaster and go), large scale Nerf Wars are a special beast. Most participants are going to be using blasters that get at least 70' flat (a rather conservative estimate) unless it's a special gametype or they just want to mess around. For the person just starting to get interested in modding, there's a large barrier between how far they can shoot and the ever-increasing numbers of homemades on the field. There are relatively few blasters anymore that new people can grab off the shelf and quickly mod to get decent ranges (Big Blasts are discontinued; the UMB is getting pulled off shelves, etc). Offhand, the only readily-available blasters these days that would be remotely competitive for a beginning modder to slap couplers onto are the Big Bad Bow, Triple Shot, Berzerker variants, and....that's it.While it's certainly possible to split up said noobs to even out teams, etc, it's certainly not fun for them, since they're going to be killed off before they can even hit anyone.
NOT the ideal blaster versus a pumpbow.


Aside from people always bringing loaner weapons (which isn't always possible), has the barrier to a fun time become just too darn high? After all, if you're not even remotely competitive, you're not going to have any fun.

Perhaps I'm not expecting enough out of people; while it's easy enough to say, grab a 2K off of Ebay, it still feels strange that in order to be competitive, new players have to search and pay extra for older blasters.

I certainly did fine entering Nerf. My first mod was a spring-added Longshot with a reinforced boltsled, AR removal, and weighted streamlines. Not the most ideal weapon for my first war, but it worked; and by the time the first Vengeance in Ontario came around 5 months later, I had already made a competitive Doomsayer. But not all people are like that and can just pick things up. (Not to mention they keep getting banned off of Nerf forums for never actually reading and following the CoC. Some people never learn...)
Lucky for my guest Dr. Science, I had built more than just a Doomsayer by then.


Enough rambling for this morning; feel free to chime in!

2 comments:

  1. On waterwar.net we like to joke about the ultra strict rules that nerf forums have, it's not that people don't read the rules its that it is so easy to get banned on nerf forums.

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