In a spot of news that's guaranteed to change the way that many paintball fields look at doing business, Drop Zone Paintball has announced that they will only be allowing gravity hoppers on their field during recreational play.

Their aim is to level the playing field again. As guns like the Ion and PMR were released, more and more people started substituting quantity of paint in the air for skill because it became so financially viable. For what people used to pay for Tippmann 98 Customs, they began to be able to afford guns that could actually compete with higher ends.

This meant that even beginning players were able to shoot very quickly without having played for enough time to gain the skill that many had had to gain previously. In days of old, people played until they were actually truly being held back by their gear, and then had to invest a lot of money into buying guns that were not the leap in technology that you see today.

So, at least in my head, ten years ago, you didn't see the random inexperienced kids shooting their mad gats at the chrono. Or ramping on the noobs at their local field. Or thinking they were hard until they suddenly got lit up and ran off the field crying.

Like today.

Anyway!

Drop Zone has come up with a perfect solution. There's no ROF limit, no board caps, no tech limit on guns. Instead, there is a blatantly obvious object that has to be on top of your gun: a gravity hopper. It's easily recognizable, and very, very few people are going to try to cheat by modding a grav hopper. In fact, how stupid that would make you is hardly describable. Plus the switch might give you away.

So, what are the potential problems? None that I can see, as long as they're reasonable about allowing teams to practice with electric hoppers, because those aren't going to leave tournament paintball, at least in the foreseeable future.

Read on to see the full text release!

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