I want to start this post out by stating that I love devil ops and the idea of indoor airsoft. I love the fast, intense, adrenaline pumping games that I play in St.Paul. I wish for nothing more than for Devil Ops to be successful. I think that the owner is a great guy, but I disagree with how the field (it’s more of a course, but I’ll just call it a field for now) is being run. My friend and I went to this field last Saturday, and what we experienced was the most unsafe and ridiculous airsoft open play/event we have ever been at. I have about 4-5 years of airsoft under my belt with a good amount of Ops to back it up. My buddy has been participating in airsoft for about a year now and has seen his fair share of Ops as well. We have seen how safety is properly enforced and maintained at other fields. My buddy and I show up to see that the owner isn’t running things anymore; he has 2 kids running the counter and refereeing the games. I am a kid myself (19), but I have more of a clue on how to run games than these two. We start up with a warm-up team elimination game just to get things rolling. We then played the punching bag game (retrieve the bag and bring it back to the wall), but the way the referee split the teams was completely absurd. The referee put a full team together and put a whole group of new players with my friend and I. I have no problem playing with new players; I have no problem with losing, I have a problem with not having fun because we get blown out so bad. 2 experienced airsofters and 6 new players vs a team of 8 is no where near fair. We got blown out in the elimination and punching bag games. After I recommended to the ref that we switch up the teams he told me we were playing a different kind of game that wouldn’t require a swapping of teams. For the next hour the referees tried to explain a roleplay of PayDay, essentially we roleplayed this game for about 2 ½ hours total. It was about an hour of explaining and about 45 minutes for each game. Essentially the game turned out to be a overly complicated game of attack and defend, except this time the attackers only got around 2 lives, unlike the normal game that allows the attackers to have unlimited lives. The game was slow and impossible for the cops/attackers to win. Not only was the game screwed from the start, but the brilliant ref put the team together once again, which allowed the team to have a field day on all the new players. Once again I said that the teams were unbalanced, but to no avail, the ref didn’t want to listen. I told him what was wrong with the game, and why it didn’t work, yet the ref just continued to blame the cops/my buddy+me+newplayers for the game not working. When I tried to explain to him that we aren’t to blame for a shotty game that would never work he continued to blame the players. I stopped the conversation abruptly because I wasn’t going to argue with this ref when he refused to admit defeat and take the blame for a blotched game. To my surprise he decided to play a second game, and switched one rule; he made the cops have unlimited lives. Meaning he listened to me, or saw the fault in the game and didn’t want to say his game mechanics were horribly constructed. The 2nd game also went horribly wrong because the ref decided that keeping the team together was a great choice, so it was, once again, an unbalanced battle. Which eventually surmounted to a standoff for 20 minutes while the ref made bogus rules on the spot that ruined the game even further than what it once was. So we played 3 games (2 elimination + 1 punching bag) and then played 2 ½ hours of roleplay that completely wasted everyone’s time. It was well noted that no one except the team liked the game, yet the ref, in all his brilliance, decided to run it again. At that point my friend and I were so frustrated with the ref’s decisions that we wanted to walk out right there. Devil Ops lacked many safety protocols that other fields enforce every week. No one is required to chrono. The refs had no way of marking who did and didn’t chrono. They had a chrono that they recommended everyone use. As I chrono myself, I wasn’t supervised to make sure I was under 350(I didn’t need to be because I’m not an asshole, but I couldn’t say the same for some of the members of the team that was present that day, I’ll get to that later.) Between games I clearly spotted multiple people coming in and out of the field without barrel condoms on, I would try and remind people, but it got to be so overwhelming that I looked like that guy. So I decided to leave it up to the refs to handle the barrel condom situation, not only did they do nothing, but the refs were almost even more unsafe than the players. While on the field, the refs would walk around with no eye safety on. The most unsafe thing I saw while at this open play was a few players unholster their pistols and point them at each other, while in the staging area. It happened multiple times, but ended too quick for me to even yell at the dummies on the team that thought whipping out a loaded pistol and pointing it at other people was a fantastic idea, while no one had any eye protection on. On to the last straw that forced my friend and I to leave the field early. After about 2 ½ hours of stupid roleplaying and about 45 minutes of waiting for people to get back from getting food, we finally got to play the punching bag game once again. Yet again, the ref splits the teams unfair and the game went poorly. Before the second game a team member from FoxHound(Cody Staricha) tried to tell us that if he sneaks his way into our spawn, we aren’t allowed to spawn and have to wait for him to leave. None of us agreed to this ridiculous rule, and he walked away before any of us could object. I was told later the ref even told Cody that his rule doesn’t make any sense and that he will be shot up if he goes into the enemies’ spawn. Near the end of the game Cody sweeps across the back side of the field right by the spawn. My buddy still had a spawn left, my friend then spawned in and shot Cody in the back. Cody turned around, and from about 30 feet away shot full auto into a group of people sitting in the spawn because he had no idea who shot him. My friend and I scolded him and told him that what he did was outrageous. Cody stormed off yelling about how we didnt follow his made up rule. We walked off the field in the middle of the game, packed up, and left. To my knowledge the ref allowed Cody to continue playing even after this outburst. Im surprised the ref didnt pull him from the game, let alone remove him from the open play all together! My friend and I got 4 games of legit airsoft, while having to play with almost the most unfair teams possible. 20$ for 4 games and about 4 hours of wasted time. I understand people want to be together, but if I was in a team, I wouldn’t want to beat up on the new guys. I would rather the teams be fair, compared to a blow out. I would rather the new players have fun, for they are the future of the sport. Most of these new players are young and will grow up with airsoft. I don’t want to turn them away from a fantastic sport, just because I wanted to win. I want the new players to know how safe fields operate. I love Devil Ops, but it really needs to get its act together.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 20:49:09 +0000
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