[kalnaren]

This will probably come across as a rant... you have been warned.

This mostly applies to skirmishes and pick-up games, which are the majority of airsoft games, and not to full blown milsim events. I know I've written about this before but the general response I've gotten on ASC doesn't seem to match what I see on the field.

Does anybody use anything other than midcaps and highcaps anymore? The last game I was at I actually ran out of ammo in a skirmish.. yet everyone around me is happily bursting away in full auto for 10+ minutes. I use a DMR.. I'm in semi 99% of the time.

When I first started playing airsoft I remember hicaps being shunned like they were the spawn of satan. I'd say in my first 2 years about 70% of people I played with used standards or realcaps, maybe 20% used micaps, and people generally only used hicaps if they were using a new gun or didn't have the equipment to carry a bunch of mags on them. Now this seems to have shifted.. I'd say at least 50-60% are using midcaps, 30-40% hicaps, and maybe 10% using standards or lower (also, interestingly enough, I see more games now where there are ranged, stand-off gunfights rather than people actually moving in). I also notice now that significantly less hosts state or enforce any kind of ammo limit in games. Sure, I know people come to games to shoot, and shooting is fun... but isn't 4 G36 hicaps or 5 AK hicaps a little excessive? (yea, I constantly see both of those). Maybe people don't like the fact that their assault rifle's ROF will empty a standard in 2 seconds... I guess the solution to having the ROF twice what the actual real version of it shoots is simply to up the ammo stowage instead of not hosing.

Even retailers seem to not stock standard magazines in any quantity anymore. A couple don't even carry them. I haven't seen G36 standard magazines in stock anywhere for nearly a year (granted, I haven't been looking constantly, but every time I have I haven't found them). I just did a quick look at 2 different retailers.. one only sells hi-caps and mid-caps, and the other, out of 47 magazine types listed, only 7 are standard or real caps. Now, I'm not blaming this on the retailers, they'll get in what people will buy, I was just using it to illustrate my point. Standard mags used to be a lot easier to find (yea, I know STANAG mags are still easy to find.. but guess what.. not everyone uses a STANAG rifle...).

Maybe it's just me, and maybe the majority of airsofters don't care. Personally I don't like being pinned down like I'm under fire from an HMG by someone with a submachinegun or assault rifle. I always felt a big part of the fun in airsoft was proper trigger control, and properly picking your targets so you didn't run out of ammo with no result.. now it seems it doesn't matter. 'There's a guy somewhere over there? Oh ok.... fire bursts in that direction for the next 10 minutes.. maybe you'll hit him.'

Does this annoy anyone else the way it bothers me? Or am I just unrealistic and picky?