Ghillie suit wearers/snipers wearing team armbands around their ankles or hidden among their foliage. Cheating? Close to the limits? Tactical?

[AirSniper]

It's the same argument you could have with the ghillie suit in general. It's not as if it's something that only im allowed to wear.

I've never seen any none ghillie wear it on their leg and I wonder if the site owners would have any issue with that?

But as a counter question, what about some of the sites that operate bands Vs none bands? Is one team cheating?

And also, (sorry for the incoherent format of this reply, just woken up after a night shift), what's the purpose of the band? To denote who's team your on or to make you stand out? Because as some of the replies to this topic would suggest, they're sole purpose is to make you stand out should you be trying to be sneaky and hide from the enemy team.

It all depends on what type of site it is, if its an indoor CQB then you're not likely to have a sniper playing. 

If there are sites that operate outdoor games where you have banded and non-banded and Mr Ghillie suit wearer decided to conceal their armbands by wearing them on their ankles... it presents an unfair advantage because you don't know if that is a team member or not.

Simply put, if you have two teams and one wears armbands then that is where they must be worn.
 

 

[SBoardley]

It's the same argument you could have with the ghillie suit in general. It's not as if it's something that only im allowed to wear.

I've never seen any none ghillie wear it on their leg and I wonder if the site owners would have any issue with that?

But as a counter question, what about some of the sites that operate bands Vs none bands? Is one team cheating?

And also, (sorry for the incoherent format of this reply, just woken up after a night shift), what's the purpose of the band? To denote who's team your on or to make you stand out? Because as some of the replies to this topic would suggest, they're sole purpose is to make you stand out should you be trying to be sneaky and hide from the enemy team.

Armbands are solely to denote which team you’re on. To alter the narrative to suit your notion for their use is your problem, not the site, marshal’s or the opposing team. Sorry you are wrong bud. 

 

[leadly]

Armbands are solely to denote which team you’re on. To alter the narrative to suit your notion for their use is your problem, not the site, marshal’s or the opposing team. Sorry you are wrong bud. 

I never said that was my aim, merely pointed out how some of the replies to this thread had suggested that was their use. Im Fully aware they are to denote which team you are on. The reason most ghillies wear them on their legs is because after all the time, effort and money spent on making a nice working ghillie suit, adding a bright coloured band sort of ruins it and makes you stand out, when the whole point is trying to blend in and hide.

For me, that's why I wear one on my leg (site permitting), so my ghillie actually does the job I want it to

Ill always ask if I can wear them on my leg, if im not allowed then that's fine. I never said I'd ever remove them from my arm and put them elsewhere when no body is looking.

All the best xx

 

[leadly]

It all depends on what type of site it is, if its an indoor CQB then you're not likely to have a sniper playing. 

If there are sites that operate outdoor games where you have banded and non-banded and Mr Ghillie suit wearer decided to conceal their armbands by wearing them on their ankles... it presents an unfair advantage because you don't know if that is a team member or not.

Simply put, if you have two teams and one wears armbands then that is where they must be worn.
 

But then what about the ghillie on the unbanded team? Is he all of a sudden not cheating because he's not wearing an "illgally" placed arm band anywhere on his body? How would we not know he's not hiding one on his ankle? Full auto him and then when he says he's on unbanded then just blame him for wearing a ghillie in the first place?

 

[SBoardley]

But then what about the ghillie on the unbanded team? Is he all of a sudden not cheating because he's not wearing an "illgally" placed arm band anywhere on his body? How would we not know he's not hiding one on his ankle? Full auto him and then when he says he's on unbanded then just blame him for wearing a ghillie in the first place?

I’m not sure if this is just a hypothetical question, because in my almost 20 years playing the sport, I’ve never been to a site where one team wears an armband while the other team doesn’t. But you pay your money and take that chance. By your logic, we could all rock up wearing ghillies and hide our bands, then where would you be? 

 

[Adolf Hamster]

I’m not sure if this is just a hypothetical question, because in my almost 20 years playing the sport, I’ve never been to a site where one team wears an armband while the other team doesn’t. But you pay your money and take that chance. By your logic, we could all rock up wearing ghillies and hide our bands, then where would you be? 

Armbands vs non armbands is definately a thing.

Typically due to sites having more numbers (ie only enough armbands of all colours to outfit one team) or if they use tape that they've run out of one colour.

It's also pretty universal that when it happens the armband team blames the armbands for any and all percieved failures (that arent blamed on cheating at least).

Granted a well organised site this shouldnt happen, but organised and airsoft are 2 words that seldom go hand in hand.

 

[leadly]

It would appear no matter what I say or how I say it, you'll always class it as hiding my band.  So I'll just give up wasting my valuable procrastination time on this thread and revert back to watching pimple popping videos on Instagram! 

All the best x

 

[BigBell1987]

If the arm band is to show team affiliation not to make players stand out then who cares where a ghillie wears it so long as they accept that when they get shot by friendlies it's their own fault?

Players often shoot people before band identification simply based on player directional heading and their own itchy trigger fingers, probably the same ones whining about ghillie band placement.

If your on side with a ghillie communicate so you have some awareness of his area of operation to negate the frequency of team kills and vice versa/more importantly Ghillies communicate with your team before you start.

It's not cheating if the band is for team identification as opposed to making one stand out and the only one suffering is the ghillie himself when he gets hit from both sides.

@leadly put some longer grassy fabrics on one arm, wear the band on the arm, cover it with the fabric, screw the whiners on a technicality, of course they will still cry because they like to suck the fun out of everything!

 

[Cannonfodder]

It would appear no matter what I say or how I say it, you'll always class it as hiding my band. 

Probably because thats what you said. 

 The reason most ghillies wear them on their legs is because after all the time, effort and money spent on making a nice working ghillie suit, adding a bright coloured band sort of ruins it and makes you stand out, when the whole point is trying to blend in and hide.

For me, that's why I wear one on my leg (site permitting), so my ghillie actually does the job I want it to

Many non ghillie users will often wear stuff that helps with camouflage but are capable of wearing the band on their arm and staying concealed. Claiming that you can't stay hidden with a 2 inch band on your arm is simply bullshit

 

[leadly]

Probably because thats what you said. 

Many non ghillie users will often wear stuff that helps with camouflage but are capable of wearing the band on their arm and staying concealed. Claiming that you can't stay hidden with a 2 inch band on your arm is simply bullshit

There's a slight difference in the user though isn't there. Im sure anyone could blend in / hide in a bush or dense foliage without the band giving them away, but generally that's not what I do. 

As I wear a ghillie most of the time when I play outdoors I often sit Infront of the base of a tree or at the edge some natural cover rather than fully submerge myself in something. This means I can get a better view of the playing field and not get my sniper or suit caught up in the inevitable bramble bush I end up gravitating towards.

There, you've drawn me back in and away from my pimple popping videos, now leave me be and carry on with posting negative comments on Kicking Mustang videos! ?

 

[Cannonfodder]

Well done on completely missing the point. You claimed you're not putting on your leg to hide the band but also say putting it on your arm will make you stick out so it goes on your leg. How is that not trying to hide it? 

 

[Pseudotectonic]

If one day we have a perfect invisible tech (let's call it magic suit) anyone wearing the magic invisible suit will be fully expected to wear armbands at the very minimum, probably leg bands as well, if not just for safety and ID reasons.

I think the visible armband rule should be mandatory to all players to maintain fairness, if the guy in normal suits have to keep his armband visible (and not allowed to hide it), a ghillie should not enjoy any privilege to be able to remove or relocate or obscure their armband just because they choose to dress in leafs. I would even argue ghillies should have mandatory leg bands in addition to armbands as to allow prone position identification for friendlies.

If I decided to put my armband in my pocket just because I am dressed in some magical optical cloaking tech (therefore should be "fully invisible") they would have kicked me out of the site.

The thing is, this is ultimately a game, and any game needs some sort of balance for A. a fun experience for all and B. for the health of the hobby in general. By and large the real world counters to real snipers are not commonly practised in airsoft or have a much higher bar of entry than just paying £50 for a ghillie overall. This is also a game legally limited to 1J plastic bullets and the rules should be designed around the gameplay that emerge from it and I would say perfect invisibility should be ruled out. At the minimum team identification should be visible from any angle. Outside of the armbands, you can be as invisible as you want but keep the armbands visible.

Moreover if you wear a ghillie you should still need to make the armband (and leg band) visible even just for identification reasons alone. If someone has the rare skills to identify you from under the bush before you can shoot him but not able to tell you are friend or foe, they will be forced to either shoot you or ask you verbally which team you are on, which frankly both are merely workarounds of a problem that should not be allowed to take place in the first place. So this is as much as a class-privilege problem and a practical gameplay rule-set problem.

 

[BigBell1987]

@Pseudotectonic the whole speculative invisible tech is just a daft and proves that people are just being salty for the sake of being salty, making up extra ways to whine.

if not just for safety

Bands for safety?

maintain fairness

I would even argue ghillies should have mandatory leg bands in addition to armbands as to allow prone position identification for friendlies.

Fairness soon went out the window!

More rules you bring in the more whiners whine.

Ghillies have to wear leg bands for when prone, well ok non Ghillies can't stay in cover that hides arms, on and on and on it would go, more whining than enjoying unless you enjoy whining in which case jobs a good one for some I guess.

any game needs some sort of balance

Ghillies should use bolt action and pizzle and that's a good handicap at closer range.

a fun experience for all

Agreed, so let them enjoy it their way.

By and large the real world counters to real snipers are not commonly practised in airsoft or have a much higher bar of entry than just paying £50 for a ghillie overall

Id argue cheaper than Otacon Stealth Camo or selling your soul to the devil for that magic stuff you were on about.

This is also a game legally limited to 1J plastic bullets and the rules should be designed around the gameplay that emerge from it and I would say perfect invisibility should be ruled out

That to me means that ranges are shorter than real life therefore Ghillies are less effective.

So this is as much as a class-privilege problem and a practical gameplay rule-set problem.

It's not a problem if you don't make it one, you can have hi cap high rate of fire if you want and they can have low rate of fire high concealability. Who cares, enjoy it and when you find one before he finds you and you take his arse out it will taste so much sweeter.

 

[Tactical Pith Helmet]

Bands for safety?

If you wear armbands on your ankle, you would float upside down.  You could drown!

 

[Pseudotectonic]

In some sites the sniper class already has their own category of joule limits and engagement distances however that is just for the rifle you choose. Ghillies can be worn by anyone so it does not belong in its own separate class of clothing, because there are no separate classes based on clothing like how the sniper rifle belong in a different class from normal rifles.

If wrapping myself in heavy gauge green cotton strings gives me the privilege to remove my armband or reposition it however I please I still wouldn't. Because A. that is an arbitrary exemption of a rule and B. it gives you a visibility privilege therefore is unfair to other players. Does not matter if you did or did not intent to conceal it, or if it is "relocated" for prone position ID or any other reason. The moment you remove or conceal it from the usual expected position i.e. on your arms, you are already generating an unfair visibility privilege. The armband is an agreed identification protocol that makes the game a game. If everyone wears it in one place and one of them wears it in another place, it becomes less legible therefore harder to identify therefore slower or impossible to react to therefore has real gameplay fairness implications.

If the rule is every player is required to wear the armband clearly, everyone should wear it clearly. There should be no exceptions.

If everyone is allowed to bend the rules however they enjoy (even if they enjoy it very very much), we wouldn't have a game at all because it would be impossible for marshals to enforce any rule.

And by the way if some magically invisible person is running around without visible armband and ankle band it becomes a massive collision or tripping risk. Two invisible magicians without armbands can knock each other out running their helmets full force unknowingly into each other and the worst of all is no one will notice and the tripping will pile up in that particular location.

 

[Cannonfodder]

Agreed, so let them enjoy it their way.

But if one person, or a minority, is acting in a way that negatively affects everyone else's day shoud they be allowed to carry on? 

 

[BigBell1987]

But if one person, or a minority, is acting in a way that negatively affects everyone else's day should they be allowed to carry on?

I can't get my head around allowing that to affect my day in the first place to be honest.

 

[Pseudotectonic]

If we have a ghillie clothing class with their own rules to allow discretion removal or repositioning of armbands, like how sniper rifles have their own rules, surely for marshalling reasons they should just belong to the same class, as such you should only be allowed to wear ghillie if you use a sniper rifle and vice versa. If that is the case then I don't see the issue with different rules applying to ghillies. But in practice since everyone can wear a ghillie, or wear parts of a ghillie, that becomes the issue, because suddenly you have random people deciding not to wear the armband simply because they enjoy it, and it becomes impossible to marshal the game because the only way of team identification goes out the window.

So for management reasons any game sites should never allow discretion removal of armbands based on clothing. It should be based on the sniper rifle special rules. That is at least piggybacking on the existing rule-set and makes it a sniper rifle problem therefore completely eliminates the ghillie clothing from equation, which would make a whole lot more sense to me.

If we reframe the problem into "should sniper users who already play with different joule limit and engagement distances allowed to remove or reposition their armbands", that is a much more reasonable question or proposition than say, can someone remove their armband based on the amount of leafs they are wearing.

So in short this is actually a sniper rifle problem, and not at all related to the ghillie suit clothing.

 

[leadly]

In some sites the sniper class already has their own category of joule limits and engagement distances however that is just for the rifle you choose. Ghillies can be worn by anyone so it does not belong in its own separate class of clothing, because there are no separate classes based on clothing like how the sniper rifle belong in a different class from normal rifles.

If wrapping myself in heavy gauge green cotton strings gives me the privilege to remove my armband or reposition it however I please I still wouldn't. Because A. that is an arbitrary exemption of a rule and B. it gives you a visibility privilege therefore is unfair to other players. Does not matter if you did or did not intent to conceal it, or if it is "relocated" for prone position ID or any other reason. The moment you remove or conceal it from the usual expected position i.e. on your arms, you are already generating an unfair visibility privilege. The armband is an agreed identification protocol that makes the game a game. If everyone wears it in one place and one of them wears it in another place, it becomes less legible therefore harder to identify therefore slower or impossible to react to therefore has real gameplay fairness implications.

If the rule is every player is required to wear the armband clearly, everyone should wear it clearly. There should be no exceptions.

If everyone is allowed to bend the rules however they enjoy (even if they enjoy it very very much), we wouldn't have a game at all because it would be impossible for marshals to enforce any rule.

And by the way if some magically invisible person is running around without visible armband and ankle band it becomes a massive collision or tripping risk. Two invisible magicians without armbands can knock each other out running their helmets full force unknowingly into each other and the worst of all is no one will notice and the tripping will pile up in that particular location.

The last bit reminds me of a time me and another ghillie sniper were going for a stroll on an attempted flank, the chap tripped over a branch and hit the deck!

I started shouting for him and pretended I didn't know where he was, then when he stood up I was like "ah there you are". He didn't speak to me again ?

Well done on completely missing the point. You claimed you're not putting on your leg to hide the band but also say putting it on your arm will make you stick out so it goes on your leg. How is that not trying to hide it? 

The issue is that you see me wearing a band on my leg (or often a band on each leg) as hiding it and I don't. I'll still carry on doing it (IF THE SITE ALLOWS) and you'll still have an issue with it and that's fine.

Probably just best to agree to disagree.

 

[clumpyedge]

If you have been going to sites that allow you to wear an ARMband around your leg or ankle then that's fine, its their decision. Speaking from a marshaling perspective on the sites I have worked on my position is this. If I got a complaint about someone be it sniper or not generally someone will come to me and so "so and so on green team is doing this that and the other" if you are wearing that ARMband on your ankle and decide you want to do something knobbish or is perceived as being knobbish by the other team it doesn't leave much for someone to give a decent description or tell me what team you are on. This then forces the occasional scenario where EVERYONE wearing a ghillie that day has to be told off together as, as a marshal we cant get a positive ID.

My personal thoughts on it are this. Bollocks to how much you have spent on your suit, its a mute point. You are playing a team based game where by you are marked so the other team can positively identify you and shoot you. If you choose to hide that after a marshal has placed that on your arm because it ruins the aesthetic of the tree you are trying to emulate then you are cheating (if playing on a site that states you have to have it on show). If you are playing on a site that allows you to move it then again, their site, their rules. I will however say that I have been to sites that allow this and the amount of snipers that then bitch and moan all day about being lit up is a hell of a lot more than the one or two people on this thread who "accept" that risk - take one of mustangs recent video as case and point, constantly gets hit by his own team but if he were wearing the band on his arm, more than likely would have been less of a problem but then again they could have just had it out for him.

Not sure why but this whole thread takes me back to a day at copehill down when a sniper got very very salty and complained to the DS running the event that he'd spent in excess of £500 building and crafting his suit only to spend most of his weekend either dead waiting for a medic or having to leave it in the harbor area because a large number of people on the other team had either thermal scopes or helmet mounted thermal. Not the same situation but did make me LOL.

My post is not directed at anyone so no toy throwing please. Just my thoughts based off of posts already made.