You have your gun, your camo jacket, and your running shoes. It’s time to play!
Click on the “Ready” button (lower left) when you’re ready to join a game. Click the “Ready” button a second time to un-ready yourself and stay out of the next game.
Notice when you click the “Ready” button, your status in the Players Online list changes from “unready” to “READY”.
New games start about 1 minute after the previous game ends–or faster if all the players online are ready.
When the game begins, you are teleported into the game area on the map.
The game boundaries are marked. You can’t move outside the game area (neither can the bots; more on those in a minute).
Once in a game, there is no truce. I recommend you find cover (like forests or jungles, since you’re wearing a woodlands camo jacket). Keep in mind, though, that you will move slower on terrain other than grasslands.
Paintball Net has a number of terrain types: grasslands, forests, jungles, hills, valleys, deserts and mountains. Forests and jungles provide the most cover, but slow you down. Hills and mountains can give you a great way to see (and be seen farther). Mountains and water are the slowest terrains to run across. So keep that in mind as you click on the map to move.
If you see an enemy player, shoot ’em! If you’re using a mouse, that means right-click on their avatar.
You will shoot where you click. Unfortunately, enemies have a tendency to move. So you’ll probably need to shoot again. And maybe again and again. You get the idea.
If this is really your first game, and the game is Survival, you’re protected from the more experienced players (though not the bots). Until you’ve achieved 25 splats, you can’t be targeted by experienced players. This “newb armor” doesn’t apply in team games, though.
When you successfully splat an enemy player (or a bot), you are awarded a small cash prize. And, more importantly, you add to your stats: total # of splats, accuracy, and so on.
As you run around the game area, keep an eye out for tokens. You can pick these up by moving onto their location and clicking the “Get Token” button. You can sell these tokens after the game.
Most Paintball Net games will also have “bots” that are added to the game after it starts. Bots are automated painting machines. They float around the map, looking for players. When they see a player, they charge.
Bots come in several varieties: dumb, smart, really smart (not really any smarter, but it paints a bigger area if it runs into you), stealth (sneaky), and kamikaze. If a bot enters your location, it will spray you. Some of the bots have proximity triggers. If they get close enough, they will spray an entire area. Kamikaze bots are really messy.
Once you’ve been splatted, either by an enemy player or a bot, you are out of the game. You will be teleported back to the holding area, where you can reload, sell off any tokens you collected, and get ready for the next game.
Paintball Net has a number of different types of game:
- Survival – It’s everyone against everyone. If it moves, shoot it.
- Team – The players in the game are divided into 2 teams.
- Invaders – It’s players vs bots. Lots and lots of bots.
- Hunt – 1 player is chosen as the victim, the other players are hunting them as a team.