I've stopped wearing rigs which cover my chest because I know that I don't feel hits through them, so I have to rely on the sound... yeah, well, not when I'm firing myself or have a team mate close by, or I'm running across crunchy terrain, or there's terrain being rattled around me by misses, because my hearing has a pronounced drop off in the higher frequencies and a bit of tinnitus in the upper mids. It's not like it's an absolute, like if I don't feel it I don't take it, because obviously I hear some, but I've had enough people saying "Oi!" to take note.
There was another time when somebody pulled me on the way back to the safe zone to say he had been hitting me in the leg, consistently, during the last game. I was lying prone behind some barrels and snap shooting with my off hand and, combined with a noob rental on my right crouching, putting the complete damper on any advance up that flank - he said my leg was sticking out, which I find credible. Weeeeell, I felt nothing, but I did have a knee pad on and a drop leg dump pouch, so it seemed possible - but I was prone, so the back of my leg should have been shot if he'd been hitting me as much as he claimed and it's pretty sensitive, plus there were marshals close by... what can you say except "Didn't feel it. I'm sorry you are annoyed. If it happens again please call a marshal because I don't want to be cheating accidentally."
Thing is, in the last example the bloke was obviously peeved, but he was still polite about it. I've done the same kind of thing myself as well, when I've been sure I've hit somebody and it actually mattered to the outcome of the skirmish, but they didn't take it. It's not always possible to get a marshal to oversee somebody whom you think isn't taking their hits, because the situation develops and changes too fast. At times like those I just remind myself that I'm doing it for a laugh primarily, the majority of people are like me in that if they are not taking hits it's because they do not know they're being hit, all that's needed is a polite word.
There is also adrenalin to consider. I'm pretty sure that I have failed to notice hits to even relatively sensitive areas like the inside of my biceps, because I've got home and found round hit bruises but don't remember the hit (although with the state of my memory it probably is possible that i took a hit and just forgot the whole regen etc :lol: ). I can't be alone in this though. If we didn't get excited at some points during a skirmish day, there'd be little point IMO! So I spose that what I'm saying is that I'm very prepared to accept that most people are well meaning but that they sometimes don't take hits, so I'm not in favour of any draconian procedures for enforcing the rules. I think every case needs to be examined on its own merits. There obviously are some people who refuse to take hits they clearly have felt, but my experience of life leads me to believe that people respond far better to feeling mildly embarrassed when they do wrong and being praised when they do right than they do to being told to get lost for rule infringements.
That said, the people whom we all have met, with their loadout and guns costing not far off the price of a reasonable car, who have been at it for long enough that they ought to know better, but look down their nose at us mere mortal skirmishers and refuse to believe that we could have hit them, the Absolute Cocks (it's a technical term) and/or members of Special Farces, really do need to be pulled up short by marshal intervention and sin binned for infractions, because they literally have too much invested in their self image to change without an external imperative. But as for a type, Ed, JCheeseright, and Sam, to mention just 3 off the top of my head, can and do field some fair wallop of money's worth of kit, and though I can only vouch for Ed and James in person, I'm sure Sam is an honourable player, so it totally doesn't mean that we ought to expect good kit to go with a bad attitude.
