Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

^ While pinning elbows to the side while being a HP does not feel natural in anyway whatsoever and I think G40 can be unreasonable at times, it's the way it has to go if you don't want to be blasted by G40 penalties.

I wonder how my former team's drive coach would've been if our human player made some silly mistakes. Granted this was all their 1st year behind the glass.

This is the way it's always been since auto / coopertition / teleop / whatever points have been used as tiebreakers. It's just not practical to have refs keep track of which specific robot is scoring which points... it's hard enough to get the points for an alliance correct.

I suppose you could use some form of OPR solution to solve for team contributions, once all the matches were complete, but you'd have no accurate way to track tiebreaker rankings until then.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Attended Midwest, a Week 6 event. On Friday, right before matches started, a student asked one of our adults "What does the human player do?" Later found out that our human player was asked to explain the basics of the role to at least two different teams on Friday. I'm sure this was not an isolated incident for our team or the volunteers.

Then on Saturday (Day 2 of a Week 6 event) in what I believe were teams' 11th or 12th quals matches I observed:

• Human player being instructed from stands where she needed to locate herself. She stood outside the box and immediately got a penalty.
• Human player being instructed by an alliance partner where the human player needed to stand. Student did not move to the box. Eventually his own mentor gently pushed him down the sideline and he walked slowly to the human player box as the match started. No one noticed and he did not get a penalty.
• Two human players occupying the same human player box for the duration of the match, leaving the box on the opposite side of the field empty.
• Another entire match played without a human player in one of the human player zones. This time no one doubled up though. No idea where the third human player was.

Unfortunate for students to find themselves in these situations as they could easily be avoided.

Some teams bring bumper supplies and build bumpers for rookie and other teams. Perhaps a few teams could also "build human players" on practice day - just checking in with teams to make sure they have someone assigned the role and understand the basics of the role. Certainly should be on teams' pre-match checklists - Do your alliance partners have a human player? Do they at least understand where to stand? Something we'll discuss during prep for next season.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

To add on to the post above of bad human playing, I also saw a coach inbound the ball when he realized that there was no human player in the inbound area, but then I also noticed another teams human player acting as a second coach for his team. I don't understand how either team could do that if they even looked at the rules once.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

So no one gets too confused, this isn't actually illegal. I've considered it as a way of training other HPs in practice matches. I'm not sure of any uses other than that, but they can pass to each other within the island as well. There's also nothing that prevents an alliance station human player (or even one of the many animatedly-gesticulating island HPs) from offering coach-like advice to theirs or another team.

That said, I've reffed events where is seems like fully half or more of the HPs don't have a clue what they're doing the first time they come out. If I had a nickle for every "so what do I do?" question right before auto starts (and a penny for every delayed start, and a dime for every "where do I stand?", and a dollar for every mid-match "can I throw this in?"*...) By my count, I'd be uniquely rich this year vis-a-vis the rest of my reffing history. Haven't figured out why yet.

*"You can correctly re-enter an out of bounds ball whenever you think it's appropriate." "...So, Now?" "...Whenever you want" "...But now?" "...Wheneveryouwant(!)" ..."uhh" ...Well, not now, the match is over.

As I said, stressful for all parties.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

True. I just cannot figure out why you would use that approach during an actual match - training makes a lot of sense, but a live match not so much. Leaving a zone empty opens up even more chaos if a ball is ejected in that area and field reset has no one to give the game piece too.

Another tip, for teams with decorative accessories - be sure to make sure they are fastened securely to your human player (or removed entirely). One human player got bonked by a game piece and his toy hat almost fell into the field of play. Pretty sure that would have been a foul.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

After our 2nd event where we were easily one of the top 5 offensive-style robots, I'm mixed about this game. If your partners are bad - literally won't push the ball right in front of their robot - your match is toast. The main offensive robot will get double-teamed by defenders, effectively making the match won or lost by autonomous & defense.

It's also quite the p.i.t.a. when teams who are pretty good have different philosophies on how the game is "supposed" to be played (triple-assist vs double-assist+defender) when either is a viable option against the right opponents.

All in all ref'ing was much better in Week 6.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

To be fair I've witnessed Stupid Human Player Tricks other years. My all time favorite was the 2010 GTR West when a rookie team human player was manning the trident and received several balls while standing outside the player zone. A ref was watching him the whole time and gave him a penalty for every ball he received. After about five or six he walked up behind the kid and nudged him back into the player station and went back to watching the field. After the match the team removed the student from being human player and made him driver instead.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Wouldn't it be more advantageous for teams to be able to implement different playing philosophies?

The floor of robot ability for this game is a contributing factor to the drop in quality in my opinion, for situations that you described.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

When you're opponent can break 200, then you need 3-assist cycles. Watch SVR Final 1-1 and watch us rapidly close the gap on 971/254/1662, just missing catching them after missing an auto shot.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Here is a link to the match:
http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2014casj_f1m1

1678/368/4171 played excellent defense and forced our alliance to drop points on our cycles throughout the match. On the first cycle we lose out on 20 points when 4171 blocks 1662 from inbounding. On the second cycle we lost out on 10 points because 1678 and 368 played excellent defense on 971 and prevented them from trussing. For the third cycle, the stellar counter defense from 1678 dragged both 254 and 971 into a corner to try to stop 368, causing us to miss another 20 point assist. The most amazing thing is that 1678/368/4171 remained patient and continued to gather 3 assist cycles while playing defense, allowing them to catch up over the course of the whole match. There were amazing plays from the blue alliance in this close match. The fluid transitions from offense to defense and back from both 1678 and 368 were a scary sight to see.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I wonder if FIRST is trying to gently(?) nudge the "powerhouse" teams towards improving the general level of play, which really is shockingly low at a lot of regionals. 254 got the Gracious Professionalism award at SVR largely for, according to the speech, spending a great deal of time in the pits helping other teams. While I'm not questioning their motives, this probably helped them as well, given that they had a very good robot and could then expect better partners in their matches. Obviously improving the overall level of FRC by a significant amount takes a lot longer than a weekend, but....

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I posted earlier on this thread that I thought this was the intent of FIRST, but that they could have implemented it more smoothly so as not to catch the more experienced teams off guard. With a little forethought, the play level could have been lifted prior to the build season, instead of trying to catch up after the first Saturday in January.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Thanks much for the complement. In the end of course, it still wasn't enough. Congrats on a great regional.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I originally did not like the game because it was so much different from all the other games. Here, teamwork is required for points, not just recommended. Before, each robot could operate individually scoring points on their own to add to a team score. This year, robots have to pass to each other to get the most amount of points possible.

Lots of teams who usually create really good "lone wolf" robots did not like this game because they had to rely on their teammates to win. They no longer could have all the glory to themselves.

Strategy and alliance selections are even more important this year because robots need to work well together. An in-bounder, trusser, and scorer are all needed to have the most reliable and highest scoring alliance. Because of this strategy, this is my new favorite game.

This year there is no endgame either. Last year there was the pyramid climb, and the year before the bridge balance. This year: nothing. While this is not a huge issue, it is still a downside.

One more after-the-fact problem is that too many robots look the same. It is hard to go to an event and see a unique robot.