Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Everyone has something about each game that stands out to them making it the "best game". For a lot of people 2013 stood out as the best for a variety of reasons including a large number of game pieces, unique/challenging endgame, tons of strategies to play in a game, variety of robot designs to play the game, complexity of being able to pull off a "do it all robot", etc. It was one of the first games where you couldn't do it all (ground pickup, quick cycle, full court shooter, 30 point climber, color frisbee dump, etc) in a match.

For a lot of people 2012 was their favorite game but 2013 seems to have been more favored.

As for your second point, I would hope that a sponsor would not cease to support a team due to them losing however taking a tough loss or the season ending early is not an easy thing to have to tell your biggest supporter who is financially supporting your team or donated a lot of shop time for parts. It really depends on each team's situation but yes there are teams who spend a good amount of money not only to play but to iterate designs ($), build a practice robot/assemblies ($$), or compete at additional events to increase the chance of qualifying ($$$). A bigger investment is also all the time and efforts teams have put into their robots as well as senior members who may have gone "all out" in their final year only to lose due to a bad call. Its not an easy thing to swallow when you put your all into something, you followed the rules, and yet a bogus call ends your season.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Amen, Paul. This is excellent and I totally agree.

To many others:

Being frustrated with a game or with a referee's call is not new in FIRST. Were people frustrated when alliances were added in 1999? Heck yeah. Were they frustrated when defense was taken away during the 2001 4-0 game? Oh, yeah. Were teams at IRI frustrated when the head ref DQ'ed the entire 71-93-111 alliance in the final match in 2002 for inadvertent entanglement? Um, yeah, there was some frustration. Were teams frustrated with the triangle zone penalty in 2005? Yes, those penalties decided matches too.

Did some people get very upset at FIRST and these key volunteers? Yeah, that happened. However, people showed this frustration in different ways. Some had to vent about it, loudly disagreeing with the ruling. Others would lob insults to the folks who they disagreed with. To me, this shows the true character of a person. How does a person act when everything seems to be against them? Are they still a positive role model, or are they not careful about tossing these insults while students are around? Are they quick to judge and fast to pick a side without knowing all of the details, or do they wait for the full story and careful to figure out what all is going on before making a rash judgement?

This program has not survived and grown for 20+ years by people who overly freak out when things are not exactly how they wish them to be. We have helped FIRST progress each year by being graceful under pressure, handling change well, and focusing on the big picture moreso than details which need to be improved.

Believe me, there are things I don't like about this game. I wish that the human players would not be able to cause G40 so easily and I wish that the wide open geometry of the field did not cause so many other fouls and I wish that the ball re-entry had a better system than it does now. However, we can play this game like it is, with hopefully some continued improvements between now and the Championships.

Thanks for listening,
Andy B.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

It is also tough for kids to spend months of all their free time only to have their work marginalized by uneven calls.

At this point if at the end of the match you are not at least 100 points ahead their is no celebration until the score is posted. Is that really how it was intended to play out?

I am hoping that they make one final rule change to lower all penalties. Penalties should be equalizers they should not hand out victory.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

This post will probably draw some ire. I will get comments like "not us! we are a good team and we like the game!". I know I am making generalizations, and my comments may not apply to you. So if you feel insulted, and my comments seem unfair, then just assume I wasn't talking about you and forget it, don't flame me.

WARNING: GENERALIZATION BELOW! IT MIGHT NOT APPLY TO YOU!

From what I have read, teams that traditionally build a competitive robot don't like the game. Teams that usually build a defense bot, or a non-competitive robot think the game is great.

I have not posted any positive or negative comments on the game itself. People who are familiar with me know that I don't like defense, and I don't like games that encourage defense. In my view, building a defensive bot is a cop out. It says "accomplishing this task is hard, it sure would be easier to just keep other people from doing it." I have been involved since 2008, and never experienced any of the bash bot phenomena of the earlier years. I liked Overdrive because it discouraged defense. I liked Lunacy because it made defense difficult, and made offense dangerous (when you approached your goal, you were taking your opponents goal closer to them). Each year, the GDC has been able to somewhat discourage defense. Last year, with Ultimate Ascent, we won an off-season event because during finals the other alliance used two robots to defend us. We didn't score, but our two alliance partners were un-hindered, and the other alliance had only one bot left to score.

I have not yet attended a regional this year. I have watched matches from other regionals every weekend. What I saw was embarrassing. Orlando was especially brutal. I saw bots screaming across the field at 16-18 fps and ramming another bot. Anybody can build a brute pizza box. That doesn't make you great or dominant, and it is not inspiring. A monster drivetrain with 6 CIMs and super traction wheels that can do nothing other than push other bots around is no better. What is inspiring, and is CHALLENGING is to build a bot that accomplishes the goals set out in the game rules. Note that attaining the goals of the game is rewarded with point values. Preventing others from attaining that goal is not mentioned in the rules, nor is it rewarded with points.

If your goal is to inspire the kids, then have them look at the challenge before them, and design a robot that can meet that challenge to best of their ability. Remember, it's not about winning by any means, it's about inspiring the kids to rise to a challenge. A team that feels they can only build a brute pizza box might instead build a bulldozer that can inbound well and push a ball into the low goal. Yes, you can play defense, but not battle bots. If you do that well, you would be tops on my third pick list.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Whether or not it is right, that is a concern for some teams.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I didn't say it was. I did say "literally thousands of man-hours" of playtesting, though, and I think you can figure out the logistics of that one well enough.

(An added difficulty of why it is to some degree impossible to test an FRC game at all is robot variability and out-of-the-box thinking of tens of thousands of people. That's the peril of an open rules set...but people complain about the closed parts stifling creativity, too!)

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I agree 100%.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

The game has flaws but I LIKE THE Game!

The best part about the game is that it is an equalizer.

Some adjustments could be easily made to the penalties and ball inbounding to make the game go so much better.

Adding the "end game" mid season would have been fun as well:)

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

To all - I realize I exploded in the heat of the moment last night, and for that I apologize. I do not necessarily wish I did not say it though. It was real, and it was what I felt in the moment. Its the same reaction I saw all weekend throughout the event. Most of you both for and against my method of venting my frustrations seemed to agree with my points, at least.

I woke up this morning a little less heated, and filled out the survey for the event in a constructive manner.

The fact of the matter is, my students worked amazingly hard, harder then any group I've ever had before. We pretty much had an 8 week build season - Our intake wasn't working properly so we withheld it and continued the grind. All of the time and money we spent chasing perfection feels wasted, as we're out ~20 MAR points and probably wont get an invite because of a hastily thought up rule that came out literally the day before the event and probably wont exist next week. I hope everyone can understand that is where my frustration is coming from. I am proud of the rest of the team for how they handled the situation.

To be blunt, not us. Out of all the teams in FRC, only a fraction get to attend champs. I agree, champs will be much better, but what about the rest of the teams? At this point, nothing more I or anyone else can do other then wait and see. We're probably done for the season, though.

My statement was an unnecessary callout, and for that I do apologize.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I won't say that I hate this game, but I'm really disappointed in the number of fouls and the seeming ease with which you can be hit with them. While the points obviously encourage offense, the rules and fouls seem to encourage a defensive robot just so you're not at risk of all those foul points. I think this is best illustrated by a quote from the GDC, as pulled directly from the rules:Emphasis mine. If I'm supposed to design a robot so it's impossible to intentionally possess an opponent's ball, I'm designing a robot that can't possess any balls, and thus can't participate in offense. That's the only way you can come close to complying with this suggestion. Even if you ignore the "intentionally" there, it's awfully difficult to design a robot that can catch a truss shot or an inbound, but not unintentionally catch an opponent's ball that's flying at your robot.

I'm glad so many teams (mine included) decided to ignore the suggestion that we eschew offense in favor of avoiding G12 penalties, but I think it says a lot about the overall game design that one of the rules has attached a blue box that you're pretty much forced to ignore if you want to play offense and meet the actual challenges presented in the game. And I'm disappointed when that means that teams trying to play offense end up penalized because they were accidentally under an opponent's ball that took a weird bounce.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

When this game was released I had very high hopes for it. I felt that it would give traditionally less competitive teams a very easy way to compete, since building an intake is not super difficult, especially with all the 3 day robots. I knew defense would be important and the game would be much more physical than previous years, but I had no idea that it would turn into the kind of Aerial Assault slug fest we saw at week 1.

The rules to begin with were missing a few key components, namely the possibility of robots dying with balls in their possession. Unfortunately, as the week 0 scrimmages and week 1 competitions showed, the game was extremely rough, which seemed to catch some people by surprise. Robots were smashed, irrelevant human player actions were tech fouled, and a lot of people's tempers flared.

I had hoped after week 1 that the GDC would take steps to address the issues in the game. I was quite happy to see the changes made to G40, and I don't believe (to my knowledge) a single G40 was called at Wisconsin last week. That being said, most of the recent updates have felt like Band-Aid's on a severed limb. The most recent update was extremely frustrating. Not only was it released on practice day for our regional, but it contained wording so ambiguous I almost wanted to laugh. I'll leave the specifics of the update to another thread, but as the game stands right now, I would go so far as to say it's not Aerial Assault any more, it's Ambiguous Assault. Ref's are left in the unenviable position of trying to guess the intent of a robot and sort their way through mountains of rules over who did what to who, where, and how many times. Each team sees the incidents differently, and we have seen recently how frustrating it can be when these phenomenally close calls have such a big impact on match outcomes.

All that said, I don't hate the game, and I still have hope the GDC can fix it. I think the concept for the game is superb, but like someone else said, it feels unfinished. My heart goes out to everyone who has been affected by the (IMO) poorly written rules. I know it's hard to make a good game, but after 2013, we all know the fantastic work the GDC is capable of.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I don't think this is as impossible as you think it is. Actually running thousands of matches may be impossible but within a week I've often run simulations of thousands of matches (likely many more). That's me, with excel/R. Like seriously, it's not hard. Do I catch everything? Nah. But it woulda told me that 2011 the minibots were ridiculously over valued. (2012 was the first year I started doing real models and running a bunch of scenarios, they've gotten more complicated every year).

But most of the egregious problems with games should be apparent with even a modicum of common sense. Examples:

- 2014 — One game piece per alliance? More power in the KoP than ever? More COTS for getting that power to the ground? Open field? Recipe for pain
- 2013 — Humans can throw frisbees? Rain of discs inevitable.

I don't know the make up of the GDC any more but I would imagine that most folks who've been involved in a team that is competitive would have caught those issues quick.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

The moment I saw this game at Kickoff, I loved it. The strategy is the best we've seen in a long time for an FRC game. There are many many many types of robots out there. The design of the game allows a decent robot to have an opportunity to play every part of the game, from inbounder, to trusser, to cycle ender, to defense - sometimes all in the same match. For the first time in a long time, I feel like this game is actually a competition and not an exhibition of who's robot is faster at a given task.

That, I think, is where the problem lies. The FRC community has gotten complacent. The last time we had an open field was 2009, and no one could get enough speed to really cause any damage in that game. Before that, you have to go back to 2002 to really have a dynamic "if you do this, I'll do this" sort of game. Maybe 2004. We have nearly 10x as many teams playing the game in 2014 vs 2002 - so naturally, there will be more complaints.

Are there flaws with the way the game is administered? Sure. The GDC is working on them. The decision to change a rule on Thursday, while not unprecedented, was a terrible idea (note: it didn't really work last time either, if memory serves correctly). The rule change itself is not a bad thing, but it is a knee-jerk reaction to the communities complaints and I don't personally like it.

My biggest complaint this year is consistency. Event to event will never be consistent, but that's fine. The inconsistency between days of a single event is unacceptable. Replays on one day for pedestal delays but not the next? That's not okay. Not a single high speed ramming call during qualifications but 10 in the elims? That's not okay (yes, play is more intense, but of the calls I saw, they were not damaging nor malicious).

How do we fix it? I say get rid of the pedestal light altogether and just take the ball when the ball is scored - end up with 2 balls on the field? Make that a technical foul. No judgement required there.

Referee consistency is partly due to the overworked refs - just put more refs on the field. I was told this weekend that HQ would not allow more than 4 refs + head ref for qualifying. I don't understand this at all. When I reffed in 2008, each quadrant had a ref, there was a head ref, and there were at least 2 other refs (maybe 4?) watching the scoring (tracking balls, tracking robots). THIS WORKED. Why can't we do that this year?

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

This is my absolute favorite game now. When it was released, I was not a fan. I thought it was too simplistic, and had no end game which was the wow! factor. But now after playing it at two regionals, it was the most fun game, and required the most alliance strategy and assisting than any other game.

Good job game design!

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

In answer to the original question, I don't hate it.

I love the life lessons this game teaches:

• Life is not fair
• Help\teamwork usually produces better results than working alone
• You can't please everyone all of the time
• Competition can bring out the worst in good people
• Good people sometimes get thrown under the bus
• There are two sides to every conflict
• Nothing is perfect
• Resources are limited
• Sometimes it is best to "sleep on it"

I also don't necessarily love it. It is pretty much par for the course in a lot of ways.

I do love the big picture of FIRST and the superstars of tomorrow it is creating.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I think we are stuck with subjectivity in foul calls, because the alternatives are worse. I think the best set of rules would advise the referees to mostly let the teams play, but call fouls if the contact becomes egregious in the judgment of referees.

Here are some worse alternatives that eliminate the judgment calls:
1) Any type of contact is legal: results in battle bots
2) All contact is illegal: robots tiptoe around each other in fear of penalties, creating a lame game
3) Any contact within frame perimeter is a penalty on the extending team: penalizes offensive robots more, and allows teams to ram other teams to give them penalties
4) Any contact resulting in damage is a foul on the other team: pretty silly if you were sitting still and a team runs into you and breaks themselves, or if their robot was held together with bubble gum and a really light hit made their widget fall off.
5) Any collision faster than, say, 10 ft/s is a foul on the team that initiated it: how do you know which team initiated it, and how do you measure the speed? Better to simply admit that collision speed and intent are judgment calls on the part of referees.

Regarding the fouls for possessing the other team's game ball, I think the rules aren't hugely far off from where they need to be after the update that allowed regular fouls for inadvertent possession. The point value of fouls and technicals is still very high compared to the average match score, but I think it is appropriate that referees can award different penalties depending on the perceived intent and result of an opponent possessing your ball. The existence of that technical is important to eliminate any incentive to intentionally possess the opponent's ball and take the penalty. I think the smaller foul is helpful, because if the other team possesses your ball by accident, it still wastes some of your time. Other sports have different penalty levels, too: Hockey has major and minor penalties, basketball has "flagrant" fouls, football has 5 yard and 15 yard facemasks depending on severity, etc.

Last comment: I think games would be called better if the "can't cause your opponent to commit a foul" rule was consistently followed. The other team can't throw a ball into my stationary robot and give me a foul, and they can't ram their lego tower into my robot to break themselves and give me a foul, and so on. This is another judgment call, but it's a necessary evil to prevent other problems that are much sillier.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I just realized that FRC lacks the following rule, which comes from this year's FTC rules:

We really need this rule. All we have is this:

Referees don't technically have the option to simply not call a foul in some cases when that would be the best call. I can think of only one time that I've ever heard of a G14 penalty (or similar from previous year) being called on anybody.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I'm interested in this. What sort of testing/validation do you think would be possible through mathematical simulations and modelling?

---------
On the thread in general:

I'm withholding my opinion for now. I would like to build on some things people have said though:

The GDC's job is very difficult. They have to design a game that's interesting to build a robot for, play, watch, make it feasible for teams with a wide range of resources, feasible logistically for event organisers, etc. Every year the list seems to get longer.

What could we do to help?

Currently there's only two ways to communicate with the GDC. Indirectly through posting on ChiefDelphi (we know at least one member reads it) and semi-directly through the Q&A.

The rules come out seven weeks before the first regional. That's seven weeks where we can potentially 'fix' a lot of the problems.

For example, the situation at Waterloo, where a team was penalised 50pt because another team accidentally broke their antenna so they extended beyond the 20in perimeter (G24), has existed since January. Could someone have spotted that and alerted the GDC?

G40 exists because it's a huge safety concern. Maybe there's a better, feasible way to keep human players safe but not make it easy to incur a huge draconian penalty.

While CD does not extend its reach to everyone, even here we have a large pool of smart, dedicated people that represent most of the FIRST community: engineers, students, mentors, event organizers, inspectors, refs etc. Why can't we take a more active role in at least informing the GDC, if not helping in a more direct way somehow?

A mentor from 610 (I believe, forgive me for the lack of details - I'm on my phone) suggested finding a means of including more input from the experienced and competition-saavy. Is that the solution and, if so, how can we implement it?

This program is designed to help inspire a new generation of problem-solvers. Depending on your perspective, there's a few problems or a lot of them. I think it's time we shifted the focus of discussion away from "I don't like X; Y needs to be fixed" to "How can we fix X? How can we make sure we don't make a similar mistake in the future? Are our solutions good? Are they feasible and inclusive?".

To get the ball rolling:

I think one of the over-arching problems that needs to be solved is the lack of direct communication and feedback to the GDC. I don't think we should rely on Frank reading a thread on CD to highlight major issues/possible solutions to the game. I think a dedicated, official, public, suggestion/feedback site akin to the Q&A could work, where more people can highlight issues and discuss solutions for the GDC to consider and maybe partake in.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I really dont see this game any different than in year's past. Many of the successful veteran teams are still winning regionals, similar to that of recent years.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I have sufficient experience in professional game development to be confident in my assessment. :D

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Time/Difficulty vs Point Reward is my primary focus. 2010 is the most obvious case of Difficulty/Point Reward being crazy out of whack. Suspensions were rare because it was often worth more to keep scoring than take the time to line up a suspension and risk the damage to another robot.

2011 is another pretty obvious scoring whack up wherein the rack didn't matter nearly as much as the minibots.

Please note that these assertions are primarily true for 90% of FRC teams. Obviously 254's 6 second climb was crazy but they were one out of 3k teams to do that. Most other 30 point climbers took close to 2 minutes to ascend.


This year the big thing woulda been the penalty points as compared to the match scores. Even our no defense analysis showed that a 50 point penalty would be massive. Factoring in that defense can usually halve optimal that 50 point tech foul was high on our list of "things to avoid" (I think it was shortly behind 'ejecting the battery').

Coupling the difficulty in scoring (as compared to years like 2008/2012 where teams could score points merely by being mobile) with high foul points should have been able to show the GDC that a disproportionate number of matches would be decided by fouls even at high levels of play. [insert Ether here to back up the exact number or elim matches decided by fouls]

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I think the game is improving every week. And when fouls don't taint the game, I love this game! It's high-octane, exciting, and suspenseful. It feels more like a "Varsity Sport".
When tricky fouls get involved, thats when this game gets ugly. I think most of us have gotten over the G40 foul and know how to avoid it, but things like inadvertent ball possession and extensions beyond the frame perimeter or beyond 20" mess with the spirit of the game.

But the game today is way better than the game from Week 1. The penalties are less frequent, the game is evolving in a complicated and strategically intense way, and the robots are becoming more consistent and more competitive.

I understand fully the frustrations of many teams involved in events so far. Losing out on the rest of a season you worked hard for is difficult, and sometimes deserving teams don't win when they maybe should.

I'm excited to see what these next few weeks of competition hold for everyone. And I certainly hope the problems with this game are resolved and don't hurt other teams down the road.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

To be clear: I LIKE this game. Its a neat concept, and when played well, its really cool to watch. HOWEVER: The rules make it UNPLAYABLE (depending on the refs). The day that ramming other robots is a tech foul, or when building a harvester results in tech fouls (over the bumper rule update 3-20-14), or when human player actions that DO NOT impact the match decide the match, this is the day that FRC becomes uninspiring. The GDC really punished teams that built offensive bots this year. The 3-20-14 rule update said that high speed ramming, even if undamaging results in a 50-point foul. How are refs supposed to call fouls that use wording like "if intentional", or "purposefully damaging"? The only way to harvest balls this year is by going over the bumper, but the 3-20-14 rule update removes protection for these assemblies, and makes it possible, no LIKELY that the pickup device will result in penalty calls.

This is the issue. The game is fine. Its the rules that are broken. The GDC seems like they don't want ANY defense played, yet they make rules that make defense the only viable option. People keep saying that they like how this game allows bad robots to beat good robots, and to that I say WHAT??????? How is that positive? Strong offensive bots should always beat mediocre or bad robots. If the GDC wanted the game to be an equalizer, they should have realized that the result would not be positive. Why would teams build good robots if a drivebase w/o any scoring potential beat them?

At RI this weekend, the refs called few penalties, only making calls on blatant fouls. This was nice, as it allowed scoring to be the focus, not avoiding fouls. However, we lost in the Finals because of a human player foul (he stepped outside the human player box after an amazing jump catch - we would have won by 8 points otherwise), and our robot breaking in the last match. 78 had a great alliance, and it was really close, but it kinda stinks to have games decided by actions that did not impact gameplay at all.

I hope everything I said makes sense, and I hope its clear that I like this game when its played clean. I too would like to know how many members of the GDC have EVER been on an FRC team, or if they have ever attended an event. The GDC needs to stop playing games with the rules.

Our team built probably our best robot ever this year. At both of our events this year, we have been finalists. Luckily for us, due to the new district model in NE, we still have a chance of going to champs. I hope the GDC figures out how to NOT punish GOOD teams for being GOOD.

/end rant

This ended up being a lot longer than I meant it to be, but its nice to get it off my chest. :o

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I agree. At first, I wasn't a fan of the game, but now I love it. It's more like traditional sports, where teams of all skill level and experience can play and have fun, unlike previous games, which were hard for inexperienced teams to play. Watching elimination matches is very exciting, and is when the game really becomes fun to play. Most robots this year do the same thing, pick up the ball, then shoot, but it's still amazing to see how fast and accurate some of these teams are.

Lots of people have complained about the human player fouls. The foul rules have been always been here, and teams should have practiced throwing in the balls. It's not ridiculous to give teams a heavy penalty for reaching too far into the field. Compared to building a robot, keeping your hand away from a line is an easy task. It's the same story with possessing an opponents ball. It says in the manual that you need to be careful of this. The same applies with defense on an open field with no safe zones. Even if you don't think that a rule makes sense, a rule is a rule and will be enforced.

After watching week four, it seems like the G27 update that got everybody all upset isn't to stop defense, but to stop excessive robot damage and discourage teams from becoming extremely violent. It hasn't been called much, and it seems to be called only if the damage was caused by really violent ramming.

The only issues I see with the game are a few glitches on the field with the pedestal light, but these matches are usually replayed, which is a free match and extra driver practice for your team.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Don't know what events you were watching, but G27 was all over lenape and tech fouls were falling from the sky some matches and not at all when they clearly should have been in others. The pedestal issues were almost nonexistent, though.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

The tricky thing with analysing the foul points is coupling the intent with the value. G40 is intended to scare people from ever putting their hands in danger (My personal grievance is that the human player zones have a back line - ie they are too small).

For the other TFs, I think some of them are out of whack on purpose. G14, TFG27, updated G28 are about ethical retribution/scare-forcing rather than balancing out strategic advantages.

"In game justice" is hard in FRC because the games are too short. Ideally there would be a ruleset like Ultimate Frisbee, which is designed to recreate the state of the game before the foul (read: not as a punishment), but in FRC that's near impossible. Using points, the penalty points, on average, have to make up the points lost because of the foul. But that often means situations are either under-penalised or over-penalised.

Take, for example, trying to determine an appropriate foul point for tipping. A team that is tipped loses the alliance some amount of points depending on the capabilities of the robot and the state of the game (namely, time left). How is it possible to derive one point value to cover all cases? This is why ridiculous "20 pt + 3rd level hang" foul happened last year for interfering with only 10pt hangs.

The consequence is a choice between more subjective refeereeing (yay!), less rules (battlebots!) or purposely high penalty values to scare teams from accidentally or intentionally committing the foul (50pts!).

But just to be clear - I think that your analysis (and all of TwentyFour) is great and useful and more publishing of this type of analysis and deconstruction would really help the community and the GDC.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I only watched Waterloo eliminations and a few random qualification matches. I do agree that any rule that relies on a interpretation of an ambiguous word is not very good. It is very hard to standardize a word like "ramming" or "aggressive", and only giving teams a referees a day to wrap their heads around the new change, which has the ability to totally change the game if interpreted a certain way, is a risky move.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Fun fact that most people don't know - My degree is Computer Science with a concentration in Game Design. So, the following is based primarily on that...


Let's say we are designing a game. Obviously there is a set path we want the player to follow to advance through the level. There's a couple different options we have.


1) We can incentivize that path with things like points, power ups, or just cool visual experiences (Carrot)
2) We can penalize them (death, point loss, waves of enemies) for alternate paths. (Stick)
3) We can force them down that path by not allowing any other options. (Rails)

All three options are perfectly valid and have their uses.

The Rails options isn't really viable for the GDC. Linear games don't allow teams much strategy and just straight up aren't fun for FRC. Plus, it's pretty hard to do this when you don't control everything the players can do like you do in a game. (Wanna block off an area? Put up an invisible wall)

Now, the Stick method is one that the GDC favored this year. "Play this game the way the developer intended or you will be punished" is a viable approach and some games excel with it. Personally I've always found that it chafes to play these games. There's very little freedom and you often see crazy high penalties for alternative play styles and the metagame quickly becomes stale because it's not a function of strategic play, merely executing more effectively.

The Carrot method, in my opinion, is optimal for game design. 2013 encouraged teams to play the game they wanted by making it easy enough to play the game that the penalty for being even a 50% shooter wasn't that high. Think of this as the pick up and play factor. There were lots of ways to play and teams tried them all to varying degrees of success.


Now, why this is relevant to FRC and why I dislike this game...

The Stick and Rails patterns are just lazy design. There, I said it. This game was just lazy. Properly incentivizing scoring so as to discourage defense takes a lot of work but it creates better FRC games. Much in the way that discouraging camping in FPS games takes a fair bit of work but creates less boring games.

Couple that with the high degree of difficulty of executing successfully (scoring) and the penalty for failure being high? You're going to produce not only a bad game but a toxic community. One need look no further than DOTA/LOL to see what happens with a hard game that has a high penalty for failure. (There's a reason I never got into those games; I don't like being called a 'feeding noob' or whatever the derogative du jour is)

So, I don't like this game because it IS, by almost every measure I was taught, a bad game. It is lazily designed, difficult, and punishing and has created a toxic community.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Hard and punishing games do not always create a toxic community. I'll point you towards Dark Souls 1 and 2, where the game is extremely punishing and exceptionally difficult, and still enjoyed by millions of fans.

One needs to look no farther then DOTA/LOL to see what happens with a hard game that has a high penalty for failure. LOL is the most successful esports game to date, with over 3 million people watching the world championships and over $17 million in prize money, coupled with hundreds of smaller tournaments.

Unfortunately, comparing FRC to video games isn't exactly the best choice. You can choose not to play a certain game, and go play another one instead. The same thing applies to sports. You don't like basketball? Well there's football and soccer and baseball etc. etc. You can't say, "Oh I don't like Aerial Assist so I'm going to play Rebound Rumble instead."

There just simply isn't a parallel here.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

DS1 and DS2 are not really designed as a wide audience multiplayer game. They are good games but they aren't really designed to compete with your CoD/Battlefield/Halo/LOL type stuff which is designed as mass market distraction (Personal opinions about mass market games go here). See also Super Meat Boy (which is a great way of disposing of extra gamepads/monitors). I should have been more clear, hard/punishing games forcing players to work as teams were more what I was focusing on.

DOTA/LOL may be successful esports games because, when played well, they are phenomenal games. (There was a followup I was going to write about that topic). But they are not a good community.

Comparing FRC to video games is actually quite valid as they are both games designed to be played much the same as soccer/basketball (hockey is not a sport, it's a way of life thank you very much!). Many of the same tricks apply to FRC/FTC games as apply to any other multiplayer game designed for mass market. And, I CAN go play other games. If I don't like FRC I can go play Vex, or battlebots, or compete in the AVC, or IGVC, or any of a dozen other competitions for robots.


And for folks who think I'm being too harsh - There IS a followup to these posts talking about why 2014 is a good concept that does achieve a lot of FIRST's goals. I just need a little longer to think the topic through. I'm a firm believer in props where props are due.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Generally, powerhouse teams build the best robots every year. There are always exceptions of course, but I can tell you, atleast in Michigan, that 33, 67, 469, and the like will always build some of the best robots in the state. They generally win their districts and win states as well.

I for one would rather see an alliance of "average" robots beat an alliance of powerhouse teams. If the best robots won every event simply because they are built the best, then why do we have a competition? Why don't we just say "33, 67, and 469 built the best robots in Michigan this year, they win all the competitions there's no need to actually compete."

Upsets are some of the most exciting things in anything. Period. It doesn't matter whether its a video game, a professional sport, or an FRC competition. When the 4th alliance pulls out an excellent strategy and manages to defeat the double powerhouse teamed 1st alliance, everyone it up on their feet cheering.

If the best robots should win every year, what do you tell to a rookie team that built a defensive bot because that is only thing they have the knowledge to do? "I'm sorry, but there's absolutely no way for you to win the competition because there are better robots here so don't even bother trying."

So why should you even bother trying to build the best robot possible? Because it gives you the best chance to win a competition. It gives you the best chance to seed higher. And it gives your students something to be proud of. Because it's INSPIRING.



FRC isn't a beauty contest. It's a competition. You get awards for building the best mechanically sound robot. That's why we have judges and awards, to showcase the teams that build the best designed robots. The competition part is a culmination of good robots, strategy, and skill. The Winning alliance is the alliance that has the best combination of the 3, not just the first part.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I agree very much that a powerhouse alliance being taken down by some average robots with a killer strategy is a great and exciting thing, and is, IMO, the coolest part of the game. Having powerhouse robots kicked out because of stupid rules that make winning pure chance is bad. Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about some of the rules. Sometimes, I think that the GDC is right in what they've done, sometimes I feel they shouldn't have changed it, and other times I hate this game. Right now, I kind of like it :D

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

You have at least 2 matches to beat the opposing alliance during eliminations.If you lost because of fouls in both of them, then it is highly unlikely that both of them resulted from "stupid rules". If they did, and you incurred the same "stupid rule" twice, then the old saying "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" applies.

I understand where you're coming from. I felt pretty angry myself after the Newton Finals in 2012. The difference is, your alliance had to do something to get a foul. You either hit someone a little too hard, or dropped your intake down at the wrong time, but you had control over the situation. Drive a bit slower, be more careful with your intake, spend more time training your human player. These are all things that you can do to make the second (or third) match more successful.

My main problem with the complaints about the penalties is there was something you could do to not incur the foul. You see someone coming at you fast with a non-robust robot? Back up. Chances are the 5 additional seconds it'll take you to pick up the ball aren't going to change the outcome of the match. If it costs you the match because you can't get a last second truss shot off, then it's worth the risk to stay and get hit. If there's still a minute left to go, why risk incurring a 50 point tech foul?

What happened in Newton Finals 2012, we had absolutely no control over, there was no way to do anything about it. What so ever. However, not a single 68 student came on to the forums to complain. Or a member of our alliance. And that was us losing to events outside of our control. You can see why I'm against all the posts complaining about things that were within a teams control.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

As you probably know though, any design has a combination of these three things. I cannot think of any game that does not have a 'rail' or 'stick' involved.

There will always be the possibility of actions that are:

a) malicious or dangerous
b) unfairly advantageous

Regardless of how many 'carrots' you provide. If we talk on a points per second ratio, and the assumption that point prevented = point scored, there will always be means of gaining points that are not within the original intention of the game.

This is why every rule set has foul/penalties.

I think Aerial Assist is intended to be a dynamic game, with both offense and defense, but the kind that requires good teamwork and organisation. Defensive strategies where one robot can prevent another team from scoring are the main causes for concern.

The fact that there is only one ball and that you rely on your partners is central to the game. Accepting that's not going to change, the rules now need to reflect the need to realize the original vision of a dynamic and co-operation oriented game.

So, the rules they have for achieving those goals:

Incentivize working together on offense/prevent an unbeatable lone wolf:

Carrot
- 30pt for triple assists (3 robots)
- 20pt truss & catch (2 robots)
- mobility bonus (per robot)
- Assist as second ranking

Rail:
- one ball at a time
- one truss per cycle

Incentivise working together on defence/prevent one robot from crippling an alliance:

Carrot:
- two "idle" robots

Stick:
- G12 (possession of an opposition ball)
- Goalie rules
- low goal rule

Protect robots/Prevent robot assassination

Carrot:
- Random qualification partnerships
- GP

Rail:
- Inspection

Stick:
- G27
- G28
- G14

Protect humans/prevent risking human safety

Stick:
- G40

I think the goal for safety-related rules should not be stick-oriented, but be rail-oriented. Reduce the possibility of people being hurt rather than de-incentivise. Otherwise, the general architecture of the game seems pretty balanced. I'm not clever enough personally to see possible improvements of 'stick to carrot'.

How sharp and jaggedy those sticks are is another question.

Then there is another set of possible actions that are not accounted for: inadvertent actions. Basically anything in the hole between what carrot/stick guide you toward, and the rail.

Any FRC rule set is vulnerable to these actions, especially the more interaction teams have with the opposition. How do you judicate for these actions (eg a robot damaging another robot, tipping, hitting the ball out of the field etc)?

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I'm not a computer game guy, but I've been paid in real life for design work on card, board, roleplaying, and tabletop miniatures wargames. I think the best parallel between any of these and FRC is the last one, because it's very open-ended in terms of strategy (including force selection) and tactics (in-game actions).

[As an aside, the absolute hardest part of wargame design is balance between forces; fortunately, FIRST doesn't worry about that overmuch beyond some power, money, and time restrictions--we don't have a point system for force-building to exploit.]

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

My opinion: Great game, poor execution. You know there are too many issues/rules for referees to pay attention to when a pedestal goes unlighted for twenty seconds (what happened to my team in quals). There are ~6 of them - if one of them doesn't notice no blue/red ball on the field for twenty seconds after a goal, something is wrong. And not with the referees. The referees have too many other, non-game-changing fouls to focus on to even bother with stuff that can actually change the outcome of a match, or safety issues.

My $0.02.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I hope I'm not speaking inappropriately by posting as a referee this past weekend, but while I've lurked around here in my past 9 years volunteering as a ref, this is the first time I've bothered registering to post. Of course my opinions are my own and not representative of anyone at my regional or my fellow referees, etc.

Without turning this into a laundry list of issues, I was surprised at the basic issues of referee location on this year's field. With regards to seeing whether the pedestal lit up, I found that standing by the tablet in front of the gates made it very challenging to see due to the angle and the number of drivers and coaches in between my position and the pedestal. I could step back and turn towards the pedestal, but that took me away from the scoring tablet and the action on the field.

If anyone knows of a proper channel to provide feedback to FIRST and the GDC as a referee, I'd be interested to hear it. I feel like a bit of an odd duck as my experience with FRC is limited to refereeing once a year and watching the occasional live stream on other weeks, and I won't be at St. Louis so I can't find someone there. For what it's worth, every prior year I finish the weekend with the intent to sign up in VIMS as soon as I remember it's open. This year is the first year where I'm more hesitant, and I expect that I'll read the 2015 game rules in detail before I agree to sign up.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Personally, I feel that the fouls are really inconsistent. I am a human player, and at the Wisconsin Regional I went to, almost every referee did not call the human player reaching fouls. They only started calling it the second day, and even then only one referee was calling it. Also, I don't like that there is only one ball, and only one robot can score at a time. I also don't like the scoring of the game, and having to keep track of all the points from scoring and assists.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I'd talk to your head ref. You could also reach out to your volunteer coordinator. You're not the first ref I've heard from whose in the hesitant-or-no for next year boat. I'll have reffed some 300 matches by the end of the season, and I don't yet know how I feel about that. I do know, though, that we're risking losing volunteers. I do like things about this game, but that's reason enough for me to dislike it.

As a coach, it's been frustrating. I'm glad the game has gotten better, but to me, Week 1 is as much a part of the game as Week 7. As some wise person said around here somewhere, it's like FIRST identified everything they've been historically bad at or that's caused major challenges, and made it absolutely critical to this year's game. Too much to watch for refs, too much inconsistency for teams, too many points of failure for everyone.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Too bad there aren't LEDs on the inbound zones that are wired off the same circuits as their respective pedestals.

... Then again if you light the inbound zones, it would make much more sense to just make the rule say that you can't inbound a ball without the inbound zone being lit. Maybe add in something about the entire alliance being able to only inbound 1 ball per instance of their respective inbound zone lights turning on to aid in clearing up confusion, but otherwise you wouldn't really need the pedestal anymore.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

TIL. (And really agree) Remind me at CMP to buy you a beer and pick your brain sometime.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

This game had a lot of potential for strategic play, but penalties neutered it. I'd rather see more consistent rules that allow for harder defense, or see more balls introduced to the field at a time.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

It's a date!

...well, if we win FLR, which looks like it's going to be a brutally hard thing to do, in all the right ways. :D

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I really appreciate your insight, and the insight of other referees. From what I can gather, it's never easy to be a referee, and this year is even worse. As a student who will be graduating, I look forward to volunteering - HOWEVER, games like this make me hesitant to ever volunteer for refereeing.

I probably should have clarified in my original post - we did take it to the question box, and the referees said none of them even noticed. Your insight does provide more inspiration as to why some balls take 10-30 seconds to get onto the field, though. I really feel for all of you.

As a student whose life has been changed directly by this organization (most of the life-changing events happening in competition), it truly saddens me that years like this discourage the volunteers that make the competitions happen. FIRST was ambitious with this game, and it was a wonderful concept. However, it saddens me that the poor execution and detail in the rules has prevented this game from reaching its potential - and is discouraging wonderful volunteers like you.

In other words, this could be a whole lot of :D but is really a whole lot of :(

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Not remotely true - 2013 was often ineffective to the point of removing points from your score. Truth be told - that game was phenomenally designed. It was incentivized and scoring was easy. Furthermore the penalty for a miss was effectively 0 so there was no real downside to having teams try to score.

At higher levels some defense started to occur but, as evidenced by the world champs, the optimal alliance involved 3 robots running and gunning.

I might come back to your other points later but it's been a long night.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Not quite true... Disc shortages did effect gameplay that year. We ran out in a few matches, partially because partners were missing. Of course, this was only very rarely a problem, and we never had to tell partners not to load discs to allow us to score them.

I totally agree that what made 2013 so awesome was in part that everyone was incentivized to score, even if they couldn't do it very well.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I've always had some nagging doubts about that comparison between FRC and other types of gaming, and a hypothesis to explain those doubts just occurred to me. In a tabletop game, while there might be a diversity of strategies, it's unlikely that those strategies are fundamentally dependent on the execution of a complex task whose successfulness is (as a practical matter) non-deterministic because of a combination of physical randomness (imprecision in control, variability in game pieces and field, etc.), human perception (of the drivers, officials, etc.) and tournament sorting (essentially random in qualifying, but without enough iterations to represent all permutations). The tabletop game is essentially a very complicated set of strategic possibilities with well-defined randomness. An FRC game (or any physical sport) is only reducible to a set of strategies if you also have a way of reliably modeling the effectiveness of strategic execution in an unpredictably random environment. Computer games probably fall somewhere in between, depending on the nature of the simulation.

If those unpredictably random factors are major contributors to the outcome of an FRC tournament (as I suspect is the case), then designing the game on the basis of the straightforwardly predictable components may be insufficient. That's not to say that I disagree with the idea of a using a statistical model of an FRC game for game design purposes, just that for it to have validity, we need to be clear about the limitations of the model.

Better experimental methods might go a long way toward eliminating those limitations, but the feasibility of some possible approaches is rather questionable. For example, we could gather input and output data for robot mechanisms (of the type used in closed-loop feedback control) to get a sense of the ability of robots to physically execute tasks (confounded by operator ability, of course). Or we could record everything spoken in the question box, and code it for rule compliance (subject, of course, to the existence of a canonical interpretation) to assess the quality of officiation and the likelihood of teams obeying the rules.

At the cost of analytical rigour, it's probably reasonably practical for the GDC to get much of the benefit of those formal methods by soliciting the input of people who are intimately familiar with those factors across a spectrum of FRC events and similar competitions, and asking for quantitative estimates of the distribution of variance. If the GDC isn't already doing this, maybe a good first step would be to try it for a selection of past games (for which the outcomes are known), to see if it can improve the predictive power of the models.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

While I haven't been reffing as long as Ryan has, I was at Waterloo, GTR West, and I will be reffing at champs.

Seeing the pedestals is nearly impossible from the tablet locations near the field gates. The only way I could tell that a pedestal was unlit was when I was tracking that color ball on assists, and noticed that no human player was inbounding after a completed cycle, or when a team began yelling about an unlit pedestal.

Another issue noticed is that depending on the Head ref, the truss lines up exactly at eye level, obstructing the view of dead ball cards for one alliance by the head ref. This meant referees on the other side of the truss had to radio in dead ball cards. Not significant, but with the band aid that the dead ball card is, I dont think the GDC thought about this.

Several penalties are very difficult to enforce correctly.
G40 requires the ref to almost put they're head into the safety zone to see correctly. I don't know about you, but a head in the safety zone seems more dangerous than a human players hand. I understand the rule, but unless its blatant, its very hard to call now. I actually preferred it week 1, much less ambiguous.
G27 needs more defining. What is high speed? What is aggressive ramming? How does any defensive strategy, no matter how gentle not inhibit the other robot? Unless its more defined, the penalties wont be called consistently. The head ref sets the benchmark for each competition, but what ensures the rule is equally applied everywhere? A more thorough definition of these terms would make it a lot more enforceable, and also keep things fair for everyone.
G24 needs a damage clause. If a robot suffers damage causing G24 to be violated, but remain inconsequential to the match, I dont think the penalty should be applied. As the rule is currently written, this is not the case.

I understand that the GDC is unable to predict every twist or turn the season may bring, but having somewhere for Referees to submit feedback would benefit everyone, and lead to a balanced game much more quickly. I was surprised that there was no way to do this besides making suggestions to the head ref.

Tracking very fast paced teams is difficult, especially when there are a few powerhouses on one alliance milking assist points. With the slight delay on the tablets, keeping up with these teams meant that it was very difficult to watch for anything else besides possessions.

The rule change on a Thursday made things difficult as well. At Waterloo, one team played perfectly legal defense on Thursday, and ended up taking huge penalties on Friday for the exact same defense. If the GDC had wanted to stop high speed collisions, why not wait til the following Tuesday.

As a coach, the new rule changes frustrate me, but I can understand where they came from. As a mentor, I feel that anyone who had played a game made by the GDC would have noticed several things before the game was released. I cant blame them for not noticing, and the fact they are doing their best to fix it is evident, I just wish it had been done while teams could still redesign their robots.

Overall I like this game, but as others have stated, its execution is poor, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I will volunteer to ref again, as its a lot of fun, gives a different perspective on the game, and I think whatever they throw at us next year will be a lot easier to ref than this.

PS: Woah, that turned into a wall of text really fast.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

The game *could* be fun...if the people responsible for game management were all...

1. consistent
2. competently aware of the rules
3. attentive
4. in possession of sufficient visual acuity to discern things that are happening directly in front of them

In other words, Canadian.

And can we PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE aggressively signal pinning counts (provided you even bother to start counting) like they do in Canada?

In all seriousness, it seems Canadian referee crews are generally praised for their performance. Can anyone corroborate this? If true, I openly wonder what their methods of recruiting, training, and preparation are, and I would like to question why the practices of better-performing crews aren't propagated/mandated by the governing body to other regions where refereeing is less well-regarded.

Here's a thought for HQ - spend some of that stockpiled cash you're sitting on on incentive bonuses for events who grade highly in event quality on post-event feedback surveys distributed to teams. Give RD's and VC's more of an incentive to place resources in the area of quality volunteer recruitment (and then train those individuals using better materials and methods than you currently supply). Also, if event performance is truly horrible, such team surveys would QUICKLY identify events where intervention is warranted (instead of watching the alternative happen - letting years of team abuse at the hands of a certain out of control head ref at a certain regional go by before a very public CD thread finally forced action....)

Even if everything is called straight up legit to the letter of the rules, certain foul situations built into this game can still put a sour taste in the mouth of teams, as Waterloo evidenced.

As far as I could tell, the "Thursday rules" had zero effect in Wisconsin, mainly because I felt an "anything goes" style of gameplay was permitted, especially on Saturday morning.

Refs are supposed to be the "police" of this game. Be overt and passionate in your actions in signaling teams that they are doing wrong. RUTHLESSLY PUNISH THE INEPT AND RECKLESS. Rain down swift justice upon the idiots such that those who actually, you know, "read the manual", can have a chance of success instead of being gutted by frame incursion damage in 3 straight Saturday matches with zero penalties called.

I will say that Week 4 pedestal lighting at Wisconsin seemed very good. So we finally learned how to deal with that major clusterfluge, not that that is any consolation to the teams who played in the earlier weeks. Now let's focus on punishing the guilty and reckless and giving the innocent the freedom to play this game the way it was meant to be played.

Week 4 rant....finis. Let's see what happens Week 5....

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I think that's only really a third of the story.

Scoring frisbees was incentivized well, I agree, but that's also because it de-incentivized the other 2/3 of the game:

a) 2/3 level climbing was severely under-rewarded
b) defense was difficult/heavily penalized (namely through safe zones)

Essentially 2013 became about how quickly and consistently you could score frisbees in the high goal, which is a perfectly valid game. Straight shoot-outs were high-scoring, easy to understand for an observer and easy to referee (see FLL).

I can understand people describing 2013 as 'the best game ever'. It had few issues/controversies. It gave every robot an opportunity to show off. Better robots won out. For the most part, a single match was entertaining to watch. Every game should have these qualities.

But the depth of gameplay was quite shallow. The rules reduced 90% of robots to play one strategy: cycle + 10pt hang.

Aerial Assist is a lot braver. It wants to be dynamic and versatile. It wants more teams to think, talk and coordinate before and during a match (at least more than picking which feeder station to use). It wants to be more like a real team sport. Most teams sports have only one game-piece in play at a time as they cater for both defense and offense. That's what I believe Aerial Assist is trying to do.

There are two veins of criticism: criticism of the intent and criticism of the execution. Ultimate Ascent was executed very well, partially because the intent was simpler to execute. But as a fan of team sports, I personally welcome the direction the GDC are trying to take.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

At least at Buckeye, the refereeing was extremely good in this sense. The referees were very clear when a pinning count was starting and what the current count was and they also showed when the pinning had ended with an easily visible sweep of their arms.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Same at Tech Valley--it was very, very obvious when a pin count was ongoing, and when it had been called off.

I don't think they were being called off correctly--six feet for three seconds--but it was at least clear.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Keep in mind that G39 this year takes a different approach from the "stepping out of bounds" rules of past years.

In previous seasons, teams weren't allowed to touch the floor outside their alliance station. This year, the foul is for losing contact with your alliance station/HP area.

This means that if you feel you need to be further away from the guard rail or safety zone to avoid G40 tech fouls, you can put your back foot outside the HP area legally. Just be careful to maintain contact with the HP area with your front foot.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

The penalty for not having a third robot is 20 points--that third assist, so the margin is actually doubled...

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I for one do NOT hate this years game. In fact I love it. Every year the game is a compromise in some ways with both pros and cons. This year there seems to have more potential for inconsistent application of fouls, and potential pedestal delays and other frustrations on the field. I am sure that some of the issues with this years game are particularly concerning to some of the most elite teams who plan carefully, and depend on consistency. However, this years game also seems to offer a lot to offset some of those shortcomings. Here is why I particularly like this years game.

1. It is very exciting to watch. With high point swings, and large easy to follow game pieces, there have been some really thrilling games to watch.

2. The game is at least playable by a team with limited funding. This year it is much easier for small or disadvantaged teams to at least "show up" for the game, and compete at a modestly competitive level.

3. Cooperation is rewarded much more this year, and I have seen many more examples of cooperation on the field this year than on most other recent years.

4. Autonomous mode scoring is more obtainable this year, and I have seen a higher percentage of robots perform at least basic autonomous scoring this year.

These are just opinions. I do not have data to support any of this, but that was my impression of game so far.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I agree with this sentiment. Other than the disproportionate foul points, I think this game gets an important aspect that can enhance the FIRST experience across all teams. It requires cooperation across the entire alliance to succeed. Unfortunately the competition has been dominated by power teams, even to the extent that there's a thread about the "ethics of saying 'no'". This game gets all of the teams back into the action. I think that the game could be better designed, and even Ultimate Ascent could have given even more incentives to alliance play (e.g., more points for FCS and rebound collected shots, and more allowance for blocking FCS to require counterdefense.) But that shouldn't take away from the aim of the GDC.

That said, the lack of design and build experience by the newer teams is highlighted in this game. A disabled or unavailable robot creates a 20 point per cycle penalty. That's unfair to the other two alliance members who have absolutely NO control over that aspect--it's even worse than a 50 point technical. FIRST made that worse this year by pursuing a strong team recruitment effort, particularly in California and Michigan (which I applaud hugely!) The result is even MORE inexperienced teams. From my analysis of the OPRs, it appears that the spread between teams has increased this year compared to 2013 and 2013 (which had very similar year to year spreads).

The answer is requires a thred-fold strategy (which we plan to implement the our part locally here in the Sacramento Valley).

1) FIRST needs to announce in September, long before Kickoff, that it is planning a game that requires robot interaction with bonus points. This gives all teams a signal that they must rely on their alliance members much more than in the past. The GDC need not reveal anything more so teams are not going to get a jump on design.

2) FIRST needs to provide a list of newest teams (including prospects) to other teams in the region so that the older teams know who they need to contact for step 3). FIRST should try to finalize this list by the end of November.

3) The more experienced teams should start in September to visit the newest teams, both this year's and last year's rookies to start, to explain how they design for different game strategies, including focusing on specific, manageable tasks at the outset, and to train these teams in building robust, reliable robots. And guess what? This program both enhances the FIRST experience AND achieves some of the most important educational objectives of FIRST. It also builds community by bringing together the best teams (which aren't always viewed in the best light) with the newest teams.

FIRST could take this a step further by assigning the top teams a number of new teams to mentor, e.g., 3-5, and start the assignments based on world ranked order. Participating could become a requirement for FIRST membership. Many top teams do this, but it would formalize the process and ease finding the newest teams. FIRST could even create the ability to have "superalliances" that some how play into regional rankings and world championships qualifications.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

You can't design for BOTH avoiding inadvertant capture AND truss catching. Even our robot with dual sided intakes that can catch a ball cannot not 100% guarantee avoiding a well placed bounce or rebound. We haven't incurred it, but this one rule could be a hazard for teams trying to play what is supposed to be the highlight reel moment of the game.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Based on our experience in 2013, the optimal alliance was an FCS with a counterdefense robot and a ground pickup for rebounds. Watch SF 1-1 on Einstein to see that in action. Our robot went dead in SF 1-2 (our fault) so it's hard to prove that point, however this required TEAM strategy, not individual robot performance.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I'm reminded of a quote from "The Next Iron Chef": "If a dish is creative, but a failure, is it creative, or is it a failure?"

While there's something to be said for a brave, challenging game design with complex strategies that really makes teams think, there's also something to be said for a more straightforward game that lets teams succeed and have fun without throwing up a ton of arbitrary obstacles and gotchas. 2001's 4-v-0 game was probably one of the most out there game designs in FRC history, and it was pretty frustrating and not incredibly fun to watch, especially in the finals.

Also, I feel it necessary to point out that team sports have had decades to work out rules that allow for an even balance of offense and defense with a single scoring object. Heck, it took professional basketball 8 years to come up with the shot clock to make sure games kept moving. With a new game design every year, the GDC doesn't have a lot of time to tweak and twiddle to balance the game. Teams are happiest when they get it right out of the gate and don't have to make large rule changes in the middle of the competition season. I'm pretty sure simpler, less strategically complex games vastly simplify the balancing process and increase the likelihood of getting it right to start with.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

But what Ultimate Ascent did well, that I don't believe Aerial Assist is doing well, is incentivize teams for creative engineering.
In UA, teams who built a floor pickup machine or a climber were rewarded with different ways to play teleop, and more auto/climb points. These were difficult tasks to accomplish. Teams were rewarded for figuring out how to full-court shoot, and that it was even a valid strategy!
Aerial assist tries to reward strategy and different robot designs, except it fails. It wants robots to be specialized in catching, trussing, and high goal shooting, but since all three tasks can be performed by one robot, it fails to do so.
Additionally, in Ultimate Ascent, all three teams could try to score simultaneously, which decreased the effectiveness of defense and the prevalence of defense greatly (except on full-court shooters). Ultimate Ascent also had passing between robots, where full-court shooters would pass to floor-pickup machines, but it wasn't forced by game design that those frisbees were worth more points- it just happened organically.

And so in some ways, in terms of general game design, I love this game, in other ways I'm quite disappointed.
Aerial Assist is like eating salad after your ice cream. The Ultimate Ascent flavored ice cream was delicious, what's next? A salad?!?! Awwww...
(salads are good but not in comparison to ice cream. Duh :) )

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

It's almost like the GDC should have put the truss on the floor as a barrier to get over. Less high speed, full field charging by robots, and different (maybe more interesting) gameplay. See 2012, just more of a challenge to cross the field.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

The last two comments make me wonder if the truss should have been replaced with a tunnel down low or a maze up high. Both would have been different tasks that high goal shooting.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I don't hate the game, but I agree it's severely lacking relative to other experiences. My experience was as a student from 99-01 and then a mentor in 2013 and this year, so I wouldn't say I have enough knowledge to declare any particular year the "best" game. That said I feel like this year's system is flawed in a few ways.

There are positives about this game. For starters it's exciting to watch as a spectator. Having a single game piece for either team makes it easier to follow the action and get excited on a score. The presence of strategy is also big; a team that can't necessarily score well but is good on defense with a powerful drive train can still contribute. This opens up the game to weaker teams, which I think is important. The team I mentor is not well funded or equipped so it's nice to have a chance to compete.

That said there are obvious negatives as well. The foul situation is an obvious one. Rules are intended to shape behavior, penalty-based rules especially so, and good rules have three aspects. They're easy to understand, they're easy to enforce, and the consequence of the rule is equivalent to the importance of the action. An example of a good rule (from a behavior standpoint) is the rule that a ball is scored when it passes through a goal. It's easy to understand, it's easy to enforce (ball enters the goal, points are scored), and the consequence (in this case the points) reflects the importance of the action.

Many of the fouls, especially technical fouls, are in my opinion poorly designed from a rules perspective. Several rules are hard to understand, as evidenced by the sheer amount of debate going on here as well as by the judges. Enforcement of those rules is also difficult and is heavily dependent on the interpretation of the referee. And finally the consequences are, in my opinion, way out of line relative to the importance of the action. Scores over 200 points are exceedingly rare, yet a technical foul is worth 50 points. That's a massive penalty.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Compared to other years the field setup is somewhat boring. No obstacles and also no end game. I think is just because this year is so much different people are having trouble getting used to it. I personally like this game but see a few flaws in it also.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Well said. I support the idea of fewer game pieces and more defense for the reasons you list (more exciting game, better use of weaker teams), but we need to overhaul the foul rules so that playing defense in future games isn't a GIANT MINEFIELD of devastating and yet hard to predict foul penalties!

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I haven't gotten to reading other opinions of the game, but some of the points that the original post I agree with and others I don't.

Saying the game is worse than the 2003 game, I just watched the video for the game, Stack Attack, which seems bad in it's own ways. This game has it's own issues, I can easily complain about with how big the defense seems to be in my own opinion. I could easily go on about the pros and cons at this game, compared to my interest in last year's.

With fouls being the contenders, I can agree that there are matches that have seen that just because of a single human player error an alliance has last the match, I have been on both sides of those matches. There's been matches where I've seen over 100 foul points have been added to matches and have made drastic changes to outcomes of matches and rankings.

I agree to the original post when it says that that's a part of having a good outcome is to input your alliance members that might be new or having a rough year to their best abilities and to use them to your advantage as defense or this year even as a robot that is for intake and the first assist. That's the big part of having Assisting as a large part of your alliance in winning with assists helping your score (and your ranking).

This game certainly has a lot of ups and downs with how it was played and scored, my personal opinion is that it could be better and the way the single game piece and fouls we used made it not as enjoyable as I think it could have been, and the rules for certain parts of competition could be improved as always I could see improvements in the ways things work in FIRST. Sadly my team's competition time in Aerial Assist is done until our off-season next school year.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I'm not a big fan of this game for a few reasons.
My team was in a very weak regional and in almost every single qualifying match, we were stuck with really bad robots. As a result, we went 1-9 and were ranked 62nd out of 63. It was really frustrating because every round, someone's shooter broke, or the refs didn't notice that we were calling a dead ball for 30 seconds or one of our partners got a foul. Our robot was running great and was pretty decent.
Basically what I'm saying is that since so much emphasis is placed on your alliance, a decent robot in a field of bad ones won't do well and won't get the attention of any scouts of the good teams

(apologies if I sound like a sore loser and/or really ranty)

However, this makes elims really awesome to watch!!!

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

After Palmetto, my opinion of the game wasn't great, but I wasn't complaining too much yet. Now that Peachtree has passed, my patience with this game and the way its officiated is completely gone. Giving the refs so much to do, leaving the gray area for G27 calls, pedestal issues, and the fact that possession of a ball is still a gray area absolutely killed our shot to be in a picking position for alliance selection. (Ask 2415 about inconsistent rulings between regionals, they'd love to tell you about it). One of the finals matches in eliminations had to be stopped and redone due to a pedestal issue, and teams were cheated out of potential assist and teleop points in some quals matches due to 20+ second pedestal delays. I'm almost glad our season's over, so we don't have to deal with the headache that is Aerial Assist anymore.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

The game concept? Great.
Most elimination rounds? Pretty darn exciting.
The implementation? Horrible.

There is no consistency between events and matches. On webcasts, I keep hearing the words "technical foul assessed for entering the frame perimeter of a robot". What rule is that? Honestly, when a technical foul is called, a rule should really be cited.

Also, really subjective words, like "trapping" your opponents ball, "aggressive", "deliberate" (if I don't like you, your robot always "deliberately" did it...) and "high-speed" "ramming" are interpreted differently by everybody. At this point, there is literally no excuse for pedestal delays. It's been 5 weeks since the first issue was reported, and the technology to turn on a light at a certain time should not be too advanced for FIRST. It's a robotics competition. If this huge organization can't figure it out, I'm sure some members of the FIRST community could find a clever solution to turn on the pedestal light, like a light switch :rolleyes:

At this point FIRST should also just give up with the assist lights. I'm not sure what they really do, other than stress out the drivers. The assist dots on the webcast change a good 15 seconds before the lights update.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I actually like this game.

It's unfortunate that the many good ideas have been poisoned by an ambiguous and ill-defined rule set and a lack of enough referees at events.

Frankly I'm surprised that there haven't been more complaints at competitions. It's one thing for us teams who are familiar with the rules and can understand why fouls are given to see a match decided by foul points, but it's another for parents or passer-byes who see a clean looking match swing another way because of heavy foul points. I can't count the number of questions I got on the rules this weekend from not only spectators, but also teams who were wondering why exactly they were disabled before the match started (and I'm not even a volunteer! Just a guy in a hat!).

Frankly, I'm exceedingly impressed at the volunteers and how hard they're trying in spite of the rules. Both of the events I went to were exceedingly well run (despite some misunderstandings), despite all of the inherent difficulties and high tension at the events.

All in all, I think it's been significantly better this year than it would have been if this game was played in my first year of FRC, 2011. Looking forward to seeing what next year's game brings.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I do like the game this year a lot. It requires you to pay more attention to notice some of the scoring stuff, and it is great that it forces teams together. It's also nice becuase (presuming that every robot can move) every robot should be able have a role as defense.

The main problem with the fields is that they are inconsistent, and with the live time scoring it is difficult to change what may have been incorrectly selected. That said, fouls are a part of every game, and while when your team loses from them its not fun, they aren't new and some regulations if this sort is necessary.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

So my views on this game swing a lot.

At the time of unveiling, I was wary on this game. I thought more on it for about 2 days and then thought "This is actually cool and could be very fun".

I liked it even more and thought, this could be one of the deepest game strategy wise for FIRST. I really liked it and thought it could be played great. The assists aspect and the idea of teamwork looked really cool. I thought of things like different offensive styles and defensive styles, like a real sport. Loved the attempt FIRST made.

Come week 1, I saw the constant ramming and carnage and inconsistent reffing that occurred and the ridiculous amount of fouls. I ended up disliking that it marred the game so much.

Each week I grew more discouraged with gameplay. A lot of matches just weren't good at all, they were a pain to watch. A lot of the robots just also weren't that effective at playing the game, except for collisions. And the inconsistent officiating, which I believe is a result of both the game design and in my opinion understaffed events lessened the experience.

When the game is played like it's supposed to - It's a great game, looks awesome and it's exciting. That's not the norm however. The game is dreadful to watch otherwise. Some of the matches at the DC regional were just not fun to watch.

I believe someone mentioned this before, but the GDC attempted to do in a small amount of time what many sports have had for years. In months the GDC has to create a game and complex set of rules that are able to be justly and correctly enforced. It's definitely a nuanced thing, because sport rules are complex and backed by years of study and observation. FIRST GDC doesn't have that. I do love the attempt made by them and I think they can make the adjustments for Championships.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

My team went to a poor regional as well where there were a lot of rookies and newer teams in the area so bad alliances was common, and the first seed was the powerhouse seed and of course won. By the time they got to us at 6th seed there wasn't the best selection of teams there (yet I still blame the co-captain for not picking 1939 ((and again with our driver at the next regional))). Our only reasons for losing matches was because the other teams didn't listen to us and there was a lack of communication and strategy, or they were a very new team that wasn't working too well. We had problems with the deadball card, half because the team with the ball stuck in their robot refused to hold up their card and weren't able to find it to hold up, when we should have probably put ours own up and slammed the glass as hard as we could.

I agree that the good robots on alliances of not as good ones can really harm your ranks, especially when they don't seem to listen to the plans to work better. The matches we lost were because of miscommunication and not as good teams, not because of breaking down. If a team has good scouting like they should, they won't focus all that much on the results of an alliance as much as they need to on the robot's individual performance, if it's shooting well, if it can catch, how quick its' intake and outtake is, how good it's assists are and how often, not so much on how they're working with say the teams that are having low performance.

Also the elims are really interesting, but in my personal experiences it would be better to watch the same power house teams go up in the finals over and over and over and over every single regional, and they're extremely brutal. I watched a certain team completely and repeatedly ram into another robot to hit off another's pickup mechanism as seen in a match screenshot here from when they were evaluating the damage for the score.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Oscar, I agree with many of your points. GDC is making a game more like a traditional sport: simple and deep. A lot of the problems relate to that attempt being within the one year turnover time period instead of fifty years of development and nuance.

In light of that, it might help to view many of the qual matches as developmental league- level play. Coaching peewee soccer for a number of years, I saw a lot of weird things that were perfectly fine for the age group. No offense intended to any team, but FRC is a mix of pros, up-and-comers and perpetual rookies (in the sport sense and in the amount of student and knowledge turnover). Boring (to watch) play comes with the territory; some of us are in peewee league, and are experiencing the game for the first time when we play match #8 on Friday.

It might also help to remember that qual play has always been spotty, every year.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Has there ever been a year where that's not the case? In my experience, the bottom half or so of any given Regional in any given year can't accomplish any game objectives except (probably) driving around.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

The rules are too subjective - unless DC bots are really that much meaner than St. Joseph bots.

St. Joseph 19 technical fouls
Livonia 28 technical fouls
New York 41 technical fouls
Waterford 53 technical fouls
DC 58 technical fouls

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

At this point I would have to say Aerial Assist is a pretty bad game at the regional level for the reasons that have already been stated in this thread.

However, I think it might get better at State Championships and Worlds. The most exciting matches of Aerial Assist I've seen are ones where the ref crew stands back only calls blatant rules violations. I understand this can't happen often at the regional and district levels because many bots can't handle that style of game play without falling apart. In divisional eliminations and above, hopefully the more passive style of refereeing will become more common.

Also, the FMS still has some issues, like once in a great while the whole field will lose connection. That could definitely put a damper on Einstein if it were to continue.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

That's a fair point. It seems even worse than particular this year. This is also a game that at the regional and district level, relies heavily on the floor in terms of robot ability. The floor sadly is a bit low in some places.

And no DC bots aren't that much meaner, it's what do you do when your robot is limited in capabilities? Play *defense*.

There also should have been more tech fouls than were called at the DC regional, but I believe that the volunteers there did a great job. I still have an issue with the pedestal and the inconsistency behind it. Cycles and runs have been affected severely because of it.

I do trust that by championships we will see a much better game overall. There have been a lot of improvements from the slugfest that was week 1.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

St. Joseph bots looked pretty mean to me, and I was watching from a very close vantage point while wearing stripes.* I saw a lot of very hard hits, and called very few technical fouls.

The results (see two posts above) speak for themselves -- good hard defense was not inhibited, and solidly built robots were rewarded by this style of officiating.

---------
*This was my first time refereeing. As a good volunteer should, I was following the direction set by our Head Ref.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

This has to be one of the most frustrating aspects this year. The stronger competitions with better teams do not have the same picky over zealous technical foul calls whereas the weaker regionals are calling fouls non stop. Its unfortunate when teams don't build a machine that can handle rough contact but that is not a reason to call penalties at a higher rate, yet that is what is occurring this year with the incredibly subjective rules.

Additionally it is truly disheartening that teams pay so much money to compete and then FIRST won't even spend the money on proper electronics to ensure matches run without communication issues or pedestal delays. Its not that hard to light up a trashcan immediately

Anupam, it was a pleasure to meet you and talk to you about different strategies at the peachtree regional. I wish we could have played with you guys again as you guys were sporting a great robot at this event. I am pretty surprised by your post as we dealt with a completely different situation.

In another thread, John V. Neun pointed out how 148 is always at the question box asking questions about the match they were playing in. We did the same. For most of the qualification matches we played, our student was at the question box to ask questions about close calls and possesions as to gain understanding of how the referees at the peachtree regional are going to make the calls. We didnt receive any fouls however we had problems with the pedestal lighting up in couple of matches and the referees took note of that. Unfortunately, referees dont have control over when the pedestal gets lit up. The referees made consistent calls in matches that we played in.

In one of the matches, one of the teams intake got tangled with our robot by mistake and tore apart our radio and some of the wires, they did run into us. This team felt that we were at the question box to complain. We were simply there to ask how the call is being made so our driver knows not to make that mistake. The team came upto us and was very apologetic and we explained to them that it wasnt their fault, it happens and its part of the game; we also encouraged them to play harder defense if needed in future against us. I have outmost respect for this team for coming upto us and clarifying the situation.

Another team attending the regional probably viewed this game as battlebots, they were on us the whole match ramming and pinning. They rode past our bumper perimeter bending our shooter frame and break some lexan covering. We were at the question box again and the head ref told us that she didnt see it so she cant make the call. We moved on and fixed what was needed to be fixed because the head ref made it clear at the driveteam meeting that she simply can not make a call if she doesn't see the incident. We were very surprised by this team's action. In our 20 years of existence, this is the first time our robot was broken after a match and the team responsible didnt approach us. Pretty surprising when you are dealing with a veteran team.

This game is brutal. Referee calls will be different from regionals to regionals. Teams who play this game like battlebots will receive penalties. Teams who know how to properly defend (ex. Team 1683) will do well.

Instead of complaining and picking this game apart, I strongly advise others to find ways to gain understanding of how the refs at the specific regional will make calls.

It took me 15 minutes to write this post which I could have spent watching matches from different regionals to see how the referees made the calls. Our driveteam spent four weeks watching webcasts, hundreds of matches, and collected data.

Play the game how it is meant to be played and I think that teams will enjoy playing the game. Watch matches after matches and strategize to find ways to win instead of going ballistic on opponents robot and receive tech fouls, and then complaining about getting a tech foul.

I am sorry if this post offends anyone but I am so sick of seeing so many negatives and so much drama unfold all over the place over this game.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Arefin,

I'll admit, my comments were marred by the post-regional feeling of defeat. I often get caught up in the heat of the moment and let my emotions affect my posts. Starting today, I will not post about a regional until I get a good night's sleep after the regional. I will maintain that my experience with Aerial Assist has not been as pleasant as with Logomotion, Rebound Rumble, and Ultimate Ascent. Most of my comments were really just issues I saw with the regional, and not really the game, though the game still has many issues.

This is good advice, and I'll make sure our team's drive coach and drive team understand how to use the question box for more than debating calls. We did have some debatable calls that could've swung a match the other way, but I think the way we approached the question box was in a reactionary manner instead of an inquisitive manner, which definitely did not help our case. The matches we had questionable calls in happened to be one that could've changed the alliances in eliminations alltogether, so I suppose realizing the gravity of that call can also affect the attitude we have when approaching the question box.


For the most part, we didn't have any issues with tech fouls and defense, though other teams definitely had those issues. At the end of the day, our team definitely had a lot of fun, and all of the positive comments on our robot's look and functionality, capped off with an imagery award, definitely inspired all of our students. I suppose our exit in the quarters, while disheartening, is inspiring our students to work harder and better. We promised our juniors that we will get a banner before they graduate, and at the end of the day, this inspiration is what FIRST is all about

Good luck to 108 at South Florida and Championships, your team definitely deserved the win!

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I don't "hate" this game at all - I think it's one of the best underlying game designs FRC has had in recent memory, marred by significant problems with implementation.

The reffing at the Greater DC regional was about as good as I've seen anywhere this year, and the result was a game that was intense and fair. Teams with well-thought-out strategies, good drivers, and good robots were very successful.

The change from games mostly consisting of three robots playing in parallel to three robots playing as a team is massive and fundamental, and, in my estimation, a good thing. I see far more strategic depth in Aerial Assist than in any other FRC game I've experienced, and alliance communication and cohesion is absolutely required for any results. This engenders interaction between teams and builds rewarding relationships, and I think that can only be seen as a good thing.

There are still problems with fuzzy rules and ref overload, but (at least at Greater DC) the head ref was open about this and it was not a crippling problem.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

A word of caution about repeated visits to the question box. There is a risk involved with repeated visits to the question box, depending on the personality of the head ref involved and a team must weigh the potential results of their post match question box visits. Some referees can't handle repeated questions and may even think you are questioning their authority, resulting in a negative bias against your team. There shouldn't be a risk, but there can be...

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Understatement.

Understatement. Hurray for consistency in training!

Really? The following was called a tech foul against us (blue bot playing offense) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rvUzolCZ-8. We're not the one using our arm as a defensive spear.

Please do continue to rip out wires, pop bearings out of sockets, and bend forks with reckless impunity, n'er do wells of FRC - referees won't mind! They might even blame us for your idiocy!

If only that were true.

Frequent visitors. The answer to that question is often "Poorly".

Tried. Thinking we do a good job since we've had exactly 2 fouls called on us across three regionals. I don't count the "tech foul" called above.

Nope. Still waiting for that "pure" competition experience. I'd like to think we'd get that at the CMP, but then, we didn't qualify. Seems some extra roadblocks tossed in our way detoured us off the path to that desired goal. Would we have reached the finish line without those in the way? Not sure, BUT I SURE WOULD HAVE LIKED TO HAVE HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO FIND OUT.

The waitlist remains our last best hope for the season, but I remain unoptimistic in that regard.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

To be fair, nothing in that clip even remotely resembles battlebots. All I saw was unintentional entanglement and resulting (unfortunate and nigh-unavoidable without banning defense) damage. Additionally, throwing around words like "idiocy" is not particularly conducive to the sort of atmosphere required for productive discourse.

Edit: It just occurred to me that I might be mis-parsing your response if you intended that as an example of receiving a penalty while not playing "like battlebots." It's really rather unclear; the sentence directly after indicates you think the reffing against overly-aggressive robots is insufficiently strict, not vice-versa.

Continous visitation to the question box will become very annoying yes. We only went to the question box twice when we felt that there might have been a close one but ref overlooked or they were fine with it. I am not suggesting to go out there after every match and ask, "hey how did we play?"

Travis, I am sorry that you are having a bad time with this game and I am sure we would be frustrated if we were in your shoes. However, my comments were based on what I have heard from my students and what I saw when I was behind the driver station as well as our experience at the peachtree regional.

The video you posted, I dont know how the ref was calling the match. I would have asked the head ref what they will call this as and as long as they stayed consistant with the call throughout the weekend, I would be happy.

Team 1683 have done phenomenal defense for our alliance (108. 2283, 1683). They knew how they should play their defense based on our strategy and who we were up against. This earned them a blue banner. I suppose I would say a team that wins a regional has done very well for the season.

You are right. Posting back and forth and trying to argue over individuals opinion would get us nowhere. So I will move onto getting our team ready for the South Florida regional. After all we got a whole shooter to build.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I don't hate this game, but I do have a few problems with it and those problems all seem to stem from the fact that the refs are responsible for too much in order to always call a game correctly. The inconsistency of calls for G12 and G28 along with not always properly awarding assist points has been rather frustrating, and frankly disappointing.

Our team was most disheartened by this game this weekend at the Auburn district in match 35. 3393 collects our alliance's ball, drives into the white zone and shoots it out, almost off the field, and no tech foul was given. Here's video of this occurrence http://youtu.be/DjNCiD1QUZw?t=1m48s. Our student went to the question box and the response from the ref was simply that they didn't see it, which was rather unbelievable, as the announcer called it out as it happened, it happened right in front of the head ref, and it seemed to us the ref at the far side of the field had signaled it. If it wasn't that, I'm not sure what it was they were signaling.

I don't mean for this to be a criticism of the refs, I appreciate the fact that they are all volunteers and that they've been given a lot to keep track of in order to be fair and effective. Still though, when so many matches are determined by what the refs see or don't see rather than by robot performance or alliance strategy... it's a bit disheartening.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

So you're saying you don't enjoy it when people destroy your robot with questionable motives?

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

WOW, this is ridiculous! It's even worse that it's the head ref that is calling the foul.

#1 - Your obviously trussing and trying to retreive the ball.
#2 - It appears your intake was inside your own frame perimeter at the time.
#3 - It wasn't you that decided that "snow fence" was an appropriate material for an FRC robot.
#4 - It was right in front of the head ref. Who is supposed to exactly what was happening and what the right call should be.

I hope the waitlist goes in your favor. Looks like you guys have a good machine that we would love to play with at Champs. If not, hopefully we will see you guys at MARC this summer.

There are many reasons to "like" this game. But, I can understand why many teams could "hate" this game...or atleast the way the refs, rules, scheduling, etc. have played out this year.

I don't hate this game. I think the eliminations are exciting. Qualifications can be a little hard to watch, but that is most years. Overall we often view the quality of the game based on our individual results. I liked playing in 2009 and hated 2006 for a long time. But, looking back 2006 was a great game...just not for us b/c we were never playing it correctly....while '09 is favorable b/c we had a good strategy that worked out really well for us.

Overall the rules, ref consistency, and scheduling are really effecting my opinion of this game. If we can overcome those issues and take advantage of a really good machine this year, I think that Aerial Assist will leave a good taste in our mouths. If we get screwed by assists, poor schedule, refs, etc... I may come to hate this game.

Regardless of how we make out in the end, with a few major tweaks to this game (additional balls and/or less reliance on partners in quals) we could be discussing this game as being one of the best games ever.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

We tried too. We learned your robot needs to be made of acrylic to have a chance.

See Lenape Quarter 3 match 1

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I was unclear. The "tech foul" we received in Pittsburgh was not really the target of my "battlebots" implication. It was, however, the result of careless gameplay on behalf of an aggressor where a robot positioned their claw in a hazardous manner when playing defense. They snagged themselves on our bot during this incursion, and we were penalized for extracting ourselves from this situation to continue to play the game.

To their credit, the team that received the benefit of this penalty apologized to people in our pit, saying they realized they were in the wrong. I hope they learn to translate that remorse into improved gameplay on the field.

To my discredit, I blew up verrrrrrry overtly in the pit over this whole situation, to the point I felt it necessary to leave the venue for an extended period, including Friday closing ceremonies. As I've said elsewhere, this game and my personality are a "toxic combination." The rest of the team handled the situation in a much better manner than I did.

The "battlebots" I was referring to actually occurred in Wisconsin, and went unpenalized all weekend (at least the "ripping wires", etc. stuff that happened to us in multiple matches on Saturday).

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Ah, okay, that makes a lot more sense.

I don't see anything in that video that is even close to what ought to be a foul - clearly, your bot did absolutely nothing wrong, and the other bot caused no damage except to themselves and did nothing malicious so much as careless (though, to their credit, they weren't that far outside of their frame perimeter when the entanglement happened). That you got called for a tech foul there is absurd.

It seems this sort of stuff varies a lot by regional - I was very content with the reffing at Greater DC. We played stiff, aggressive (but not damaging or violent) defense for the vast majority of the competition and had no problems with bad calls.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

QFT!

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I would have been happy with a simple non call or foul reversal, which is what we argued for.

Thanks, Adam. That means a lot coming from you.

We've had enough teams being adversely impacted by this game. I'd love for more teams to communicate positive experiences. However, I don't think that is going to happen without extensive short-term intervention and an investment in long-term corrective actions by the core FIRST leadership.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Here's an example from this weekend of getting away without a penalty. The event occurs with 90 seconds left:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4rf-6eP4dc

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Was this intentional? The video doesn't show how the robots ended up in that position. If it was, that should be a penalty, yeah.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

this is the consistency problems I have been seeing.

At Peachtree we were given 50 pt technicals for entering another robots frame perimeter...it did not matter if the other robot was damaged, tangled, touched, or even if they initiated contact....entering got us a 50 pt technical. I will admit, there were 2 incidents that I saw that were completely 100% our fault. Seemed like after that everything we did was "intentional"

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I really don't think the 3rd point makes any sense. The only way that having two lower ranking alliance members would cause your chances at victory to be zero is if they literally could not move.

Let's Look at Smoky Mountain Regional Q89.
Red Alliance:
5022 (Rank at the time was in the 40s.) No Manipulators.
3856 ( Rank at the time was 48.) No Manipulators.
4265 (Rank at the time was ~12 or 14. Can't remember for sure.)
Blue Alliance:
2614 (Rank at the time was 1.)
2856 (Rank at the time was in the 10s)
2856 (Rank at the time was either 30s or 40s, can't remember for sure.) No Manipulators.

What's your prediction for this match? Obviously Blue.
Final score? 105 to 73, Red.
How did this happen?
Every student giving it their all in an effective strategy.

When it comes to fouls, you can't just assume if you're with a fouling team that there isn't anything you can do about it. You have to speak with the team and figure out what the problem is. Only after you've done your best to make sure it doesn't happen in a match can you really say that you couldn't have done anything.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

FYI: other head refs may have different systems for this, but the way I normally communicate fouls to the game announcer is to quickly hand them a piece of paper with the rule number, penalty (foul, deactivation, etc.) and the team and alliance who did it. He checks those numbers against a "cheat sheet" with a one-line description of each rule. I've heard plenty of cases where a foul was correctly called during the game, but the game announcer misses some nuance of a rule when announcing it to the crowd. When I hear this, I try to let the game announcer know for next time.

It would be nice if I could spend time discussing each foul in detail with the announcer, but the flow of the tournament usually doesn't allow for this.