Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

But what about the teams who's goal is be a captain? To seed first? What about the team who seeds 8th but could have been 3rd if it weren't for one foul?

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I completely agree. I don't remember high speed ramming being called once all qualifications, at least not in the matches I watched or played in. And then suddenly there were 10+ throughout elims. What constitutes high speed ramming? What if two robots moving at "high speeds" hit each other? Who do you penalize? Should a robot moving at a "high speed" be penalized for an opposing robot moving into it's path? Too much left up to the refs to decide.

Besides that I love this game. The strategy is so much more fun than essentially playing a match by yourself, just making sure not to get in your partners way. This does not however make quals any more fun. You really have to prove your worth to those in the top 8 if you want to ensure a spot in the elims. But once you get there the strategies you can plan out with your alliance are so much more fun (and usually more successful).

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Care to explain this point?

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

If a team has their intake out, a team cannot just run into them and draw a foul.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

The lack of an end game is also an extremely notable point. The vast majority of people outside of FIRST I know who watch the matches as a spectator were disappointed by the lack of an end game for this year, even if the qualification and elimination matches they watched were pretty nifty (Canada has the best regionals :p )

In 2011, I enjoyed the minibot. FMS issues aside, it was a quick yet dramatic buildup to the towers lighting up, and watching the minibots race was really exciting. Then the game was picked up a notch into my personal favourite end game with the balance bridges the following year, and the still amazing and, to many, the more exciting "pyramid" end game.

These end games were exciting; they kept you on the edge of your seats, wondering if by some huge drama, the game would flip the tables in a few moments' notice. It gave teams another function on their robot, which allowed for more innovation, more opportunity to shine and some attention from scouts instead of having a bunch of one-trick ponies shooting to the human player, goal posts, over the truss, etc. There's variety for sure, but it's still relatively linear in that shooting and passing in the same capacity (as in you can just set one type of shooting, like going far away, and do anything in the game with only that mechanism) and you miss out on some really interesting methods of getting the game done.

Making more matches exciting not only helps keep spectators watching, but it gets them, the players and the other team members pumped up for the competition.

This year, as a fellow 781 team member said it best, the end game exists as fouls. Other parts of the game were already touched on before I posted here, so I'll just leave this as it is.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

More power to you. Is this year really that much different in terms of these goals than previous years? Watching Waterloo, I saw lots of matches with one great robot, one that struggled and one that barely moved in alliances where they won by a wide margin thanks to strategic play from the great bot. The best robots in Utah seeded first and second. And if your bot went from 3rd to 8th based on nothing more than a foul caused by your alliance partner's poor play, do you think the scouts in #1 and #2 don't know how great you are?

I'm not saying that rules and human error in reffing calls aren't deciding some matches; clearly they are, and they've changed my team's fate in our first regional. But I've been doing FRC for 10 years and have seen that happen before, in almost every year's game. That's part of what happens.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I like it. It's fun, it's challenging...it can be frustrating because the match schedule can decide who is picking whom...but in the elimination rounds, the teams get sorted out, who is the best.

Fouls were not an issue at Arizona.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Here is an example of a foul that just baffled us this weekend. A robot on the opposing alliance rammed our alliance partner and got caught on them. Our partner backed away and got a 50 point foul. The referees agreed this is what happened, but said because they were caught on us and it pulled their bot when our alliance backed away it was "against the spirit of first".

Another example from this weekend. We had 2 bots on our alliances that had issues. They barely moved the entire match. The other alliance's ball landed on one of the unmoving bot. We ended up with 170 foul points that match (holding and extended hold).

It isn't so much the fouls, it is more the amount that the fouls seem to effect the outcome. If they weren't 50 points a pop it might not affect the game so much.

The other thing wrong with this game is the scoring seems... off a lot of the time. The referees are so busy watching for fouls that they miss little things. Like auton points. We had a match where they didn't count any of our autonomous points. We sent a member to ask about it. They went ahead with one or two matches before talking to him and just told him "we don't have a record of that".

It is difficult to play a game when the rules are so interpretive.

That all said, the game itself is actually growing on me. It is fast paced and fun, but they need to fix the foul issue.

Just my two cents.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Fouls seemed to not be a big issue at Arizona. There were a couple human player ones early on but very quickly the fouls became pretty rare in the matches. Part of it is that compared to the regionals I've watched on webcasts in previous weeks, it seemed teams were much more focused on scoring than defense. It also sucks sometimes in qualifying when you have 2 immobile robots against an alliance with decent passing robots though I don't think this will be as much of a problem by championships. All in all the game is actually pretty awesome in eliminations but falls short in qualifying due to adding more emphasis on getting a good schedule as opposed to previous years.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

Anyone who says the fouls aren't a problem in this game need look no further than 1114.

22 time regional champ. Second most winning team in FIRST (behind 254). Have won 3 regionals in the same year a whopping 5 times. On the #1 alliance, they were eliminated in the semifinals at two events by a technical foul. At ONTO, their partner accidentally caught the opponent's TRUSS shot. At ONWA, they were damaged in a collision which left a part of their robot hanging >20" outside the frame perimeter. The robot that caused the damage only got a 20pt Foul for that action.

The fouls and field problems are breaking this game. Generally speaking, you should not be seeing matches decided by fouls during eliminations. By then the teams ought to have figured out what not to do. Anybody have stats on what percentage of elimination matches are being decided by fouls, compared to past years? I'd bet it is much higher this year than most previous years.

The game concept itself I agree is among the better ones, it just seems like its lacking polish.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I forgot the exact number but the its around 5 times.

Arial Assault is a broken game and, with a plethora of new rules updates the GDC seems addicted to making it worse. Here the 12 step program:

1. Lower all human player penalties to regular fouls.
2. Stop making strategy changing rules updates the day regionals start.
3. Get an apple I or comadore 64 for field timing so the hot goals turn on at the right time.
4. See #3 and replace hot goal with robots being enabled and disabled.
5. Make the inbound an assist. No more having to hold the ball for half an hour to get the 1st assist.
6. Develop a system of immediate rematches for when things go wrong.
7. Create a proper inspection protocol for eliminations.
8. Remove refs ability to retroactively DQ a team or alliance due to an inspectors mistake.
9. Remove penalties that hurt offensive plays under heavy defense.
10. Make ball tracking and assist crediting ether all electronic or the job of 1 ref per alliance.
11. Remove rules that can not be enforced evenly throughout different events.
12. Inject some common sense into penalty judgement.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

The game itself is pretty cool. It's like a robotic version of Rugby or Australian Rule Football but the rules are too invasive and are deciding too many matches.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

^^^^ This

FIRST has always used the concept of the "luck of the draw" in qualifying to help level the playing field.

I think the game is fun and really no different a challenge than we've seen in past years. But then again onf of MY all time favorites was in 2001 when it was 4 v 0. THAT game was where Coopertition and sharing among teams really started.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I like the assist idea even though it can be frustrating in practice. My biggest complaint is that we go to all of the work to score assists and then don't get the points for them.

It would be a much better game if every single team had a functional collector that can quickly pick up and eject the ball.

Re: Why does everyone hate this game so much?
 

I was speaking about this point with other mentors on my team: the term "assist" completely misled you about how extra points were gathered until you had a grasp on the wording and rules (I had to explain to multiple people how it actually worked). That, among with other issues already addressed in this thread, has made this both my favorite and most hated game in my 7 years in FIRST. To be honest, I was ok with no end game, primarily because the "buzzer beater" truss or score was just as stressful, edge of your seat action.

I have a lot of thoughts on this game. There are a lot of positives to take away, and nearly as many negatives. One thing I can say is that the strongest robots will win. The question is, how many strong robots look alike? Not. Many. And THAT, is my key takeaway this year.