Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Sorry youngins, but Eric takes the cake here. For those who were around and remember the awe of the 710 match, you also remember the feeling of hopelessness of the mastery of FRC71 completely having the game figured out and there was NOTHING you could do to stop them.

I just remember that each member of the alliance had to hit their E-Stop for the timer to stop and the Emcee just yelling "and STOP". The 710 matches were less than 60 seconds!

2015 is the worst game in the last decade but it was still way more exciting then what 2001 was.

Recycle Rush was the worst game, hands down.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Trust me. I've been doing FRC or hanging around it for a long time. I've been to Nationals (and to fend off Gregor, I do mean Nationals. I've also been to Championship.). Recycle Rush is not the worst game. It's on the list, but the absolute best (worst?) it can do is #2--and that's a stretch. The fact it's been so long between total clunkers (ignoring '09 and '03, which were both decent games IMO--though not the best by a long shot) is a testament to the GDC's collective institutional ability to design games. The fact there are total clunkers... that speaks to the GDC's collective institutional "in-tune-ness" with teams, your choice whether that's positive or negative.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Can't speak for 2001 but RR was just too boring. Once on an alliance you did the same thing over and over. The average system was also stressful. In other games when paired up with less than ideal opponents who could basically out gun you, there were options. Strategies to pull off a farfetched win. This year however there was no such attempts. Can Wars decided your fate. No amount of strategy could change the results of an unfavorable matchup.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I can't trust that statement with you standing next to a bag of moon rocks :)

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Been a few years since I changed my WAI. That was, as I recall, the bag bound for the next regional--or one of them.

The big problem with '09 was the scrums. '03 was the elims "win"--you could win in one match and you had to play two.


I could probably go into the least-liked and most-liked aspects of most of the games back to '03, maybe even '02. (Want to make an old-timer cringe? Suggest a tape-measure tether. If they were around in '02, you'll hear about it.:p)

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Wow I remember back when 2003 used to dominate the worst of polls. For me Stack Attack still takes the cake, and that's despite the fact it was the first FRC event I saw live and got me hooked on the program. It was always just over too quick, first one to the top wins. And the ranking system was awful.

Lunacy was a flawed game, but I never got the hate for it. I thought the 0-0 matches of Breakaway were worse.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I am not answering this one. Recycle Rush was certainly the worst of the four most recent years, but I am fairly certain that Lunacy, at least, was worse.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

This is a great snapshot of how the community sees Recycle Rush. However, there are a lot of variables this soon after the 2015 game. That being stated:

Through the optics of time Recycle Rush will prove itself to be the worst of all the games in FRC. Either that or we have witnessed the moment that FRC took a downturn in its ability to capture the students' imagination.

My God, I hope Recycle Rush was the worst that the GDC came up with.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

2001 is my vote for worst game.
A format of 4 vs 0 and trying to beat the clock is boring at best for today's participants and audience. This especially after seeing what has worked/not worked since then.
I hope the GDC takes into consideration previous games, polls and past reactions when designing new games which I'm going to believe they do.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

According to the poll, the most disliked games involve regolith, making stacks, knocking over stacks, and a lack of defense.

Also according to the poll, every 6 years there is a game most people dislike. (The games with the most votes are currently 2003, 2009, and 2015.)

The 2021 game: making and knocking over stacks, on regolith, against the clock without an opposing alliance.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I didn't vote because I couldn't use the term "worst". I've enjoyed every FRC season that I've been part of whether as a teacher, mentor or volunteer.

But in the criteria of things that maybe didn't work out so well, I'd have to say that arranging alliances by team number in 2007 didn't really work out as hoped. Throw in a bit of a KoP gearbox problem (not the fault of the game, per se, but it certainly had an impact on our team) and there were a few memorable low points that year.

Aside from that it was a good game. And I enjoyed the season, and actually got some really good stories to tell because of the alliance pairing algorithm.

I've had the opportunity to be involved in designing a few game like challenges for students. The GDC does a pretty awesome job of it. It's not always perfect, but it has never been bad.

Jason

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Wow, the fact that 2003 is so underrepresented here must mean there just isn't anyone around from then anymore.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I'm going to be totally contrarian hear and say that Lunacy was one of my favorite games. Too many of the games have been about moving a really big or hard-to-hold object, while handling the orbit balls was about how you do something repeatably.

I understand the people hated the floor, the broken orbit balls, and the traffic jams, but we had fun with Lunacy. Of course, my opinion may be colored by the fact that we had a really great team in 2009.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I for one am very frustrated by the "this past year's game was the worst ever" sentiment after both 2014 and 2015 (people now seem to like 2014 quite a bit after the pendulum swung in the opposite direction).

Recycle Rush certainly wasn't my favorite game, but if any of Diabolical Dynamics, Stack Attack, or Lunacy were played this year, I'm sure you wouldn't have RR taking anywhere near 48% of the vote...