POLL: Worst FRC game
 

A few days ago, I had a poll about the best FRC game, and it seems so be 2013, 2014, and a lot of liking from 2005. But now its time to put up the worst FRC games. Im going to cut out 1992-2000 simply because not too many people can remember those times, or simply weren't around. So now please vote. Oh, and let the arguing begin!


Edit:Also there is a one vote limit because it is suppose to be the game you hate the most, the game that really grinds your gears, that shorts your wires... a game thats bad.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

There is no poll

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Woops. I forgot which one 2001 was (easy to do, given the names)--and voted Coopertition FIRST. One vote there needs to go to Diabolical Dynamics.

Want to know why? 4v0, NO defense at all, just 4 teams against the clock. And you thought Recycle Rush was bad after the canburgling. Imagine trying to coordinate 4 teams to finish a task in a certain time...and if you mess up, you lose a multiplier. Literally, finishing in 16 seconds with 5 more points could be worse than finishing in 15 seconds without those points (depending on what they were)--I forget the exact breakdown, but that's a possible scenario.


2015 had a technical challenge, and was OK but could have been better. 2009 had defense. 2003 had stuff breaking. For a lousy game, I'll put 2001 in a heartbeat.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I doubt this poll was made as a hate fest against last years game. I think it being the most recent bad game, people remember it the best and of course younger members haven't even experienced older games. The same thing is reflected in the other thread of course with 2013 and 2014 being the favorite games. It's just normal distribution of data.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

2015 for me
Was it challenging? Yes. But most of the designs were pretty derivative besides a couple outliers. The challenge of the game and lack of defense screwed rookie/inexperienced teams that would've at least had fun in any other game.

Edit: not saying lunacy wasn't awful but at least the bottom 50% could participate.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Generally 2 types of people voted in this poll

1) People who voted for Recycle Rush
2) People who witnessed Lunacy

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Well I voted Recycle Rush. I didn't chose it because I think that it is the worst game that FIRST has ever done, but I did it because I count the early years as times when FIRST was still trying to figure it out. As has been mentioned before, the 4v0 of Coopertition FIRST wasn't good from the videos I've seen. And I'm assuming that I've only seen the best.

I think that the worst part about last year was the disappointment of seeing how great games had been, and then being let down from kickoff and only going downhill from there.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I voted for recycle rush, just because that's the worst game I've participated in. However, from what I've seen and heard, it sounds like lunacy was pretty bad too.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I agree... they had a lotta hype build up for 2015, but then a huge disappointment... I'm almost afraid for this year.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I witnessed both. Lunacy had its flaws, but it was also a lot of fun to design for and if you didn't have a traffic jam the matches were rather fun to watch.

This game? IRI eliminations were fun to watch, but only because the robots were capable of stacking so many more of the extra totes they set out that it became a legitimate challenge to fit them and get around them. 842's tape measure canburglar at Championship was fun too, as were the cheesecaked ones of 1923 and 900. That's a highlight reel that can almost fit into a Vine.

I wasn't around for Diabolical Dynamics, but I can understand why the old-timers had such a strong dislike of it. But much like Lunacy, there was at least some variety to those robots and a few roles to play.

Several other games on that list also had fatal flaws (Breakaway, Rack 'N Roll, Triple Play), but none were quite the grind that this past season was. So yeah, I voted Recycle Rush.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Unpopular opinion: I voted for 2011. I didn't mind that Recycle Rush had no defense; it allowed for some very interesting designs. For Lunacy, though I wasn't on the team at the time, I heard that it was an interesting design challenge.

In 2011, from what I've heard and seen, the challenge was too hard. That means for lower level teams, they could only score a point or two. As a lower level team, I highly value that a game has tasks accomplishable by both the top teams and the lower level teams. Logomotion did not have this.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Had more defense been allowed in 2011 it would have been more in-line with other FRC games involving tubes and would have allowed lower level teams more opportunities to contribute.

I always though Lunacy got a bad rap for a few reasons: the floor made for a rather annoying design challenge for many teams, but there were also problems with static electricity building up on the robots (due to plastic wheels on plastic floor) and shorting out electronics (It was also the first year using the cRio so everything was a bit buggy to begin with).

I personally liked the gameplay style Lunacy provided, it reminds me a lot of Aim High (my personal favorite game of all time) but with a few interesting twists. I, for one, hope this years game does not restrict the number of game pieces that can be handled at a time by robots, IMO, such games usually tend to be the most interesting.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Alright I'll bite here. I completely disagree.

Maybe it was the event you were at, but compared to last year, robots were wildly diverse. There were many many variation of cappers and stackers with different lifting mechanisms, drivetrains, and can grabbers. There were factory bots which were pretty amazing to watch. There were robots that cam in two and three different parts. Sure there were some robots that looked similar. There always are, but in my 4 years of frc this one in my opinion has seen by far the most varied designs, and I loved it.

And if by screwing over rookie and inexperienced teams you mean forcing them to build something more than just a box on wheels, I'm not really opposed to that. Minimum participation this year meant getting boxes from one place to another.

Don't get me wrong I had my own problems with Recycle Rush. I do not consider it to be a very good game, but for different reasons. Still it had it's moments when it shined.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I'm not sure if I can answer objectively because I have only been around since 2008 Overdrive. I can choose probably out of those, but I've only seen videos and stories of previous years.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Right but save for very few exceptions internal capper stackers were the only correct answer.

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...

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

See that one (1) vote for Rack 'n Roll?
Yeah, that's me.
The field was obnoxious. Did anybody actually enjoy building that rack and all the spiders? And the silly routine of the referees going out to shake it before each match? Ridiculous. Plus all the workshop space wasted to that huge, expensive behemoth of wood and PVC.
Scoring was hard to track - no matter where you were, half the scoring opportunities were blind to you. Scoring was also as complicated, if not more, than RR.
BLTs had no purpose in this game. If your robot couldn't actively manipulate some pretty complex game objects, you were pretty worthless.
People complain that Lunacy was hard to follow because the field was so congested. Rack 'n Roll was much, much worse in that area.

The only saving grace of the game was its exciting endgame. That was pretty cool.

Also, I agree with the sentiment shared by some on this thread that this poll is like choosing the worst flavor of ice cream. Sure, that flavor may not be your favorite, but it's still ice cream. Yum!

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

To compare games from diffrent eras, perhaps at the end of this you could subtract the 'Worst game" votes from the "Best Game Votes" and divide by total number of votes.

So for example a recent Year X had 45 best game votes and 12 worst game votes.
It's score is : (45-12)/57 = .579


An older game, Year Y had 5 best game votes and 2 worst game votes.
It's score is : (5-2)/7 = .429

Just a thought on comparing older and newer games with different amounts of people around that actually were involved.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Were the People who voted for Recycle Rush over Lunacy around for both games? If you were and still thought Recycle Rush was worse than Lunacy, please enlighten me lol. Lunacy was awful....

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Personally, I was not around for Lunacy, but I have watched videos of some Lunacy matches from Einstein (Go 111!), and yes, it was slow in terms of scoring the "moon rocks", but it had a straight-forward scoring system and none of this multipliers and gray-lines that Recycle rush had with the Bins and noodles.

I vote for Recycle Rush
:deadhorse:

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I'm definitely in the majority for this; Recycle Rush was a bust. It was certainly an engineering challenge, which I appreciated, but it was not a spectator sport. My team attended nine competitions this year (including offseason), and as a scouting captain, I easily watched over a thousand matches. Other than MSC (2 fields and 102 teams made things quite interesting) and IRI, competitions were boring to watch. We had so much trouble getting the team to scout because no one wants to sit in the stands and watch robots sit in a corner, moving an elevator up and down.
I understand that there were issues with sponsorship which led to Recycle Rush being put together in a matter of months, but it was lacking one of the most important parts of FRC, an engaging competition atmosphere.
As anyone on my team can testify, I was literally dancing through the halls when we were eliminated at our final competition of 2015. I was just happy that the game was over.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

As someone who was on a second year team in 2011, I would not say that the challenge was too hard. Teams made the challenge too hard on themselves from not understanding that just having a functional minibot netted your team more points than it really deserved. You could have been very functional without challenging yourself to reach the top level.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

The way I see it, there are three factors that define the quality of a game.

1. Strategic Freedom - How many viable strategies/designs are there? (more = better)
Good examples: FIRST Overdrive, Aim High

2. Technical Challenge - How challenging is it to play the game at the highest level? (more challenging = better)
Good examples: Recycle Rush, Ultimate Ascent

3. Spectator Interest - How exciting are matches? (more exciting = better)
Good examples: Aerial Assist, Ultimate Ascent

I believe that Lunacy fails at all of these. A moshpit of refrigerators for 2 minutes and 15 seconds isn't exciting to watch nor were the designs and strategies particularly unique. At least Recycle Rush had some diversity and posed a unique technical challenge.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Which rookie teams could still do even as a box on wheels. Even Dozer would have been able to score a few points.

At the GTRC regional there was one team with a C-shaped drivetrain. That's all it was. It would go out and find a tote and push it onto the scoring platform. Then it would go and do it again.

It didn't sound like much, and the temptation was to smirk contemptuously, but it outscored the robot we brought, which theoretically could do much more but arrived untested and unpracticed.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Truth here.

I find it funny that the new generation has such hatred of Lunacy. At least due to the human player element, it was somewhat okay to watch. It was flawed and too difficult of a challenge, but it was watchable.

Stack Attack is a whole other class. A challenge that was too difficult - much like Lunacy, yes. But combine that with a boring human player challenge, rules with a lot of wiggle, scoring that missed the mark, and most of the gameplay happening in the first three seconds of the match.

Much like Tyler's post above re: hopelessness at others' mastery of the game (I also subject Zone Zeal in this category), this was the opposite. After three seconds of play, you didn't really want to (or couldn't!) play any longer - and thus it remains my least favorite. I hesitate to say there has ever been a "bad" game, because to echo earlier statements, being on a GDC is extremely hard work. So I'll just say it has a permanent spot on the bottom of my list.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I don't understand the hatred for Lunacy and Overdrive. They were my two favorite games. The last two games compete for the worst.

Aerial assist: there was only one game piece for each alliance, therefore always four robots with nothing to do. There were many penalties to choose from, so the idle robots spent their time accruing penalty points.

Recycle Rush: What can I say that hasn't been said? Who wants to watch two teams on opposite ends of the court throwing free throws to see who can sink the most in a fixed time period?

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Logomotion was the only kickoff I ever left pissed off. The minibot was an intriguing idea but the rules execution was an abomination.

It's basically why I refer to my team as 829 not FIRST team 829

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

the other four robots were going after the ones carrying the ball.. they were basically playing kill the carrier. In one match at SBPLI, it was me vs. 2 robots where i basically made it so the one robot with the game piece couldn't score... we lost by one point. it was intense because it was literally happening right in front of me.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFfPZy0CW54

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

When I say this, I've only played the 2015 game. But I've seen the rules for most of the games and every game animation that has come out. I'd say the most recent "Bad Games" were 2015 (Recycle Rush), 2011 (Logomotion), and 2008 (First Overdrive). Here are the quick reason I don't like these games.

2015- First of all, it wasn't the best game to watch. No Defense is a bad idea when you're trying to make a spectator game. Secondly, the most ideal game is a game that requires 2 or 3 robots to work together. That is the part of the 2014 game that I really liked. Recycle rush just was pretty much 3 robots doing their own tasks

2011- Very similar to 2015. Almost every robot worked by themselves and defense was not a huge factor in most matches I've seen. Almost every robot was built the exact same way.

2008- Is running around in a circle over and over again with a yoga ball really that fun to watch. I voted this as the worst game because this game had very little substance in my opinion.

Also, Can people elaborate on why Lunacy was so bad. The game looked to be a fun game but I'm sure many aspects of the game were frustrating. Thanks

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I think a lot of the hatred for Recycle Rush is only exaggerated by how great the games proceeding it. My first year was during Ultimate Ascent, and going in to kickoff for the next coming years and expecting the game to be as great as it was then, is only setting myself up for disappointment. Aerial Assist seems, in retrospect, to be a better game after playing Recycle Rush. This all seems to be extremely subjective.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I personally loved Rack n' Roll. It had the best endgame EVER. Robots on robots?? Please bring that back. Please.

As operator that year I thought it was a fun game to play. Trying to hang deflating tubes on a shaking rack while your bot is getting rammed by an opponent? What a rush!

Lunacy had no exciting end game and a lot of the time (to me) it looked like toddlers pushing each other around in rolling chairs. Trying to explain the different colored balls to visiting family members wasn't easy. Empty cells, Super cells, huh??

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

My high school career was 2005-2008, I mentored in 2010 and 2012. I'm familiar with all games since 2003.

Overdrive is my least favorite. The biggest reason was the lack of enough game pieces, two robots were always without a ball and an actual "minimum competitive concept" was build a drive train and run laps, would actually be a decent 3rd pick.

Lack of an endgame, lack of a challenging autonomous mode (guided by a remote control!) and the 80 inch diameter ineffectively enforced, bleh.
Not to mention the GDC killed a creative "game breaking" approach due to restrictions based on movement rules around the field, and gave a "I'll know it when I see it" response on the 1 robot only rule.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

It's saying something that Ultimate Ascent has zero votes.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I think Lunacy was a mediocre game, but a lot of the reasons it was bad were not related to the game. The game was unique in how open the field was and how much interaction existed. The biggest strike against it was the new controls system and the floor causing issues with static build up and the cRio being bricked. I think if people were to play that game now, there would be fewer issues with this and it would ultimately be a better experience.

I voted for Logomotion, because at the time and now it felt very uninspired and it had Minibots which were the single least enjoyable mechanic I have ever seen in a game. If you thought the Canburgler race was toxic this year, you never experienced minibot races. The difference in tenths of a second could change the outcome of entire events. FIRST's goal was to have people race small FTC style robots, which is not insane. What it became was an arms race by teams to modify motors until they burnt out while finding the minimal amount of material that could be used to constitute a robot. I feel like there were teams spending upwards of $1k just on those small Tetrix motors because they kept burning them out. Minibots were the only time where I felt like there was a financial and facilities design advantage that could realistically not be overcame by an average team.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Overdrive had 2 game pieces per an alliance, an endgame, and actually made rookies decently competitive :P

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

We spent about $600 on Tetrix motors that year. Hated that minibot...

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

While we're all complaining a little, why hasn't anyone who voted 2011 as the worst game saying anything about the minibot scoring system? It was almost absurd how much they were worth. On top of that, the coopertition system that year was to give another team your minibot to use and actually have it be successful. I think this happened less than 20 times total that year.

To be fair, teams should have recognized how much a minibot was worth but I think that having and endgame that could almost ensure a regional win by itself is a bit broken in the game design.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I'm guessing you don't watch NASCAR...
Seriously, watch some 2008 match footage. It got pretty exciting. The 2008 Einstein rounds were considered some of the best FRC matches of all time.

I never personally experienced the 2009 game but from what I've heard the problems people had were:

1. The lack of maneuverability from the Regolith led to robot traffic jams where nothing was happening.

2. Human players were overpowered, as they could oftentimes score more than most robots.

3. (Less of an issue) Most teams could not test their robots on the regolith much before competitions since only a few square feet of regolith was given to each team, and it was hard to get a hold of especially with limited funding.

4. Any 2 v 3 match (one dead robot) basically was an automatic win for the 3 since they had a stationary robot to score in.

I'm sure many others can add to that list. I for one think Lunacy looks like it was almost a really fun game, but a few things went wrong and many people didn't like it. I like the idea of scoring in your opponents.

My "least good" games would easily be 2003 (the game was broken), 2001 (boring), and 2015 (almost equally boring). The others I tend to think optimistically about.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I personally rank 2011 just a little bit higher than 2015 from the years I've participated. The minibot was pretty much equivalent to canburglers in terms of breaking the game at the highest level. I give 2011 a higher ranking though because the rest of the game was more fun to play and watch than stacking in 2015. That match was also decided in the end for logomotion rather than the very start in recycle rush. The minibots weren't that overpowered at regionals either from what i saw. Tube scoring was still the main reason teams won events(not all the time).

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

It's ironic to see how Recycle Rush stacks up to the rest ;)

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

2009 easily robots should matter more then human players. Honorable mentions 2015 for most boring and 2013 for half of the game being useless.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Defense. Being able to slow down an alliance's cycle time had significant value, perhaps not as much in qualifications, but certainly in eliminations.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Least favorite I have played: 2009

Aside from what was mentioned before, having no rules against pinning made for many struggling matches where one or two good pinning robots just shut down the game by keeping the scorers in a corner. The lack of a good real time scoring system made keeping track of who was a head impossible in most matches that were close.

Least favorite I have watched: 2003

Still holds a special place because it was the first game I watched but the game was important in the first and last 3 seconds.

Neither were as bad as 2001 sounds IMHO.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I am so excited for this year! Even though last year was my firsts year in robotics, I've heard about the games in the past. I hope there will be defense :)

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Here is a post I made Friday night of the 2011 Peachtree Regional. 2815 was kinda bad about shipping robots with teething problems (three years out of the five I was with them), but this robot crapped out in all but two qualification matches, got picked over 24 other robots, and hung a banner. It then did it again the very next weekend. Why did we get picked? Defense. Even with the safe zones, even with the ample protections on minibot towers, you were not going to score a logo if you couldn't get the right game pieces. Add in a few unscored Ubertubes shoved in the opposing near zone, and you were facing a much harder task if an opponent knew how to play--even if they never laid a bumper on you.

This is not to defend Logo Motion, a decidedly lower-mid-pack game that IRI fixed beautifully. But it doesn't earn the title of worst when there are better options.

Rack 'N Roll had its own fatal flaws--the endgame meant you had rampbots with nothing to do for the first 90 seconds, the frustrating only-one-tube-at-a-time rule paralyzed any team that got a tube stuck on their mandated flagpole, and let's not even discuss BaneBots or being required to ship two batteries no matter what. But I have to agree with other defending it from the worst title--it did have its fun parts. Seeing 71 or 1114 or 179 unfurl their very-competent arm robots into ramps was always amazing to see.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Lunacy was a combination of good parts into a terrible game. Robot ball tag? Good idea. Regolith? Good idea. Robot ball tag on regolith? Terribad idea.

Add into this that it was like Recycle Rush in that human players could be just as or more important than the robot on the field (in terms of scoring ability), and that there was an "instant lose" condition (immobile alliance partner) and there's a good reason a lot of people would prefer to forget it.

I didn't experience them, but 2003 and 2001 sound like they were pretty far up the bad list. If I had more first hand knowledge of them, my vote might go there, but Lunacy is what gets it because I've actually seen it played.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I voted for Zone Zeal. You know, the game that spawned the greatest robot before the 3v3 era. Why? No game has ever been so fundamentally flawed since the 1v1v1 era (I know little of 1v1v1 era) that it allowed for such an ironclad chokehold strategy. When 71 was fully functional, there was a zero percent chance any other combination of two teams in FRC could beat them.

2001 and 2003 failed because the rules were broken in the way that they tried to force the way we play robots into a way that doesn't work.

2009 and 2015 failed because they were games designed to shift the design paradigm, which is something that teams of all ages have difficulty handling, unless they possess the agility of powerhouse team that comes with a mentor roster stacked with a mindboggling combined years of FRC experience. A game that plays like an ugly mess isn't the problem with a bad game as much as it's a symptom of the game design backing teams into a corner.

Those 4 games all are cases where you can see where the GDC flew close to the sun in trying something interesting (you can say that claim is dubious for 2003, I guess, but it had some pretty interesting elements involved)


2002 was just a failure borne of either ignorance or indifference to the chokehold. If 2016 ends up being a game I could describe as being one borne of ignorance or indifference, can you imagine the backlash with how much money and time is put into this sport now compared to 14 years ago?

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

You forgot 2004. A good HP (FRC33, for example) could beat any single robot out there, even without the doubler being applied by their robot. Robots could ONLY hang for 50 to score directly--the HPs just needed to drain 10 shots.

That being said, the HPs did need to be fed by the robots. And there was that doubler ball that the robots could place.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Anyone notice that games developed during the year when class 2 senatorial campaigns took place aren't very popular? NH has a class 2 seat. Even though I can't find a candidate who ran in all three of those NH elections, that has to be the cause somehow. Who is on the GDC and was distracted by actively supporting a class 2 Senator?:ahh: :p

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Jeanne Shaheen ran for Senate in 2002, 2008, and 2014, losing in her first attempt before being elected and reelected in the last two.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

The two game pieces were meant to be shared by the three robots. The implementation of the game did not promote sharing, instead the scouting conversation went like this for many teams: "We're the best team here, so we get a ball. Stay out of our way." Followed by "They're the second best team, so they get a ball. Stay out of their way." or "You two are about the same, so maybe whoever gets a ball gets a ball. Stay out of our way."

Another gripe is that at many events (championship included), testing catapults was outlawed. So if you were unfortunate enough to build a robot that hurdled in a specific style, you were at a huge disadvantage at events because of limitations on practice fields, compounded by further scarcity in matches.

EDIT: The end game of placing the ball back on the overpass was worth only 2 points more than a hurdle. So the endgame was pretty much worthless.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

Hmm. my earlier searches did not show her running in 2002 against Sununu. That locks it - whoever it is on the GDC who actively supports Jeanne Shaheen is essential to having a good decent game!

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

We did a simulated kickoff this year of FIRST Overdrive with our team and a couple of rookie teams (who will be joining us for the real 2016 kickoff), and this was pretty much our understanding. The precision required was rather high, the number of points was not particularly high, and there were no rules preventing the opposing alliance from easily de-seating your replaced ball even if you did put it back on the overpass. Two of our three groups explicitly downplayed/rejected this as a valid scoring method, and the third did not even consider it in their outbrief.

Re: POLL: Worst FRC game
 

I saw a video for the 2001 game. It looked so awful.
Of the games I was actually involved with 2002 Zone Zeal(the only game that complexly changed from qualifications to elims) edges out Lunacy(snails jousting).