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Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
yea it's hard to figure out what's going on if you happened to walk in and another thing i miss the team numbers on the alliance when the scores are posted...that helps w/ scouting a bit...and well just in general..
it was a great trial for the 3 bots..sorta crazy but hey it's a new challenge..and all the penalites..yeah sorta ruining way high scores..we're not use to see like number of 9 but like last year way up in the 100s...so different than the past... |
Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
Back to the original question for this thread. I just want to throw in one data point. During the VCU regional I wandered up to the VIP lounge on Saturday. The people there were primarily folks that had been brought in to see the event as prospective future sponsors, and most did not have affiliations with existing teams or the event. They didn't know the game, and had not seen any information about it before arriving at the event. In other words, they formed the perfect control group.
I talked with ten of the people there. Each had been given a one-page description of the game, including the field, game elements, and the basic scoring structure. With only that information and a few minutes of observing the game, I asked if they could understand the game. Seven of them said they were following along with no problem (several did say that having Jeff Seaton explain the penalties at the end of each provided the "final piece of the puzzle" and helped a lot).They then started to discuss the basic strategies of the game all by themselves. Two of them needed about 90 seconds of additional explanation, then they were up to speed. One required several more minutes of description, because they wanted to get into the nuances of the game. I have not seen anyone offer an opinion of what a reasonable "success criteria" should be, so I don't know if this feedback tells us that we are doing a great job, a mediocre job, or an abysmal one. But I do think that it offers at least one real observation to counter the contention that the game is unintelligible to the audience. A perfect game implementation would allow all observers to understand and appreciate the game with absolutely no description or instruction; the game concept and structure would be obvious just through brief observation. The opposite end of the spectrum would be pro wrestling, where no amount of endless explanation can ever make the fundamental purpose of the exchange make sense. I am not exactly sure where this year's game is along that spectrum. But based on the data from VCU, I think that we are at least on the right side of the line. -dave |
Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
I remember two matches where penalties cost us quite a bit. One match, we had 48 and 40 of that was taken away by penalties that have far too much power. We lost that match by 28. On our last match on day one, we fell on the floor and our main driver (not myself) managed to slow down all three robots on the other alliance while on our side. He accidentally bumped into a robot in the human zone with the edge of the wheel. No harm was caused and it was such a small impact that the other robot did not even move. We got a 30 point penalty and lost that match as well. To take away a display of awesome driving with one penalty so large is just not fair. I agree that there should have been a penalty assessed because we have to keep human players safe but 30 points is just too much. I agree with the idea that penalties should have been 2/3 less but I guess now we just have to be careful.
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Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
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Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
Unfortunately at the Finger Lakes Regional, the penalties were only explained when a team complained and even then, the penalty was only explained to the person who asked so a lot of us were left in the dark about why something just happened. Luckily, our human player was doing an awesome job watching the game and could often tell us about any penalties.
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Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
I think the basic concept "you have to get those pyramid things on the goals" is easy to grasp
I think knowing who is winning, or even who won at the end, is impossible as we saw in the last match of the FLR. It took the judges a good 10 to 15 minutes to decide who won. The best test? Ask a random spectator what the scores are, before they are annouced by the refs? or even simpler, ask them 'Who won?" |
Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
All though I do not think that this years game is the one that will be broadcast on National TV like battle bots was, I still think it is a good game, It might not have the different field elements like last year where all the action was mostly around the platforms and th bar, but this year the game is back to more about what FIRST is for, to get kids interested in building a robot and learning about the different ways to solve a engineering problem. I think that the game is a bit confusing at first to watch but after i think about it more and more the game is easy to pick up, once the penalties are explained by the refs, and that after having someone watch a few matches that isn't part of a team they will be able to understand it.
So, Mr. Lavery I think the game design committee did another great job with Triple Play and this years game is defiantly a "great job" on my "success criteria" list. Once again just my 2 cents. |
Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
I think as Dave said, the ultimate goal is to have a game that someone can understand and follow simply from watching a match or two. Unfortunately, I think this is in direct opposition to making the game technically challenging.
Games you can understand easily have obvious scoring goals. In basketball you get the ball through a hoop. In soccer, the ball goes through a goal. Yes, the other rules in the game can be complicated and downright confusing, but the scoring is easy to understand. In Triple Play, you put a tetra on a goal, put it underneath a goal, get rows of tetras, or get robots in the end zone at the end of a match. Even with realtime scoring, I think it would take someone quite a while to figure out the whole rows thing. A team would cap a goal and their score would shoot up by 13 instead of 3. It'd be rather odd to the uninformed spectator, as a previously understood acation would be doing something totally different. So the obvious way to make a game more understandable is to have less scoring options, which makes the game much simpler technically. The only other option is to have really well trained announcers at events that briefly recap how a score came about at the end of every match. |
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Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
Yes, 494 did both. That was the key. Most teams played defense at one point or another, especially when the opposing alliance went to cap your home row.
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Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
With six bots on the field, it's very hard to follow what is happening with all of them. You would watch a "stacker" bot trying to overcome a great defender at a goal, meanwhile another bot is getting a tetra from the human loading zone whose bumped a bit by another bot and received a penalty. Most of the parents and students that we had watching the game had a good idea of which alliance scored the most points, but never knew for sure if there were any penalties until the ref's conducted their deliberations at the end of each match. By the end of Saturday, as a group of 10-12 observers, we're able to get an idea of who won and where the penalties took place. It is highly unlikely that one spectator could always tell who won. I'm not sure it is possible to do this for this year, but perhaps a more significant way to signal when and where the penalties took place, perhaps on the big screen. A red flag symbol with a 10 in it or a 30 in it could signal that red alliance had a penalty. I bet then the scoring would make more sense.
As far as the nature of the game - I loved it!! Offensive usually paid off more than just defense and ramming robots. The defenders that were productive were the ones who played defense around a goal. |
Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
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When I took the time to count everything, I could get the correct score (or very close to it), but I couldn't do that any faster then the referees. |
Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
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So it doesn't have to be easy or simple to be fun for outsiders to watch. So for next year my game would look like this: 1) Easy ways of scoring (1-3 ways, including specialties) 2) Not many penalties, and if penalties have them explained (maybe the game stopped) and for everybody understandable. 3) To keep the game challenging make the field harder. So the way you can score is simple but to get there you have to do hard things. I hope it is clear what I mean. |
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