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How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
Does anyone remember several years ago when it seemed like FIRST was strongly focused on drawing spectators who knew nothing of the event into the action by making scoring and gameplay simple to understand? The idea was, as I remember it, that a spectator walking in off the street could sit in the stands and easily and quickly discern which alliance was winning.
I know the ins and outs of the rules for this game and, while watching this VCU Webcast, I'm having an awful time deciphering who actually wins a watch. Sure, I can quickly glance and see that there are more blue tetras than red on the goals, but that doesn't make a lick of difference because of the surprise appearance of a million points worth of penalties at the end of each match. The announcer is doing a good job of explaining, now and again, why the penalties are assessed and their value, but it's still really frustrating to have no idea who wins until the penalties are tallied up. It's not exciting; it doesn't create anticipation; it's simply irritating. I know that there have been discussions about how to best implement a penalty system on these forums, but it seems to me that the end result is not really useful for making the game easy to understand. Additionally, given the six weeks we've just endured, I think it's valuable to ensure that these kids feel good about their robot and the work they put in. I can imagine how frustrating it must be for them to have spent long days and nights building a functioning robot that scores no points because of penalties. Is anyone else as irritated as I am by both the overabundance of penalties and the obscenely skewed point-values assessed for such penalties? It doesn't seem fair for teams have deducted three times as many points in penalties as they score in a match. |
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I'll second the penalties remark. When one penalty costs more points that the majority of alliances are scoring, the game is a bit unbalanced. I understand the need for some penalties and such, but the 30-pointers seem excessive. I can understand the non-interference rule, but -30 if you accidentally bump another robot while it's getting a tetra seems extreme. Ditto -30 for an antsy teenager jumping out of his human player station during autonomous mode. Warnings seem like they would be appropriate here.
To this end, as a rookie coach with a trial by fire at GLR I will be brainwashing my drivers with light jazz in an attempt to keep them mellow. |
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Yeah. In the match that was just held (VCU #50), the Blue alliance scored thirty points but lost forty points due to penalties. The Red alliance scored 27 points, incidentally.
Last year, ten-point penalties were okay because the scoring objects scored five points each (and were fairly easy to score), so each penalty essentially took two scores away. This year, each individual scoring object scores only three points if stacked, and the minimum penalties are still ten points, taking away 3 1/3 scores for each penalty. It's also a lower-scoring game than last year. Personally, I wish that the penalties could be cut by two-thirds, so each 10-point penalty would become a 3-point penalty and the 30-point penalty would become a 10-point penalty. That's not really feasible at this point, but the penalties are rather frustrating. |
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I totally agree! I saw so many matches decided by penalties and so many 0 scores that I can't imagine how the teams must feel. The first thing I said to my captains was memorize every penalty and figure out how to avoid them. The values are completely out of whack with the scoring. It seems a penalty in this game should result in your bot being disabled for some amount of time, not reducing your alliance score to zero. With 3 bots in an alliance it must be very frustrating to have one alliance member who doesn't understand the rules destroy a round. :eek:
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A lot of the penalties probably come even when people do understand the rules just because they are so easy to get.
It must be really depressing to have so many zero scores. With three robots, I was expecting better scores but I guess more robots means more penalties, not more points. |
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The penalty points might be high, but I've also seen (on the SSTV Webcast...) that a lot of 'bot drivers think this is Battlebots. Lots of smashing and slamming. Generally, the teams which have smashers don't win, either.
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The rules for our drive team are to give the opposition's loading zones a wide berth. We'll do whatever we please near the goals, but *NOT* at near the loading zones. I wouldn't want the opposition harming my students (or my wife as she works for the field crew), so I'm not going to endanger their students either. I, for one, firmly believe the 30 point penalty is sufficient and has a *very* good reason for being so stiff. Anything less would be ignorable by high scoring alliances and would lower the overall safety of the game. Just my $0.02 (2 cents). Lynn (D) - Team Voltage 386 Drive Team Coach |
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I would rather see face shields and hard hats than penalties.
EDIT: As a side note to how to figure scoring, I had a hard time determining alliance pairings. In the webcast, you would not even know that there were any LED lights, even when they did robot close ups. |
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There were no penalties for interference as such in 1999, to my recollection. |
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I agree with everything everyone else has said so far. I have been trying to watch the VCU webcast today and was very frustrated trying to keep score. The big problem I see with the penalty points is that they effect BOTH the red and blue alliance since you get the loser's score. I just watched the rankings scroll by for VCU and the highest QP I saw was 15! Most QPs were in the single digits! That is a direct result of both teams getting the losers score which includes the penalties points. I know FIRST is not meant to be "fair" but shouldn't penalties only effect the alliance that committed the foul? Instead of subtracting points from the alliance that commits the foul wouldn't it make more sense to add points to the opposite alliance thus when both teams get the losers score there might be less 0 scores averaged in. As far as the comments about Battlebots, the only thing a robot can do this year is score tetras or play defense. It seems like the tetra scoring is not going as well as some teams had planned so I guess in the frustration (maybe due to all the penalties) teams are resorting to defensive strategies.
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And then in 97 they got rid of the seatbelts and let the HP stand, but they were still right at the edge of the field interacting with the robots (while the robots were still enabled). {edit} Good picture of the 1996 setup here: http://www.wildstang.org/ws_pic_albu...on29.sized.jpg {/edit} |
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Yeah. Next year, to ensure that the winning alliance isn't penalized as well, the QP should be based on the score without penalties. It isn't really their fault if they get rammed is it?
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Another thing is that I would watch a match, then I'd leave and then 5-10mins later I would see some of the same robots back on the field. This is gonna be tough cause if something breaks I fear that we won't have enough time to fix it in between matches. As for penalties, I think they are too high for the game. The penalties take a lot of points away from matches that don't have high scores to begin with. I feel discouraged as a driver because I don't want to work hard to get those tetras up there and see my partner get a penalty and take away the points 3-fold. Their are some tricky rules this year that I see a lot of teams breaking. I see the same penalties over and over again. This year is all about strategies and making sure your partners don't do anything illegal. It is going to be a very interesting season and I can't wait to see all the teams at nationals. Good luck everyone!
GO 1403!!! |
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The penalties in FIRST are mostly to shape the way the game is played. They discourage certain kinds of actions and similarly, scoring encourages other kinds of action. The trick is that this should work somewhat like a standardized test like the SAT. If you guess on the SAT, everything averages out to nothing. In FIRST, if you follow a penalty heavy strategy, it should result in you seeing no positive benefit, and possibly a slight negative consequence. With the way penalties are weighted this year, you instead are faced with huge negative consequences for an action. I think -6 for all the penalties would be sufficient. I don't see how interfering with a robot picking up a tetra is any more disruptive to their score than descoring a tetra or interfering with them scoring the tetra. Look at what you yourself have said. You're telling your drivers to avoid two sides of the field for fear that you'll bump someone and recieve a crippling penalty. I think any penalty that scares people this much should be looked at. |
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Smash 'em and bash 'em is what I say! If you don't like contact, your robot is not built well enough. Penalties should not be given to those who compete against fragile robots. EDIT: I don't mean to say I prefer battlebot style competition over FIRST competition (I like the manipulation of game pieces), but I do believe a good amount of contact makes for a more exciting game. We need more legal contact. Contact not just for the sake of contacting, but contact while trying to accomplish game tasks/strategies both defensive and offensive. |
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Hey everyone, Its a ghost from the past :^)
Ive been too busy at my new job to be on a team, or to even keep up with whats going on this year But I could not pass up the New Finger Lakes Regional at RIT in rochester, esp since my new company is only about 2 miles away I got there this morning when matches were allready being played, and I sat in the bleechers for a while and had two predominate thoughts 1. WOW! this is awesome - we waiting for a Rochester Regional for so long and 2. I have NO IDEA whats happing on the field, what the score is, whos winning after 3 or 4 hours I caught on a little. I agree with the first post in this thread, walk-in spectators are not going to have a clue whats going on this year but I gotta add, having 6 bots on the field all doing their stuff sure looks impressive! :ahh: |
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I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling that FIRST thought that with 6 robots on the field, the scores would be higher, so they lowered the scoring points and left the penalties the same. In their minds, this probably would have evened out the scores. However, getting good scores turned out to be harder than they thought. They couldn't change the rules so they let it go. So we have a very low scoring game and the penalties, which would have been good for previous years' scores, are now over excessive. To have 5 or more points for capping would have mad the scoring better. But I don't think teh people that made this game knew how hard it would be to get decient scores. Previous years, good (non-penilized scores) would be about 50 and great ones would be above 100. This year, good (non-penilized scores) are about 10 and great ones are above 20. Like I keep on saying, it's not that they made huge penilites, but that the regular scores are much lower.
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As for spectators, I agree it will be very hard to catch on. While the game is simple to explain, it can get very complicated in actual play. As for actual penalties, I agree with sanddrag. While FIRST isnt battlebots, its still fun to go and push other robots around. Guess we'll just have to avoid the loading stations.. |
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Also, i find it odd that First Stayed with same LED'S even though there were many complaints about them last year, including not being able to see them unless you were really close to the bot. And last year, it was easily to clarify what team was on which alliance, but this year it is not so. Only the fact that if they have a blue tetra, they are probably on the blue alliance.
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There was a call at VCU the announcer said today over the webcast that has me worried. He said a robot (I'll just call it red) bumped into an opposing robot (blue) that was stacking a tetra. In the process of being bumped, the stacking blue robot unstacked a blue tetra from the goal. The refs called it against red, saying it was red's fault for unstacking the tetra, and gave blue possession of the goal and 3 points for the unstacked tetra.
Does anyone else think it was red's fault? Should blue have been given permanent possession of the goal and the 3 points for the de-stacked tetra? Did anyone see it and what did you think? Update: the opposite just happened in the finals. Blue bumbed into stacking red and red pushed off a stacked blue tetra. The call was that blue unstacked their own tetra. I went back through the rulebook and I couldn't find this situation covered. I believe this call is beyond even the intention of the rules, of which I think are misguided this year. There's too much discouragement of competitive interaction among teams. This is coming from a member of a team that last year had their computer smashed and allies that were taken out in a pushing match during the semifinals. As a spectator, I want to see teams vie for position to stack that final tetra, not sit on opposite ends of the field afraid to get close to each other. While I think it's good that the refs are being very strict and consistent this weekend, setting a precedent for the rest of the competitions, I think, at least with the call I mentioned above, they're going overboard. |
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I believe that was covered in an update somewhere. Mostly in reference to the not interference in loading zons rules, but FIRST set a precedent for penalizing the root cause of the infraction. The given example was a red bot pushing blue-a into blue-b that's loading. red gets the penalty.
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This was definitely true. We counted capped tetras and then sat around wondering what the score would be. We are not going to make anything of it, but my bigger complaint would be that there were some bots there being driven pretty aggressively, to the point of kicking wheelies when they charged. As a rookie team leader I was surprised by this & dissappointed that penalties were incurred for what seem minor placement issues but not crashing; some robots were damaged and ours was knocked over. Certainly in the future we will be building our machine to handle more severe shocks.
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We will be making contact and we will be blocking and pushing to block scores and to score. What I'm saying is that we won't be engaging in those activities where people could be unnecessarily endangered. Lynn (D) - Team Voltage 386 Coach |
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After watching webcasts and reading up on this issue in this thread, I have a couple thoughts on the issue.
I agree with the safety aspect. With high reaching arms and the major tendency to topple, sometimes it's just important to avoid this penalties. Please keep in mind last year's game. Though there wasn't such an extent of penalties, their were penalties. The first day of matches, there was trouble. However, at a team's second regional, instinct taught drivers and coaches what situations to avoid or how to solve them if they came up. I think that this kinda of change will occur in this year's game, just on a different level perhaps. The best strategy is possibly to discuss with your alliance beforehand and set a few things down. Also, I'd like to point out that a team with an expert knowledge of penalty regulations will be a very valuable alliance partner for finals, if that's motivation to anyone. Good luck everyone - Genia |
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Note: I only got to watch the first seven or so matches before school started so what I write here is based entirely on those matches and the few matches I caught later in the day.
I have to agree that the scoring is difficult to keep up with. This was evidenced at least in the first few matches by the fact that the judges were about a match behind in the scoring. I also have to agree that the penalties are excessive. In fact I noticed that a team could be more productive by playing defense than by trying hard to score. Teams that tried hard to score generally ended up incurring far more penalties than they scored points, thus ending up with a score of zero. If a team were to just score a tetra or two, then play a very safe defensive match they could generally win. One thing I think we are going to see a lot of starting next weekend (maybe this weekend too) is teams doing something they know will incur a penalty, and knowing that they dont even have a chance to win the match, and venting their frustration on the field. While they certainly wont do anything drastic, I predict some intentional ramming and or flipping. |
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Today at Rochester, my team started to get a little aggressive with defense because other teams were getting rough. At one point, we were pinned in by two robots from the other alliance. We finally had to cut down on our tougher defense after a few bad matches; we bumped a robot while they were in the human player loading station. In another round, another alliance partner did the same thing we did. 30 point penalties in both rounds. I can see why the human player loading station would be such a high penalty, we don't want the human player risking injury from another robot.
We corrected ourselves; however, we are afraid of these penalties, they can really hurt your score. While we may dislike the high point penalties, it's part of the game and part of the challenge. |
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Bingo! People... this is the point. FIRST is trying to create a game where offensive, task-oriented robots should be able to be somewhat free to what they are designed to do. If people are complaining that they are getting too many penalties for playing a little defense, one the other side of the field, with a partner as they pin their opponent, then I don't see good reason for that compaint. A certain level of robot interaction is fun to see... but think about this from a scientific perspective. How is a 10 foot tall robot supposed to have a chance if a 2 foot tall robot is ramming them? These penalties are present to allow the taller, extended teams to control their robot to score points by stacking tetras without getting mauled by a brick on wheels. Here is the situation: for the first time ever in FIRST, a VERY high percentage of teams have rock solid drive bases. At the same time, we all know that it is difficult to design a good arm to score these silly tetras. So, teams who see their opposition with more scoring ability want to use their drive base to help them win the match. I bet that 3 separate things are happening tonight: 1. Many drive teams are getting lectured, being told to stop getting penalties 2. Refs at different competitions are comparing notes and trying to get consistent. 3. The Game Design Committee are discussing these issues. People... chill. It is week 1. Recall week 1 last year when many teams said "no one is capping with the 2x ball"... "only a few teams are hanging". It is early. We will see more clarity from the refs and I hope we see more restraint from the defensive drivers. Just some thoughts, Andy B. |
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I understand and agree with the often stated desire to introduce as many tetras to the field as possible in as safe a manner as possible with as little interference from the opposition as possible. The rules and penalties for infractions during tetra introductions are well documented and have been well enforced so far this season. That's great. However, I think we should separate that situation from the one described above, where two robots, one offensive and one defensive, are in direct competition with each other near a goal, and the field officials are artificially limiting one team's ability to execute their strategy, LEGAL ACCORDING TO THE RULES, in order to favor the other team's ability to execute theirs. It's NOT an issue of safety at this point; instead, it's an issue of someone attempting to impose upon teams their vision of what type of robots and gameplay they want to see displayed ("behavior modification", as Dave put it). Of course, it's their right to do whatever they choose - the NFL and many other sports leagues tweak their rules attempting to achieve a desired effect all the time. Like these other leagues, they should also explicitly state ALL of their revisions in their rulebook well ahead of time, and they should recognize there are risks involved with heavily favoring one style of play over another, not the least of which are having enough teams with the offensive capability to give you the large amount of high scoring matches you desire and seeing teams who cannot possibly adapt to the directive lash out negatively with even harder hitting and more penalties than before (which some have observed). You can skew the rules toward offense til doomsday, but if a team ain't got the horses to compete on par with the big dogs, they're still going to do poorly and do so in a far more uninteresting or dangerous manner. I don't know about you guys, but whenever I'M a spectator, I'm much more excited and entertained watching an offense that's strong enough to bust through and score against a tenacious defense than one that scores at will against A.) a poor defense, or B.) one that's rendered toothless by flag-happy refs who are inclined to do anything to keep the star quarterback from hurting his pinky. With the absence of defense, how often are the competing teams that evenly matched in offensive capabilities to provide a thrilling outcome? A balanced robot sporting adequate offense and a strong defense can counteract an all-offense team; take away their ability to play defense, and they have very little chance of victory. Take it away and wait until the season starts and the refs start tossing the flags for them to realize it, and you have a team with little chance of victory and a whole bunch of anger and frustration heaped on top of it. Many of these rookie teams (and probably many vets as well) have not created robots with arms that function nearly as well as they'd like; because of this, many may often feel that a defensive strategy will give them the best chance to succeed in a match, especially when they're facing teams with super wowee spiffy gee-whiz uber-arms. Is this apparently offense-skewed application of the rules early on making it harder for the "little guy" to succeed, therefore giving the "better" teams an advantage they probably didn't earn? Is it causing these teams to take a "Who cares? We've been hamstrung to the point where defeat is certain, so let's go mash metal?" approach to the matches? We shall see. There's a fine line between allowing vets to showcase their technology to better inspire the younger teams to elevate their game and overloading the balance of power to the point where the young teams feel they can't compete and simply give up or give in to their more un-GP emotions. I know there are a bunch of offensive minded people out there who would love to see these "protect the QB" referee rule interpretations continue. I feel obligated to present an opposing viewpoint in an attempt to draw people's opinions back toward a middle ground. From a ref perspective, in my mind, the best referee is one who's presence is barely felt, in part because the game rules are so balanced and well defined that a referee's interpretation is rarely needed. It was very much that way most of last year, and I hope this game and its refs eventually shift into that pattern. If they don't, I'll deal with it, as I'm sure will many other teams. It's those teams who aren't equipped to deal with it I'm most worried about. |
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I love it when there is someone that obviously "gets it". People, please read Andy's words again. He has homed in on the right interpretation of the penalties. There are there for a reason. They are behavior modifiers that are intended to have an effect. If a team is modifying their style of play based on a concern about accumulating too many penalties, then the simple existence of the penalties is fulfilling the intended purpose.
The message is simple: STAY AWAY FROM THE LOADING ZONES WHEN AN OPPONENT IS RETRIEVING A TETRA! Lots of tetras should be coming out onto the field. The way to beat an opponent that is scoring tetras is to retrieve and score more than they do, not by wrestling over access to their loading zone. -dave (I also hate it when I keep seeing this message: "You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Andy Baker again.") |
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I understand that things get better with time, but not all teams have the benefit of attending several events so they may have the opportunity to learn and improve. Furthermore, it seems to me that a spectator off the street isn't going to stick around watching things evolve for the next five weeks. They're not going to see teams learn to be better at avoiding penalties because, for the most part, they don't understand why the penalties were assessed in the first place and did not see anything obviously out of the ordinary during the match. Again, I see how the penalties can be successfully used to influence behavior on the field -- but I wonder if there are better methods of play balancing that are more spectator friendly. |
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I too have to agree with Andy (you can pay me later :D )
When I was in the Air Force Reserves we would what they call ORI's (Operational Readiness Inspections). People would complain about the rules and the inspectors. My philosophy was that it was just a game with rules and if you played by the rules you could get through it. If the penalty is 30 points for hitting a robot in the loading zone than STAY AWAY from the bot in the loading zone. Period!!! Just my $.02. Take it with a grain of salt. Don't you just hate cliches :D Wayne Doenges Lemmings non sumus |
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Matt |
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I'm sorry, am I sounding like a broken record here? By the way, I did email FIRST about this issue several days ago. No response... :( |
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I do think that 30 points is a bit much in some cases but they are there to keep people safe, With out the rules this would be battle bots, not FIRST. I hope everyone has a safe and fun events in the up coming events. |
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I'll toss another 2 cents into the jar here..
I think it's obvious that the penalties are for behavior modification. I think it's also obvious that they're working because they're so high and damaging that getting a single penalty means your round is pretty much over. No one can risk getting one or even being anywhere near where your could get one. Forget capping the opposing team's goals because you're on their side of the field and an errant twitch of the joystick might make you graze their robot and lose the match. But I digress. I think the real question at this point is if this kind of behavior modification is what we want and what's in the best interest of FIRST. The obvious slant is towards an all-offensive game with little or no defense. I submit that we've already seen the results of an all offensive game with Diabolical Dynamics in 2001. Yes, it was slightly different, but a purely offensive game is essentially DD being run on two fields that happen to occupy the same area of the arena. I personally don't think this is as exciting for the reasons stated by many others above. Defense is interesting and exciting. Seeing robots perform choreographed acts of scoring isn't so exciting. I think the general public understands this as well. We will almost always have the problem of spectators no being able to quickly determine how scoring works and who wins a match. By letting defense back into the game you give them something to watch and cheer about while they're figuring out what's going on. If John Q. doesn't understand the significance of the tetra Wildstang is about to cap, winning them 2 rows at the last second, he can atleast understand that they're trying to put it on and Swampthing is trying valiantly to keep them from doing so. Defense gives poeple a fundamental way of understanding a game. We're competitive creatures by nature, and we understand two robots striving against each other on a rather basic level. I'm not sure why strong, fair defense is a thing to be avoided. |
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I'll agree that that's a flaw with allowing more defense this year. I think it's an obvious flaw in the game design this year, since there's just 4 small places on the field you can possibly get items to score with. I'm not sure assigning whopping penalties in these areas is an appropriate fix. It seems akin to fixing mechanical problems in software.
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For instance, in one match our team was involved in, (this isn't as much of a penalty as it is a strange rule) Team 88 was retreating back to their end zone as time ran out. As the buzzer rang, their robot finished rolling with its arm barely touching the lowest tetra on the central back row. This discounted not only that tetra and all above it, but (if I remember correctly), two tic-tac-toes. They were in no way supporting it--just touching it! I understand the loading zone penalties--the safety behind it--but some of them are a bit strong to. In another match, our robot was disabled for the entirety of the match because the referee on that side believed that our human player had touched the robot. Video evidence showed that it was not the case. In any case, the suspicion of the judge on a seemingly minor infraction was enough to disable a robot for an entire match. Quite a few matches ended with robots scoring 0 points on the weight of penalties alone. When it takes a fairly spectacular alliance to score 40+, and each penalty has a weight of 20 or more, the scores go down quickly. I've no bones to pick--I'm happy, because our robot finished 15th overall and we made it into the finals. There were some truly spectacular robots, and I will admit that some teams were more productive than I thought possible. But for future reference, I would suggest that, when a game is played with such low scoring objects, that the penalties awarded should neither be so great in relative magnitude nor so seemingly superfluous. The fact is, it is difficult for teams to modify their style of play when the most basic requirements of successful play often result in such serious penalties. --Petey |
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In response to several people who have commented on the apparent loss of defense in this game--
Hardly. It just requires a more ingenious approach to defensive strategizing. To be successful, robots must aggressively defend not the stacking of tetras, but the completion of tic-tac-toes. Sure, robots occasionally had success blocking tetras, but the greater success comes with the tic tac toes. Example: Team A has their "home row" full, as does Team B. The center goal belongs to Team A. Assuming one tetra on the top of each, the score is now A: 22 (4 tetras at 3 points apiece, one 10 point row) B: 19 (3 tetras at 3 points apiece, one 10 point row) Far to close for comfort. However, if A can simply stack on one of the corner goals of B, it is a 23 point swing, because you have scored 10 points for yourself with a new tic tac toe, denied B 10 points because you have destroyed their tic tac toe, and scored three points with your placed tetra. The big points in this game cannot be scored by robots that blindly stack a ton of tetras. To enjoy consistent success, robots must choose where to stack carefully, and stack only where it will be most advantageous to them. --Petey |
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I agree -there does need to be penalty reform. In the majority of qualifiers, a penalty means a loss for an alliance. I think that the 30 point loading penalties are too severe in comparison to the amount of scoring that is going on.I see the reasons for these rules, and that is protect the humans involved in loading tetras either on the robot itself or into the loading zone. At the same time, a lot of these penalties happen by accident, or with no malicious harm meant.
An example of this is today at BAE, Buzz fell over, and while righting themselves, touched a robot in the loading zone. There was not even an attempt to block here, nor did Buzz pose any threat to the human, as their arm was a couple of inches off the ground. Perhaps penalties should be more like the criminal justice system in the US (minus the bureaucracy). First time offenders can get off with a warning or small penalty, depending on the nature of the incident, while second time offenders get a larger penalty. Third time offenders get disabled. Just bouncing some ideas off here, and they probably won't be necessary as teams learn about these penalties quickly...it's just that so many of these calls are close. |
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contact = fun. no one would have fun if everyone just drove around and stacked tetras. when you watch football there is offense and DEFENSE. in hockey there is offense and DEFENSE, but it seems first is becoming an offensive sissy game.
even my grandma enjoyed the contact last she. she liked teams with wedges. :ahh: and first needs to lighten up with the penalties. |
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My other observation is that none of the penalties must be violated to accomplish any part of the game as you implied. They are all easily avoidable with skilled drivers and decent strategies. If this means a shift to an all offense game as some have implied, penalties will become less significant because the scores will certainly increase. I don't see this shift in game play. All offense suggests that teams will have the full time period to score freely, and this was not the case in nearly every match. The only result that can come from penalties is better drivers and robots from good teams, and low scores from reckless teams. They will separate the teams with the most finesse from the rest of teams. The increase in scores in the regionals to come (there always is an increase) will render penalties less decisive than they are now. Another thought that comes to mind is that if you know a team has received a massive penalty, let them score. There's no need to cap on their goals if you know you have a 30 point advantage over them. |
Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
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--Petey |
Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
I don't agree with your assessment, because it assumes that A) the penalties will be assessed judiciously and B) all the penalties described in the manual are fair and meaningful. I'm not sure if either A nor B is true.
--Petey[/quote] Both are variables out of your control. Until that fact changes the best solution is to accept it and deal with it. My assumptions are based on the fact that in years past, both the judges/referees and the teams improved at their jobs. Not assuming that the same would be true this year would suggest that one of the parties is incapable of learning from mistakes and self improvement. I know of no teams or judges that fit this description. |
Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
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Then the rest of us who prefer FIRST can get back to solving intricate engineering problems without the worry of being repeatedly whacked by an armless/towerless 14-inch high smashbot. (It might be effective, but it sure isn't technically interesting.) |
Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
Another thing people seem to forget is what year we are in. When I look at the 1996 picture, i see NO Plexi at all! That shows how much things have changed. Heck, today someone can sue a fast food place for making them fat. The last thing FIRST needs is some kids parents suing FIRST just because a tetra knocked there kid out.
We live in the "SUE" S. A. Consider all those warning labels on everyday products. While it may seem silly, Those labels mean someone tried to watch TV, dry or curl there hair , talk on a cell phone, and make coffee while in the shower! :D /My 2cents, not worth much more than .005 cents |
Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
Note: I have yet only had the chance to watch through the web cast, which I believe makes things harder to understand and you are under the direction or somebody else's eyes, however...
First things first...the original point of the thread...Is the game easy to understand to the casual spectator? It seems to me that it is. I'm probably not a very good judge as I've been immersed in it for eight weeks now, however my two little brothers (ages 9 and 11) often watched over my shoulder and they had no difficulty figuring out what was going on, despite various penalties, and not having control over where they were looking (web cast). It seemed that the announcer did a fairly good job of explaining why penalties were assessed, so that probably helped. I can't say much about the penalties yet as I haven't seen anything up close, and I try not to comment on that which I don't know. The best I can do (as coach) is learn what the penalties are, and do what I can to avoid them. The only thing that worries me is having no control over the other robots on the field (both on my alliance and the opposing one), but I shall remain opptimistic and hope that GP is enough to prevent anything too messy. |
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1. Take defense into account when initially designing your solution to this "intricate engineering problem". If, for some reason, you totally neglected to do this, or felt you'd rather devote most of your resources to creating the perfect "star quarterback" robot, then.......................... 2. You are part of a three-member team when you're out there on the playing field. So you're the star quarterback who can score at will, huh? Well that amounts to a hill of beans if you have no offensive line who can block for you and give you time to put your amazing talents to good use. Strategize ahead of the match - if you are truly that gifted offensively, one of your teammates should be more than willing to run interference (I think that's the FIRST-chic way of saying "blocking") for you while you put on a show for the crowd. If you don't work together as a team, and you leave your star quarterback exposed, he deserves to get sacked repeatedly, and the crowd will have no pity for you whatsoever. I'm a Browns fan; believe me, I know. However, if you do take care of business and let your star work his magic, the crowd will love you and be excited and entertained all at once. If we can find a way to merge "technically interesting" with "spectatorily interesting", then we'll have a winner. Based upon what I've read in this thread and seen during the regionals, I've modified my defensive viewpoint a bit. On the defensive side of things, if you are ever on an alliance who's hopelessly outgunned on stacking ability, I think a great way to give yourself a chance at victory is a combination of pestering the opponent's best robot (rushing the quarterback) and using what capping capability you have to eliminate their tic-tac-toe rows (playing deep in the secondary and picking them off) and creating rows of your own (taking it to da hiz-ouse for da score). I think this represents a strong compromise between *defensive* defense and *offensive* defense. The only question that remains is assigning your robot resources to fit the styles - 2 rushers and 1 row interceptor/creator, or vice versa? This mixed style of play yields the best chance at delivering an exciting game that can be won by either team on the field. I am of the opinion that six-robot defensive slugfests should never occur. I am also of the opinion that six-robot zero-contact stacking contests are BORING and should be avoided. The only exception, I think, would be in the rare instances where you have two evenly-matched uber-offensive alliances pitted against each other. Then go to town - cap away, steal those rows, see how high the stacks and the scores can go - only then would an all-offensive battle be worth watching. But these teams gotta be careful - it just takes one robot on those alliances to cross that field and start mixing things up to topple this delicate tetra ballet and turn the match into the balanced mix of gritty offense and hard-nosed defense that's almost guaranteed to excite the crowd! |
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Fred Agnir |
Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
I've just read through this entire thread in one sitting, and I'm getting very discouraged by some of the borderline flaming and shouting going on between many of the people involved in this discussion. There are valid points on both sides of the debate, for and against the current penalty system. With that said, the game design commitee is made up of some very smart people, and I have no doubt they took all of these concerns into account before coming up with the current penalty system. It was said very early on in the season (kickoff?) that penalties will be a big thing this year- they will be strictly enforced, and they will have an effect on gameplay. With this known early on, when teams were faced with the decision to create an offensive, tetra maniuplating robot, or a defensive "brick bot," the positives, negatives, and actions/reactions of each type of bot should have been weighed and accounted for.
As Dean said at the kickoff in Rochester, everyone is a winner. It doesn't matter if you win or loose the competition itself, because everyone involved is walking away with real world engineering experience, and the satisfaction of knowing they are capable of creating something incredibly cool. Picking up a tetra is not an easy task. I saw many elegant and creative solutions to the problem of picking up such an odd object at the Rochester regional this weekend. I also loved to see the crowd cheer and scream whenever a robot picked up a tetra and successfully dropped it on a goal, especially if there was a large stack already in place. In many ways, this has been one of the most exciting games FIRST has ever come up with. For the first time since 2000, I found myself glued to the field watching matches, unable to look away, because I wanted to see if robot X could stack one more tetra to complete the row, or break up a row, or stack that high. This year's game is no doubt an offensive challenge, and I think that was made abundantly clear in the explanation of the rules at kickoff. Now, that does NOT mean defense doesn't have it's place in the game this year. It's still perfectly legal to disrupt a robot trying to stack a tetra (and in many cases, it's necessary to do so for the sake of winning the match). However, in general it seems the rules are designed to encourage a more offensive design, to actually tackle and solve the challenge of picking up a game object and scoring points, rather than prevent other teams from doing such. Couple that with the safety of the human player actually getting close to the robot, and it seems the penalties have a logical purpose. Think of it this way too- if all robots on the field can obtain and stack tetras without hinderance, there's no reason not to see scores in the 50's and 60's and 70's regularly, and at such high scores, the penalties seem more fair at 10 points each (as an accidental penalty is just that- accidental, and shouldn't be repeated... intentional penalties are well worth their due). The 30 point penalty for robot contact has a pair of things to keep in mind. First and foremost- safety of the human players and auto-loading field attendants. Keep in mind the power many of these robots have, the motors, the pneumatics, and high flying arms of PVC and aluminum extrusion. It only takes one quick bash to send that arm or claw flying into the skull of a human player or field attendant. Second, the robot loading the tetra clearly had the intention to stack it or drop it in a goal to score some points. It's performing it's designed function, which again, is a relatively complex task (manipulating such an unusual object, as opposed to herding small balls around). It should be rewarded for it's design and creativity, for solving such a difficult problem in such a short amount of time (6 weeks anyone?). It should be allowed to at least have the opportunity to perform it's intended task (loading a tetra), while playing the game the way it was intended to be played (no other ways to score points/win other than the 10 for having all robots in the home zone). Bots capable of moving tetras around should be able to at least pick them up without interference. I thought it was incredible to watch 4 or 5 of the robots on the field swing tetras around 10' in the air, and gracefully drop them on any of the 9 goals on the field. There's no more exciting feeling than watching that, and I think that makes for a far more interesting game than watching 6 bots shove each other around for 2 minutes. That picture I posted of "The Ultimate Stack" is the perfect example- 229 and 217 didn't try to shove each other out of the way to prevent stacking. Instead they went back and forth trying to best each other playing the game as the rulemakers intended. (Props to both teams for such a great match by the way.) I do agree that the penalties do make it difficult to tell what's happened in a match in terms of score, but I think they are necessary in order to maintain the integrity of the game itself. The real time scoring (if it worked...) would provide a rough idea of what's going on for raw score, but what should/could be done is introduce a "penalty" signal on the real time scoring, like they do in football. If a flag is thrown in football, a yellow tag will appear in the corner of the screen saying "Flag" or "Penalty." This way, spectators know to expect an adjusted score, and it could make the game more exciting with more anticipation to see the final score- especially in matches where the real time scores are very close. The biggest thing to keep in mind as a driver/operator/human player is that there ARE rules, they ARE enforced, and there ARE consequences for violating the rules. If you don't understand the rules, or don't intend to follow them, with all due respect you shouldn't be driving/operating/human playing. Accidents do happen, but there should be a conscious effort to avoid them, especially with the understanding that the rules will be enforced. This year, while they may subtract from the match scores, they will ultimately add to the game by giving robots better opportunity to do what they were intended to do. |
Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
No defense?
Ask Divison by Zero if there was no defense. They took a beating all weekend long. Teams weren't discouraged from playing defense. Just be smarter about it. One team spent a whole match just pummling anotehr robot with no interest of doing anything else and they were rightly penalized for doing so. In the playoffs teams found a better way to defend was to simply get in the otehr bots way near the goal and "alter thier shot". The best defensive play of the weekend was 340 using their massive robot to sit in the other teams goal preventing them form being able to get back in their goal and score 10 points. Every year we go through this "rough play" debate and I for one think there is room for it in FIRST but I am for the penalty. These robots are large powerful machines and as it said "It's always fun til someboday gets hurt". I don't want a competition to be tainted by a child injury of ( God forbid) death. 30 points is nothing compared to that. |
Re: How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?
Since my team played this weekend and I was on the field for 11 of our 12 qualifying matches and all 4 of our elimination round matches, I feel compelled to add to this topic.
Koko Ed mentioned 229 getting pommeled all weekend at Finger Lakes. This was true. 229 and my team have very similar scoring devices (yes, we collaborated) and we did not get pommeled as much. 229's and 217's first match was against each other and we put up that ridiculous stack on the side goal that is posted on CD. We basically put a target on our own backs right from the start. We were fortunate enough to have our second match after 229's second match and we saw the beatings they were taking. While waiting in the queue watching the 229 match, our alliance modified our strategy to prevent this. The "run your blockers" strategy works pretty well and the scorer can put up big numbers while the blocker is blocking. Finger Lakes had many reliable robots and many great blocking robots that were our partners and pretty much made it so we wouldn't be touched. This was exciting to be a part of and to see all the juking and pushing. Also, defense at the goals is very exciting. Defense at the loaders would not be exciting. The penalties and their amounts are designed to keep defense away from the loading zones. Defending a goal while a scorer is trying to score is very exciting. By the way, at Finger Lakes the best goal defenders where not bashers (or pushers) they were the scorers. Teams 1507 and 237, two of the best scorers at the competition were also the best goal defenders. Our hardest time fighting against blocks was against the scorers. With that said, I can tell you that 3 good scorers will beat pretty much any combination of other robots. If you send one robot to defend one of the other team's scorers and they score just one tetra, you are at a disadvantage. We learned that the hard way. Being a target all weekend and successfully using the "use a blocker" strategy during qualifying, I was biased to have two awesome scorers and one blocker. I was able to convince our elimination partners that this strategy was the strategy to use and I was dead wrong. Team 237 was convinced we needed three stackers and I must say they were dead on! The "one interference bot" strategy may work in the qualifying rounds, but with the quality of robots this year it will not work against a three good stacker alliance. To some this may have been obvious for a long time, but not for me. I know better now and will not make this mistake again. There is a well known quote in sports, "Offense wins games, defense wins championships." I think this year's FIRST game is the opposite. Here is my modified saying, "Defense wins qualifying rounds, offense wins championships." Sorry for the long post, Paul |
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?
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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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. |
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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. |
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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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