Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto (Post 858654)

Agreed.

Every parent I talked to this year said they had no clue what was going on. Having 6 mobile goals and 120+ game pieces flying around everywhere is a lot more confusing than 4 balls, 4 lines and 2 bars.

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto (Post 858654)

Every parent I talked to this year said they had no clue what was going on. Having 6 mobile goals and 120+ game pieces flying around everywhere is a lot more confusing than 4 balls, 4 lines and 2 bars.

Originally Posted by Cory (Post 858645)

That certainly does not describe Lunacy. There has yet to be a worse game for accessibility to the public in the 9 years I have been doing FIRST.

Originally Posted by Cory (Post 858645)

That certainly does not describe Lunacy. There has yet to be a worse game for accessibility to the public in the 9 years I have been doing FIRST.

Originally Posted by Bharat Nain (Post 858650)

I didn't like Lunacy for the many reasons. Before I post my reasons, I would like to make something clear: I am not trying to place blame anywhere.

1) The field flooring was way too expensive for teams, especially in this economy.
2) The availability and cost of the balls. How do you design a robot to hold 40 balls when you could only afford to buy about 10?
3) It was boring to watch - at least for me. I could hardly follow what was going on. I prefer a game where a team knows what their score is by looking on the field. Yes, the real-time scoring was there but it was not reliable.
4) Punishing teams for building good robots with the serpentine draft and taking away super cells.
5) Standard wheels for everyone.
6) There were only about 4 types of designs for a robot - BORING!
7) If a team was dead during a match, it killed the alliance. Dead driver stations and other control system issues decided many regionals.
8) Some robot rules were way over-designed and over-complicated such as the bumpers.

The outcome/good:
1) The game let teams who were nobody last year emerge as champions at regionals. But it was not because they were able to build a good robot - it was because of luck, standard robot designs, and a game that leveled the playing field for everyone.
2) The new look of the playing field was different and kind of exciting. The concept of the game is really cool and a change from the carpet was welcome. Just not for a game like Lunacy.

Overall, I cannot say that I liked Lunacy at all. In my book, it goes down as being one of the worst games ever. Sometimes I feel that the rules butcher the fun of the competing. I'm looking forward to a more exciting 2010 season.

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner (Post 858680)

Here's a picture to make the above description crystal clear:

Originally Posted by Chris is me (Post 858706)

When I showed people Lunacy it was a lot simpler. I could basically say "well, it's like basketball with hoops called "trailers" behind each robot. 6 humans try to shoot balls in the trailers, and robots can either get balls from humans or pick up missed shots to score on opponents. There's a special ball that can be brought to the corner to activate a green ball worth more points". Then they'd get it.

Originally Posted by Chris is me (Post 858768)

I don't like how people have interpreted G14 as punishing good play. People have decided that "good play" ought to be "score as many balls as possible in your opponents trailer". Nowhere is this the stated goal of the game.

Originally Posted by Chris is me (Post 858781)

Man I have a bad habit of making mistaken posts that get corrected by you, huh :/

Well, my point is more along the lines of "it's part of the game so by trigerring it, you're _not_ playing well regardless if you want to be or not".

Originally Posted by XaulZan11 (Post 858783)

In my opinion G-14 has been way over-blown. What percentage of matches were really determined by it? How much did it really prevent FIRST from achieving its goals?