[EricH]

Originally Posted by roboticsgoof95

Well, you do make a good point ,but i must disagree with you.... when you think about FIRST it is about creating the best robot that you can to preform the task that you are given while still learning with others and working together. Which is why im asking this question, Why do we have to make it simple for them to understand? I mean if the rules and game were simplied then that does not give the team any room to think outside the box. like i said before, If breakaway was such a game that the rules were "a 3 on 3 game of soccer where you score the balls and then you hang at the end" 469 wouldnt have done as well as they did. their robot did nothing more then drive around in atonomis and then park itself and score goals the rest of the match.... we wouldnt get thinkers like that if the game was simplier. just a thought.

You're confusing AUDIENCE simplicity with PARTICIPANT simplicity.

The BEST games are ones that are simple for the audience to understand (3-on-3 game of soccer, hang at the end, goals come back to the middle) but the participants can wow everyone with the "cool/awesome factor" (469, 51, 125 as they redirected--but especially 469). The main way to confuse the audience was the 6v0 that the ranking system encouraged a bit.

Or, to take another example, I'll go to 2002. The game was simple: move three goals, filled as full of soccer balls as possible, into a particular zone of the field (of the 5 zones), then put some part of your robot into a particular non-adjacent zone. There are two legends from that year: FRC71, who raced out to the goals, grabbed all three, and crawled into the proper zone using filecards, and FRC60, who grabbed two goals, got into the zone, lifted them up (you've got to understand, these goals are 30# heavier than even today's robots are while on the field, which have a good 20# on the robots back then), and spun them in a circle whenever someone tried to push a goal.

It's games like that that we need: 30 seconds to explain the basics to some random person off the street, 6 weeks+ championship to show just how innovatively you think to everybody, participant or spectator.