Quote:
Originally Posted by 45Auto
No, you ALMOST correctly predicted game play. Some teams CORRECTLY predicted game play in that the frisbee free-for-all at the end of the game would be drastically modified or removed during the build season updates and built their robot accordingly.
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Therein lies the problem. FIRST has had over a year to develop this game. Moreso than they have in the past, they have made efforts to fully test the gameplay to the best of their abilities. Many, many teams were able to correctly predict that there would be a hailstorm of frisbees at the end, and assumed that the bright folks at FIRST would also have anticipated that and had tested it well enough prior to kickoff that the safety features (nets, high walls at either end of the field) to mitigate the risk.
In short, we put our faith that if we were able to easily anticipate the hailstorm, FIRST did to and had chosen to leave it in the rules because their field design adequate to provide a safe environment. There is an inherent expectation by the teams that the gameplay allowed in the rules will be safe. It is the teams' responsibility to analyze the rules and determine the appropriate strategy, it is NOT the teams' responsibility to determine if parts of the rules present an unsafe situation and anticipate a GDC rules change.
To all the teams who are saying "Why didn't you anticipate they would change the rules and plan accordingly?", it's just not that simple. The ONLY strategy basis teams should have to go off of are the rules as they are written. What if a team designed their robot anticipating this rule change, and it didn't get changed? Would they then complain about an unfair disadvantage because they think it's unsafe but the GDC doesn't? If a team anticipates it would be a safety issue, why didn't they make an attempt to inform the GDC of this during build season? I'm guessing the answer is because they, like everyone else, assumed the GDC was aware of the potential hazard and the lack of any changes meant that the GDC was confident in the safety of the field and gameplay.
That being said, I don't think it's the hail of frisbees that caused this ruling from the GDC, but rather the number of frisbees that left the field entirely during this period and sailed off into the stands/scoring table/etc. They pose a hazard for spectators, field personnel and judges, as well as being a field reset issue. As unfortunate as it is that it took week 0 events for this to become apparent, that's what happened, they made the change because they had to, and we will all deal with it. I agree with Karthik and others, I do not think it will be as big of an issue as most people are making it out to be.