Part of this should make people realize how hard the GDC's job is when they design a game. Point Evaluation is such a difficult requirement for any GDC due to them not being able to see what the teams and robots are capable of. The person who asked the question asked why the climb value was so high, but I saw many cimbs either removed or not picked due to their respective value compared to the overall field. I would wish I could PM this guy to tell him that my personal favorite climber this year did not get picked at champs(1421).
Back to the overall game design for FIRST. I also believe that providing multiple strategic options for teams to focus on in the game is very important. I believe teams would be very scared if they were forced to compete in one specific task against teams such as 67,111,254,469, and 1114(
). Teams need variability in order to be competitive(IMO). The GDC did a fantastic job this year in particular for providing a game with so many multiple ways to become a valuable alliance partner. Just look at the Division Elims(as well as IRI next month) to get a true sense of how many different strategies were used.
The one item I didn't like about this year's game was the cost to build a "close" practice field. To be either a good FCS or pyramid climber teams would usually have to shell out around quite a bit of cash. This isn't a bad thing, but I would personally like a game with an end game field structure that is cheaper to build like 2011 instead of 2012/13.