Well, I've put it off as long as I can (this is going to be long).
So let me start by reiterating the things that are important in a FIRST game. These are the things that FIRST needs to include and seems to be trying to include.
The most important aspect is having strategy choices. Dean and Woody love to make parallels between the game and real life. Ultimate Ascent was the pinnacle of this so far, but the GDC can achieve more if they think through it and are very objective.
Another very important thing is how fun the game is to watch. How fun the game is to watch relates directly to the amount of activity on the field which also poses a challenge for scouters.
As well as having an entertaining game to attract a crowd, having a game that can be explained easily is very important. It also benefits teams. Having a game you can understand as simply as “get the balls into the baskets” helps peoples’ comprehension rates and allows them to slowly “sink” into the more subtle rules and twists of the game and approach it in an organized manner. This goes back to work well with understanding how to put together an effective strategy.
Some people have been saying that FIRST needs to eliminate safe zones and allow more defense. This is a bad idea. You have two ways to win: Win by tearing your opponent down or win by rising above them. Which one do you think is a better example to set for thousands of students entering their next stage of life? FIRST is (and should be) making a trend of carefully balancing scoring and defense. The scoring is the main focus and the defense functions as a way to keep teams from getting lazy in their designs and strategies.
That brings up my next point. FIRST is going a great job promoting more robust robot designs. They should continue this trend (and probably will).
So, the popular suggestion seems to be hockey. I really like this idea. It would be unlike anything FIRST has implemented before. Hopefully it would involve actually hitting a puck around the field (like real hockey), as opposed to picking them up and depositing them in a goal. I wouldn’t have a problem with them bringing back some sort of very slick surface as long as the only purpose it serves is to allow the pucks to slide and not to impede robot movement. Look at professional hockey, the players have no problem moving around the field. In fact they move around a lot faster on ice than most people do off the ice. FIRST needs to allow us to solve the problem of maneuverability on the field with different types of wheels and materials making contact with the floor (not make us use those dumb hard plastic wheels). Oh, and don’t even think about making me put skates or skis on my robot.
The other popular game is some sort of stacking. FIRST had a REALLY bad experience with this in 2003 so they seem to be really shying away from it. They’re going to have to face it some year but if that year is 2014? We’ll have to see.
They don’t have to use cubes for stacking, but I really think they should. I don’t want to see those stupid tubs that when tipped over don’t stack! They also need to really get the scoring right. Forget all this crap about multiplier stacks. Do it right. My team hosts a summer VEX day camp every year. This year we had them stack wooden blocks. Our scoring was that each cube (when stacked in a special zone) was worth two more points than the one below it. So a stack of 1 is 1 point, a stack of 2 is 1 + (1+2) = 4, a stack of 4 is 1 + (1+2) + (1+2+2) + (1+2+2+2) = 16. Strangely this also means that a stack is worth its height (in cubes) squared. I didn’t notice it until after the fact.
Let’s talk about the glow in the dark tape measures. Try not focusing on the glow in the dark part. I would bet that it’s not important (it’s probably a Red Herring to distract you). However I could be wrong.
Dark fields are out of the question because they’ll make the game hard to watch in two ways. One because the spectators won’t be able to see, and two because the driving won’t be as good due to the decreased visibility. This also might result in some robots just sitting there because their drivers can’t see to safely drive them around.
I would really like to see the cylinder rule go away. Or at least be increased in size.
I think the chances of another shooting game are slim. It could happen, but I don’t want it to.
As for endgame, I think that minibots may make a return eventually. But I think it will still be a few years. They’re weren’t very fun to watch. And there wasn’t much creativity or flexibility involved in them.
FIRST hasn’t done a good ‘ol king of the hill for a while, so that could make a return sometime soon. It could also be coupled with a chin-up bar like in 2003.
A unique endgame that I would like to see implemented is climbing to the top of a rectangular pillar. They would just be robust boxes (with no lips, grooves, bars or any other place to grip) anchored to the floor. There would be several heights available with different point values associated.
For personal preference. I would like to see the concept from 2009, of goals attached to your opponents brought back and made to work better with a more standard field surface.
Another thing I would like to see is several hundred tennis balls on the field which have to be launched/dumped in huge quantities into horizontal goals (like the hoops from 2012). This would be quite amazing to watch I think.
Tell me what you think!
