My regional actually had mostly shooters, with a total of about 4 or 5 full climbers. Of the rest (which were mostly shooters with one or two defense bots) the majority used the same sort of shooter as Ri3D, leading to a large number of very similar robots. We still had a few of the tall shooters, and shooters with other designs, but they were few and far between. While I do not think that Ri3D is entirely a bad thing, as it can be useful for inspiration and some ideas, I do think that a few teams relied on Ri3D for ideas too much. Because of that, I can see FIRST deciding to retaliate with a random major change to the game after Ri3D finished. That said, I am still not completely sold on the idea that they will have some sort of trick up their sleeve to counteract Ri3D.
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Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik
I'm hearing lots of complaints that Ri3Ds reduced the "diversity" of robots last year, which I find unfathomable. At our regional we had the full gamut of tall shooters, small shooters, 10-30 point hangs, ground pickups, 30-point exclusive hangs, 30-pt hang and dumps, and defense only chassis bots. Only there were a lot less of the latter and more attempts at shooters that could probably work with a little more polish.
This is compared to 2012 where a rather lot our teams didn't even attempt shooters or ground pickups or anything. And many didn't even manage bridge flippers.
So if Ri3D means reducing "diversity" by reducing the number of teams that fail at everything but driving and increasing the number of teams that at least attempt an advanced subsystem like a shooter or manipulator... Well don't you think that might do a slightly better job of Inspiring students about Science and Technology? And you think the GDC is against this somehow?
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