[sircedric4]

I am glad we have started this thread early because I have also been worried about the single game piece in the game causing a ridiculous amount of behind the scenes human anger and drama. FIRST seems to think this game is played by robots and is not taking into account the human nature teleoperating them.

For instance, lets take a suboptimal team's perspective. We have spent minimum $9000 to compete in this regional. We have spent the same six weeks of late nights, hard work and stress as any other team out there and here comes a team that tells us to play defense only. Sure my mechanism is slow and janky but it does allow us to score once a round. My student's parents are out in the crowd and I want to show off what I have been putting the late nights working on off. To be able to win I cant do that. 50% of the teams at the regional are in this situation. In the past there were other game pieces to play, now there aren't.

I dont even want to start the things that teams will do as the seeding starts to close and they start to realize that they can break up traditional power house teams by simply throwing a game by goofing around with the one game piece. Ill will everywhere indeed.

I predict that one of the lessons learned in the First game design handbook after this year will be no more games with a single game piece. Humans are competitive and they are also justified in their desire to play the ball after sinking so many resources into their robot. The behind the scenes is going to be more high strung then usual this year and that is saying something considering how high strung it is to begin with.