[Grim Tuesday]

I flipped on some webcasts today and honestly, for someone who has been out of the loop for the entire season (since week 2), the game is very difficult to watch. I was expecting that the two balls would help focus gameplay, but it seems that robots almost forget what to do when they don't have the ball, milling around and making the field a mess. Just like 2009, the game is focused not on the goal but on other robots.

I think it just isn't very fun to watch. None of the tasks are instantly interesting to the public (climbing was cool no matter what) or immediately obvious what robots are doing: putting basketballs in hoops simply made sense but robots picking up and dropping balls just looks disorganized. With the lack of an endgame, there is no task to wrap up the match so it just kind of fizzles out.

This is an odd change of direction because in the last few years, the games were only getting better and better with regard to that, and the GDC was making a conscious effort. I wonder if they thought this game would be interesting to watch and it isn't, or if they didn't have that as one of their primary goals anymore?

Edit: I've been watching a little more and am warming up to the game a little bit. Good alliances, like the 525/1986 one in Illinois that manage to actually execute a strategy make the game much more interesting. I based my original post on qualifications at GTR, so maybe I spoke too soon.