Jim does a nice job of summarizing FRC history and I appreciate the perspective of someone who has seen the really early years of FIRST as a comparison. I started in FRC in 2004 so I wasn't aware that penalties hadn't really existed before (I knew alliances were fairly new). Overall I agree that penalties aren't an effective way of policing team behaviors, and penalties have to be possible and sensible to enforce.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zebra_Fact_Man
The thing that sticks out most to me is that it seems like Jim thinks 2011, 2012, and 2013 are examples of how a FRC game SHOULD be designed, while personally I found two of those games to be some of my least favorite (2011 for the completely overpowered minibot, and 2012 because objectively defensive play was next to worthless). I enjoy sports that celebrate good, clean, physical contact, like a hockey check or a football tackle or even an outfielder dive or home-base collision (while they're still allowed to do that). The excessive amount of "Safe Zones" in these three games made any physicality almost moot, becoming a game of who-can-score-the-most (NBA basketball anyone?). Personally I missed the robot collisions and rigorous defense of old. I find this game a breath of fresh air in that aspect.
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I also got this reading the paper. Although the amount of rough gameplay has gotten out of hand this season, I am glad to see a game without safe zones. I find offensive robots that are untouchable while scoring, loading, and driving across certain portions of the field to be a tad boring to watch at times. I really liked 2013 but wasn't a big fan of 2011, and 2012 was hit or miss depending on the matches. I know the paper is about the penalty system but it's a very different perspective on some of the rule additions of the last few years.
In both this thread and the
other penalty paper thread I have seen numerous comments that the major failing of this game is a single game piece, which gives teams without a ball nothing to do other than pound on each other. I concede that this is not a good thing, but I can also see why the GDC attempted it besides forcing cooperation, which is that it makes the match flow much easier to watch from a spectator perspective. If you discount the confusing "what is an assist?" rules (unique robots... in unique zones... huh?) this is one of the easiest games to watch as a spectator ever. In autonomous teams simply try to score the ball in the goal, and the rest of the match you never have to watch more than 2 game pieces at a time. No end game maneuvers, no doubler balls, no bonuses for owning goals. If the whole assist system had been tossed out I still think a decent amount of passing between teams would have occurred simply because this is the most effective way to move the ball down field under defense.
I've heard complaints since I joined in 2004 that FRC games are difficult to follow because there are too many game pieces at once and too many ways to score for an easy explanation. How do you resolve that issue with the conflicting problem of teams having nothing to do but wale on each other?