[JeremyLansing]

When this game was released I had very high hopes for it. I felt that it would give traditionally less competitive teams a very easy way to compete, since building an intake is not super difficult, especially with all the 3 day robots. I knew defense would be important and the game would be much more physical than previous years, but I had no idea that it would turn into the kind of Aerial Assault slug fest we saw at week 1.

The rules to begin with were missing a few key components, namely the possibility of robots dying with balls in their possession. Unfortunately, as the week 0 scrimmages and week 1 competitions showed, the game was extremely rough, which seemed to catch some people by surprise. Robots were smashed, irrelevant human player actions were tech fouled, and a lot of people's tempers flared.

I had hoped after week 1 that the GDC would take steps to address the issues in the game. I was quite happy to see the changes made to G40, and I don't believe (to my knowledge) a single G40 was called at Wisconsin last week. That being said, most of the recent updates have felt like Band-Aid's on a severed limb. The most recent update was extremely frustrating. Not only was it released on practice day for our regional, but it contained wording so ambiguous I almost wanted to laugh. I'll leave the specifics of the update to another thread, but as the game stands right now, I would go so far as to say it's not Aerial Assault any more, it's Ambiguous Assault. Ref's are left in the unenviable position of trying to guess the intent of a robot and sort their way through mountains of rules over who did what to who, where, and how many times. Each team sees the incidents differently, and we have seen recently how frustrating it can be when these phenomenally close calls have such a big impact on match outcomes.

All that said, I don't hate the game, and I still have hope the GDC can fix it. I think the concept for the game is superb, but like someone else said, it feels unfinished. My heart goes out to everyone who has been affected by the (IMO) poorly written rules. I know it's hard to make a good game, but after 2013, we all know the fantastic work the GDC is capable of.