Quote:
Originally Posted by Pault
This game was, quite honestly, too hard. They made it so that if you wanted to put up a decent score, all three robots on an alliance had to be able to manipulate a 2ft diameter ball reasonably well. And one of the robots had to be able to launch it a good distance in order to make the match very interesting. Those are expectations which many teams just weren't ready for, and I don't think they will be for at least another few years.
Going a bit more generally, there was not enough forethought in the designing of this year's game and game manual. The examples of this have already been beaten to death, but we need to find a solution so that this doesn't happen again. Something needs to change about how the game is designed/evaluated. Maybe bringing some people with more experience on teams into the GDC, or maybe just bringing them in a couple of times when the game is in its final stages to point out the flaws. Some sort of simulation for how the game will go down would be great, but I'm not sure how they would implement it. I'm not sure what it would be, but something needs to happen.
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A few people have said this, and I think it's a great idea: FIRST should bring in the various 72 hour robot groups to beta test the game. Give the GDC some very useful feedback from some very experienced people, and give the 72 hour robot teams time to produce nice polished videos, preferably about the brainstorming and prototyping process. Most teams struggle with those parts of the design process.