[IronicDeadBird]

The problem with most long running games is a meta is formed. Unless a game is perfectly balanced in such a way 9 times out of 10 there is going to be one dominate train of thought on how things should be done. Last year a defining game analysis moment I heard over and over was
You need to get a ball over a truss into a goal within a shorter height limit (in most circumstances) this led to -> launching the ball into the goal
Yeah you could do it in other ways you could in theory drive up to the goal and use an elevator to get it into the high goal but does it make sense to do that?
I believe the biggest influence on robot diversity is not "what are the high level teams doing" first and foremost it is "what is the obvious solution and how do we get there" (no disrespect to high tier teams.)
The only issue I have with BuildBlitz and Ri3D is its so well done and so captivating to a lot of students that they there is an entire world outside of youtube and the internet where they can pull designs from. As long as students learn to emulate and improve on what they see everywhere I'm cool.
Oh yeah thats the other thing I think all these are great starting points for any team but what really astonished me the most after seeing those high-angle single side pickup robots is that each team added something different to it. I mean the diversity is there it is just at a smaller scale.