[Zebra_Fact_Man]

After just completing my team's second and most likely final competition, I feel like I'm going to have as good a perspective as any right now. I'll try to keep my comments as brief as possible. Sorry for the long-windedness


My single greatest gripe about this year is that this year's game is not won on the playing field but on the drawing board. The practiced team with the best design is going to win. Now every year requires a good design to be successful, but the extent of that impact this year is what bothers me.

I'm going to pick on 1023 for a little bit because they're an awesome team and other teams should strive to be like them. At Woodhaven this past weekend, every single person knew that 1023 was going to win the event on Thursday night when they came in and demonstrated their 84 point independent routine. They were untouchable; no one could score anywhere near them, and come the playoffs, they swept as expected. People started referring to the quick increase in their rank score after being paired with them as Bedford Inflation.

I actually had teammates in the stands tell me that they quit watching 1023 because they were so well practiced and ran their routine so well, that you knew exactly what was going to happen so there was no reason to watch. They were desensitized by the robot's repetitive success.

In fact, some of the most exciting and breathtaking moments were when teams completely shot themselves in the foot and messed everything up with one false move (or noodle). Auto racing suffers from this to some extent when people claim the crashes are the best part (when they aren't, from any standpoint). People are looking for some action and methodical completion is anything but.

So far in FiM, the #1 Alliance is 9 for 9 (this isn't the case everywhere, but I don't live elsewhere). The best robot picks the 2nd best robot and that's the game, folks. Last year, you didn't know what to expect, and that's what keeps any sport interesting; the unpredictability of the outcome. Why do you think people don't like being told the outcome of a sporting event they've recorded at home.

But the biggest problem is that there is no way for a pure underdog to possibly win. After a bad match, my alliance sat on the sideline and knew (even though we had one more match left in the SF) that we were done unless everyone else screwed up. And I have to admit, when 469 (another awesome team filled with awesome people) knocked their stack over, I felt pretty internally conflicted. It was horrible that everything went so wrong so quick, but my alliance was done UNLESS this happened. That shouldn't happen. I should be allowed to stop them from winning myself, not have to hope that they goof. I am so glad that they still made it to the finals because it would have been awful if that accident had kept them out.

FIRST is about gracious professionalism, and rooting against the other alliance is anything but. I want to help my competitors off the field as long as I can stop them on the field. And I can't do that this year. If we can't score more than them, then we've already lost.

Why do you think TNA was killed so quickly? Because it was bad news.
I personally will be glad when interactive gameplay is reintroduced.

The very last point I have is that this game leaves no room for error. You have one bad match last year, don't sweat it. You've still got two to get it right. This year, you're probably done. No second chances here. I don't like that. FIRST should be fun. Perfection is rarely fun. People are flawed beings.