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Unread 06-04-2015, 13:39
Andrew Schreiber Andrew Schreiber is offline
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Re: A Recycle Rush Reflection

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sunshine View Post
Couldn't agree more! Tired of hearing people complain that it's boring and then go on to say it's too hard. Some suggest on other threads of lowering the bar so everyone can compete. I agree with you, everyone should strive to raise the bar to achieve greatness. The great teams INSPIRE my team to do more using SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY. I think the system works, and is not broken in my world.
It's not about raising the bar, it's about setting attainable options for teams. Last year, no matter how bad you were, you could contribute to an alliance. Heck, I watched Meredith Novak get assist points off a completely inoperable robot at OMB last year. That's an extreme case but even a mediocre robot could inbound and then play effective zone defense (ok, or contact defense but I don't want to claim that is a good thing) This year? They get to become anchors to ramps or liabilities. That's neither inspirational to the team ("here sit in a corner and don't screw up") nor is it fun to watch ("daddy, why is my brother's robot just sitting there not moving?"). Upside, a static billboard is a good billboard, so maybe some sponsors will like having their logo sit still in front of people for 2 minutes, but I doubt it.

Now, I'm not advocating lowering the bar so teams can compete. I'm saying it is a fact of life that, at any given event, there's about 10% of robots that play the game well, maybe 60% middle tier that can play the game sometimes, and a remaining 30% of teams that flat out can't drive reliably (this in itself is an improvement, prior to the 05 kitbot I'd flip the last two categories). Now, I've been pushing for years to help the last 30% group. But you know what? They are the hardest to reach. They have 0 CD presence, don't respond to emails, and probably only meet during build.[1] It's REALLY hard to bring these teams up. But during quals they still need a task to contribute in some meaningful way.[2] That is the big failing of this game. The bottom teams are always going to exist, no matter how much we raise the bar there'll be people who miss it. Games need to have some sort of THING for them to contribute. Otherwise these teams will be reduced to, at best, an anchor or will remain a liability. Or we could have game designs that don't penalize teams from taking risks in qualification matches and not have to have these awkward conversations about how of the 8 times team's have tried to score an auton ball they've spent the next 2 minutes chasing it down or how they have knocked over an average of 1.3 stacks every match.[3]





1. There's also the alternative of the team just being mismanaged contributing to their failure.


2. and to recognize they need to do this other task and not the main task that they are poor at doing.


3. As much as I hate to push for a never ending stream of '13 clone games ala Call of Duty 47: Jaffar Gets Glasses the big takeaways from those games (and why they are well received in my mind):
- Numerous and consistent game pieces
- Instant Scoring
- Sufficient protected zones to make contact defense risky
- Minimally invasive ref involvement
- No penalty for attempting to score (this applies at the low levels where the number of discs was effectively unlimited, at higher tiers of play missing a shot hurt, and that's good)
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