[dudefise]

Although I wasn't with a team for most of the season, I was able to make it to a competition and was there for the first day or so.

It seemed to me like this was a much more technical challenge with precision and repeatability the key goals. For the drivers, I felt that this year was just as challenging as any other year.

Construction wise, it was much more challenging - slight timing delays or malfunctions couldn't be compensated for by "let's go play defense lol".

I felt the real losers from no defense were the crowd. While the FRC students all get excited about whatever and will cheer and yell for their team (or other teams) this wasn't exciting to an untrained observer.

Despite the increased elegance in design required, I would not want to bring a grandparent or non-indoctrinated student to RR. It's simply not exciting to watch.

I strongly felt that FIRST was going the right direction after Lunacy - with Breakaway, Rebound Rumble, Ultimate Ascent and Aerial Assist being very simple to understand games for the crowd. Flying stuff is also entertaining, which is good.

I also felt that this game detracted from the ideas of coopertition and gracious professionalism - in many cases, it was clear who would move on in a given elimination matchup. If your team made a mistake, you were done, and from that point on silently hoping for another team to make a worse mistake. Even if lower-seeded teams got through more often, it wasn't through superior strategy, just opposition errors.

I also felt that it was boring on account of a lack of buzzer-beaters and other dramatic finishes. I don't really mind the whole no-endgame thing so much as the fact that the match is pretty well determined within the first few seconds of canburgling.

If the goal is inspiration and recognition within STEM-interested individuals, this game is good. But to interest and attract those outside, we need real, hard-hitting defense in my opinion. Making FRC appeal to those who aren't otherwise interested in STEM or even education on the whole is a big deal.

I didn't really like this game. In fact, I would hesitate to call it a game since there is no direct competition. I understand that some people really liked it and I have no problem with that view at all - I've always been defensive-minded as a student and now as an alum who helps out on occasion. For me, this simply wasn't near the best game FIRST could produce; I felt that they regressed in the areas I consider key. To improve next year, I feel that they could

1) Bring back defense, even if it is limited. If robot-to-robot contact can't be a thing for whatever reason, why not goalkeeping?

2)No more average scores, this hurts teams who do well but have one off match

3)Flying objects/big, fast stuff is always entertaining. Putting a new twist on it shouldn't be hard.