Quote:
Originally Posted by BigJ
In 2015 a lot of alliances just had no need for a 3rd robot in their strategy aside from "[Burgle cans/tether to ramps/scoot the auto totes] and then sit out of the way next to the wall", and this was caused by the non-interactive game design.
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This is exactly right. The extent of the cheesecaking this year was 100% a result of a poorly designed game. When two robots can cap 7 6-stacks by themselves the third robot is not useful. Additionally, I doubt there were many (or any) teams that were designed purely to burgle cans in less than 1 second, which is really all that some of these alliances needed. The other cheesecaking which took hold (ramps) were mostly used as a correction to a poorly designed field.
Basically, I believe the level cheescake we saw this year was much more of a result of a poorly designed game than some more insidious intent to 'win at any cost'. The reason we haven't seen this level in the past is that in most games it would hurt you to play a majority of the match with only 2/3 robots, where in this game it could easily be argued to be a benefit.