Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Johnson
Now for the rant:
I think that FIRST holds a lot of the blame here.
Three years ago they allowed all manner of things to be strapped to robots as blockers for full court disk shooters. Last year, the game design almost forced this because it required two good robots (a.k.a. the #1 seed and the first draft pick) to not be able to win unless the last team drafted (a.k.a. the 24th best team at a tourney) did at least SOMETHING that qualified as an "assist". These two years got the cheesecake snowball rolling.
But THIS year, this year was something special. FIRST made a game where two good robots could effectively get max points if and only if they won a battle that was over in a literal blink of an eye... ...during Auton. FIRST designed a game where a half a second into the match, not only didn't the best alliances need a third robot, often having a 24th robot around was a liability - having them do something, anything, only cost them points -- it never helped them. Add to this that Alliances get a 4th robot at the World Championships (not FIRST's best idea imho) and you have a recipe for the Harpoon Bot. It was going to happen.
I think this is bad for FIRST. Not illegal. Not immoral. Just not want we want more of. FIRST should take steps to make it clear that this is not something it supports both in terms of rules and expectations.
Dr. Joe J.
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FIRST gave us a game where they put all of the carrots of the game design into this kind of strategy, while the sticks preventing it would not have met the goals of FIRST as an organization. Anyone who decries the hard work of teams to succeed to the best of their total abilities (not just robot power, but people/willpower) are insane. If you didn't like how alliances came to be and how the robots were adjusted, the onus is not the teams' to bear. I think lessons were learned by the GDC on this front. I've made a couple points on how the game design encouraged this before, and I'll probably add to it and summarize it later this week. That seems pretty agreeable.