[connor.worley]

I think it's completely possible to have good games with no defense. It's all about the strategic options that the game makes available to teams. The best games are ones where there isn't one clearly superior strategy. When everybody is trying to do the same task, it quickly becomes obvious who the best is, and that's all around boring.

This is why I think Aerial Assist was a bad game. Every match consisted of three robots doing the exact same thing. One inbounder, one trusser, one scorer. If not holding ball, play defense. My proposal for improving AA would be allowing teams to have two balls in play at once. That would force teams to evaluate whether they want to take the offensive approach of bringing in two balls or the defensive approach of running double defense.

Recycle Rush really lacked any of this decision making. Grabbing the cans is an obvious best choice. Making stacks of 6 is an obvious best choice. Doing anything else will only hurt you. It makes the game feel like a 100m sprint.

So I don't think we need defense to have interesting games, as long as the strategies are unique match to match. In my opinion, defense without alternatives, defense with no opportunity cost, hurts games. On the other hand it can make the game more exciting if FIRST pulls it off right.