[Abhishek R]

Like Rachel has pointed out, I have to agree it's the game design that drives the extent of "cheesecaking" we saw this year.

In 2014, cheesecaking would be limited to assisting devices. These will not inherently make or break the game for an alliance; they aren't extremely necessary to be competitive at even the highest levels of play.

In 2013, cheesecaking would be limited to full-court blockers, or maybe more advanced, a 10 point hang. Again, neither of these were necessary at even the highest levels of play.

In either case, the cheesecaked robot still had to execute its role pretty well. In 2015, you install the system, they get the cans (which absolutely are necessary in order to win), and then they're done for the match. Furthermore, they are taken in autonomous, so the team itself doesn't really do a whole lot in terms of playing their role for the match. A higher resource team is going to be able to build a faster and better cheesecake than many teams can build for their own robot's system, and there's no way to win if you can't keep up. I think this is where a lot of the animosity towards the cheesecake in 2015 comes from.