[nuclearnerd]

Good:

• The GDC obviously spent a lot of time working on the difficulty curve of Stronghold. The capped-bonus challenges of breaching and capturing meant that lower-tier robots could contribute meaningfully, but higher tier robots couldn't run away with the points. Matches were often won by just a few points, even when the "strength" was lopsided.
• The field looked really impressive from the stands
• The defenses added a really tough, new engineering challenge after a few years of drive train stagnation
• The secret passage "tagging" rules were pretty cool. Sadly most teams didn't go into the secret passage much, but I feel like a slight rule change could have made it interesting (not sure how right now)

Bad:

• Little meaningful interaction between teams. Except for robots who held doors for eachother (rarely), and the race to the batter, the matches were almost always "6 robots do 6 things". That gets really boring from a strategic (and spectator) point of view. Instead of looking for interesting new gameplay, you're watching to see who screws up their part. Contrast that with 2014, where new strategies were still being innovated on Einstein. I fear that this will always be the case as teams pressure the GDC to choose games with lots of game pieces so their performance doesn't depend on others.
• The rules on defense were too onerous. I understand their reasoning, but the result was basically to kill any meaningful defense, and all of the associated game dynamics. When defense was attempted, it usually led to fouls (interfering with a crossing, or not clearing the courtyard in time).
• The field was *really* expensive to build. Take it from a team that built a community practice field.
• I would argue there were *too many* engineering challenges. I personally prefer games with fewer required mechanisms so that we can focus on getting those few working really well, without sacrificing capability. Others will disagree with me though.