[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Edxu

I'm sure that the IRI committee put a lot of time into this decision. While it does negatively affect a few teams who planned for their robots to manipulate the drawbridge, I'm sure that the decision was made in the interest of the competitiveness of IRI itself.

While the Drawbridge may not look as obstructive from the stands, in many scenarios the Drawbridge is actually more detrimental to your OWN alliance than it is for the opposing alliance, as placing it in position 2 blocks your left-side member from seeing the left side goal, placing it in 3 blocks your own view of the middle goal, placing it in 4 blocks part of the right side goal and placing it in 5 entirely blocks view of the right-side goal from the right driver station.

Also the main difference between the Drawbridge and the Rough Terrain imo is that very few teams could justify putting a drawbridge anywhere on the field that would benefit their own alliance, while basically every team was able to cross the Rough Terrain.

To be quite honest, the only people I've ever heard say the Drawbridge adds to the depth and excitement of the game are people who have never had to play a match behind one. The drawbridge was a suicide pact - you torched your own visibility on a prayer that it messed up the opponent's visibility more. But it's closer to you than them, so it blocks more of your vision, and it blocks a significant chunk of the midfield. This is a good change.