[Will Hanashiro]

i believe that there will be stairs, but not all teams will be required to use them. instead, the stairs would be more of a bonus. two years ago we had a "home" zone, where if you were there at the end of the match, extra points were awarded. this year i believe that you will be awarded extra pts if you are at the top of the stairs at the end of the match (maybe autonomous).

i would also like to see more of a role given to human players. in previous years, the human player element leveled out the playing field a little more. a good human player meant more points, and the unfortunate teams who couldnt move, or had trouble still had a way to score points. i like the idea of the human player shooting balls at goals.

other probables for this years game:
1) autonomous will remain
2) 2 vs 2
3) elimination matches will go back to best of 3
4) bigger human player impact
5) there will be a need for robots to be able to reach higher. (maybe to get things from high shelves, score balls in a tall goal, maybe to grab onto a bar and hang). in previous years, robots had to be able to go vertical, the the past two years FIRST has gotten away from that.

-just my thoughts-