First let me say, I hope the Card system is adopted into future games, albeit with a few tweaks to be as fair and effective as possible. I think it went over pretty well at IRI and hope we see it again.
Since somebody asked....
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Originally Posted by Chris Hibner
Does anyone really think that point penalties are confusing? It seems we had point penalties this year for a lot of things - breaking the plane, stepping out of bounds, goal tending, etc. I don't think that was too confusing.
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Ok, I'll say it - In FIRST Frenzy, I think having all those possible point penalties was confusing - and I was one of the "rules experts" on the team. I counted or can think of at least 10 or 11 point penalties.. this doesn't include all the DQs or disablement possibilities. I quickly didn't care what the value was (even though in the end I think they were all 10pts), but just tried to be conscious of not doing them.
With this past season's game especially, I think the amount of point penalties was excessive. I'm an advocate for making penalties as simple, but effective as possible. When I see all these suggestions made for numerous/additional point penalties, for whatever various reasons, and they're all different values, call me lazy, but I don't want to work that hard to understand or remember it all...
While I'm not going to come up with the best solution ever, I think that having too many penalties is a problem. I realize maybe not all of them are known or realized at the time of game creation, but it shouldn't take me 10min to explain to a non-FIRSTer (or even a FIRSTer) what all the penalties are and what their point value is, and then think they're going to remember with all the other action going on. And that's in addition to explaining the game.
I'll even risk saying that I'm not sure all the refs knew all the point penalties throughout the season. It got exponentially better as competitions went by, but there were times it was clear not all the penalty rules were known (and I'm speaking only of the misc point penalties, not all the ramming, entangling, etc). And no, I'm certainly not bad-talking the refs. The point is, those making the calls have a LOT to be thinking about.
I'd even venture to say that 40-50% of FIRST participants didn't know all those rules/penalties, for various reasons, which I think is unfortunate.
I think that by having few (because it's hard to imagine having none) point penalties, and an effective system, such as the Red/Yellow Card system, it helps the audience, drive-team, and esp Refs, focus on what's more important. There's many reasons I think this way (i'm not gonna go thru them), and they're more beneficial to everyone than not.
It is possible to design fewer penalties into the game, while not compromising robot design and strategy creativity. Granted, it would be difficult, and I by no means have all the answers. i.e. Crossing into the ball chute could have been eliminated in game design, esp since it was such a safety concern. That's just an example.
Though I refuse to compare robotics to sports, sports don't often change their rules every single year... so they can get away with numerous point penalties, cumulative pts resulting in greater offense, etc.. it's learned over the decades and not re-learned every year. If say basketball had
numerous NEW, different penalties every season, it'd make it harder to watch, frustrating... imo...
Anyway, again, I like the Card system for all the reasons others mentioned and hopefully it's brought to on-season competitions.