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Originally Posted by 2000vfr800
<snip>...
It's boring.
And most everyone left after an hour or two.
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At the PNW regional, this didn't seem to be the case. I had heard that the game was going to be boring, but it seemed to remain fairly exciting, with lots of back-and forth action throughout the day, even during the elimination matches.
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Originally Posted by 2000vfr800
And, from the people who have seen the game the last two years I have been involved, it's missing the big, exciting ending the king of the hill or the 10 ft bar or the double ball provided the last two years. It was easy for them to figure out what needed to happen for each side to win the match. It was something to cheer for.
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Well, it seems that its clear enough that with 10 seconds left and a tetra being raised to cap the center goal that will decide the outcomeof the match... that's something to cheer for. Maybe what you really mean is that the dynamic of the game didn't suddenly change with about 30 seconds to go, because the end zone bonus was so small?
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Originally Posted by 2000vfr800
This year the big ending is the adding up the penalties. And several time watching the matches, the group of us each added up the points and we all had different answers.
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Once again, not so much the case at the PNW regional. We had our share of penalties, but in general, they didn't decide the matches like I have heard they did in so many other regionals. Almost all of the games that I saw were
very clean. Many had no penalties at all. The winning alliance, for example, went penalty free throughout finals.
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Originally Posted by 2000vfr800
And, please, I know some people are going to post about how they are wrong and how exciting this game really is. I think it's exciting. But, I am just relaying what I was told by at least 20 people this weekend...
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I don't think you're wrong, per se. Lots of other people have been saying the same thing - and there's no denying that people actually told you that it was boring. I am just under the impression taht the PNW regional actaully
was exciting. I would like to hear otherwise from a spectator if that was not the case, however. But I think the lower incidence of penalties, and the vast swings in points for caping a single goal, and the back-and-forth nature of many of the elimination matches (several ties, several comeback wins) made the PNW more exciting. Of course, I am one of the invovled people, so maybe this isn't the ase, and as I said, I would like to know what spectators thought.
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Originally Posted by 2000vfr800
I guess the point of this thread is for whoever is reading this and might have some input for the future games, if you want to keep the interest of the people off the street who might get excited about FIRST and want to get involved in the future, please think about this.
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Well, I think everyone and their dog will have input on how to make the games better, but here are the ones I can think of (my head still hurtsfrom yesterday, so maybe I won't remember everything):
The biggest thing is, STOP the glitches! At the PNW regional, the first thing all our schoolmates saw when arriving Saturday morning on the TRC Booster Bus was - an hour of dancing. The field equipment was malfunctioning, so alternate forms of entertainment had to be employed. The equipment malfunctioned AGAIN at the startof finals, this time for an hour and a half. Thats a lot of wasted time for the spectators.
But onto the real list: games should borrow more heavily from popular sports:
- In the three big ones in this country (Football, Baseball, Basketball), play stops on a regular basis, which allows spectators to catch up on what just happened.
- Games are longer. This allows more strategic play and more comeback opportunities. Also endurance becomes an issue.
- Fouls are called immediately (so the result of a particular play is never in question for long)
- The scoring system is simple enough that it is never unclear who is winning, and what the opposing alliance needs to do to come back
These are the things that make sports so compelling to watch. These are why when your favorite football team is down by 21 points in the fourth quarter, you don't give up all hope. This is why these sports have attracted millions of fans. I believe that if FIRST were to borrow more heavily from what makes popular sports compelling, the FIRST games would become more compelling.
I know it must be an extremely difficult task to create a unique game each year that is exciting for the teams and spectators alike, but here are some ideas that perhaps the game design committe could take into consideration:
- More visually interesting, achieveable autonomous modes (TRC-492 mentor Larry Barello has some good ideas that I don't entirely recall - I'll try to have him follow up on this thread)
- Longer matches - say, five minutes. Maybe bigger batteries if thats what it takes. This is to let the games develop more.
- Stop play for penalties. This will scoring easier to follow.
- Implement an on-the-field timeout. Say, one one-minute timeout per alliance per game to allow alliances to reconstruct their strategies if they are falling behind. I don't know if this is a good idea, actually. Let me know.
- Automatic scoring system. It's very hard for a human to keep track of the scoring of these games real-time, so let a computer do it! This is once again to keep the audience informed of the score accurately at all times.
- Consider games where the score only goes up, not back down again, just like all the major sports. Sure, in this game you could not "descore" a tetra, but you could drop an opposing alliance's score by 40 points in one move. I personally liked that, but I'm not ure how intuitive it would be to follow.
Well, I've gone on long enough I think... I'd like to hear other people's ideas.