[Beta Version]

the following is quite long, but I think very true,

I love this year’s game, I think they did an excellent job of simplifying the game, while still keeping it challenging. (Something Dean tried to convey at the kick off.) In the past years, the challenge has kept getting more and more complex, up to the point where last year you had to: hang from a pole, corral balls, move goals, cap goals, and try to climb stairs in one robot! (or blindly hope that you alliance partners would complement your abilities.) It was nearly impossible to try and focus on trying to do everything last year, and I'm sure it was a nightmare for the rookie teams. In the end all the robots could do was try and push each other around. Last years competition turned into some idiotic battle-bots game with the only reward having to watch other robots push yours around.

This year’s game is completely different. Autonomous mode is more of what it should be, something complex and challenging that wields a strong reward for completing. I think it's sad that at the sight of an actually challenging autonomous challenge, most teams cowered and didn’t even try. While the vision thing is new and some things need to be ironed out, autonomous isn’t supposed to be some easy thing on the side. And as with the game, this year robot is actually scoring the points, a much more invigorating notion, and the robot only has to have one ability, but can try to do multiple and increasingly complex things with it. This allows rookies and veterans to complement and help each other, and to compete on the same level, just in different ways. I actually think this year’s game is more exciting. The only people that find it boring are those that are sitting there dumbly not thinking. Since the points are scored with large, visible objects instead of stupid little balls (a nightmare to manipulate), you can psychologically participate and actually think, “Ok, they have 18 and we have 9, we can form one row and still win,” leading to some very tense and exciting matches. I also think that the matches do have exciting endings, in the last 10 seconds when you’re screaming and praying that your robot can cap that goal and win the game, or miss and lose, it can be very nerve racking. Unlike last year, idiotic ramming and pushing doesn’t do any good, while strategic positioning and blockading can greatly benefit your strategy and game play. The game also moves from one match to the next faster because the robots are encouraged to get back to starting positions instead of being left in a tangle dangling from a pole.

I think this year FIRST really stepped back and looked at was wrong with the game, and truly endeavored to fix it. While the general populous may not find it as exciting or climactic, it is much more inspiring and invigorating on an innovative, technological, and fair level, which is what FIRST is truly about.




P.S. To answer what is missing, I would say a better set of rules more designed to this game, its strategy, and to the sensitivity of color recognition (i.e.: forbidding substantial yellow and green objects like caution tape on the field.) This lack of adequate rules has led to so many strange penalties.