[John Gutmann]

through all the years they have used balls it has been very interesting to watch and play because, if you drop a ball you have to chase it and everything is everywhere, which makes for better stratagies. Balls are easier to manuever and to design for.

in '05 if you dropped a tetra you could literally sit there in the same spot the whole match trying to pick it up, while with balls even if you mess up it is more interesting

in '03 with the bins they were much bigger and harder to maneuver around due to their size. I think '03 was more interesting then '05 in some aspects, but in '05 at the end of some matchs(like at FLR with the leaning tower of tetras) everybody is on their toes. Compared to '03 where youjust had to put bins around.

By far '04 was one of the best years I have ever seen matches from because there are so many elements, you have to push the balls to get the to your human player, and you have so many ways to score and get bonuses that alot of teams went so many different ways. Some teams could hang some could caps goals, but '04 was also very suspenseful at the end of a match when you had 4 frobots up on the bar and all 4 were straining to stay up.

If FIRST wants to make it exciting they need to add some vertical and horizonal elements to it. For example in '04 vertically you had throwing balls, capping and hanging, and horizantally you have moving balls, blocking balls entry points(to the human player), moviung goals, blocking from hanging, and the dreaded step up to the bar. it just had so many elements to desgin for.

At the reveal of the '05 game i was a little disappointed that it wasnt as good as '04 but hopefully they will do it this year