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Re: Thank you GDC for an incredible game!
I really think Breakaway was a perfect game.
It was a hard design challenge for everyone. The game objectives featured a very hard "required" element (ball control) that stumped even the most experienced veterans. On top of that, you had several choices, tradeoffs, and general conflicting goals in the game that made robot variety begin to kind of approach 2004 levels. 45 degree bumps, tunnels, hanging from a tower every which way... none of these were intuitive challenges to solve at all. It wasn't an "arm game" nor a game where many pre-built mechanisms could just be plopped onto a new robot. Kickoff made me feel scared, worried, and as Woodie always put it, "made my brain hurt".
I think the "easy enough for rookies, hard enough for veterans" sweet spot was found with this game. This is a game where every robot could score, and I would not be surprised if every robot did. Yet mastering the ability to score through defense, kick over bumps, traverse the bumps, and hang was not trivial for anyone; especially the former since it required possession. This year, defense was not a consolation prize for teams that did not do well on offense; it was something even storied veterans did. Good drivers could win with average robots, great robots fell to average drivers.
The actual game at a high level was also strategically very interesting, even before factoring in teams like 469. Autonomous placement, management of resources, and end game roles were more important than ever with the division of the field into zones. Where you put the alliance partner that couldn't go over the bump, what autonomous routine to run, the tradeoffs of trying to starve a zone, and the places to apply defense were all very interesting. This was a game I could describe to stat junkies, sports nuts, and competitive game players alike and they would all be intrigued with the options teams had.
I'll make a separate thread about the seeding system as my opinion in there is very different than most, and I don't want to derail this thread.
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Mentor / Drive Coach: 228 (2016-?)
...2016 Waterbury SFs (with 3314, 3719), RIDE #2 Seed / Winners (with 1058, 6153), Carver QFs (with 503, 359, 4607)
Mentor / Consultant Person: 2170 (2017-?)
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College Mentor: 2791 (2010-2015)
...2015 TVR Motorola Quality, FLR GM Industrial Design
...2014 FLR Motorola Quality / SFs (with 341, 4930)
...2013 BAE Motorola Quality, WPI Regional #1 Seed / Delphi Excellence in Engineering / Finalists (with 20, 3182)
...2012 BAE Imagery / Finalists (with 1519, 885), CT Xerox Creativity / SFs (with 2168, 118)
Student: 1714 (2009) - 2009 Minnesota 10,000 Lakes Regional Winners (with 2826, 2470)
2791 Build Season Photo Gallery - Look here for mechanism photos My Robotics Blog (Updated April 11 2014)
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