Why does everyone hate this game so much?

[Anthony Galea]

I keep reading these threads, and people seem to think this game is terrible.
People are saying this game is 'worse than 2003', 'fouls decide too many matches', 'if you have one really bad alliance member, you will lose'. This negativity is just terrible for FIRST. I feel like most people never gave this game a fair chance, just because it is a little different.

1) 'Worse than 2003': I wasn't around in 2003 for the game so I may be incorrect, but from what I've heard, what was bad was that it was nearly impossible to score after autonomous, and robot parts were on the field after almost each match from poor field setup. In this game, scoring is possible after autonomous. This is clearly evidenced by the scores that are being put up after autonomous. Also, the field is well set up, with no field elements causing damage without the fault of a team.

2) 'fouls decide too many matches': While in Week 1, teams may have drawn fouls which decided some matches, that has been fixed. If teams are drawing fouls, they should be more careful, and READ THE MANUAL. Also, if you notice that your future alliance partners are getting fouls, tell them what they are doing and how to stop. When you are scouting for eliminations, a good thing to rank on MIGHT BE to make sure they don't get many fouls. There is a reason Technical Fouls are 50 points. THEY DONT WANT THOSE THINGS HAPPENING. Don't do those things. Also, fouls decide games every year.

3) 'if you have one really bad alliance member, you will lose': No. This is how most team sports work, so why should it be different here? It should be a team effort. In football, you cannot have just a good quarterback who carries the team. You have to have receivers who catch the ball. In baseball, you cannot have a good pitcher who holds the tem to one run, if your hitters cannot score.

Honestly, I think this game is one of the best. For once, you can be a 6, 7, or 8 captain, and not abandon all hope once you are set there. Upsets happen more often, defense is a viable strategy, and spectators are entertained. I would like to hear a legitimate reason that this game is bad.

Sorry if this seems ranty

I love this game.

Point disproved.

[mrnoble]

I'm really enjoying it too. And if anyone has a right to complain, it might be me. I think the game is fun to watch and challenging to play, and that there are lots of different paths to victory.

[Abhishek R]

On the subject of fouls, I would check out the elims at Waterloo. I'm certain they have all read the rules, but the fouls were out of the teams' control.

Personally, I enjoy the concept and the idea of the game, but it is also quite frustrating as to how subjective this game can be.

[BigJ]

I love this game on the game side but the fouls and inconsistent reffing are driving me crazy. The "new Thursday rules" were reffed seemingly completely opposite on Friday and Saturday at the Wisconsin regional from my estimation, giving teams an incorrect idea of how they would be called in eliminations.

[wesbass23]

Originally Posted by BigJ

I love this game on the game side but the fouls and inconsistent reffing are driving me crazy. The "new Thursday rules" were reffed seemingly completely opposite on Friday and Saturday at the Wisconsin regional from my estimation, giving teams an incorrect idea of how they would be called in eliminations.

I completely agree. I don't remember high speed ramming being called once all qualifications, at least not in the matches I watched or played in. And then suddenly there were 10+ throughout elims. What constitutes high speed ramming? What if two robots moving at "high speeds" hit each other? Who do you penalize? Should a robot moving at a "high speed" be penalized for an opposing robot moving into it's path? Too much left up to the refs to decide.

Besides that I love this game. The strategy is so much more fun than essentially playing a match by yourself, just making sure not to get in your partners way. This does not however make quals any more fun. You really have to prove your worth to those in the top 8 if you want to ensure a spot in the elims. But once you get there the strategies you can plan out with your alliance are so much more fun (and usually more successful).

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by BigJ

I love this game on the game side but the fouls and inconsistent reffing are driving me crazy. The "new Thursday rules" were reffed seemingly completely opposite on Friday and Saturday at the Wisconsin regional from my estimation, giving teams an incorrect idea of how they would be called in eliminations.

The game *could* be fun...if the people responsible for game management were all...

1. consistent
2. competently aware of the rules
3. attentive
4. in possession of sufficient visual acuity to discern things that are happening directly in front of them

In other words, Canadian.

And can we PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE aggressively signal pinning counts (provided you even bother to start counting) like they do in Canada?

In all seriousness, it seems Canadian referee crews are generally praised for their performance. Can anyone corroborate this? If true, I openly wonder what their methods of recruiting, training, and preparation are, and I would like to question why the practices of better-performing crews aren't propagated/mandated by the governing body to other regions where refereeing is less well-regarded.

Here's a thought for HQ - spend some of that stockpiled cash you're sitting on on incentive bonuses for events who grade highly in event quality on post-event feedback surveys distributed to teams. Give RD's and VC's more of an incentive to place resources in the area of quality volunteer recruitment (and then train those individuals using better materials and methods than you currently supply). Also, if event performance is truly horrible, such team surveys would QUICKLY identify events where intervention is warranted (instead of watching the alternative happen - letting years of team abuse at the hands of a certain out of control head ref at a certain regional go by before a very public CD thread finally forced action....)

Even if everything is called straight up legit to the letter of the rules, certain foul situations built into this game can still put a sour taste in the mouth of teams, as Waterloo evidenced.

As far as I could tell, the "Thursday rules" had zero effect in Wisconsin, mainly because I felt an "anything goes" style of gameplay was permitted, especially on Saturday morning.

Refs are supposed to be the "police" of this game. Be overt and passionate in your actions in signaling teams that they are doing wrong. RUTHLESSLY PUNISH THE INEPT AND RECKLESS. Rain down swift justice upon the idiots such that those who actually, you know, "read the manual", can have a chance of success instead of being gutted by frame incursion damage in 3 straight Saturday matches with zero penalties called.

I will say that Week 4 pedestal lighting at Wisconsin seemed very good. So we finally learned how to deal with that major clusterfluge, not that that is any consolation to the teams who played in the earlier weeks. Now let's focus on punishing the guilty and reckless and giving the innocent the freedom to play this game the way it was meant to be played.

Week 4 rant....finis. Let's see what happens Week 5....

[eddie12390]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

And can we PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE aggressively signal pinning counts (provided you even bother to start counting) like they do in Canada?

At least at Buckeye, the refereeing was extremely good in this sense. The referees were very clear when a pinning count was starting and what the current count was and they also showed when the pinning had ended with an easily visible sweep of their arms.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by eddie12390

At least at Buckeye, the refereeing was extremely good in this sense. The referees were very clear when a pinning count was starting and what the current count was and they also showed when the pinning had ended with an easily visible sweep of their arms.

Same at Tech Valley--it was very, very obvious when a pin count was ongoing, and when it had been called off.

I don't think they were being called off correctly--six feet for three seconds--but it was at least clear.

[Niezrecki]

I have to admit that this game can be a little bit less interesting then other games, but I don't think that it is bad. It's a little bit more difficult to show off to sponsors and non invested FIRST members because it is a little bit less comprehensive than other games.

I also entirely understand the G27 updated, but I saw it being called quite often at different events. It just seems annoying that so many deciding factors in games were fouls. Most of the time the fouls were in my favor, but it took away from the overall importance of offensive action and cycling.

[evanperryg]

Originally Posted by BigJ

I love this game on the game side but the fouls and inconsistent reffing are driving me crazy. The "new Thursday rules" were reffed seemingly completely opposite on Friday and Saturday at the Wisconsin regional from my estimation, giving teams an incorrect idea of how they would be called in eliminations.

Exactly. The game itself is really good and introduces a very new style of gameplay to FRC, but at the same time the game is extremely subjective and there are grey areas in many of the most basic rules. Some of the poor reffing is caused by how different referees interpret the rules. At midwest, we found that inbounding from the human player on one side of the field almost always resulted in a foul from the referee on that side, whereas inbounding from the other side was fine.

Originally Posted by BJT

I dont remember the match or teams involved, but at wisconsin, the outcome of an elimination match was changed by 100 points in fouls. In my opinion for there to be 100 points in fouls, there should be no doubt in anyones mind what happened.

This certainly isn't the only instance of this occurring, either. At crossroads, my team had a qualifier against many of the best robots at the event and we ended up winning because of 150 foul points. Although it is a little amusing to be on the receiving end of this issue, it certainly did screw over a couple of great robots.

Originally Posted by mrnoble

unless you are top three, qualification wins and losses really don't matter. Who cares if you have a partner who fouls a lot? Do you think scouts will actually blame your team?

Coming from a second year lead scouter, a lot of teams either don't scout, or do really bad scouting. This should be especially evident with this year's game where certain things are very confusing to track (we actually had to write up definitions for "low-goal attempt" and "floor pass").

[evanperryg]

More on the topic of the game itself, I absolutely love it. No other game has ever been as effective in displaying FIRST's theme of coopertition, and it presents an entirely new style of play that has never been seen before. In games past, an awesome robot could carry their entire alliance without a problem. This year's game makes carrying next to impossible. Instead of 6 robots in colored bumpers scoring points individually, there are two clearly defined alliances playing the game together, in a group effort to score. Compared to previous games, strategies are extremely varied, and can be really unique. That is what makes this game really special, and if penalties weren't so bad, I would argue that this is by far the best game in the history of FRC.

[scooty199]

Coopertition in this game would be great, if true alliances during quals were to actually work.

I joke about this sometimes with friends, but deep down I know it's not funny. There may be matches where teams with kitbots or a functionally limited robot can be told by their alliance partners to either disregard their own strategy or not have any input into how a match should go.

I'm sure there's been occasions this season where a team may tell another "Get of our way, don't mess things up". That's something that isn't inspiring and doesn't help this game's case.

This has been said multiple times before, but conceptually FIRST did a good job with this game. Somewhere between concept and actually implementing and executing this game it got all weird and the game is poor on that front.

[Carl C]

Originally Posted by Abhishek R

On the subject of fouls, I would check out the elims at Waterloo. I'm certain they have all read the rules, but the fouls were out of the teams' control.

Personally, I enjoy the concept and the idea of the game, but it is also quite frustrating as to how subjective this game can be.

I agree. The game itself is great and is a lot of fun to play and watch; the issue is the rules, which give a ludicrous amount of penelty points and put far too much pressure on the referees with its subjectivity.

I am not sure that everyone would call the game horrible, but it is important to contrast it with previous games which did not have many of the issues faced in Aerial Assist.

[Phyrxes]

I was chatting with one of our Alumni on the way back from our event today and we agreed this game is a lot like watching college basketball. Watch a good match up and its an elegant display of coordination and strategies that adapt and flow over the course of the math. Alternatively it can be a jumbled mess of that doesn't appear to be accomplishing much at all.

After watching the progression of our regional event this weekend the more I look forward to district play and the ability to give my students more time behind the glass in a competition environment.

Not my thought but one of our team member's parent likened some matches to small children playing soccer, all the robots in a herd around the ball with no real coordination or play calling.