What is missing from this years game?

[Don Wright]

OK...I'm SURE there's a thread somewhere about this already, but I searched and couldn't find it.

So, I attended the Great Lakes Regional this past weekend and had many family members there along with a lot of co-workers.

And while those of us who are deeply involved with FIRST might have a totally different opinion due to the fact that we all have our favorite teams to root for or against, here is their common opinion of the game.

It's boring.

And most everyone left after an hour or two.

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.

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.

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.

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...

[Brandon Holley]

For anybody in FIRST this game is going to be exciting, cmon it has robots in it....but like you said for the off the street comer, it does look kinda boring.

True, the past 2 years there has been a "big finish" type of thing for the last couple of seconds. That "big finish" still exists, its just that it looks like the rest of the game...for example:

Red has there home row all capped, and the side 2 of the middle row......Blue also has there home row all capped, but the center goal......Blue makes a move down to the red home zone with a 10 seconds left and caps their middle goal, giving a 23 point swing to the blue alliance....a VERY big difference, but it still just looks like they capped a regular goal

I think this game is great, but I can see how some people may think that its not.

[Silent_Stryker]

[quote=MORT~11]Red has there home row all capped, and the side 2 of the middle row......Blue also has there home row all capped, but the center goal......Blue makes a move down to the red home zone with a 10 seconds left and caps their middle goal, giving a 23 point swing to the blue alliance....a VERY big difference, but it still just looks like they capped a regular goal[quote]

we did that at GLR and it helped us win the first round and eventually make it to the finals

[Mr. Van]

In a word. Nothing.

This is a great game. If we want to knit-pnick, we could use an additional task to provide scoring... like creating a stack of tetras on the ground or something like that, but all in all, Triple Play stands very well on its own.

One thing that is missing from last year is the 10, 20, 30 (or even greater) seconds at the end of the match with robots hanging around and time simply ticking away. What is also missing from previous year's games is the element that scores so high (or multiplies the score) that once it is accomplished, the opposing alliance might as well shut down.

As far as "audience off the street" goes, we all know that FIRST must do a much better job at getting people to go to the event at all... Having said that, Triple Play is really easy to follow. Tell people to look for the rows. Rows win the game. At the end of the round, count the tetras & count the rows - you'll have a good idea who wins. Once you realize that high scores are in the rows, the game is very exciting.

BTW, none of the "popular sports" games (football, etc.) have a "big finish". They are all "everyone doing the same thing over and over".

To the Game Design Team: Thank you for Triple Play!

-Mr. Van
Coach, 599
(Game Announcer at PNWR)

[pakrat]

ok, so two years ago, it was easy you push crates into the carpet thats your robots color, one point per box and 25 points for being on top of a platform at the end. (stacks didn't come into play much at my regionals)

last year, you put balls (which were labelled with point values, very average Joe friendly) into your goals and then hang from a bar, and you can tell very easily if a team hangs (they are swinging around)

this year put put stuff wherever, and its worth random (and small) point values. then you dont go behoind the line because its not strategic and dont get a bonus at the end.

[Shu Song]

Originally Posted by pakrat

ok, so two years ago, it was easy you push crates into the carpet thats your robots color, one point per box and 25 points for being on top of a platform at the end. (stacks didn't come into play much at my regionals)

last year, you put balls (which were labelled with point values, very average Joe friendly) into your goals and then hang from a bar, and you can tell very easily if a team hangs (they are swinging around)

this year put put stuff wherever, and its worth random (and small) point values. then you dont go behoind the line because its not strategic and dont get a bonus at the end.

interesting way of putting it, but a good point nonetheless.

I would have liked it much better if they explained the score somehow after every match. It becomes VERY confusing when trying to figure out what's capped and whats not and goal is owned by whom. So by the end of the first day I just didn't bother and just trusted the score, but I hear that in Arizona Regional, they messed up the scoring/ranking; that's no good.

[Not2B]

My mom (59 years young) loved the game - she thought it was exciting. Came from Cleveland to watch us at GLR. She liked watching the different arms lifting the things into the air. And she liked it when some of them fell over.

But she also said she had no idea how to win, how to score, and she also thought the refs didn't know how to score it either. (Due to the long break after the game ended and the score was announced.)

So, she was utterly confused, but thought it was interesting to watch anyways. Visually a very cool game, but hard to understand.

Kinda like watching underwater shark tag on ESPN 2 at 3:00am. Wild to watch, but I don't get it.

[chinckley]

The announcer at GLR did a good job explaining penalties. I hear that there were many fewer than the first week regionals. I liked the game. It gave our team (a 2nd year team) a fighting chance.

Also, given that Team 66 was the only team I saw or have heard of to score a vision tetra, I would not say that the game was too easy. Otherwise, I think we all would be able to do it. It is as hard as the autonomous was last year. Last year we accomplished it once in a practice round. This year we pushed a vision tetra but could never lift it.

I thought it was exciting this year.

It may be that FIRST was looking for a way for teams to not drop out. It seemed that lots of teams did not come back this year. I am not sure if it was funding or what. Some Regionals did not fill up this year. If they make it too challenging they run the risk of teams dropping out. This year they said their goal was to allow all teams to build a robot that could compete and yet challenge the long term teams to dig deeper and do more with the code and strategy. It was fun to see that each team had a chance.

I can hardly wait to see what next year brings.

[Simon Strauss]

yeah, definitely a big ending would help. I cant really speak from first hand experience yet because my Regional hasn't happened yet, but from watching the videos teams put up i think that passing the line at the end of the match isn't big enough and it might be more interesting if there was more human player involvement(not just having people load tetras).

The Game still kicks $@#$@#$@# though

[Adam Richards]

You must have had a really boring regional. The Orlando Regional at the UCF Arena was incredible to watch. I was exhausted watching the final matches (warning: NEVER PLAY HALO2 UNTIL 2:00am BEFORE THE FINAL DAY), but I still was finding it to be so fun to watch. Even though my team placed 24th(/47), it was great to just watch the matches and see all of the incredible scoring that some teams like 233 (The Pink Team) or 1402 (Freedom Force) were pulling off.

I also noticed that our regional had less penalties than VCU had. While VCU refs were dishing out penalties, the only ones that we saw were for the occasional bumping while in the loading zone or the accidental tap of a tetra while not in the loading zone.

If you have another regional/nats, just ignore what happened at your last regional, and hope it turns out to be a better competition.

[Koko Ed]

What is missing from this years game?
Updated information from the regionals.

[RyanMcE]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

What is missing from this years game?
Updated information from the regionals.

How about accurate information for the regionals?

According to the PNW regional results, TRC-492 lost two games (nope), was seeded third (nope), played itself twice in the finals (nope), and there was only one qualification match (nope), which occured after the playoffs (nope)...

[Shu Song]

Agreed, variation in robots has always been FIRST's trademark. But somehow, that variation in robot construction turned into variation in strategy. With all the robots able to do the same thing, strategy becomes essential. During build season, when teams were showcasing their robots on CD, I saw that each robot looked just like the one before it, with the only variation being the lift mechanism, be it an arm or forklift.

I highly doubt that FIRST overlooked this aspect of the game, and the more likely scenario is that FIRST wants us to focus more on strategy, rather than design. In past years, pre-match alliance meetings were over in minutes, but now, each of our meetings were up to 5 minutes, even 10 sometimes. And our pre-elimination meeting took from the end of alliance pairings to the beginning of elims.

I'm not so sure how I feel about this shift in tactics by FIRST. I would have prefered variations robot design AND emphasis on strategy.

[Kevin Sevcik]

I'll agree that the game is probably uninteresting for your average joe spectator. Two robots might be fighting over capping the center goal at the end of the match, but chances are someone in the stands doesn't know what's so important about putting it there until after the match is over. Last year, hang from the bar, get 50 points, big finish. This year, cap the center goal, get 3 points, or 13 points, or 23, 33, or 43.

Also, I'll agree with the lack of variety this year. The one real thing you can do is pick up a tetra to score points. Either you stack it, or you didn't manage to make a good enough arm and you toss it underneath. So there's only so much variety to be seen in designs when everyone has to concentrate on doing the exact same thing. I saw two crazy screw contraptions for picking up tetras at GLR. You'd think that'd be unique enough to only find one at a regional, but everyone has to do the exact same thing, so no.

Aside: From what I've seen of all the scoring displays, etc., it looks like FIRST has gone with a completely new scoring system this year and they're still working all the bugs out. Last year's system was mostly brand new as well. (I think the software was based on some team's prior efforts) Last year there were lots of glitches and oddness in the first couple of weeks, and even all the way till Lone Star when I was running it. By Atlanta, last year's scoring system was working very well, so one can hope that they'll get all the bugs out of this year's new system by then as well.

[rocknthehawk]

I noticed this also early on...Friday morning/afternoon at BAE was for the most part kind of boring, unless you really had an idea of what was actually going on. I don't think it really got interesting until the final matches.

Whats missing would be an immidiate understanding of whats going on. Last year you could get an idea because it was fairly simple...with so many things to do/ so many penalties this year it's hard for someone thats never even seen the game to really get an idea of whats going on.