Human players and FIRST games

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by martin417

FIRST has a stated goal to inspire kids to enter the field of engineering, math, and science. How inspiring is it for kids to design and build the best robot on the field, only to lose the game because the high school quarterback landed a supercell in their trailer from all the way across the field? (I am not saying this event actually happened, it is just a what if question). In my opinion, it does exactly the opposite. It tells kids that no matter how well they may do in school, no matter what great inventions they create, the person with the greatest physical skill and athletic ability will usually win.

2009 was 2009. There were angry threads back then, and I think that FIRST learned a lesson. I'm not going to say that '09 was bad. It was just a greater challenge of the game. Robots had to be aware of other robots on the field and the threat from a potentially devastating human player.

I don't quite understand where the anti-human player feeling about this game is coming from. It was made perfectly clear that throwing or feeder slot loading is perfectly legal, I'm sure there were many discussions about this on this very forum. And at a certain point, it was purely a design choice.

As for how much the human player will change things, I can tell you that even the worst human player can get the tube to half way. And getting the tube half way is a lot better than running to the feeder slot.

Instead of thinking of this as something that's holding back science and technology, try to think of it as another part of the challenge. At the very beginning of the year, people base their strategies and robots off how they think the game will play out.

Whether you think it's fortunate or unfortunate, the human player position this year seems to matter, whether it's more or less than previous years, it still matters. Never the less, it's still a part of the game that we all have play.

- Sunny