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Re: Do you LIKE the game this year?
As a veteran team, we LOVE it! I've always wanted another game similar in nature to "Aim High"! I think the public will like this game, especially in the regional elims and at Championships when you have several teams that can shoot.
Now to my concerns about this game, and it really doesn't have anything to do with the way the game was designed. Aim High had a couple of ways to score, including the corner goals, where you could drop balls into the bottom goal for a single point. We were a relatively young team at the time (I think it was our 4th season), and while we could occasionally score in the upper goal, we also knew we could score in the lower goal, and we could play defense. As we discovered in Aim High, building a shooter is not a trivial task, and building one that can shoot from more than one spot on the field is going to be even harder. However, since that is the main object of this game, teams are going to try to build just that, and, like we were in 2006, many will be very ineffective. We did do a good job of scoring in the 1-point goal, and playing defense. It was enough to get us selected as a 3rd round alliance pick.
Like Aim High, this game still has those opportunities for teams to score points, without having to build a complex shooter. Rookie/younger teams should be building a bot that has the capability to climb and balance on the bridge, and that they make that a priority! 10 balancing points is 3 made shots at the high goal, 5 made shots at the middle goal, or 10 made shots at the low goal! Yet, since we are still in the middle of the build season, hope springs eternal, and many teams I've worked with say "We want to be a shooter, and we 'know' we can do it." Some may very well do it, but many won't, and will spend a large part of the match trying to score a single shot.
Hopefully, teams will work to build bots that can at least get some of those "easier" points:
* Bridge balancing, as mentioned above
* Dumpers into low/mid goal (can be done easily from the front of the fender, or from the side where the fender and alliance wall meet)
* Simple shooters, maximized to shoot from the spots mentioned above (that's what we did in Aim High)
If they do those types of things, we see some good matches, otherwise I fear we will have some matches where the only points come from the penalties, if they can even cross the bridge/barrier to put them self in position for a penalty.
Overall, I rate it an 8/10 - Aim High would be my 10!
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