Best FRC Games

[IKE]

Originally Posted by nuggetsyl

I love the 2006 game. I think we should do a replay of that game just one change. Use footballs.

OCCRA did a football game a few years back. I was amazed at how easy it was to "drive up on" a football. They were using hig grip footballs, so maybe some leather ones would be different.

[bduddy]

IMO the fact that Logomotion, which I'd put in the bottom 5, is at #8 indicates that people are just voting for what they know, which sort of ruins the whole thing. Oh well...

Does anyone know why Rug Rage is so far below everything else, even Diabolical Dynamics? Was it that bad, or do people just not like the name, or...?

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

I think FIRST Frenzy is now old enough that the large proportion of FRC has forgotten about it. Per Mark McLeod, the mean FRC team is only 4.4 years old, and the median team is almost certainly even younger. Even the high school students during FIRST Frenzy are probably starting to reach the point in their careers where they may have enough other time commitments that they don't mentor teams anymore.

As a quick approximation, the 1300th team on last year's team list is 3058, and their rookie season was 2009.

Our team was around in 2004, but I wasn't - I started in 2009, our seniors started in 2010, and we only have a couple of mentors left from our 2004 team.

It just goes to show that FIRST can safely recycle big chunks of a game from 8 years ago and not bore most of the people in FIRST. If they do it in a smart way, of course. Based on most of the comments I've seen about FIRST Frenzy, it would probably be pretty fun if they paid homage to the 2004 game with a new game that revisited the basic game with new twists.

[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by bduddy

IMO the fact that Logomotion, which I'd put in the bottom 5, is at #8 indicates that people are just voting for what they know, which sort of ruins the whole thing. Oh well...

Does anyone know why Rug Rage is so far below everything else, even Diabolical Dynamics? Was it that bad, or do people just not like the name, or...?

I strongly disagree. Logomotion overall was a very well designed and executed game compared to many others (i.e. stack attack, lunacy and overdrive). The tasks were simple yet allowed for a huge range in execution at all levels of experience, it was visually impactfull, the audience could follow it, and it was an always exciting game to watch.

Diabolical Dynamics has many reasons why people argue over it it but the main reason it is so maligned is that it was 4 vs 0. People didn't like going against the clock instead of a live competition.

[Bob Steele]

Originally Posted by Donut

I'm a little surprised at how far down FIRST Frenzy is in the rankings. If you go look at some discussions here on CD from the mid to late 2000's it often rose to the top just behind Aim High. It's only one spot above Stack Attack (by a healthy margin though) which is certainly in the running for worst game ever.

I agree with the sentiments about Breakaway here. It's the season I've been least involved in FIRST since joining in high school so I was more of a spectator than anything else at our regional. It had some good Finals matches but outside of that was very difficult to watch from a spectator view due to the struggles in scoring.

If you look at the site and look at individuals with 10+ years of experience, First Frenzy is first followed by Aim High. I think another version of First Frenzy with three robots on a side would be pretty interesting to play... although I am not sure if there was enough room on the field to play six robots... the center steps and hanging area took up a great deal of room. Perhaps a version of First Frenzy without the steps and with 4 movable goals.

I am not sure how individuals who have only experienced the last few games can rank those old games. I don't feel qualified to rank the first few games because I didn't play them... I wish the survey had asked that question too...the best we can do is to screen those with less experience and see what individuals with experience in at least 10+ years of games think ...

I don't mean to dismiss the younger members but i really don't know how you can rate a game if you haven't played it or at least seen lots of videos of the game (which are hard to find for the early games...)

[TheMadCADer]

Originally Posted by CalTran

Alas, if only figuring out what makes or breaks a game were that simple. Particularly in the method that FIRST presents the games, it's hard to think outside the normal configuration when Breakaway was described best as robot soccer or Rebound Rumble as robot basketball. The description really drives the design, as many teams forget that Breakaway was not soccer reliant, but simply a name of the game where the goal was transport a ball to a hole in the wall.

Personally, I'm a Breakaway fan (With heavy bias as it was my rookie season.) Everything that year, from being the third pick of the second alliance at Greater Kansas City with 16 and 1625, to rising to the #1 Seed and first alliance captains in Oklahoma City, to striding across the floor of the Georgia Dome, was amazing. The robots, IMHO, were totally different that year too. As stated, it takes an eye that sees past the exterior generic box shape and sees what's within the box that truly amazed me.

Coincidentally it was my rookie year as well. I couldn't stand watching matches, mostly because of the frustration of having to see a bunch of teams in qualifications try to simply push the balls into the goals and continuously have it bounce out or roll back down. Unless there was a team (or, if you got lucky, teams) with a good shooter on the field it was simply a robotic interpretation of Sisyphus and the boulder.

I will concede that there most certainly were a bunch of different ways that teams built their robots, though I found them to not make as much difference as in other years. Most other games tended to have a couple of different 'positions' to play, each requiring a distinctly styled robot. In 2009 'shooters' and 'dumpers' played the game very differently and couldn't be interchanged. In 2008 you had tiny but fast lap-bots weaving in between hurdlers like 16 and 1114 that would shoot trackballs across the field. Heck, in 2007 each team chose between any of three 'classes' with different height and weight limits. But in 2010, any rear or middle zone shooting robot could play ball-pusher in the front zone, and any good ball pusher still had a good ball-grabber and decent kicker, so they could move back as well (though obviously each robot and driver had a position they liked best).

I guess my point would be that there wasn't much in the game that necessitated making distinct design 'direction' choices and strategizing around the trade-offs associated with them.

[Donut]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

I think FIRST Frenzy is now old enough that the large proportion of FRC has forgotten about it. Per Mark McLeod, the mean FRC team is only 4.4 years old, and the median team is almost certainly even younger. Even the high school students during FIRST Frenzy are probably starting to reach the point in their careers where they may have enough other time commitments that they don't mentor teams anymore.

I agree wholeheartedly. Just as anecdotal evidence I know of only 1 other student who was on 498 in 2004 that is still involved in FIRST, and only 2 of our mentors from that season are still involved.

I think a replay of some elements of FIRST Frenzy would be awesome. A big key to that game is that the end game is worth a lot of points (10 scored balls equivalent per robot) and that the end game is shared, which made it almost impossible for all robots to score it. The only shared end game since then is Lunacy where either alliance could score the super cells. This made for interesting tactics because some alliances would go for the end game as soon as possible since it could deny their opponents the end game bonus. Our elimination alliance used this tactic at least once, hanging 2 robots and then only making 3 of your human player shots still scored 115 which was hard to overcome if your opponents had no room to hang due to your robot positioning. However hanging early runs the risk that your now un-defended opponents go crazy and put up 150 in ball points.

I totally understand why a shared end game would have been a horrible idea for many recent games, but I do wish that competitive element would be bright back.

[Donut]

It's interesting to note that for both the 7-9 and 10+ years in FRC groups the 2004-2007 games make up 4 of the top 5. Is that just nostalgia from when these FIRSTers were in high school or was the GDC on top of their game?