What do you think of the game?

[Damiaen_Florian]

So everyone at the beginning of and during build season all had their views toward this game on whether they liked it from a spectator perspective or not. From what I heard the views toward this game were generally negative with some people comparing it to the likes of Lunacy. So now that week 1 is all over and we've all seen the game be played legitimately what do you think of it now?

Personally, this game is starting to grow on me. The strategy this year seems to be more important than ever in elims, and to see it all unfold is a true spectacle to watch. Not to mention the amount of defense that is being played makes this game a good ol' fashioned robot rumble. I don't think we've seen that in recent years and it's kind of nice for a change. Although the penalty values do seem to be a bit too high.

[BBray_T1296]

It is a good game and is very exciting to watch, HOWEVER:

-Penalties are kind of ridiculous (calling vs not calling, as well as point values)
-Scoring is unreliable and unfair

Fix these 2 and this is one of the most fun games to watch I have ever seen

[mlantry]

I liked the game from day one and I still like it today even after the play from our first week one event. I like it because it is exciting to watch and their is a lot of strategy behind the game this year.

[Gdeaver]

Chaos, pure chaos and it will only get worse as weeks progress. Major referring changes needed. They need allot more help to keep the game under control. If not changed then this is battle bots and the last robots working win.

[JTEarley]

As human player, I expected this game to be pretty dull, and some of the qualification matches our team (624) played at Alamo this weekend were.

However, our elimimination matches, especially finals, were extremely intense. The game is is definitely growing on me and the team members in the stands told me the same thing.

I think that many people were expecting the game to be relatively simple, with many cycles, but what they got was brutal defense. This happens in football as well. Most people don't enjoy watching defensive games because they tend to be slower, eventually when something breaks through the defense it is amazing.

Overall I think the game is great and just needs to be viewed with a different perspective.

[SenorZ]

I did not think much of the game when it was announced, and many of my students thought it was a joke. But it is much more action packed with good teams on the field.

When there were mostly rookie and 2nd year teams on the field though it looked like no one knew what they were doing. Balls were rolling around, being bumped everywhere. It was like the opening scene from Temple of Doom, chasing the diamond and the antidote.

Defense has played a much bigger role, too... and slamming your opponent! Saw some pretty hard hits taken by robots that didn't seem to be designed to take hard hits.

[sodizzle]

Originally Posted by BBray_T1296

It is a good game and is very exciting to watch, HOWEVER:

-Penalties are kind of ridiculous (calling vs not calling, as well as point values)
-Scoring is unreliable and unfair

Fix these 2 and this is one of the most fun games to watch I have ever seen

This is spot on. Seconded.

[thmeans06]

I like it now that I've seen it. Very exciting and action packed...

What I don't like: consistency in penalty calls. I get that a Ref isn't going to see everything, but come on... Penalties need to be consistent; dare I even question a little favoritism?

This specifically referring to G28: Deliberate or damaging contact with an opponent ROBOT on or inside its FRAME PERIMETER is not allowed.

Either call it for everything and for every robot, or don't call it unless the other robot is obviously damaged from contact. Too much grey area with this rule.

Just my 2 cents.

[jee7s]

Originally Posted by Gdeaver

Chaos, pure chaos and it will only get worse as weeks progress. Major referring changes needed. They need allot more help to keep the game under control. If not changed then this is battle bots and the last robots working win.

+1 on this.

I liked the game all the way through build season. It seemed like great coopertition. But, the change of the contact-inside-frame-perimeter rule from absolutely no contact in previous years to allowing incidental contact inadvertently created battle bots. At Alamo, my team's robot had everything above the bumpers stripped off in two matches, we've been pulled by the back side of our bumpers at least once, and the pool noodles we mounted to illustrate the contact were torn up. Other teams at the competition saw speed controllers ripped out, pneumatic cylinder pistons bent, and drivetrains gummed up with wiring and other robot parts that ended up on the field.

In my opinion, it's not enough to just enforce G28. The rules need to be changed in some fashion to bring down the intensity of the inside the frame perimeter interactions. I don't know what that change is, but if robots keep getting broken like this, I fear we will see teams (particularly newer ones) leave FRC out of frustration or disappointment.

[lsbd4]

I found the game really exciting to watch. However, like many others have said, I think the referees have way too much to pay attention to. There should also be 2 scorekeepers ( one to watch the blue alliance and one to watch the red alliance). The ref should have the responsibility of penalties and dead balls.

[Wayne Doenges]

Originally Posted by Gdeaver

Chaos, pure chaos and it will only get worse as weeks progress. Major referring changes needed. They need allot more help to keep the game under control. If not changed then this is battle bots and the last robots working win.

+2 on this
Why do you need to go full tilt boogy, across the field, to slam into another robot? Is it just to see how much damage you can do to another robot? If so, you are in the wrong arena. Try Battle Bots.
My motto is "Do unto others as you would have done to you". I'm more then happy going toe to toe in a shoving match to see who's better, but to hit another robot at full speed
*this is my opinion only*

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by BBray_T1296

It is a good game and is very exciting to watch, HOWEVER:

-Penalties are kind of ridiculous (calling vs not calling, as well as point values)
-Scoring is unreliable and unfair

Fix these 2 and this is one of the most fun games to watch I have ever seen

Third-ed.

It is a very difficult game to play because the three drive teams have to be so synchronous with each other. Ego and over-confidence are killers, as is distraction.

With our heavy reliance on our alliance partners to get assist points (and thus wins) we were left twisting in the wind when they were unable (or unwilling, believe it or not) to assist in scoring, which lead to a few disappointing losses. This made us very sensitive to drive team compatibility much more than in prior years when making our pick list.

To think that if we had won one more match (and at least one was decided by foul points!) we could have been 2nd seed...

We also had to have several auto scores corrected for a wide variety of reasons. The refs are really over-loaded.

[cmrnpizzo14]

I love the game when it is played well, I am frustrated by it when it is played cluelessly. When teams got together in elims and actually executed strategies the game was fluid and good to watch. Even huge pileups and defensive struggles I was ok with because (At least in eliminations) occurred during the end of matches when both teams were struggling to score the game winning point. See F2 of Alamo if you are dubious.

I showed this to my non-FIRST friend, he loved it. Direct quote: "I would be totally ok with skipping this calc lecture to go watch this." He thought that the strategies required for teams to succeed was incredible. 1772, 148, 118 and 624 were his favorites. It took him a minute to realize how teams could just gain a massive amount of points with one shot but once I explained the assists everything clicked for him.

[indubitably]

I really like this game, and I think the overwhelming negativity toward it will calm down when we start to see changes take place and teams get used to the rules a bit more. The deep strategy this game presents got cast aside a bit by the fouls and bounce out shots in week 1, but week 1 always has problems so I'm willing to overlook it for now.

I was a bit confused at the beginning of the season about why they chose to go without an endgame, but I must say, endings are way more exciting this year without one. Regardless of how accurate the scoring has been so far, the real time scoring is a great representation of what the official score will be, knowing exactly how many points an alliance needs to come back makes for some thrilling matches. Only having attended Central Illinois regional so far, I have already seen about 4 very memorable endings, 2012 was the only other game in recent years I can say something like that about.

[TedG]

I would have liked to seen what the penalty points were for up on the board.

At GSD, we were seeing teams loosing by 100+ penalty points and it wasn't obvious why. I hear most of them were human player issues, but am not sure.

I think it took to the second day for the refs and volunteers to figure it out too.

I also didn't see consistant ball handling by the volunteers to the human players, it got confusing.

Human players weren't sure if they were "allowed" to get the ball off the peditstal, or they were going to be handed it, or if they could put it on the field.

And yes, what others have said, the games were exciting to watch, but some teams were playing "hit the robot so they'll drop the ball" or so it appeared.

These are just my observations from the stands... the first games are always a learning curve.. unfortunately.