San Diego: Tech Foul in Finals

[pigpenguin]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

Almost no teams can make up a 50 point deficit, especially against a good alliance. If a ref makes a mistake or what some would consider a bad call, it's essentially game over for any alliance which wasn't going to blow out the other alliance anyway.

Fouls exist to get people to play the game fairly. The current fouls seem to punish teams for stuff which may or may not be within their control. Imagine if tech fouls were 500 points. People wouldn't be any less likely to commit them. There's just no good reason for the fouls, especially tech fouls, to be this high.

I think this is the problem at the moment. The technical fouls are punishing teams way too much especially for what are, in most cases, accidents. However on the flip side if they are too small teams won't try to avoid them as much and possibly (although I know of no such teams) abuse these fouls... At the end of the day it sucks that this happens but game design is tricky and stuff happens. Although I would have loved to see one more round those final matches were intense.

[DanielleSisk]

Here is the logic I can see behind the foul being called:

It looks as though the human player is attempting to throw the ball to 2485 when it hits 330. BUT then 2485 never goes to retrieve the ball, they appear to play defense against 330 (as per the second video). 3250 actually ends picking up the ball in the last few seconds (as shown in the first video). This could lead the ref to believe that the ball was intentionally thrown at 330s robot and not intended for the following 2485 to inbound.

[mathking]

I watched both posted videos a bunch of times and it seems clear that the human player is trying to get his alliance the ball and should not have been a foul. But I will be honest when I watched the first posted one the first time (and mind you I could not see the human player) it looked like the ball was thrown at 330. So I understand how a referee could make the call. And not reverse it because they can't look at video. As quite a few posters have said, the high point value for inadvertent fouls is a problem. I think smaller point values would make for a better game. If you are really concerned with keeping play clean perhaps the point values ratchet up for multiple instances of the same infraction in the same match. One thing I think that would dramatically improve the game would be to have six scorekeepers, whose only job is to watch one team for possessions and scores. Then the referees could look just for fouls and not have a divided responsibility.

[Karthik]

Let me preface this by saying what an incredibly difficult job the referees have this season. They have too much to watch, and are working with sub-optimal input system. It would be difficult to find fault with any referee call this season, just because of the terrible position they've been put in by the written rules and Q&A.

Even if this was an intentional move, the fact that something so inconsequential was worth 50 points is mind boggling to me. From my vantage point, this seems completely accidental, and definitely not warranting a foul. I feel bad for both alliances here, the red alliance for having to lose due to a ridiculous penalty value, and the blue alliance for having their well earned victory being drawn into question. I also feel for the referees, who are in for a long season of being the focal point of match results. These overwhelming penalties for inconsequential actions are definitely marring Aerial Assist.

[wlaroche]

Originally Posted by Karthik

Let me preface this by saying what an incredibly difficult job the referees have this season. They have too much to watch, and are working with sub-optimal input system. It would be difficult to find fault with any referee call this season, just because of the terrible position they've been put in by the written rules and Q&A.

Even if this was an intentional move, the fact that something so inconsequential was worth 50 points is mind boggling to me. From my vantage point, this seems completely accidental, and definitely not warranting a foul. I feel bad for both alliances here, the red alliance for having to lose due to a ridiculous penalty value, and the blue alliance for having their well earned victory being drawn into question. I also feel for the referees, who are in for a long season of being the focal point of match results. These overwhelming penalties for inconsequential actions are definitely marring Aerial Assist.

Glad to hear that others see what kind of job the referees have this year. It takes all of Thursday just to learn the tablets while having to learn how the game is going to be played. There are two different screens that can take a couple of seconds to navigate between just to enter fouls, then a couple of seconds to navigate back so the can enter the points accumulated. While navigating the screens your eyes are off the field and things happen. When we look up situations can look like penalties and they get called. But we all would do our best to help each other out to make sure the points were added though, the radios are well used during the match for this and for penalties.

This is the first time in my history with first that game was designed to be this rough. When standing 4 feet from a demo derby of robots beating each other up situations can look like a foul. Please be kind to your referees all the crashing and hard hitting can make intent and who initiates the contact really hard to figure out.

Not knowing how your regional was played by the human players, it looked like the ball was thrown with some force wether to their alliance robot or at the blue ball. In our regional the balls were barely making it on the field because they were thrown in so passively all weekend (they did not want the technical for passing the plane). So looking at how the ball was thrown and the the fact that the red robot playing strong defense for so long before the ball was thrown, and little to no actions to go and pick the ball up after the blue ball was thrown towards the goal, I could see why the referees said the red robot was not playing the ball thus throwing the ball at the blue robot. It looks like the red robot was coming in to intercept the blue robot and pin them against the wall to stop there movement while the ball was thrown in the direction of the the scuffle, I say this from a referees perspective who was standing 4 feet from a demo derby all weekend.