Why does everyone hate this game so much?

[Anthony Galea]

Originally Posted by 3175student17

2) 'fouls decide too many matches': If teams are drawing fouls, they should be more careful, and READ THE MANUAL. Also, if you notice that your future alliance partners are getting fouls, tell them what they are doing and how to stop. When you are scouting for eliminations, a good thing to rank on MIGHT BE to make sure they don't get many fouls. There is a reason Technical Fouls are 50 points. THEY DONT WANT THOSE THINGS HAPPENING. Don't do those things. Also, fouls decide games every year.

It seems this this section is being taken wrong, and I can see where that can come from.
I would just like to point out that this is NOT referencing any unpreventable fouls. This section is referring to G40, and intentional infractions of G12, but mostly G40.

[falconmaster]

Originally Posted by MrForbes

Very good observation.

I agree!

[Alex2614]

Originally Posted by 3175student17

I keep reading these threads, and people seem to think this game is terrible.
People are saying this game is 'worse than 2003', 'fouls decide too many matches', 'if you have one really bad alliance member, you will lose'. This negativity is just terrible for FIRST. I feel like most people never gave this game a fair chance, just because it is a little different.

1) 'Worse than 2003': I wasn't around in 2003 for the game so I may be incorrect, but from what I've heard, what was bad was that it was nearly impossible to score after autonomous, and robot parts were on the field after almost each match from poor field setup. In this game, scoring is possible after autonomous. This is clearly evidenced by the scores that are being put up after autonomous. Also, the field is well set up, with no field elements causing damage without the fault of a team.

2) 'fouls decide too many matches': While in Week 1, teams may have drawn fouls which decided some matches, that has been fixed. If teams are drawing fouls, they should be more careful, and READ THE MANUAL. Also, if you notice that your future alliance partners are getting fouls, tell them what they are doing and how to stop. When you are scouting for eliminations, a good thing to rank on MIGHT BE to make sure they don't get many fouls. There is a reason Technical Fouls are 50 points. THEY DONT WANT THOSE THINGS HAPPENING. Don't do those things. Also, fouls decide games every year.

3) 'if you have one really bad alliance member, you will lose': No. This is how most team sports work, so why should it be different here? It should be a team effort. In football, you cannot have just a good quarterback who carries the team. You have to have receivers who catch the ball. In baseball, you cannot have a good pitcher who holds the tem to one run, if your hitters cannot score.

Honestly, I think this game is one of the best. For once, you can be a 6, 7, or 8 captain, and not abandon all hope once you are set there. Upsets happen more often, defense is a viable strategy, and spectators are entertained. I would like to hear a legitimate reason that this game is bad.

Sorry if this seems ranty

Thanks for this! Very well said. And actually, at Palmetto in week one, the only time I saw fouls determine the outcome of matches (which happens every year) is when teams blatantly disregard the manual (mostly accidental, of course). If you stay within the boundaries the GDC has set for you, fouls will not happen as much. I think our alliances had only had fouls called against us a couple times throughout the duration of the event. And rarely did it call the match in our case (not for every match, but for the ones in which we played). At WEEK ONE. I don't know what was different at Palmetto, but I haven't seen a lot of things people are ranting and raving about.

What 3175student17 has summarized, in particular 2 and 3 HAPPENS EVERY YEAR. And every year, I see the same complaints.

First of all, when IS a game exactly like we (and the GDC) imagined it would be by the time April comes around? I've only been involved with FRC for 7 years, but I can't recall a time (other than MAYBE 2008/2012) that had every element of the game stay the same from the visions of kickoff to Einstein. But as far as gameplay itself goes, it's pretty similar to what I imagined. It just turns out to be better and more exciting than I thought it would be.

That being said, my team has only competed in one event so far (Palmetto) and will be traveling to Knoxville this week. So, I only have one event's point of view, and admittedly have not seen other events other than maybe a match here or there via webcast.

I really like this game. I was extremely skeptical at first (which isn't unusual for me), but even going into the week one event, I thought the game would be a total flop. We have some of the worst luck when it comes to reliable alliance partners in qualifications. I thought it was going to be a mess for everyone.

What I saw, however, was completely the opposite. There were a couple matches that saw little to no collaboration, and it showed in the scores. But because this game forces teams to collaborate to be successful (even more so than 2012), most teams put forth the extra effort to do so. There were countless extremely close matches often determined by a single last-minute score. It was down to the wire ALL THE TIME, and proved to be a very stressful game, which is a good thing in my opinion. It's more engaging and fun.

To quote our wonderful coach, we can't control what happens on the field. What I see in this game is a lot more of a real-world experience. For example, we saw some awesome defense, but some even better clever replies to the defensive strategies.

Again, I admittedly do not have as much experience with this game as I would like, and this is my first time posting in this thread. I'm sharing a semi-outsiders' point of view. I like the extra challenge of having to collaborate with alliance partners. I think that whatever the circumstances may be, the best and healthiest thing we can do as a community is work with it. If FIRST makes decisions to alter the gameplay, then our students need to come up with clever solutions. It makes life more interesting and challenging, and is definitely preparing our students for the real world. We can never control what happens on the field... That's one of the most exciting parts about FIRST. You never know what you're going to find.

[Brandon_L]

Remind me to guide my kids to build a non-robust robot next season, because all you need is a poorly designed robot and the tech foul gods are on your side.

GDC needs to be fired. Straight up, just going to say it. Go home. I'm tired of you.

We lost too many matches we should have won, including elim matches, because of this bull. With everything else you've put other teams through, you need to make a change. Have you never attended an FRC event yourself? Seriously, what do you expect to happen with one game piece and 3 robots? two robots are doing NOTHING at any given point. And then you have the nerve to put out a rule that basically says "don't touch other robots"? Why in the world was "what if a ball becomes stuck in a robot" an afterthought? Are you kidding me? Are you even aware that most robots at district levels and regionals in some locations can rarely even play the game? We're cheated out of more then 20 MAR points and at risk of not attending because we're sitting on the bubble now.

My kids, my mentors, and myself poured our heart and soul into this robot to make it what it is, including our student captain who is #2 in his class. He is not #1 because of the time he willingly put into this program. We spent countless hours in design to make sure not a single part would fail at events because of anticipated rough defense. And we've only experianced one failure which was a quick and easy fix after two events. We walked away today with the Quality Award, at the cost of being punished on the field for it. You tell me what to do when I have to tell my kids there is nothing we can do other then be at the mercy of inconsistent reffing, poor calls, and the worst rulebook in FRC history all because they worked too hard. How am I supposed to handle this?

GDC if you want to inspire teams to enter engineering fields, you're doing it wrong. Very wrong.

Hey JVN and Vex folk, nows the time to start up a FRC-Sized VEX event. I'm sure more then enough teams will be happy to jump ship at this point.

OP, this game is good in concept. Its execution is amazingly terrible. Its uninspiring and bringing out the worst in people. This is why everyone hates this game.

[Yipyapper]

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

Remind me to guide my kids to build a non-robust robot next season, because all you need is a poorly designed robots and the tech foul gods are on your side.

GDC needs to be fired. Straight up, just going to say it. Go home. I'm tired of you.

We lost 6 matches we should have won, including elim matches, because of this bull. With everything else you've put other teams through, you need to make a change. Have you never attended an FRC event yourself? Seriously, what do you expect to happen with one game piece and 3 robots? two robots are doing NOTHING at any given point. And then you have the nerve to put out a rule that basically says "don't touch other robots"? Why in the world was "what if a ball becomes stuck in a robot" an afterthought? Are you kidding me? Are you even aware that most robots at district levels and regionals in some locations can rarely even play the game? We're cheated out of more then 20 MAR points and at risk of not attending because we're sitting on the bubble now.

My kids, my mentors, and myself poured our heart and soul into this robot to make it what it is, including our captain who is #2 in his class. He is not #1 because of the time he put into this program. We spent countless hours in design to make sure not a single part would fail at events because of anticipated rough defense. And we've only experianced one failure which was a quick and easy fix after two events. We walked away today with the Quality Award, at the cost of being punished on the field for it. You tell me what to do when I have to tell my kids there is nothing we can do other then be at the mercy of inconsistent reffing, poor calls, and the worst rulebook in FRC history. How am I supposed to handle this?

GDC if you want to inspire teams to enter engineering fields, you're doing it wrong. Very wrong.

Hey JVN and Vex folk, nows the time to start up a FRC-Sized VEX event. I'm sure more then enough teams will be happy to jump ship at this point.

OP, this game is good in concept. Its execution is amazingly terrible. Its uninspiring and bringing out the worst in people.

Yes.

You cannot give Reputation to the same post twice.

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

I like this game. That said, I'll know how much I like it come week 7 when the state championships roll around.

I think one of my favorite aspects this year is the unpredictability of the elimination rounds. Really, any alliance seed could win the whole thing, as opposed to previous years where Alliance #1 seemed to win an overwhelming majority. This past week, all three MI districts were won by non-#1 seeds. I can't ever remember that happening before in a single week.

Kinda reminds me of the unpredictability of march madness, which everybody loves.

[PayneTrain]

It is really disappointing to see a game that is probably at its core the most exciting game to watch in FRC be marred by poorly thought out rules with massive gray areas. It's like they turned in the outiline and first page of the essay but didn't deliver on the rest. It just bums me out.

And I'm not on a team who built a kickin' robot that might get left out of a higher level of competition over the poor administration of the game.

To further elaborate, this game has amplified a lot of things that are both good and bad about FIRST and the FRC community as a whole. FRC can't brush weaker machines and teams under the rug this year. FRC teams who look like pillars of the community are going through emotional breakdowns. Volunteers are either gettign thrown into the fire or doing part of the throwing.

[jeremylee]

Originally Posted by cstelter

I put our video of Wisconsin Regional Quarter Final 2 match 3 on You Tube: http://youtu.be/sbJUjhtlHLs.

I see flags waived for 1 red technical, 2 blue technicals, and 1 red foul. I only see penalty points scored for the 2 blue technicals and the 1 red foul? Odd.

Looks to me red initiated the tie up twice playing defense on blue. It also looks like red initiated the final pull apart the 2nd time driving away from blue at which point the robot then became disabled. Technical on blue only for this? Or was it to be a technical on both and the red wasn't scored?

The 2nd blue technical appears to occur at the 1 minute mark when the head ref points to the red robot on the right as they moved in/out of a defensive position triggering the 2nd blue flag wave. Correct call?

Quarter Final 2 Match 2 is another story of a match ending with penalties potentially swinging the outcome. A similar tie up occurred between the same robots with penalties accessed upon them separating. Maybe someone has video of this also?

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by Zebra_Fact_Man

I like this game. That said, I'll know how much I like it come week 7 when the state championships roll around.

I think one of my favorite aspects this year is the unpredictability of the elimination rounds. Really, any alliance seed could win the whole thing, as opposed to previous years where Alliance #1 seemed to win an overwhelming majority. This past week, all three MI districts were won by non-#1 seeds. I can't ever remember that happening before in a single week.

Kinda reminds me of the unpredictability of march madness, which everybody loves.

Whichever team flips the better coin gets less fouls. And that's due to a horrible rule book with rules that punish teams for things they could not, under any circumstances, have avoided.

Not sure why that's a good thing...

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

GDC needs to be fired. Straight up, just going to say it. Go home. I'm tired of you.

Many of your points have merit, but statements like this make it hard to be sympathetic to them. A rational critique is usually more effective than a tantrum.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

Many of your points have merit, but statements like this make it hard to be sympathetic to them. A rational critique is usually more effective than a tantrum.

When you realize that you've wasted $5k registration and probably ended your season today (in Brandon's case) because of horrible rules, that warrants a tantrum, in my opinion.

[Abhishek R]

I have a feeling everything will be sorted out and all the rules will be in order by Week 6 through Championships. Of course that's too late for many teams to even rationalize the game, but, I have faith that this mess will be tidied up to make for one of the most exciting games in FRC history.

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Gregor

When you realize that you've wasted $5k registration and probably ended your season today (in Brandon's case) because of horrible rules, that warrants a tantrum, in my opinion.

Take this from someone who has learned the lesson the hard way- no one listens to someone throwing a 'tantrum'. The most effective way to get your message across in the most brutal of circumstances is just to remain as calm as possible and keep sticking to the facts.

This may seem like obvious advice, but believe me, it goes such a long way.


That being said, of course there is truth in Brandon's post. Its just being fed through an emotionally charged lens and while some people may be able to see through that, there are certainly others who will not be able to do so.

Believe me, I've been there. I've made the same type of post on CD after a competition way back in the day. Take a night, sleep on it, try to get back to the facts and use those as your ammunition to try and force change.

-Brando

[Brandon_L]

Originally Posted by Gregor

When you realize that you've wasted $5k registration and probably ended your season today (in Brandon's case) because of horrible rules, that warrants a tantrum, in my opinion.

$7k+, countless hours, and the robot with the most potential from us to date.

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

That being said, of course there is truth in Brandon's post. Its just being fed through an emotionally charged lens and while some people may be able to see through that, there are certainly others who will not be able to do so.

Very much so, thank you for putting that into words for me.

Off to sleep on it.

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

Originally Posted by Gregor

Not sure why that's a good thing...

Many of the complaints to this year's game regarding rules are very reminiscent of sports to me. For instance, whether a pass interference will be offensive or defensive can sometimes be entirely up to the referee calling the play, and we all know how an umpire can skew the results of a baseball game by a simple safe/out call. Or in basketball whether or not something is a foul or whether or not it is a flagrant foul; subjective to the collective referee crew.

Do we always agree with the calls? No. But upon, further consideration, I honestly don't believe there is much that could be done to improve the current rules we have without the degrading the integrity of the game (maybe lessening a few individual penalty values from 50 to 20ish, but only a few if any).