Why does everyone hate this game so much?

[coalhot]

Let us have a moment of silence for those teams that built their robots more robustly then most, and may have sacrificed some design functionality to do so, that now have gotten screwed over by the new rule (and may not be moving on because of the rule)

In other news, GDC, please let us know about rule changes like this a little sooner then you did. Seriously, Thursday? Seriously?

[greasemonkey]

I can sum up why I don't like this game in one word, Rematch.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

Its bringing out the worst in people.

I'd agree with this. I saw and heard things during this year that I haven't seen in previous years. There were entire sections of teams booing from the stands and entire alliances, including adult mentors, in the referee question box at Boilermaker. This year's game has driven some not-so-great behavior from some individuals that has made us look bad as a whole.

On the flip side, I've seen many teams handle this year with grace and composure. This has been a rough year for a lot of teams and for a lot of the volunteer staff, especially the referees.

[hardcopi]

It seems at every event a lot of matches are being decided on fouls. These are not violent matches particularly or bots behaving badly. This speaks volumes.

Even though we got stung by it a few times the human player foul I'm okay with, because it is under our control. There are too many that really aren't. If you have a pickup then you seem to be in danger of being hit and losing 50 points.

[pfreivald]

A few thoughts on this contentious subject:

A. Everyone should read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conver.../dp/0071771328

Tantrums/rants not only don't solve anything at best, they are almost always counterproductive. The catharsis is not worth it.

There are ways to disagree passionately and vehemently while being both gracious and professional about it. Most people are pretty bad at it. I'm not as good at it as I'd like to be. We could all use the improvement. This book is an excellent start.

B. "Everyone" doesn't hate this game. As with everything else in life, complainers drown out the satisfied. Unless we have polling data, we don't know what the percentages are, and pretending that we do is simply confirmation bias.

C. Anyone who has ever been in any kind of administrative position (be they a judge or a head ref or a teacher or a coach or a school board member or a member of the GDC) knows the fundamental fact about making people angry:

There are only two ways to make people angry: do something, and do nothing.

The GDC is in a hard spot every year, because no matter what they do--literally--a vocal minority will complain about it. (For example, if they update the rules mid-season or late-season or on some Thursday, people complain that things have been changed and that's not fair to those who built/planned for the rules as originally presented, while if they don't update the rules, people complain that they're unresponsive and don't care.) It's a lose-lose for them no matter what, and I for one am thankful that they're willing to do it at all.

I strongly suggest cultivating some empathy for the decision-makers, even if you disagree with their decisions.

D. Yes, this game has flaws. EVERY game has flaws. If you've ever studied game design, you'd know how hard it is to create an open rules set (as opposed to a closed rules set) game. Professional game companies spend literally thousands of man-hours playtesting and revising game rules before they hit the market, and at least hundreds of man-hours playtesting any rules changes before they're made, and yet they still have unforeseen issues once the game is released to the creative and motivated public. This is not possible with FRC, which means that more flaws will make it to the field.

E. Both "sides" of both the penalties and robustness arguments have merit--but I'm not certain it's possible to satisfy either one, much less both, of either argument. ("The rules are what they are. Build your robot so that it won't be a problem and it won't be a problem" will satisfy one side, and enrage the other.)

Compromise is the art of making sure that everyone walks away equally unhappy.

[jeremylee]

Originally Posted by cstelter

I'm only trying to arrive at a common understanding of the most likely reason that the score wound up the way it did. I truly empathize with all team members involved on both alliances-- this was a harsh way for the quarter final to end.

I think we've arrived at that common understanding of the match. We both had great alliances, and I recognize that the end result is hard on both sides.

Good luck at champs, hope we meet up again at some point in the future.

[Paul Copioli]

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

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.

There are many things stated by many people in this thread. There are many valid points and some crazy ones (from my point of view). However, I feel I need to respond to this one specifically. Neither VEX Robotics nor the REC Foundation (the actual company who operates and supports the VEX Robotics Competition and VEX IQ Challenge) have any intention of starting an FRC sized competition. The VEXpro product line was specifically designed to support the competitors in the FIRST Robotics Competition. Please do not read anything into the above statement. We are quite happy supporting the VEX IQ Challenge, VEX Robotics Competition, and FIRST Robotics Competition and have no intention of changing that.

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

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

Comments like this will mute out the valid points that you do have. I know you are frustrated, but if you make your points in a professional and respectful way you will have a better chance of being taken seriously.

Paul

[mrnoble]

I have a few quick points to make this morning.

1) There may be general agreement about 2013 being one of the best games ever (as referenced in this thread several times), but I recall last year seeing threads with posts that pointed out how bad the game was in comparison to previous years. For more cases like this, see also 2012, 2011, 2010, etc.

2) There have been several recent posts that suggest that teams that didn't win (for whatever reason, though everyone seems to be pointing to the rules) "wasted their money". Really? Is that what you do this for? Are your sponsors going to fire you if you don't win the regional? I always thought that winning was the thin icing on a very big cake that is the development of fantastic young people through inspiration.

[Grim Tuesday]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

D. ... Professional game companies spend literally thousands of man-hours playtesting and revising game rules before they hit the market, and at least hundreds of man-hours playtesting any rules changes before they're made, and yet they still have unforeseen issues once the game is released to the creative and motivated public. This is not possible with FRC, which means that more flaws will make it to the field.

Why is it impossible to test an FRC game? There were six Robot in 3 Days teams this year. Why not invite them to HQ to playtest the game ahead of time? Have them play out the game video instead of those silly animations. Place a restriction on those who work on the "official" Ri3Ds that they can't have contact with FRC teams besides what is released at Kickoff for the first week of competition so as to keep it fair.

[nuclearnerd]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

A few thoughts on this contentious subject:
Tantrums/rants not only don't solve anything at best, they are almost always counterproductive. The catharsis is not worth it...There are ways to disagree passionately and vehemently while being both gracious and professional about it. Most people are pretty bad at it.

You're quite right, but I want to chime in with a different take, for what it's worth:

While most people are going to be bad at discussing stressful topics like match outcomes and rule interpretations respectfully, I strongly believe that we should still have these discussions. A public forum like CD allows the FRC community to hash out disagreements publicly, share ideas for improvements and ultimately strengthen our collective investment in the program through participation. It is just as important for readers to allow space for various opinions here (and not to conflate personal opinions with team reputation), as it is for contributors to post as professionally as they can muster. This is internet 101, and my bet is the GDC would agree.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

I have a few quick points to make this morning.

1) There may be general agreement about 2013 being one of the best games ever (as referenced in this thread several times), but I recall last year seeing threads with posts that pointed out how bad the game was in comparison to previous years. For more cases like this, see also 2012, 2011, 2010, etc.

2) There have been several recent posts that suggest that teams that didn't win (for whatever reason, though everyone seems to be pointing to the rules) "wasted their money". Really? Is that what you do this for? Are your sponsors going to fire you if you don't win the regional? I always thought that winning was the thin icing on a very big cake that is the development of fantastic young people through inspiration.

Everyone has something about each game that stands out to them making it the "best game". For a lot of people 2013 stood out as the best for a variety of reasons including a large number of game pieces, unique/challenging endgame, tons of strategies to play in a game, variety of robot designs to play the game, complexity of being able to pull off a "do it all robot", etc. It was one of the first games where you couldn't do it all (ground pickup, quick cycle, full court shooter, 30 point climber, color frisbee dump, etc) in a match.

For a lot of people 2012 was their favorite game but 2013 seems to have been more favored.

As for your second point, I would hope that a sponsor would not cease to support a team due to them losing however taking a tough loss or the season ending early is not an easy thing to have to tell your biggest supporter who is financially supporting your team or donated a lot of shop time for parts. It really depends on each team's situation but yes there are teams who spend a good amount of money not only to play but to iterate designs ($), build a practice robot/assemblies ($$), or compete at additional events to increase the chance of qualifying ($$$). A bigger investment is also all the time and efforts teams have put into their robots as well as senior members who may have gone "all out" in their final year only to lose due to a bad call. Its not an easy thing to swallow when you put your all into something, you followed the rules, and yet a bogus call ends your season.

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

Comments like this will mute out the valid points that you do have. I know you are frustrated, but if you make your points in a professional and respectful way you will have a better chance of being taken seriously.

Paul

Amen, Paul. This is excellent and I totally agree.

To many others:

Being frustrated with a game or with a referee's call is not new in FIRST. Were people frustrated when alliances were added in 1999? Heck yeah. Were they frustrated when defense was taken away during the 2001 4-0 game? Oh, yeah. Were teams at IRI frustrated when the head ref DQ'ed the entire 71-93-111 alliance in the final match in 2002 for inadvertent entanglement? Um, yeah, there was some frustration. Were teams frustrated with the triangle zone penalty in 2005? Yes, those penalties decided matches too.

Did some people get very upset at FIRST and these key volunteers? Yeah, that happened. However, people showed this frustration in different ways. Some had to vent about it, loudly disagreeing with the ruling. Others would lob insults to the folks who they disagreed with. To me, this shows the true character of a person. How does a person act when everything seems to be against them? Are they still a positive role model, or are they not careful about tossing these insults while students are around? Are they quick to judge and fast to pick a side without knowing all of the details, or do they wait for the full story and careful to figure out what all is going on before making a rash judgement?

This program has not survived and grown for 20+ years by people who overly freak out when things are not exactly how they wish them to be. We have helped FIRST progress each year by being graceful under pressure, handling change well, and focusing on the big picture moreso than details which need to be improved.

Believe me, there are things I don't like about this game. I wish that the human players would not be able to cause G40 so easily and I wish that the wide open geometry of the field did not cause so many other fouls and I wish that the ball re-entry had a better system than it does now. However, we can play this game like it is, with hopefully some continued improvements between now and the Championships.

Thanks for listening,
Andy B.

[hardcopi]

It is also tough for kids to spend months of all their free time only to have their work marginalized by uneven calls.

At this point if at the end of the match you are not at least 100 points ahead their is no celebration until the score is posted. Is that really how it was intended to play out?

I am hoping that they make one final rule change to lower all penalties. Penalties should be equalizers they should not hand out victory.

[martin417]

This post will probably draw some ire. I will get comments like "not us! we are a good team and we like the game!". I know I am making generalizations, and my comments may not apply to you. So if you feel insulted, and my comments seem unfair, then just assume I wasn't talking about you and forget it, don't flame me.

WARNING: GENERALIZATION BELOW! IT MIGHT NOT APPLY TO YOU!

From what I have read, teams that traditionally build a competitive robot don't like the game. Teams that usually build a defense bot, or a non-competitive robot think the game is great.

I have not posted any positive or negative comments on the game itself. People who are familiar with me know that I don't like defense, and I don't like games that encourage defense. In my view, building a defensive bot is a cop out. It says "accomplishing this task is hard, it sure would be easier to just keep other people from doing it." I have been involved since 2008, and never experienced any of the bash bot phenomena of the earlier years. I liked Overdrive because it discouraged defense. I liked Lunacy because it made defense difficult, and made offense dangerous (when you approached your goal, you were taking your opponents goal closer to them). Each year, the GDC has been able to somewhat discourage defense. Last year, with Ultimate Ascent, we won an off-season event because during finals the other alliance used two robots to defend us. We didn't score, but our two alliance partners were un-hindered, and the other alliance had only one bot left to score.

I have not yet attended a regional this year. I have watched matches from other regionals every weekend. What I saw was embarrassing. Orlando was especially brutal. I saw bots screaming across the field at 16-18 fps and ramming another bot. Anybody can build a brute pizza box. That doesn't make you great or dominant, and it is not inspiring. A monster drivetrain with 6 CIMs and super traction wheels that can do nothing other than push other bots around is no better. What is inspiring, and is CHALLENGING is to build a bot that accomplishes the goals set out in the game rules. Note that attaining the goals of the game is rewarded with point values. Preventing others from attaining that goal is not mentioned in the rules, nor is it rewarded with points.

If your goal is to inspire the kids, then have them look at the challenge before them, and design a robot that can meet that challenge to best of their ability. Remember, it's not about winning by any means, it's about inspiring the kids to rise to a challenge. A team that feels they can only build a brute pizza box might instead build a bulldozer that can inbound well and push a ball into the low goal. Yes, you can play defense, but not battle bots. If you do that well, you would be tops on my third pick list.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

Are your sponsors going to fire you if you don't win the regional?

Whether or not it is right, that is a concern for some teams.