Why does everyone hate this game so much?

[Kevin Sevcik]

I won't say that I hate this game, but I'm really disappointed in the number of fouls and the seeming ease with which you can be hit with them. While the points obviously encourage offense, the rules and fouls seem to encourage a defensive robot just so you're not at risk of all those foul points. I think this is best illustrated by a quote from the GDC, as pulled directly from the rules:

Originally Posted by G12 Blue Box

A BALL that becomes unintentionally lodged on a ROBOT will be considered POSSESSED by the ROBOT. It is important to design your ROBOT so that it is impossible to inadvertently or intentionally POSSESS an opponent’s BALL.

Emphasis mine. If I'm supposed to design a robot so it's impossible to intentionally possess an opponent's ball, I'm designing a robot that can't possess any balls, and thus can't participate in offense. That's the only way you can come close to complying with this suggestion. Even if you ignore the "intentionally" there, it's awfully difficult to design a robot that can catch a truss shot or an inbound, but not unintentionally catch an opponent's ball that's flying at your robot.

I'm glad so many teams (mine included) decided to ignore the suggestion that we eschew offense in favor of avoiding G12 penalties, but I think it says a lot about the overall game design that one of the rules has attached a blue box that you're pretty much forced to ignore if you want to play offense and meet the actual challenges presented in the game. And I'm disappointed when that means that teams trying to play offense end up penalized because they were accidentally under an opponent's ball that took a weird bounce.