Why does everyone hate this game so much?

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

I didn't say it was. I did say "literally thousands of man-hours" of playtesting, though, and I think you can figure out the logistics of that one well enough.

(An added difficulty of why it is to some degree impossible to test an FRC game at all is robot variability and out-of-the-box thinking of tens of thousands of people. That's the peril of an open rules set...but people complain about the closed parts stifling creativity, too!)

I don't think this is as impossible as you think it is. Actually running thousands of matches may be impossible but within a week I've often run simulations of thousands of matches (likely many more). That's me, with excel/R. Like seriously, it's not hard. Do I catch everything? Nah. But it woulda told me that 2011 the minibots were ridiculously over valued. (2012 was the first year I started doing real models and running a bunch of scenarios, they've gotten more complicated every year).

But most of the egregious problems with games should be apparent with even a modicum of common sense. Examples:

- 2014 — One game piece per alliance? More power in the KoP than ever? More COTS for getting that power to the ground? Open field? Recipe for pain
- 2013 — Humans can throw frisbees? Rain of discs inevitable.

I don't know the make up of the GDC any more but I would imagine that most folks who've been involved in a team that is competitive would have caught those issues quick.