Why does everyone hate this game so much?

[RoundTabler]

To be clear: I LIKE this game. Its a neat concept, and when played well, its really cool to watch. HOWEVER: The rules make it UNPLAYABLE (depending on the refs). The day that ramming other robots is a tech foul, or when building a harvester results in tech fouls (over the bumper rule update 3-20-14), or when human player actions that DO NOT impact the match decide the match, this is the day that FRC becomes uninspiring. The GDC really punished teams that built offensive bots this year. The 3-20-14 rule update said that high speed ramming, even if undamaging results in a 50-point foul. How are refs supposed to call fouls that use wording like "if intentional", or "purposefully damaging"? The only way to harvest balls this year is by going over the bumper, but the 3-20-14 rule update removes protection for these assemblies, and makes it possible, no LIKELY that the pickup device will result in penalty calls.

This is the issue. The game is fine. Its the rules that are broken. The GDC seems like they don't want ANY defense played, yet they make rules that make defense the only viable option. People keep saying that they like how this game allows bad robots to beat good robots, and to that I say WHAT??????? How is that positive? Strong offensive bots should always beat mediocre or bad robots. If the GDC wanted the game to be an equalizer, they should have realized that the result would not be positive. Why would teams build good robots if a drivebase w/o any scoring potential beat them?

At RI this weekend, the refs called few penalties, only making calls on blatant fouls. This was nice, as it allowed scoring to be the focus, not avoiding fouls. However, we lost in the Finals because of a human player foul (he stepped outside the human player box after an amazing jump catch - we would have won by 8 points otherwise), and our robot breaking in the last match. 78 had a great alliance, and it was really close, but it kinda stinks to have games decided by actions that did not impact gameplay at all.

I hope everything I said makes sense, and I hope its clear that I like this game when its played clean. I too would like to know how many members of the GDC have EVER been on an FRC team, or if they have ever attended an event. The GDC needs to stop playing games with the rules.

Our team built probably our best robot ever this year. At both of our events this year, we have been finalists. Luckily for us, due to the new district model in NE, we still have a chance of going to champs. I hope the GDC figures out how to NOT punish GOOD teams for being GOOD.

/end rant

This ended up being a lot longer than I meant it to be, but its nice to get it off my chest.