Why does everyone hate this game so much?

[Arefin Bari]

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli

After Palmetto, my opinion of the game wasn't great, but I wasn't complaining too much yet. Now that Peachtree has passed, my patience with this game and the way its officiated is completely gone. Giving the refs so much to do, leaving the gray area for G27 calls, pedestal issues, and the fact that possession of a ball is still a gray area absolutely killed our shot to be in a picking position for alliance selection. (Ask 2415 about inconsistent rulings between regionals, they'd love to tell you about it). One of the finals matches in eliminations had to be stopped and redone due to a pedestal issue, and teams were cheated out of potential assist and teleop points in some quals matches due to 20+ second pedestal delays. I'm almost glad our season's over, so we don't have to deal with the headache that is Aerial Assist anymore.

Anupam, it was a pleasure to meet you and talk to you about different strategies at the peachtree regional. I wish we could have played with you guys again as you guys were sporting a great robot at this event. I am pretty surprised by your post as we dealt with a completely different situation.

In another thread, John V. Neun pointed out how 148 is always at the question box asking questions about the match they were playing in. We did the same. For most of the qualification matches we played, our student was at the question box to ask questions about close calls and possesions as to gain understanding of how the referees at the peachtree regional are going to make the calls. We didnt receive any fouls however we had problems with the pedestal lighting up in couple of matches and the referees took note of that. Unfortunately, referees dont have control over when the pedestal gets lit up. The referees made consistent calls in matches that we played in.

In one of the matches, one of the teams intake got tangled with our robot by mistake and tore apart our radio and some of the wires, they did run into us. This team felt that we were at the question box to complain. We were simply there to ask how the call is being made so our driver knows not to make that mistake. The team came upto us and was very apologetic and we explained to them that it wasnt their fault, it happens and its part of the game; we also encouraged them to play harder defense if needed in future against us. I have outmost respect for this team for coming upto us and clarifying the situation.

Another team attending the regional probably viewed this game as battlebots, they were on us the whole match ramming and pinning. They rode past our bumper perimeter bending our shooter frame and break some lexan covering. We were at the question box again and the head ref told us that she didnt see it so she cant make the call. We moved on and fixed what was needed to be fixed because the head ref made it clear at the driveteam meeting that she simply can not make a call if she doesn't see the incident. We were very surprised by this team's action. In our 20 years of existence, this is the first time our robot was broken after a match and the team responsible didnt approach us. Pretty surprising when you are dealing with a veteran team.

This game is brutal. Referee calls will be different from regionals to regionals. Teams who play this game like battlebots will receive penalties. Teams who know how to properly defend (ex. Team 1683) will do well.

Instead of complaining and picking this game apart, I strongly advise others to find ways to gain understanding of how the refs at the specific regional will make calls.

It took me 15 minutes to write this post which I could have spent watching matches from different regionals to see how the referees made the calls. Our driveteam spent four weeks watching webcasts, hundreds of matches, and collected data.

Play the game how it is meant to be played and I think that teams will enjoy playing the game. Watch matches after matches and strategize to find ways to win instead of going ballistic on opponents robot and receive tech fouls, and then complaining about getting a tech foul.

I am sorry if this post offends anyone but I am so sick of seeing so many negatives and so much drama unfold all over the place over this game.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by Arefin Bari

Anupam, it was a pleasure to meet you and talk to you about different strategies at the peachtree regional. I wish we could have played with you guys again as you guys were sporting a great robot at this event. I am pretty surprised by your post as we dealt with a completely different situation.

Arefin,

I'll admit, my comments were marred by the post-regional feeling of defeat. I often get caught up in the heat of the moment and let my emotions affect my posts. Starting today, I will not post about a regional until I get a good night's sleep after the regional. I will maintain that my experience with Aerial Assist has not been as pleasant as with Logomotion, Rebound Rumble, and Ultimate Ascent. Most of my comments were really just issues I saw with the regional, and not really the game, though the game still has many issues.

In another thread, John V. Neun pointed out how 148 is always at the question box asking questions about the match they were playing in. We did the same. For most of the qualification matches we played, our student was at the question box to ask questions about close calls and possesions as to gain understanding of how the referees at the peachtree regional are going to make the calls. We didnt receive any fouls however we had problems with the pedestal lighting up in couple of matches and the referees took note of that. Unfortunately, referees dont have control over when the pedestal gets lit up. The referees made consistent calls in matches that we played in.

This is good advice, and I'll make sure our team's drive coach and drive team understand how to use the question box for more than debating calls. We did have some debatable calls that could've swung a match the other way, but I think the way we approached the question box was in a reactionary manner instead of an inquisitive manner, which definitely did not help our case. The matches we had questionable calls in happened to be one that could've changed the alliances in eliminations alltogether, so I suppose realizing the gravity of that call can also affect the attitude we have when approaching the question box.


For the most part, we didn't have any issues with tech fouls and defense, though other teams definitely had those issues. At the end of the day, our team definitely had a lot of fun, and all of the positive comments on our robot's look and functionality, capped off with an imagery award, definitely inspired all of our students. I suppose our exit in the quarters, while disheartening, is inspiring our students to work harder and better. We promised our juniors that we will get a banner before they graduate, and at the end of the day, this inspiration is what FIRST is all about

Good luck to 108 at South Florida and Championships, your team definitely deserved the win!

[Oblarg]

I don't "hate" this game at all - I think it's one of the best underlying game designs FRC has had in recent memory, marred by significant problems with implementation.

The reffing at the Greater DC regional was about as good as I've seen anywhere this year, and the result was a game that was intense and fair. Teams with well-thought-out strategies, good drivers, and good robots were very successful.

The change from games mostly consisting of three robots playing in parallel to three robots playing as a team is massive and fundamental, and, in my estimation, a good thing. I see far more strategic depth in Aerial Assist than in any other FRC game I've experienced, and alliance communication and cohesion is absolutely required for any results. This engenders interaction between teams and builds rewarding relationships, and I think that can only be seen as a good thing.

There are still problems with fuzzy rules and ref overload, but (at least at Greater DC) the head ref was open about this and it was not a crippling problem.

[JB987]

A word of caution about repeated visits to the question box. There is a risk involved with repeated visits to the question box, depending on the personality of the head ref involved and a team must weigh the potential results of their post match question box visits. Some referees can't handle repeated questions and may even think you are questioning their authority, resulting in a negative bias against your team. There shouldn't be a risk, but there can be...

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Arefin Bari

This game is brutal.

Understatement.

Referee calls will be different from regionals to regionals.

Understatement. Hurray for consistency in training!

Teams who play this game like battlebots will receive penalties.

Really? The following was called a tech foul against us (blue bot playing offense) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rvUzolCZ-8. We're not the one using our arm as a defensive spear.

Please do continue to rip out wires, pop bearings out of sockets, and bend forks with reckless impunity, n'er do wells of FRC - referees won't mind! They might even blame us for your idiocy!

Teams who know how to properly defend will do well.

If only that were true.

Instead of complaining and picking this game apart, I strongly advise others to find ways to gain understanding of how the refs at the specific regional will make calls.

Frequent visitors. The answer to that question is often "Poorly".

Play the game how it is meant to be played.

Tried. Thinking we do a good job since we've had exactly 2 fouls called on us across three regionals. I don't count the "tech foul" called above.

and I think that teams will enjoy playing the game.

Nope. Still waiting for that "pure" competition experience. I'd like to think we'd get that at the CMP, but then, we didn't qualify. Seems some extra roadblocks tossed in our way detoured us off the path to that desired goal. Would we have reached the finish line without those in the way? Not sure, BUT I SURE WOULD HAVE LIKED TO HAVE HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO FIND OUT.

The waitlist remains our last best hope for the season, but I remain unoptimistic in that regard.

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

Really? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rvUzolCZ-8

To be fair, nothing in that clip even remotely resembles battlebots. All I saw was unintentional entanglement and resulting (unfortunate and nigh-unavoidable without banning defense) damage. Additionally, throwing around words like "idiocy" is not particularly conducive to the sort of atmosphere required for productive discourse.

Edit: It just occurred to me that I might be mis-parsing your response if you intended that as an example of receiving a penalty while not playing "like battlebots." It's really rather unclear; the sentence directly after indicates you think the reffing against overly-aggressive robots is insufficiently strict, not vice-versa.

[Arefin Bari]

Continous visitation to the question box will become very annoying yes. We only went to the question box twice when we felt that there might have been a close one but ref overlooked or they were fine with it. I am not suggesting to go out there after every match and ask, "hey how did we play?"

Travis, I am sorry that you are having a bad time with this game and I am sure we would be frustrated if we were in your shoes. However, my comments were based on what I have heard from my students and what I saw when I was behind the driver station as well as our experience at the peachtree regional.

The video you posted, I dont know how the ref was calling the match. I would have asked the head ref what they will call this as and as long as they stayed consistant with the call throughout the weekend, I would be happy.

Team 1683 have done phenomenal defense for our alliance (108. 2283, 1683). They knew how they should play their defense based on our strategy and who we were up against. This earned them a blue banner. I suppose I would say a team that wins a regional has done very well for the season.

You are right. Posting back and forth and trying to argue over individuals opinion would get us nowhere. So I will move onto getting our team ready for the South Florida regional. After all we got a whole shooter to build.

[Austin2046]

I don't hate this game, but I do have a few problems with it and those problems all seem to stem from the fact that the refs are responsible for too much in order to always call a game correctly. The inconsistency of calls for G12 and G28 along with not always properly awarding assist points has been rather frustrating, and frankly disappointing.

Our team was most disheartened by this game this weekend at the Auburn district in match 35. 3393 collects our alliance's ball, drives into the white zone and shoots it out, almost off the field, and no tech foul was given. Here's video of this occurrence http://youtu.be/DjNCiD1QUZw?t=1m48s. Our student went to the question box and the response from the ref was simply that they didn't see it, which was rather unbelievable, as the announcer called it out as it happened, it happened right in front of the head ref, and it seemed to us the ref at the far side of the field had signaled it. If it wasn't that, I'm not sure what it was they were signaling.

I don't mean for this to be a criticism of the refs, I appreciate the fact that they are all volunteers and that they've been given a lot to keep track of in order to be fair and effective. Still though, when so many matches are determined by what the refs see or don't see rather than by robot performance or alliance strategy... it's a bit disheartening.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

Please do continue to rip out wires, pop bearings out of sockets, and bend forks with reckless impunity, n'er do wells of FRC - referees won't mind! They might even blame us for your idiocy!

So you're saying you don't enjoy it when people destroy your robot with questionable motives?

[Adam Freeman]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

Really? The following was called a tech foul against us (blue bot playing offense) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rvUzolCZ-8. We're not the one using our arm as a defensive spear.

WOW, this is ridiculous! It's even worse that it's the head ref that is calling the foul.

#1 - Your obviously trussing and trying to retreive the ball.
#2 - It appears your intake was inside your own frame perimeter at the time.
#3 - It wasn't you that decided that "snow fence" was an appropriate material for an FRC robot.
#4 - It was right in front of the head ref. Who is supposed to exactly what was happening and what the right call should be.

I hope the waitlist goes in your favor. Looks like you guys have a good machine that we would love to play with at Champs. If not, hopefully we will see you guys at MARC this summer.

There are many reasons to "like" this game. But, I can understand why many teams could "hate" this game...or atleast the way the refs, rules, scheduling, etc. have played out this year.

I don't hate this game. I think the eliminations are exciting. Qualifications can be a little hard to watch, but that is most years. Overall we often view the quality of the game based on our individual results. I liked playing in 2009 and hated 2006 for a long time. But, looking back 2006 was a great game...just not for us b/c we were never playing it correctly....while '09 is favorable b/c we had a good strategy that worked out really well for us.

Overall the rules, ref consistency, and scheduling are really effecting my opinion of this game. If we can overcome those issues and take advantage of a really good machine this year, I think that Aerial Assist will leave a good taste in our mouths. If we get screwed by assists, poor schedule, refs, etc... I may come to hate this game.

Regardless of how we make out in the end, with a few major tweaks to this game (additional balls and/or less reliance on partners in quals) we could be discussing this game as being one of the best games ever.

[Brandon_L]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

Understatement.
Tried. Thinking we do a good job since we've had exactly 2 fouls called on us across three regionals. I don't count the "tech foul" called above.

We tried too. We learned your robot needs to be made of acrylic to have a chance.

See Lenape Quarter 3 match 1

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

To be fair, nothing in that clip even remotely resembles battlebots. All I saw was unintentional entanglement and resulting (unfortunate and nigh-unavoidable without banning defense) damage. Additionally, throwing around words like "idiocy" is not particularly conducive to the sort of atmosphere required for productive discourse.

Edit: It just occurred to me that I might be mis-parsing your response if you intended that as an example of receiving a penalty while not playing "like battlebots." It's really rather unclear; the sentence directly after indicates you think the reffing against overly-aggressive robots is insufficiently strict, not vice-versa.

I was unclear. The "tech foul" we received in Pittsburgh was not really the target of my "battlebots" implication. It was, however, the result of careless gameplay on behalf of an aggressor where a robot positioned their claw in a hazardous manner when playing defense. They snagged themselves on our bot during this incursion, and we were penalized for extracting ourselves from this situation to continue to play the game.

To their credit, the team that received the benefit of this penalty apologized to people in our pit, saying they realized they were in the wrong. I hope they learn to translate that remorse into improved gameplay on the field.

To my discredit, I blew up verrrrrrry overtly in the pit over this whole situation, to the point I felt it necessary to leave the venue for an extended period, including Friday closing ceremonies. As I've said elsewhere, this game and my personality are a "toxic combination." The rest of the team handled the situation in a much better manner than I did.

The "battlebots" I was referring to actually occurred in Wisconsin, and went unpenalized all weekend (at least the "ripping wires", etc. stuff that happened to us in multiple matches on Saturday).

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

I was unclear. The "tech foul" we received in Pittsburgh was not really the target of my "battlebots" implication. It was, however, the result of careless gameplay on behalf of an aggressor where a robot positioned their claw in a hazardous manner when playing defense. To their credit, the team that received the benefit of this penalty apologized to people in our pit, saying they realized they were in the wrong. I hope they learn to translate that remorse into improved gameplay on the field.

To my discredit, I blew up verrrrrrry overtly in the pit over this whole situation, to the point I felt it necessary to leave the venue for an extended period, including Friday closing ceremonies. As I've said elsewhere, this game and my personality are a "toxic combination." The rest of the team handled the situation in a much better manner than I did.

The "battlebots" I was referring to actually occurred in Wisconsin, and went unpenalized all weekend (at least the "ripping wires", etc. stuff that happened to us in multiple matches on Saturday).

Ah, okay, that makes a lot more sense.

I don't see anything in that video that is even close to what ought to be a foul - clearly, your bot did absolutely nothing wrong, and the other bot caused no damage except to themselves and did nothing malicious so much as careless (though, to their credit, they weren't that far outside of their frame perimeter when the entanglement happened). That you got called for a tech foul there is absurd.

It seems this sort of stuff varies a lot by regional - I was very content with the reffing at Greater DC. We played stiff, aggressive (but not damaging or violent) defense for the vast majority of the competition and had no problems with bad calls.

[donkehote]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

Understatement.



Understatement. Hurray for consistency in training!



Really? The following was called a tech foul against us (blue bot playing offense) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rvUzolCZ-8. We're not the one using our arm as a defensive spear.

Please do continue to rip out wires, pop bearings out of sockets, and bend forks with reckless impunity, n'er do wells of FRC - referees won't mind! They might even blame us for your idiocy!



If only that were true.



Frequent visitors. The answer to that question is often "Poorly".



Tried. Thinking we do a good job since we've had exactly 2 fouls called on us across three regionals. I don't count the "tech foul" called above.



Nope. Still waiting for that "pure" competition experience. I'd like to think we'd get that at the CMP, but then, we didn't qualify. Seems some extra roadblocks tossed in our way detoured us off the path to that desired goal. Would we have reached the finish line without those in the way? Not sure, BUT I SURE WOULD HAVE LIKED TO HAVE HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO FIND OUT.

The waitlist remains our last best hope for the season, but I remain unoptimistic in that regard.

QFT!

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

Ah, okay, that makes a lot more sense.

I don't see anything in that video that is even close to what ought to be a foul - clearly, your bot did absolutely nothing wrong, and the other bot caused no damage except to themselves and did nothing malicious so much as careless (though, to their credit, they weren't that far outside of their frame perimeter when the entanglement happened). That you got called for a tech foul there is absurd.

It seems this sort of stuff varies a lot by regional - I was very content with the reffing at Greater DC. We played stiff, aggressive (but not damaging or violent) defense for the vast majority of the competition and had no problems with bad calls.

I would have been happy with a simple non call or foul reversal, which is what we argued for.

Originally Posted by Adam Freeman

I hope the waitlist goes in your favor. Looks like you guys have a good machine that we would love to play with at Champs. If not, hopefully we will see you guys at MARC this summer.

Thanks, Adam. That means a lot coming from you.

There are many reasons to "like" this game. But, I can understand why many teams could "hate" this game...or atleast the way the refs, rules, scheduling, etc. have played out this year.

I don't hate this game. I think the eliminations are exciting. Qualifications can be a little hard to watch, but that is most years. Overall we often view the quality of the game based on our individual results. I liked playing in 2009 and hated 2006 for a long time. But, looking back 2006 was a great game...just not for us b/c we were never playing it correctly....while '09 is favorable b/c we had a good strategy that worked out really well for us.

Overall the rules, ref consistency, and scheduling are really effecting my opinion of this game. If we can overcome those issues and take advantage of a really good machine this year, I think that Aerial Assist will leave a good taste in our mouths. If we get screwed by assists, poor schedule, refs, etc... I may come to hate this game.

We've had enough teams being adversely impacted by this game. I'd love for more teams to communicate positive experiences. However, I don't think that is going to happen without extensive short-term intervention and an investment in long-term corrective actions by the core FIRST leadership.