Why does everyone hate this game so much?

[Kevin Ray]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

I want to talk a little about what the GDC did well in Aerial Assist.


Human player role - I have never liked the idea of human players (and I was one for two years in HS) but I think this is the best implementation we have ever had. They don't get to score points directly but they can have a big impact on matches. The human players have to work well with the robots to get efficient cycles. And we are off the trend of having them heave full court shots at the end of matches. Though they did have a impact on a few matches in 2012 and 2013, I don't think that aspect really made the games any better.

I agree completely with all of your other points but disagree with this one point. (A) Many if not most of the major foul points have been accrued by human players, thus nullifying thousands of man hours which an entire team has devoted to the construction of the robot, not to mention the strategic planning of the game play.
(B) At the two regionals we've attended I (along with hundreds of others I'm sure) thought I'd pop a blood vessel in my head from screaming for the human player (on our alliance) to "JUST INBOUND THE BALL!!!". There were MANY times when a human player ambled over to input the ball or held on to it until the absolute perfect positioning of the receiving robot. In one of our matches he remained behind the driver station getting caught up in the action on the other side of the field while we were waiting for the inbound. --WAY TOO MUCH input/game control on the human player this year. Hopefully this never happens again. A single human player has adversely affected many dozens of match outcomes this year--and that translates into not just affecting his team, good or bad, but the entire 6 teams on the field and, ultimately the overall standings of all teams in the competition.

[Jay O'Donnell]

Originally Posted by Kevin Ray

I agree completely with all of your other points but disagree with this one point. (A) Many if not most of the major foul points have been accrued by human players, thus nullifying thousands of man hours which an entire team has devoted to the construction of the robot, not to mention the strategic planning of the game play.
(B) At the two regionals we've attended I (along with hundreds of others I'm sure) thought I'd pop a blood vessel in my head from screaming for the human player (on our alliance) to "JUST INBOUND THE BALL!!!". There were MANY times when a human player ambled over to input the ball or held on to it until the absolute perfect positioning of the receiving robot. In one of our matches he remained behind the driver station getting caught up in the action on the other side of the field while we were waiting for the inbound. --WAY TOO MUCH input/game control on the human player this year. Hopefully this never happens again. A single human player has adversely affected many dozens of match outcomes this year--and that translates into not just affecting his team, good or bad, but the entire 6 teams on the field and, ultimately the overall standings of all teams in the competition.

Thats not the games fault though. Train your human players better and get on other teams' human players to run and inbound quickly. These are things that can be fixed, they are not faults with the game (however I do agree with your point about how many slow/incompetent human players there are this year).

[Bmarshall645]

We enjoyed the game this year and it was fun to play. The only thing bad was that we kept being paired up with broken robots. We were the only functional robot on our alliance most of the time.

[evanperryg]

Originally Posted by BigJ

I love this game on the game side but the fouls and inconsistent reffing are driving me crazy. The "new Thursday rules" were reffed seemingly completely opposite on Friday and Saturday at the Wisconsin regional from my estimation, giving teams an incorrect idea of how they would be called in eliminations.

Exactly. The game itself is really good and introduces a very new style of gameplay to FRC, but at the same time the game is extremely subjective and there are grey areas in many of the most basic rules. Some of the poor reffing is caused by how different referees interpret the rules. At midwest, we found that inbounding from the human player on one side of the field almost always resulted in a foul from the referee on that side, whereas inbounding from the other side was fine.

Originally Posted by BJT

I dont remember the match or teams involved, but at wisconsin, the outcome of an elimination match was changed by 100 points in fouls. In my opinion for there to be 100 points in fouls, there should be no doubt in anyones mind what happened.

This certainly isn't the only instance of this occurring, either. At crossroads, my team had a qualifier against many of the best robots at the event and we ended up winning because of 150 foul points. Although it is a little amusing to be on the receiving end of this issue, it certainly did screw over a couple of great robots.

Originally Posted by mrnoble

unless you are top three, qualification wins and losses really don't matter. Who cares if you have a partner who fouls a lot? Do you think scouts will actually blame your team?

Coming from a second year lead scouter, a lot of teams either don't scout, or do really bad scouting. This should be especially evident with this year's game where certain things are very confusing to track (we actually had to write up definitions for "low-goal attempt" and "floor pass").

[evanperryg]

More on the topic of the game itself, I absolutely love it. No other game has ever been as effective in displaying FIRST's theme of coopertition, and it presents an entirely new style of play that has never been seen before. In games past, an awesome robot could carry their entire alliance without a problem. This year's game makes carrying next to impossible. Instead of 6 robots in colored bumpers scoring points individually, there are two clearly defined alliances playing the game together, in a group effort to score. Compared to previous games, strategies are extremely varied, and can be really unique. That is what makes this game really special, and if penalties weren't so bad, I would argue that this is by far the best game in the history of FRC.

[scooty199]

Coopertition in this game would be great, if true alliances during quals were to actually work.

I joke about this sometimes with friends, but deep down I know it's not funny. There may be matches where teams with kitbots or a functionally limited robot can be told by their alliance partners to either disregard their own strategy or not have any input into how a match should go.

I'm sure there's been occasions this season where a team may tell another "Get of our way, don't mess things up". That's something that isn't inspiring and doesn't help this game's case.

This has been said multiple times before, but conceptually FIRST did a good job with this game. Somewhere between concept and actually implementing and executing this game it got all weird and the game is poor on that front.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

Thats not the games fault though. Train your human players better and get on other teams' human players to run and inbound quickly. These are things that can be fixed, they are not faults with the game (however I do agree with your point about how many slow/incompetent human players there are this year).

I'm all for training HPs, my own and my allies' (no fouls yet, knock on wood). That said, I think we sometimes forget who these HPs are. Some of them are fantastic, smart, Johnny-on-the-spot players that work this game like variety athletes. And some are good kids that just freeze or crack under the pressure. They stand with a ball for 20 seconds and the entire stadium screams at them. I've lost track of how many times I've seen this, not to mention other errors. It's frustrating for all parties, but I can't imagine what it's like for the HP. I feel terrible about what's happened to some well-meanig kids this year.

I don't know how some teams pick their HPs, and while I personally would want to spare someone of that, I understand there must be other considerations that get them out there in the first place. Yes, HPs have always been able to ruin matches for their alliance, but usually it's harder and less public than this. I know the mistakes aren't on the GDC, but the publicity of it is painful. At least in Lunacy people understood how important and difficult the role was.

[rkbot]

This game puts to much in the refs interpretation of the rules. This plus the fact the the fouls this year are so large that if you get 1 it is hard enough to come back let alone multiple. This year we have seen multiple calls made against us or not against others while the very next match the same thing will happen and we get penalized for it. At the western Canada regional we were given a 50 point foul for high speed ramming and intentional damage of another robot on the field. In this call we did go across the field and hit a dead robot bumping them. This robot though was on our alliance and also the hit was much less violent than many of the hits we had given out before. Finally to top it all off, the intentional damage seen by the ref was from the clear plastic cover off our pneumatic gauge. This was shown to the ref who said he did not see it as we had when he was clearly shown where the piece had come from. Also as clearly shown in this game. Every team no matter how good can be ruined by a human player who doesn't know the rules. In the same match as above we did 3 cycles each one the human player cross little line. After the first i told him to watch his hands and he just smiled at me. There is also a ton of error in the calling of assists and also on the reset, we waited for almost 20 seconds on the light up for a new ball. There is to much left to interpretation in this years game. Last year the rules were definitive. Either you did something or you didn't. It had no maybe. For the amount of money all the teams put in to do this. Either the game creators need to be able to think ahead to see potential issues with their game or make more decisive rules which are easily interpreted.

[Lij2015]

Probably already been said but:
1. I hate that the tie-breaker points(assist and auto points to name a few) are scored for each team on an alliance basis(our team would get the points for the whole alliance).
2. One great robot will not outscore three semi-competent robots.
3. The lower seeded alliances at the regional level(if they scouted correctly), have a better chance of putting together alliances that can do 3 assist cycles than the higher seeds do just due to the quality of bots by the time the selection gets back to the higher seeds(other than our case at Chesapeake)

[Alpha Beta]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

After competing in our second regional with a bot that could actually play, I never again want to play a game where qualification matches are essentially a test of who got luckier with their partners.

Looking back on our experiences this season... We actually had more success involving low capability robots in the offensive part of the game than we ever have had in the past. You'll see several examples of wall press assists that are closely controlled by our robot in the following GoPro Montage. You'll also see some shots of us directly spitting into another robot. Sometimes we refer to the robot as the "Mother Bird" regurgitating worms for the youngins.

All in all, I think this game has done an excellent job of asking alliance partners to work together. There is still plenty of luck in the alliance pairings, but as long as a robot can drive, we found a way to use them.

[tStano]

Originally Posted by Lij2015

3. The lower seeded alliances at the regional level(if they scouted correctly), have a better chance of putting together alliances that can do 3 assist cycles than the higher seeds do just due to the quality of bots by the time the selection gets back to the higher seeds(other than our case at Chesapeake)

3 assist cycles, who needs em?
http://youtu.be/lFN73SVZr6o

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by tStano

3 assist cycles, who needs em?
http://youtu.be/lFN73SVZr6o

http://watchfirstnow.com/archives/88598727

Week one.

[Dunngeon]

Originally Posted by KGenson

Teams are already rewarded for winning the alliance lottery. The issue I have is teams essentially ignoring their fully functional alliance partners to do everything themselves. Even a box bot can get an assist, but there were multiple times I saw human players ignore their partners and wait for their own bot to get to them.

Sometimes giving the ball to a box robot will take too much time from the cycle, rendering it inefficient. However, if the alliance is full of robots that all work well and in a timely manner, then shame on a team for ignoring that. Our general strategy is to see how the first cycle ends up, then adjust strategy from there.

[The other Gabe]

Originally Posted by Phyrxes

I was chatting with one of our Alumni on the way back from our event today and we agreed this game is a lot like watching college basketball. Watch a good match up and its an elegant display of coordination and strategies that adapt and flow over the course of the math. Alternatively it can be a jumbled mess of that doesn't appear to be accomplishing much at all.

After watching the progression of our regional event this weekend the more I look forward to district play and the ability to give my students more time behind the glass in a competition environment.

Not my thought but one of our team member's parent likened some matches to small children playing soccer, all the robots in a herd around the ball with no real coordination or play calling.

I didn't know little kid soccer was the perfect way to describe bad matches until now. Thank you for enlightening me this is fantastic

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Kevin Ray

I agree completely with all of your other points but disagree with this one point. (A) Many if not most of the major foul points have been accrued by human players, thus nullifying thousands of man hours which an entire team has devoted to the construction of the robot, not to mention the strategic planning of the game play.
(B) At the two regionals we've attended I (along with hundreds of others I'm sure) thought I'd pop a blood vessel in my head from screaming for the human player (on our alliance) to "JUST INBOUND THE BALL!!!". There were MANY times when a human player ambled over to input the ball or held on to it until the absolute perfect positioning of the receiving robot. In one of our matches he remained behind the driver station getting caught up in the action on the other side of the field while we were waiting for the inbound. --WAY TOO MUCH input/game control on the human player this year. Hopefully this never happens again. A single human player has adversely affected many dozens of match outcomes this year--and that translates into not just affecting his team, good or bad, but the entire 6 teams on the field and, ultimately the overall standings of all teams in the competition.

One thing I have noticed in my travels to FIRST competition is you can tell a good team from a poor team is how well the human player is trained. Good teams make sure the human player understands the rules and do everything to a teams chances of victory. Bad teams human players do not understand the rules (If they are asking volunteers before the match "What do I do?" that is a very bad sign) do not have a sense of urgency and seem commit alot of penalties. A human player may not win you a match but they can sure lose you one and there is no excuse to have a bad one if you take the time to train one by having them read and understand the rules and teach them simple tactics to avoid penalties (G40 can be avoided by pinning your elbows to your side when you pitch the ball out).