Was Aerial Assist Better than Ultimate Ascent?

[asid61]

Waaaaay better than last year, except for endgame.
Watching Ultimate Ascent was like watching 6 little scoring matches going on all at the same time. No teamwork or coopertition was particularly involved. It was pretty much the same at every level to watch.

[cadandcookies]

In eliminations, it was far better. In qualifications, it was far worse. For me, they're about equal (though I liked the 2013 season a bit better for obvious reasons )

[JohnSchneider]

That question depends on who your partners are.

Because AA is no fun with 2 boxes. It's a lot of fun with even alliances

[VacioArconte]

This year was a lot more interesting overall. Last year scouting was pretty easy as it was all point based, there were no 'other' factors. This year you have to consider defense, different autonomous programs and versatility.

As a spectator sport this was much better, as last year it was a bunch of frisbees flying with no one knowing who is winning. This year every shot count and crowd reactions were extremely noticeable. The crowd was stunned when the Cheesy Poofs swerved to avoid 1114's goalie arm this year.

I think robot design was a little bit easier this year, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It just shifts the focus of the team more towards strategy and scouting, which are important aspects.

The main reason people hate this game is because it is a truly team-oriented game. You have to rely on your partners, and that doesn't suit people.

[scooty199]

Barring all technical issues and with this game played like it should be, I love this game probably more than I love Ultimate Ascent which I thought got stale.

I was in Anaheim at VEX Worlds this week so I wasn't able to catch any of the streams of CMP which I will do when I get home.

But the entirety of this game, from the low floor to the logistical issues definitely make the game less enjoyable.

[DCA Fan]

No.

[CTbiker105]

I wish there was a way to incorporate the amount of teamwork required for alliances to do well in eliminations this year, but not cause teams to suffer as drastically as some did during qualifications if they get stuck with less than functioning partners.

[Kevin Leonard]

I'm so unbelievably torn about this game.
On one hand my team just experienced a terrible weekend where having the worst match schedule in the division caused us to go 3-7, despite our robot doing well all but two of those matches. It seemed like very match we were either paired with a team whose robot couldn't effectively play any part of the game, a team that completely ignored the preset strategy, or a good robot that found a way to break during our match.
And the fouls are absolutely awful. Both of our eliminations matches in Archimedes were more or less decided by fouls- some of which I disagreed with. (The score margin won't tell you, but I felt that sometimes some fouls should have gone the other way rather than against us- but I digress- after re-watching some footage they're not that hard to believe.).

But then I watched an amazing 8 seed beat the Fighting OPeagle Barons in the quarters with amazing strategy, and that same alliance fall apart because they rushed and were outplayed by the Winnosis Windtorque alliance, I watched that smart alliance take the trip to Einstein from the Buzzkill Rushknights who everyone thought was going to win the division while 1625 pushed the bees back and forth across the field a few times.
And then I watched two semifinals on Einstein- one was an offensive shootout that was spectacular to watch and one was a game of defensive shut-down decided by who managed to get the shots off despite the shut-down D.
And who could forget All Las Cheesy Chaos versus the SimPirCircuitage epic finals- with the game of autonomous chicken and the back and forth cycling.

I can't help but love this game when fouls are decided reasonably and the robots are of a high caliber- the strategic and simultaneous play is phenomenal to watch and more phenomenal to play.
It's a polarizing game now, and I think will continue to be until we have a new game to criticize next year.
I just wish my otherwise fantastic senior season didn't have to be tarnished by what-ifs...

[Charles Boehm]

I personally enjoyed this game right from the start. I thought the change to a more team based game would bring about a completly knew kind of competition, which it did.

Ill admit I was worried about how it was going to play out in actualy competition after the problems it had in the early weeks. But after playing though two regionals and champs I was reassured with my original view.

Quarter final 1 matches 1, 2, and 3 on Archimedes were easily the most exhilerating matches I'd ever seen. I definitly recomend watching those matches, the 8th seed upset our alliance in 3 INSANE matches that added up to over 1600 points total!

I personally enjoyed this game more than Ultimate Ascent.

[AndrewPospeshil]

I'm incredibly conflicted. Personally, as someone who absolutely loves game strategy of any kind (chess, Pokemon, etc), and as someone who spent countless hours discussing strategy and match results with their dad (also the team's drive coach for most of the season), this game was astronomically better conceptually than anything FIRST has ever produced. It required all members of the alliance to be involved and strategizing. This meant that a single robot generally couldn't overpower a superior opposing strategy. It made the game much deeper than just flinging frisbees or basketballs as quick as possible. Roles were especially important during elims, as it seemed each alliance was seeking an inbounder who could defend once they received and got rid of the ball, a trusser who could quickly acquire the ball and truss it without being pushed around too easily, and a scorer who could get the ball from the human player and was generally maneuverable enough to get into scoring position. This also gave the chance for mid-level teams to be very good picks as they fulfilled a role that top-tier teams (often shooters) needed. Plus it was fairly easy for the crowd to get excited - as opposed to watching numbers rise on a screen for two and a half minutes as robots sat there or moved back and forth, they understood that one ball being scored earned a lot of points if a lot of robots touched it, and it could easily turn the tide of a match.

On the other hand this game might have been better suited to a college level competition. Having one or two rookies with no ball controlling mechanism could often lose a match for even the best of teams. The unfortunate fact of FRC is that there will always be teams that are not much more than rolling chassis (chassi? chassises?). This means that if they aren't exceptionally lucky with their matchlist, they might not win a single match at all. A college competition would be much more likely to not have near-useless robots. Regardless, a weighting system might be viable to give teams similarly-skilled alliances for more even scoring matches, but then a lot of teams would likely not be with rookies/skilled veterans at all, which isn't super GP.

Anyways I do think AA > UA, simply because the strategy aspect is second to none. That's why I like Ring It Up way more than Block Party; the game wasn't as exciting but strategy was much more fun. There were a few tweaks that could've been made possibly to create a smoother experience but overall I think Aerial Assist will be remembered as one of the best FRC games ever.

[Chris Endres]

The two games in particular where both interesting. But all in all, I believe that Aerial Assist was a slightly better game, due to several inputs. Since I am apart of the Pit Crew/Mechanical/CAD team on my team, I have been involved with many different ways of going upon scoring and overall play. In terms of technical design, Ultimate Ascent was simple, hopper and shooter, then score as many Frisbee as possible. Also, the strategy that was involved this year was much more involved than the last few years.

[Mrcope9]

No, ultimate ascent was better. I judge a game by the way strangers can watch it even if they know nothing about FIRST. With basketballs and then frisbees, everybody could watch and cheer when someone scored. Everyone really knew the rules right away. This year, it was confusing to watch at some points. Assists and the defense and so many foul points made it really great but also very painful at some points.

[CLandrum3081]

I liked the concept of Aerial Assist better. Ultimate Ascent wasn't my favorite game ever, but I definitely see why people liked it so much. Unfortunately, the implementation of this game really hindered it.

Rebound Rumble will always be my favorite. Aerial Assist could have surpassed it. In the end, I ended up liking the concept and the Einstein matches better, but Ultimate Ascent was superior overall due to reasons already discussed over the past few months on this forum. I didn't cringe to the point of tears during Rebound Rumble or Ultimate Ascent. I did during Aerial Assist, and the 2014 Land of 10,000 Lakes qualification rounds were the most disappointing, low-energy matches I've seen in my three-year FIRST career. 10K is my favorite Regional, but the matches were barely worth watching when powerhouse teams weren't on the field.

I'd say more, but I've already put a "deadhorse" graphic here.

[StAxis]

Originally Posted by connor.worley

What strategic play did you see, besides defense/evasion? I'm curious. I'd really like to see two balls in play for each alliance at IRI, since that'd actually open up strategic tradeoffs like parallel scoring vs assisting, defense vs inbounding a second ball, etc.

On Curie the Fighting Pi/PWNAGE alliance had some amazing passes across the field to the human player to get around defense and get three assists. Also there was a lot involved in finals on Einstein because of the auto modes. 254 pulls a fast one on 1114 and goes left all the way, 1114 gets in their way and makes them miss next match, then they have 2848 ram them to slow them down and prevent them from messing up the poof's auto.

In general there was a lot of strategy involved in deciding what robot did what, whether to prioritize assists or the truss, one point vs ten point goals, and trading off for zone defense. From a strategic perspective it was an incredibly complex game to watch compared to the last few years.

[pandamonium]

[quote=Tyler2517;1379327]It was the most strategic game and was a blast to wasimilarhigh levels. Once the bugs were fixed it was going pretty well.[/QUOTE

So everyone has there own opinions but I think if you isolate each game to just its strategic components you can rank them pretty easily. If you were not around for 05 or 07 you really should check them out.

Looking only at each game from a strategic level.
1. 2007 - deciding where to score and cool end game. Cool Robot types
2. 2005 - deciding where to score and when.
3. 2013 - cycling climbing fcs
4. 2014 - pre match decided games. DEFENSE. Where to score. ASSISTS. 2 balls would have made game better...
5. 2012 - bridge points.
6. 2010 - how soon people forget how bad week 1 was but it got fixed too.
7. 2008 - different concept but hard to understand score. all matches seemed similar.
8. 2006 - shooting was cool at the time but has been better since. Periods was cool.
9. 2011 - every game played exactly the same. OP end game.
10. 2009 - try to drive. Pin near human player...