2015 HINT DISCUSSION

[Wyatt Jordan]

I do not believe the GDC will re-use the 2014 game because:
1. It would be SO boring, even with a major change, and if they are going to make a major change they might as well call it a new game
2. Huge advantage for veterans (again unless there was a major change but again that would just be called a new challenge
3. They already returned the trusses to whatever company they rented them from, someone said this earlier in the thread I forget where

If we follow the pattern of the past 3 years' challenges:
2012: shooting round balls, easy to pick up/manipulate/shoot
2013: shooting frisbees, harder to pick up/manipulate, still easy to shoot
2014: shooting massive ball with tons of drag, much more difficult
2015: shooting some object that is oddly shaped, hard to pick up and shoot, a football, maybe a football challenge, my team (3941) has been discussing this idea for about a month now

However there is something to be said for having 4 years of shooting in a row. This does mean people like me (in their senior year) will have had a shooting challenge every year in FRC, Do you think the GDC would think it was bad to have all shooting challenges and try to mix it up? Or keep what was working in the past regardless of the lack of variety?

Now looking at the hint. I believe the footage mix-up for the 1997 and 1999 challenges was not a mistake, definitely something there. Also I believe there might be a hint in the scores of the matches, however would FIRST have enough footage to search through to find specific numbers for the beginning games? Probably not, however they definitely have enough footage from the past few years to get the scores they want, so at some point the scores in the challenges may start to have more meaning. I'm suggesting that point is 1999 because that is where the mix-up is.

Of course we are assuming someone spent some time making this hint if the there is a message in the game scores. Maybe I'm over-analyzing but if you remember the 2013 game hint that definitely took several complex steps to solve, just a thought, let me know what you guys think