Week 1 Observations

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

You can design around the Human Player station vs robot start arrangement in Lunacy, but that doesn't make it an awful game mechanic.

You can recognize the existence of the dogma in 2010 and train your human players to be acutely aware of it, but that doesn't make it a bad game mechanic.

You can strategize around the 10 protected areas of the field in Logomotion, but that doesn't make it a bad game mechanic.

You can recognize how the scoring weights in 2013 strongly favored throwing discs over Level 3 climbing in 95/100 cases, but you can still wish FIRST would have weighted the scores differently.

You can play a slower but less ambiguous assist cycle in Aerial Assist so referees accurately count your assists, but that doesn't make the scoring method of assists by the referees a bad idea.

Litter was seen as an issue robots would run into since Kickoff. Without looking at it, I think Karthik had mobility around litter as one of the top 4 requirements for playing the game. Litter was expected to be a total pain to work with.

Game design has to serve many masters, and this makes game design difficult. Is it a game teams enjoy designing for? Is it a game teams enjoy playing? Is it a game that spectators enjoy watching? Is it a game that "serves itself" well (not allowing for rulings resulting from a wide gap of interpretations, having an intelligent seeding system, having a safe and expedient field cycle time)? Is it a game that fulfills the mission of FIRST and FRC? While the game design committee may have different priorities (serving one master before the others) this is the order of importance I perceive as a former student and coach in the organization.

These are all of the masters an FRC game has to serve in order to be considered a success. One of the reasons Aim High and Ultimate Ascent make the top of the lists for game quality is because it manages to serve all of the masters with varying levels. The reason Lunacy scores so low? It was not fun to design for or play and wasn't easy to watch. Aerial Assist was fun to play and watch, but designing for it was pretty boring and the game did not serve itself very well. Recycle Rush may have been a fun game to design for and serves itself pretty well, but it sucks to play and watch.

Enjoy is subjective to the person in question. Some people enjoy candy crush, a bright vibrant game full of making things match. What happens when those things match? You are rewarded with fun animations and exciting sounds.
Other people enjoy Chess, a quiet game where focus and strategy is important, and aside from the act of reaching over and taking a piece off the board that belongs to your opponent there isn't much in the way of rewarding the player for doing well.
Recycle Rush would have been a great game to watch except unfortunately the kids who decided to play it are smart...
You could equate this game to watching someone swing at a pinata with a blindfold. Except higher level teams have transparent blind folds so they can see what they are doing. The rewarding aspect of this game was when you created a 6 stack that feelings of accomplishment. The fun was supposed to come from the suspense and tension in creating stacks. The issue is that teams just did it too well. 148 has an amazing robot but seeing robin in action didn't exactly have me holding my breath. I honestly wouldn't say this game is bad, at all. I would just say it isn't the right kind of game considering the audience.

Translating whats being said into shorter phrases.
Jenga sucks to watch and play when you are playing with people who are perfect at it because the fun comes from the falling Jenga stacks
Recycle rush sucks to watch and play when you are playing with higher level teams because the fun comes from falling tote stacks.