Week 2 Live Discussion

[themccannman]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

-Disparity of ability: even with growing COTS market for effective robot design, some of the COTS parts fit design paradigms that do not exist in this game, or at least do not align with successful strategies of Recycle Rush. This leads to more manufactured parts by fewer experienced teams, more things that break or even worse, don't work, and budgets with little recourse to rectify either.

-Lack of fallback strategies: Recycle Rush is not a game where "fallback" strategies exist. Third partners with broken/inefficient/risky (I'll get to that later) robots do not have a role they can fill for the alliance except to not exist at all in some cases.

-Your Own Worst Enemy: Litter excluded, the game does not provide any real defense except for gravity and the incompetence/bad luck of yourself and your partners. By removing the lowest common denominator robot from play in some cases, their physical presence not being on the field eliminates variables and minimizes risk. For higher seeded alliances that are able to capitalize on the disparate play of "the field" they are up against, it makes more sense to minimize risk if the game looks in hand without them.

I think these two are what contribute the most. The only objective in this game is one that is very technically challenging and difficult to execute for new teams. Every other game has had a role for teams to play if they aren't the best at the main challenge, defense being the most common over the years. This game has none of that, you either build a stack of 6 and cap it, or you don't and you're just wasted space/resources for your teammates, that's horrible game design IMO. 2007 had the option of building a platform robot, 2008 allowed you to just drive laps, 2010 had goalkeeping, 2011 had defense and minibots, 2012 had defense, balancing, and stealing game pieces from opponents (see 16), 2013 had lots of defense, counter defense, and shooting a frisbee isn't nearly has technically challenging, 2014 had possessions, all teams had to do was hold the ball and they suddenly became invaluable to their alliance. This year... has nothing, capping stacks is not easy, building stacks (without knocking them over) is not easy, grabbing RCs off the step is not easy, autonomous is not easy. There's really nothing for teams to do if they're not at the peak of their game, and even most of the "powerhouse" teams are struggling just with stacking efficiently.

Games need a low entry barrier (a low skill floor), but they need a high skill ceiling so that newer teams can be involved and useful while still providing a challenge for veteran teams. This game has a very high skill floor, and a relatively low skill ceiling, by week two we're getting alliances that are only 2 stacks away from the effective score cap, once you run out of RCs it's almost a waste of your time to build uncapped stacks.