1114 the Statistical Outlier

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

You missed something else here. This year, the GDC intentionally (or unintentionally, I hope) made a game that was significantly harder than previous years. Stacking totes isn't hard, but stacking totes, then placing containers on TOP of totes for the big scores is very hard. In addition, this is one of the few games in recent memory where a mistake can descore a tremendous amount of points. Make no mistake - this is a very hard game to play.

As a result, you have a game where a handful of teams are doing very, very well. The rest are struggling mightily.... and in some cases even being shuttled off to the side and not participating so they don't interfere with their stratospheric partners.

It's not like last year where even the most basic robot could do an assist. Unfortunate and probably accidental, but that's the game and teams want to win.

The biggest problem with this game is that the returns grow exponentially. If your robot can just cap stacks, it's worthless without a great, fast stacker. If your robot can just stack six, it's not putting up stellar scores without a capper. If your robot can just stack 3 and cap a 3-stack, you're doing okay, but you can't compete at anywhere near the top level for elims. But if you can stack and cap six, you're putting up 3 times as many points as anyone else. There are HUGE returns for "doing everything" and huge penalties for compromising any part of your design to do "one thing well". Teams who aren't powerhouses had to choose between hoping they get to pick a perfect alliance of specialists, or trying to do everything and over committing. It's no wonder the top teams are so much better.