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Unread 07-04-2015, 04:25
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Necroterra Necroterra is offline
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Re: A Recycle Rush Reflection

I'd like to share my thoughts on this game. This is my first and probably last (unless I mentor) year doing FRC, as I am a senior. Because of this, my perspective is different than many of the other posters here on CD - I didn't experience the 2013 and 2014 games, I've never strategized around defense, etc.

Recycle Rush undoubtedly has flaws - high skill floor, strange skill ceiling, autonomous probably deciding Einstein matches, potential liabilities of 3rd teams, boring and complicated for spectators.

I think, however, that this thread has focused mainly on defending or attacking the flaws of RR, and there are definitely some cool things about it that I didn't see in my cursory look at earlier games.

First of all is the simply insane robots some teams have built. I realized more teams had realized the potential for adventurous designs so we would have more of these at Champs, but teams like 1987 and the other ConveyorBots, 1726, with their more-or-less pure stacker, 1212 with their double robot, Batman and Robin, Zenith and Zipline, 2840's robot, 1671's under-ramp... maybe this has always happened, but seeing 1212's robot at Arizona West was amazing to me, even though it was having trouble.

Second is it seems to me like the human players, at least through the weeks of regionals, are more interesting this year. 2014 has them catching and re-introducing balls, and 2013 has them inserting and throwing (for a few seconds) the frisbees. This year, the human players have to load totes, something that has some level of skill to make it smooth and consistent, load noodles into cans, again, something that can done slowly or quickly, and most challenging, they can throw noodles for a fairly significant number of points. At championships, the best noodle throwers will be targeting robot's paths or aim for a side of the landfill.

Finally, there have been complaints about the amount of clutter on the fields this year. I actually like the clutter - whenever I watch a 2014 game in particular, the game feels so empty. This year has so much going on, especially for middle level alliances in these last week (see 1726 at AZWest).




One other note, someone earlier in the thread mentioned that there are two camps - an "FRC should be a Sport" camp and an "FRC should be a Engineering Challenge" camp, more or less. I personally don't ever foresee FRC becoming extremely fun for spectators without a major restructuring.
  • Too many qualifying matches - outsiders won't watch 80+ matches to find the really exciting ones for them. Maybe a Dakar Rally style recap series of videos would work, though.
  • Too much expected knowledge. Show 2014, a simple game, to someone new. They don't know how big the robots are, how hard it is do intake and relaunch the balls, they aren't going to intuitively keep track of the different robots, they don't understand the strategy of the scorign systems...
  • The matches are designed in such a way that no one really cares. They are short, preventing you from getting invested, it's often easy to tell who will win 1/2 way through (not just in RR). You spend 5 minutes explaining the game to someone, and then play them a 2 minute match and they don't get anything out of it.
  • They stakes of winning aren't presented to the audience - partly because they don't exist. I would think the culture FIRST wants to foster doesn't care about winning as much as learning and the experience (evidenced by Chairman's and many other decisions), but spectators want a reason to root for their team.

When I show our team's victory to an outsider, be it a family member, a friend, a potential sponsor, I think their experience is something like this:

"BLUE ALLIANCE WINS" - Ok, so they won. Now what? They get to go to Championships and lose against teams I have never heard of? Uh...

Very few outside viewers care that we are learning about programming / engineering / design / teamwork / leadership.

NOTE: Please let me know if any of my opinions about earlier years are misinformed, I'll be honest that I haven't spent much time researching.
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