Do we want another game without defense?

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by GKrotkov

It saddens me that the dominant form of play was so segregated. I still feel, even after Einstein should have shown me better, that there was room in Recycle Rush for collaborative alliances that build stacks in an interesting way: like 1986/233/4575 in Queen City, 1089/365/423 @ MAR Champs, or 1325/3683 here: https://youtu.be/Dd-SQmZg8tQ?t=71

Looking back at the game (heck, even looking at the game in January), I see potential for all these collaborative roles; bin managers, cappers, stack movers, immobile stackers - but none of it was competitive enough.

It seems like a real shame. However, I can't find a strong relation to the lack of defense. Was it that teams, when they don't have to think about making a machine quite so robust, try to do more?

Agreed. There were exceptions to this at the highest levels, but very few. I think a big part of this was more that there weren't a lot of extremely competitive role-players. 27 being the obvious exception, I can't think of many robots that were exceptional cappers or stackers. Most stackers could make almost as many capped stacks as uncapped stacks.

[DohertyBilly]

Originally Posted by Loose Screw

However, 4 out of the 8 alliances that won their divisions weren't #1.

Yeah, but the lowest seed to make Einstein was 4 (and the rest were 1 or 2). And that 4 seed was 368 picking 359, so I wouldn't really call that a major upset. Unless the top seed had some major disaster (or the best landfill player in a human player saturated division was playing from #2) there wasn't very much stopping the top.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by jman4747

I can't say yes/no, but I would say not back to back. There is a place for another later though.

Same here - not as a "new normal", but as one of the ways to shake things up and make sure that everyone's solving the challenge, not just rehashing what they did the past few years because they know it.

And there were definitely some upsets at the high levels - on Carson, the #1 alliance (lead by 254 The Cheezy Poofs) was eliminated in quarters and the #5 alliance went to Einstein. A tangled auto and a stack placed atop litter toppled another in the first round, and a robot fell over the second during auto - end of season. Once on Einstein, the other top alliance anticipated prior to CMP (148 Robowranglers allied with 1114 Simbotics) went down in semis - it was the #4 alliance that took the gold and the #5 that took silver. While I did not notice any 3/7 victories, I did see several 4/6 can splits which were won by the team with only four RCs.

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

Same here - not as a "new normal", but as one of the ways to shake things up and make sure that everyone's solving the challenge, not just rehashing what they did the past few years because they know it.

And there were definitely some upsets at the high levels - on Carson, the #1 alliance (lead by 254 The Cheezy Poofs) was eliminated in quarters and the #5 alliance went to Einstein. A tangled auto and a stack placed atop litter toppled another in the first round, and a robot fell over the second during auto - end of season. Once on Einstein, the other top alliance anticipated prior to CMP (148 Robowranglers allied with 1114 Simbotics) went down in semis - it was the #4 alliance that took the gold and the #5 that took silver. While I did not notice any 3/7 victories, I did see several 4/6 can splits which were won by the team with only four RCs.

The two seed alliance from Carson went to Einstein, not the five seed.

[Pouncing Zebra]

From a driver prospective, this game had defense. No there weren't any robots physically touching, but defense is stopping the other team from scoring. The first, obvious way to prevent the other team from scoring was the RCs on the step. If you could successfully obtain 3 cans from the step and score two of them (with the original 3 cans as well) you won the match. It's a defensive strategy. The other defensive method was noodle throwing. If you don't plan on using your 4th robot, you can pick a team who has a human player that can throw noodles. Getting a noodle stuck in an opposing robot could potentially disable a mechanism, and stack placements change depending on noodles on the field (look at finals match 2 I had to drop a stack of 6 with a can in front of the step because a noodle was in the way). So in my opinion, I believe this game does have defense, but I do like the full contact push the other robots away style of defense.

[AndrewPospeshil]

I find that although this was a much more boring game, the robots became more exciting. 2014 had plenty of robot designs, but it was nothing compared to this year. Now for teams this is really exciting - I think I squealed when I saw 900's cheesecaked harpoons. However, for spectators this has less of an effect I think. The difference between a field with similar or varied robots is fairly negligible to someone who doesn't know much about FRC robots imo. Still, it was incredible to see so many different, unorthodox designs compared to other years. Not only that but these robots could win - they weren't simply gimicks (148 is the best example). I feel that the lack of defense/interfernce and multitude of game pieces/tasks really created an incentive for teams to think out of the box. In theory every game should do this, but it's definitely not easy.

On the other hand, this game could be really boring to watch. Every game trends towards being boring in the first few weeks then becoming insane on Einstein, but I feel this year that just wasn't the case. Week 1 and 2 events (especially districts, oh man) looked pretty much like this: a tote would be dispensed, a team would take 30 seconds trying to put it on the platform, and repeat (this was another issue: teams without a gamespec element were pretty much screwed). Many teams could make small stacks but that was about it. Einstein suffered a similar fate, albeit at a much higher tier. Each alliance would make 6 or 7 6-stacks in their own little areas, and there was very little variation between matches. The obvious exception is the can stealing battles: they were great to watch. Our 35 second tug-of-war in Archimedes playoffs was the best part of any match this whole season. Einstein was determined by who got the best can-stealing selections - this is why the 1023/2338 alliance got knocked out immediately; their can-stealers just weren't fast enough. And even then, the can-stealing created an arms race that becomes a little insane imo. Karthik said something at his seminar about how the minibot arms race a few years ago got to the point where teams were using dry ice to speed up their mini bots' motors. This arms race was probably less insane, but there was lots of surgical tubing involved still - a dangerous amount of potential energy. I feel this arms race wasn't as bad, but still could've created a disaster.

Originally Posted by The other Gabe

I had no major issues with this game, except that it encouraged me to root for others to fail so that my alliance could move on

THIS one was especially bad. Now granted that comes with the upside (in my opinion, at least) of an average score system vs a win/loss system, but I hated rooting against other teams. I really miss last year when I could pick an alliance I wanted to win every match - this year we almost had to pray for our friends to drop stacks if they were competing for the same playoff spot as us.

My post strayed a quite a bit from the actual lack of defense aspcect of this game (oops!) but I really can't cast a vote. At the beginning of the season I would've voted a definite "no", but after this year's metagame evolved to accomadate the lack of defense I just can't. But I also won't vote "yes", because that just presented a whole SLEW of problems this year.

[hannaners]

Originally Posted by Brandon Zalinsky

I think a good way to judge the excitement of a game is to watch Einstein and watch the crowd and the people there. This year, the crowd was completely dead, as far as I could see/hear. This was a far cry from any previous year, where sometimes it felt like a minor earthquake in the arena during the finals.

This was due, in my opinion, to exactly what you stated. The crowd knew the match would be decided in the first second of auto, and barring major screwup, they were guaranteed a win...What I saw was incredibly creative and awesome machines playing an atrocious and boring game.

Agreed. Einstein this year kinda dragged on and had nowhere near the hype as last year. Sure, the first 15 seconds were exciting, but after that I already knew what each robot would do - 1114, 2056, 118 would pretty much always make a beeline for the landfill, 330, 148 would head to the human player, etc. etc. to the point where each match seemed to be the same thing over and over. In past years, the possibility of defense by an opposing alliance has drastically changed an alliance's strategy. I didn't see much of that with this game

Also, like others have said, the QA system for playoffs is another huge problem from this year but that's for another thread

[Bryce Paputa]

I fell asleep during Einsteins and missed more than half of it. Part of that was sleep deprivation, but a lot of it was that the game was just that boring.

[dudefise]

I've always been a defensive-minded student/coach/alum (probably from watching too much football), so I disliked this year's game as a result. I felt it hurt mid-tier teams like my own that are typically not going to match powerhouses point-for-point, but have come close or beaten them by defensively sound strategy. It also seems to reduce the ferocity of the game and the interest level of the crowd.

So no, defense is important and we need it back.

[EricH]

Without defense at all, no.

With unrestricted defense, no WAY!


The biggest problem with defense is that it has to be reffed--and that means that the refs have to make a judgement call on something that may or may not be a clear call.


I kind of like the "protected zones" model of defense prevention: If you're HERE, you are safe from defense. If you're not here, you are a target. Provided, of course, that the definition of HERE is something that's easy to see...

[dudefise]

Originally Posted by EricH

Without defense at all, no.

With unrestricted defense, no WAY!


The biggest problem with defense is that it has to be reffed--and that means that the refs have to make a judgement call on something that may or may not be a clear call.

Agreed. Looking to sports, what defines a "forcible hit to a defenseless receiver" and what is a foul vs a yellow card are the most aggravating things as a fan - and certainly worse as a team member.

Making clear-cut rules would be nice, but it is incredibly difficult. Does damage constitute excessive force? If it does, then everyone's robots will be paper mache, and designed to take damage at the slightest blow and draw a foul. I think most would agree, though, that a full-speed charge into the extended arm of a robot that is not in a scoring position is excessive though, and with the variety of robots this becomes near impossible.

I agree with the use of defensive zones, or even allowing goaltending, as possible compromise solutions.

That said, nothing is quite as entertaining as full-force hits (with bumpers of course). Relaxing the bumper rules but bringing them back would help quite a bit. Perhaps a "bumpers at your own risk" rule with guidelines as to materials and precise construction, and then allowing teams to work out the areas of their robot that need to be bumpered.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by dudefise

Relaxing the bumper rules but bringing them back would help quite a bit. Perhaps a "bumpers at your own risk" rule with guidelines as to materials and precise construction, and then allowing teams to work out the areas of their robot that need to be bumpered.

I prefer the '06-'07 bumper rules, myself. They were quite simple: You could have "standard" bumpers, or not. If you had them, they had their own weight limit. If you didn't, that was your choice. And you could cover as much or as little of the robot as you liked. '08 and '09 weren't bad, either--there was a certain percentage of the perimeter that had to be covered (though '09 forced a trailer hitch to fit in the uncovered percentage... ouch).

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by DohertyBilly

Yeah, but the lowest seed to make Einstein was 4 (and the rest were 1 or 2). And that 4 seed was 368 picking 359, so I wouldn't really call that a major upset. Unless the top seed had some major disaster (or the best landfill player in a human player saturated division was playing from #2) there wasn't very much stopping the top.

Thanks for the info. Didn't know that. 368 actually declined #3 1986, before choosing us.

[asid61]

I liked it, actually. It made the game more dependent on design/ strategy and less on luck. It also removed the need for bumpers. There was overall less human involvement, which was good thing IMO.
On the other hand it also removed a lot of luck from the playoffs (although champs did not disappoint in that area!).

[dmorewood]

Originally Posted by Loose Screw

Autonomous mode would be overpowered.
Scoring in autonomous mode was useful, but never was overpowered. Teams that could score 20-28 points in auto were rewarded, but would still have to score their best to win.
[/b]

I completely disagree. If you lost the can war you lost the match. Every single Einstein match was decided by cans. I think the fact that the match was decided in the first second ruined the competitive aspect of the game.