Cheesecake: How far is too far?

[Josh Fox]

Originally Posted by twetherbee

I was not a fan of the level to which "cheesecaking" was done this year, either. But it had to be done to stay competitive in this year's game. One more reason to dislike Recycle Rush.

Emphasis mine. I think this is the most concrete thing to take away from the discussion.

I'm a fan of cheesecake. If a "better" team can work with a "lesser" team (purely in terms of mechanical ability of their robot) to improve it, I'm all for it. If that happens to be with a relatively simple mechanism? So be it.

I'm very against bad game mechanics.

Last year, cheesecake would have generally meant putting some sort of guide, and often a passive one at that, onto a partner robot. This was necessary because of a poor set of rules that dictated a robot must "control" a ball to complete a pass, which was a fundamental and essential component of the game, instead of simply pushing it or touching it momentarily.

This year, matches were decided in fractions of a second because of an insane amount of importance placed on controlling the cans, and the inability to recover cans once the opposing alliance had them on their side of the field. Obviously allowing teams to recover them once they crossed to the other side would entirely change the dynamic of the game as a whole, but at the root of the issue is that same game dynamic.

If you don't want teams coming in with pre-fabbed mechanisms, maybe don't design tasks that are essential to the game that can be completed with something so simple, or find another way for teams that may have more difficulty accomplishing complex tasks a way to positively contribute (see: defense, pushing game pieces into a lower goal, etc.).

tl;dr don't hate the player, hate the game design