Don't Ban Can Battles in Offseasons

[Doug Frisk]

Originally Posted by Ty Tremblay

I'll admit it. Recycle Rush is not an exciting game to watch. It was a fun puzzle to try and solve, but not a fun game to play. There just aren't that many exciting moments. The one exciting moment Recycle Rush does have, however, is the can battle. And removing can battles turns an already boring game into a snooze fest.

Now before you hit the reply button and say that can battles ruined the game, I agree with you. But as we've seen before, games with no interaction with the opponents (or no opponents, a la 2001) are boring. They simply dissolve into a race against the clock. There's no change in strategy between matches unless an alliance member breaks, no affecting the other alliance, no off-field chess matches like 2014 Einstein. It's just robots doing a task until time runs out.

Why take the only interaction between alliances out of the game? The answer is balance. Canburglars are overpowered. If you have a the fastest one, you have a huge advantage over your opponent. Losing all 4 cans in auto is a devastating blow for your alliance, making it almost impossible to win the match. It's unfortunate that FIRST didn't manage to balance canburglars, but that doesn't mean they should be eliminated from the game.

There are two ways to help bring balance to a game with an overpowered element. You can remove (ban) the element or you can reduce its effectiveness (nerf it). As I said earlier, removing canburglars from takes an already boring game and turns it into a set of drills. Why not nerf canburglars instead?

IRI and Chezy Champs have already taken steps toward nerfing can battles (if you ignore the fact that they're also explicitly banned), by adding 2 and 3 cans to each side of the field, respectively. They've reduced the advantage an alliance can gain by winning all 4 cans in auto, nerfing the can battle. If an alliance loses all 4 cans in auto at IRI, they still have 5 cans to work with. If an alliance loses all 4 cans in auto at Chezy Champs, they still have 6 cans to work with. Remember, this is a game where the highest score in the world was achieved with 6 cans.

Don't ban can battles from your offseason, nerf them. Bring them to a point where winning the battle is an advantage, not a necessity.

Braces for impact.

It may put an extra strain on the refs, but what I would suggest is that no team may remove a container from the step unless all containers on that side are already scored on top of stacks and only one container may be removed from the step at a time.

That removes the can battle deciding the match in the first 2 seconds.

It benefits fast stacking teams or teams that strategically place containers on short stacks.

Sadly, it could be bad news for Wave (probably the best robot of the year) since their partners wouldn't be able to grab from the step until they'd capped their third stack.

But overall I think that's a significantly better solution than the "let's throw more containers on the field" plan.