POLL: Worst FRC game

[Taylor]

See that one (1) vote for Rack 'n Roll?
Yeah, that's me.
The field was obnoxious. Did anybody actually enjoy building that rack and all the spiders? And the silly routine of the referees going out to shake it before each match? Ridiculous. Plus all the workshop space wasted to that huge, expensive behemoth of wood and PVC.
Scoring was hard to track - no matter where you were, half the scoring opportunities were blind to you. Scoring was also as complicated, if not more, than RR.
BLTs had no purpose in this game. If your robot couldn't actively manipulate some pretty complex game objects, you were pretty worthless.
People complain that Lunacy was hard to follow because the field was so congested. Rack 'n Roll was much, much worse in that area.

The only saving grace of the game was its exciting endgame. That was pretty cool.

Also, I agree with the sentiment shared by some on this thread that this poll is like choosing the worst flavor of ice cream. Sure, that flavor may not be your favorite, but it's still ice cream. Yum!

[matthewdenny]

To compare games from diffrent eras, perhaps at the end of this you could subtract the 'Worst game" votes from the "Best Game Votes" and divide by total number of votes.

So for example a recent Year X had 45 best game votes and 12 worst game votes.
It's score is : (45-12)/57 = .579


An older game, Year Y had 5 best game votes and 2 worst game votes.
It's score is : (5-2)/7 = .429

Just a thought on comparing older and newer games with different amounts of people around that actually were involved.

[parry1126]

Were the People who voted for Recycle Rush over Lunacy around for both games? If you were and still thought Recycle Rush was worse than Lunacy, please enlighten me lol. Lunacy was awful....

[InspectorGadget1073]

Originally Posted by parry1126

Were the People who voted for Recycle Rush over Lunacy around for both games? If you were and still thought Recycle Rush was worse than Lunacy, please enlighten me lol. Lunacy was awful....

Personally, I was not around for Lunacy, but I have watched videos of some Lunacy matches from Einstein (Go 111!), and yes, it was slow in terms of scoring the "moon rocks", but it had a straight-forward scoring system and none of this multipliers and gray-lines that Recycle rush had with the Bins and noodles.

I vote for Recycle Rush

[Nuwanda]

I'm definitely in the majority for this; Recycle Rush was a bust. It was certainly an engineering challenge, which I appreciated, but it was not a spectator sport. My team attended nine competitions this year (including offseason), and as a scouting captain, I easily watched over a thousand matches. Other than MSC (2 fields and 102 teams made things quite interesting) and IRI, competitions were boring to watch. We had so much trouble getting the team to scout because no one wants to sit in the stands and watch robots sit in a corner, moving an elevator up and down.
I understand that there were issues with sponsorship which led to Recycle Rush being put together in a matter of months, but it was lacking one of the most important parts of FRC, an engaging competition atmosphere.
As anyone on my team can testify, I was literally dancing through the halls when we were eliminated at our final competition of 2015. I was just happy that the game was over.

[cmrnpizzo14]

Originally Posted by Ari423

Unpopular opinion: I voted for 2011. I didn't mind that Recycle Rush had no defense; it allowed for some very interesting designs. For Lunacy, though I wasn't on the team at the time, I heard that it was an interesting design challenge.

In 2011, from what I've heard and seen, the challenge was too hard. That means for lower level teams, they could only score a point or two. As a lower level team, I highly value that a game has tasks accomplishable by both the top teams and the lower level teams. Logomotion did not have this.

As someone who was on a second year team in 2011, I would not say that the challenge was too hard. Teams made the challenge too hard on themselves from not understanding that just having a functional minibot netted your team more points than it really deserved. You could have been very functional without challenging yourself to reach the top level.

[Dan Petrovic]

The way I see it, there are three factors that define the quality of a game.

1. Strategic Freedom - How many viable strategies/designs are there? (more = better)
Good examples: FIRST Overdrive, Aim High

2. Technical Challenge - How challenging is it to play the game at the highest level? (more challenging = better)
Good examples: Recycle Rush, Ultimate Ascent

3. Spectator Interest - How exciting are matches? (more exciting = better)
Good examples: Aerial Assist, Ultimate Ascent

I believe that Lunacy fails at all of these. A moshpit of refrigerators for 2 minutes and 15 seconds isn't exciting to watch nor were the designs and strategies particularly unique. At least Recycle Rush had some diversity and posed a unique technical challenge.

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by John Retkowski

And if by screwing over rookie and inexperienced teams you mean forcing them to build something more than just a box on wheels, I'm not really opposed to that. Minimum participation this year meant getting boxes from one place to another.

Which rookie teams could still do even as a box on wheels. Even Dozer would have been able to score a few points.

At the GTRC regional there was one team with a C-shaped drivetrain. That's all it was. It would go out and find a tote and push it onto the scoring platform. Then it would go and do it again.

It didn't sound like much, and the temptation was to smirk contemptuously, but it outscored the robot we brought, which theoretically could do much more but arrived untested and unpracticed.

[Amanda Morrison]

Originally Posted by Cory

Wow, the fact that 2003 is so underrepresented here must mean there just isn't anyone around from then anymore.

Truth here.

I find it funny that the new generation has such hatred of Lunacy. At least due to the human player element, it was somewhat okay to watch. It was flawed and too difficult of a challenge, but it was watchable.

Stack Attack is a whole other class. A challenge that was too difficult - much like Lunacy, yes. But combine that with a boring human player challenge, rules with a lot of wiggle, scoring that missed the mark, and most of the gameplay happening in the first three seconds of the match.

Much like Tyler's post above re: hopelessness at others' mastery of the game (I also subject Zone Zeal in this category), this was the opposite. After three seconds of play, you didn't really want to (or couldn't!) play any longer - and thus it remains my least favorite. I hesitate to say there has ever been a "bad" game, because to echo earlier statements, being on a GDC is extremely hard work. So I'll just say it has a permanent spot on the bottom of my list.

Originally Posted by Taylor

Also, I agree with the sentiment shared by some on this thread that this poll is like choosing the worst flavor of ice cream. Sure, that flavor may not be your favorite, but it's still ice cream. Yum!

[martin417]

I don't understand the hatred for Lunacy and Overdrive. They were my two favorite games. The last two games compete for the worst.

Aerial assist: there was only one game piece for each alliance, therefore always four robots with nothing to do. There were many penalties to choose from, so the idle robots spent their time accruing penalty points.

Recycle Rush: What can I say that hasn't been said? Who wants to watch two teams on opposite ends of the court throwing free throws to see who can sink the most in a fixed time period?

[IndySam]

Logomotion was the only kickoff I ever left pissed off. The minibot was an intriguing idea but the rules execution was an abomination.

It's basically why I refer to my team as 829 not FIRST team 829

[Briansmithtown]

Originally Posted by martin417

Aerial assist: there was only one game piece for each alliance, therefore always four robots with nothing to do. There were many penalties to choose from, so the idle robots spent their time accruing penalty points.

the other four robots were going after the ones carrying the ball.. they were basically playing kill the carrier. In one match at SBPLI, it was me vs. 2 robots where i basically made it so the one robot with the game piece couldn't score... we lost by one point. it was intense because it was literally happening right in front of me.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFfPZy0CW54

[logank013]

When I say this, I've only played the 2015 game. But I've seen the rules for most of the games and every game animation that has come out. I'd say the most recent "Bad Games" were 2015 (Recycle Rush), 2011 (Logomotion), and 2008 (First Overdrive). Here are the quick reason I don't like these games.

2015- First of all, it wasn't the best game to watch. No Defense is a bad idea when you're trying to make a spectator game. Secondly, the most ideal game is a game that requires 2 or 3 robots to work together. That is the part of the 2014 game that I really liked. Recycle rush just was pretty much 3 robots doing their own tasks

2011- Very similar to 2015. Almost every robot worked by themselves and defense was not a huge factor in most matches I've seen. Almost every robot was built the exact same way.

2008- Is running around in a circle over and over again with a yoga ball really that fun to watch. I voted this as the worst game because this game had very little substance in my opinion.

Also, Can people elaborate on why Lunacy was so bad. The game looked to be a fun game but I'm sure many aspects of the game were frustrating. Thanks

[jodge1706]

I think a lot of the hatred for Recycle Rush is only exaggerated by how great the games proceeding it. My first year was during Ultimate Ascent, and going in to kickoff for the next coming years and expecting the game to be as great as it was then, is only setting myself up for disappointment. Aerial Assist seems, in retrospect, to be a better game after playing Recycle Rush. This all seems to be extremely subjective.

[robochick1319]

Originally Posted by Taylor

See that one (1) vote for Rack 'n Roll?
Yeah, that's me.
The field was obnoxious. Did anybody actually enjoy building that rack and all the spiders? And the silly routine of the referees going out to shake it before each match? Ridiculous. Plus all the workshop space wasted to that huge, expensive behemoth of wood and PVC.
Scoring was hard to track - no matter where you were, half the scoring opportunities were blind to you. Scoring was also as complicated, if not more, than RR.
BLTs had no purpose in this game. If your robot couldn't actively manipulate some pretty complex game objects, you were pretty worthless.
People complain that Lunacy was hard to follow because the field was so congested. Rack 'n Roll was much, much worse in that area.

The only saving grace of the game was its exciting endgame. That was pretty cool.

Also, I agree with the sentiment shared by some on this thread that this poll is like choosing the worst flavor of ice cream. Sure, that flavor may not be your favorite, but it's still ice cream. Yum!

I personally loved Rack n' Roll. It had the best endgame EVER. Robots on robots?? Please bring that back. Please.

As operator that year I thought it was a fun game to play. Trying to hang deflating tubes on a shaking rack while your bot is getting rammed by an opponent? What a rush!

Lunacy had no exciting end game and a lot of the time (to me) it looked like toddlers pushing each other around in rolling chairs. Trying to explain the different colored balls to visiting family members wasn't easy. Empty cells, Super cells, huh??