POLL: Worst FRC game

[efoote868]

My high school career was 2005-2008, I mentored in 2010 and 2012. I'm familiar with all games since 2003.

Overdrive is my least favorite. The biggest reason was the lack of enough game pieces, two robots were always without a ball and an actual "minimum competitive concept" was build a drive train and run laps, would actually be a decent 3rd pick.

Lack of an endgame, lack of a challenging autonomous mode (guided by a remote control!) and the 80 inch diameter ineffectively enforced, bleh.
Not to mention the GDC killed a creative "game breaking" approach due to restrictions based on movement rules around the field, and gave a "I'll know it when I see it" response on the 1 robot only rule.

[jman4747]

It's saying something that Ultimate Ascent has zero votes.

[JackN]

I think Lunacy was a mediocre game, but a lot of the reasons it was bad were not related to the game. The game was unique in how open the field was and how much interaction existed. The biggest strike against it was the new controls system and the floor causing issues with static build up and the cRio being bricked. I think if people were to play that game now, there would be fewer issues with this and it would ultimately be a better experience.

I voted for Logomotion, because at the time and now it felt very uninspired and it had Minibots which were the single least enjoyable mechanic I have ever seen in a game. If you thought the Canburgler race was toxic this year, you never experienced minibot races. The difference in tenths of a second could change the outcome of entire events. FIRST's goal was to have people race small FTC style robots, which is not insane. What it became was an arms race by teams to modify motors until they burnt out while finding the minimal amount of material that could be used to constitute a robot. I feel like there were teams spending upwards of $1k just on those small Tetrix motors because they kept burning them out. Minibots were the only time where I felt like there was a financial and facilities design advantage that could realistically not be overcame by an average team.

[thatprogrammer]

Originally Posted by efoote868

My high school career was 2005-2008, I mentored in 2010 and 2012. I'm familiar with all games since 2003.

Overdrive is my least favorite. The biggest reason was the lack of enough game pieces, two robots were always without a ball and an actual "minimum competitive concept" was build a drive train and run laps, would actually be a decent 3rd pick.

Lack of an endgame, lack of a challenging autonomous mode (guided by a remote control!) and the 80 inch diameter ineffectively enforced, bleh.
Not to mention the GDC killed a creative "game breaking" approach due to restrictions based on movement rules around the field, and gave a "I'll know it when I see it" response on the 1 robot only rule.

Overdrive had 2 game pieces per an alliance, an endgame, and actually made rookies decently competitive

[marshall]

Originally Posted by JackN

I feel like there were teams spending upwards of $1k just on those small Tetrix motors because they kept burning them out.

We spent about $600 on Tetrix motors that year. Hated that minibot...

[cmrnpizzo14]

While we're all complaining a little, why hasn't anyone who voted 2011 as the worst game saying anything about the minibot scoring system? It was almost absurd how much they were worth. On top of that, the coopertition system that year was to give another team your minibot to use and actually have it be successful. I think this happened less than 20 times total that year.

To be fair, teams should have recognized how much a minibot was worth but I think that having and endgame that could almost ensure a regional win by itself is a bit broken in the game design.

[tindleroot]

Originally Posted by logank013

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

I'm guessing you don't watch NASCAR...
Seriously, watch some 2008 match footage. It got pretty exciting. The 2008 Einstein rounds were considered some of the best FRC matches of all time.

I never personally experienced the 2009 game but from what I've heard the problems people had were:

1. The lack of maneuverability from the Regolith led to robot traffic jams where nothing was happening.

2. Human players were overpowered, as they could oftentimes score more than most robots.

3. (Less of an issue) Most teams could not test their robots on the regolith much before competitions since only a few square feet of regolith was given to each team, and it was hard to get a hold of especially with limited funding.

4. Any 2 v 3 match (one dead robot) basically was an automatic win for the 3 since they had a stationary robot to score in.

I'm sure many others can add to that list. I for one think Lunacy looks like it was almost a really fun game, but a few things went wrong and many people didn't like it. I like the idea of scoring in your opponents.

My "least good" games would easily be 2003 (the game was broken), 2001 (boring), and 2015 (almost equally boring). The others I tend to think optimistically about.

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

Originally Posted by cmrnpizzo14

While we're all complaining a little, why hasn't anyone who voted 2011 as the worst game saying anything about the minibot scoring system? It was almost absurd how much they were worth. On top of that, the coopertition system that year was to give another team your minibot to use and actually have it be successful. I think this happened less than 20 times total that year.

To be fair, teams should have recognized how much a minibot was worth but I think that having and endgame that could almost ensure a regional win by itself is a bit broken in the game design.

I personally rank 2011 just a little bit higher than 2015 from the years I've participated. The minibot was pretty much equivalent to canburglers in terms of breaking the game at the highest level. I give 2011 a higher ranking though because the rest of the game was more fun to play and watch than stacking in 2015. That match was also decided in the end for logomotion rather than the very start in recycle rush. The minibots weren't that overpowered at regionals either from what i saw. Tube scoring was still the main reason teams won events(not all the time).

[techhelpbb]

It's ironic to see how Recycle Rush stacks up to the rest

[Drakxii]

2009 easily robots should matter more then human players. Honorable mentions 2015 for most boring and 2013 for half of the game being useless.

[Navid Shafa]

Originally Posted by martin417

Aerial assist: there was only one game piece for each alliance, therefore always four robots with nothing to do.

Defense. Being able to slow down an alliance's cycle time had significant value, perhaps not as much in qualifications, but certainly in eliminations.

[BrendanB]

Least favorite I have played: 2009

Aside from what was mentioned before, having no rules against pinning made for many struggling matches where one or two good pinning robots just shut down the game by keeping the scorers in a corner. The lack of a good real time scoring system made keeping track of who was a head impossible in most matches that were close.

Least favorite I have watched: 2003

Still holds a special place because it was the first game I watched but the game was important in the first and last 3 seconds.

Neither were as bad as 2001 sounds IMHO.

[DrewMatic]

I am so excited for this year! Even though last year was my firsts year in robotics, I've heard about the games in the past. I hope there will be defense

[Billfred]

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.

Here is a post I made Friday night of the 2011 Peachtree Regional. 2815 was kinda bad about shipping robots with teething problems (three years out of the five I was with them), but this robot crapped out in all but two qualification matches, got picked over 24 other robots, and hung a banner. It then did it again the very next weekend. Why did we get picked? Defense. Even with the safe zones, even with the ample protections on minibot towers, you were not going to score a logo if you couldn't get the right game pieces. Add in a few unscored Ubertubes shoved in the opposing near zone, and you were facing a much harder task if an opponent knew how to play--even if they never laid a bumper on you.

This is not to defend Logo Motion, a decidedly lower-mid-pack game that IRI fixed beautifully. But it doesn't earn the title of worst when there are better options.

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!

Rack 'N Roll had its own fatal flaws--the endgame meant you had rampbots with nothing to do for the first 90 seconds, the frustrating only-one-tube-at-a-time rule paralyzed any team that got a tube stuck on their mandated flagpole, and let's not even discuss BaneBots or being required to ship two batteries no matter what. But I have to agree with other defending it from the worst title--it did have its fun parts. Seeing 71 or 1114 or 179 unfurl their very-competent arm robots into ramps was always amazing to see.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by logank013

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

Lunacy was a combination of good parts into a terrible game. Robot ball tag? Good idea. Regolith? Good idea. Robot ball tag on regolith? Terribad idea.

Add into this that it was like Recycle Rush in that human players could be just as or more important than the robot on the field (in terms of scoring ability), and that there was an "instant lose" condition (immobile alliance partner) and there's a good reason a lot of people would prefer to forget it.

I didn't experience them, but 2003 and 2001 sound like they were pretty far up the bad list. If I had more first hand knowledge of them, my vote might go there, but Lunacy is what gets it because I've actually seen it played.