POLL: Worst FRC game

[PayneTrain]

I voted for Zone Zeal. You know, the game that spawned the greatest robot before the 3v3 era. Why? No game has ever been so fundamentally flawed since the 1v1v1 era (I know little of 1v1v1 era) that it allowed for such an ironclad chokehold strategy. When 71 was fully functional, there was a zero percent chance any other combination of two teams in FRC could beat them.

2001 and 2003 failed because the rules were broken in the way that they tried to force the way we play robots into a way that doesn't work.

2009 and 2015 failed because they were games designed to shift the design paradigm, which is something that teams of all ages have difficulty handling, unless they possess the agility of powerhouse team that comes with a mentor roster stacked with a mindboggling combined years of FRC experience. A game that plays like an ugly mess isn't the problem with a bad game as much as it's a symptom of the game design backing teams into a corner.

Those 4 games all are cases where you can see where the GDC flew close to the sun in trying something interesting (you can say that claim is dubious for 2003, I guess, but it had some pretty interesting elements involved)


2002 was just a failure borne of either ignorance or indifference to the chokehold. If 2016 ends up being a game I could describe as being one borne of ignorance or indifference, can you imagine the backlash with how much money and time is put into this sport now compared to 14 years ago?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Drakxii

2009 easily robots should matter more then human players.

You forgot 2004. A good HP (FRC33, for example) could beat any single robot out there, even without the doubler being applied by their robot. Robots could ONLY hang for 50 to score directly--the HPs just needed to drain 10 shots.

That being said, the HPs did need to be fed by the robots. And there was that doubler ball that the robots could place.

[GeeTwo]

Anyone notice that games developed during the year when class 2 senatorial campaigns took place aren't very popular? NH has a class 2 seat. Even though I can't find a candidate who ran in all three of those NH elections, that has to be the cause somehow. Who is on the GDC and was distracted by actively supporting a class 2 Senator?

[Ekcrbe]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

Anyone notice that games developed during the year when class 2 senatorial campaigns took place aren't very popular? NH has a class 2 seat. Even though I can't find a candidate who ran in all three of those NH elections, that has to be the cause somehow. Who is on the GDC and was distracted by actively supporting a class 2 Senator?

Jeanne Shaheen ran for Senate in 2002, 2008, and 2014, losing in her first attempt before being elected and reelected in the last two.

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by thatprogrammer

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

The two game pieces were meant to be shared by the three robots. The implementation of the game did not promote sharing, instead the scouting conversation went like this for many teams: "We're the best team here, so we get a ball. Stay out of our way." Followed by "They're the second best team, so they get a ball. Stay out of their way." or "You two are about the same, so maybe whoever gets a ball gets a ball. Stay out of our way."

Another gripe is that at many events (championship included), testing catapults was outlawed. So if you were unfortunate enough to build a robot that hurdled in a specific style, you were at a huge disadvantage at events because of limitations on practice fields, compounded by further scarcity in matches.

EDIT: The end game of placing the ball back on the overpass was worth only 2 points more than a hurdle. So the endgame was pretty much worthless.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Ekcrbe

Jeanne Shaheen ran for Senate in 2002, 2008, and 2014, losing in her first attempt before being elected and reelected in the last two.

Hmm. my earlier searches did not show her running in 2002 against Sununu. That locks it - whoever it is on the GDC who actively supports Jeanne Shaheen is essential to having a good decent game!

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by efoote868

EDIT: The end game of placing the ball back on the overpass was worth only 2 points more than a hurdle. So the endgame was pretty much worthless.

We did a simulated kickoff this year of FIRST Overdrive with our team and a couple of rookie teams (who will be joining us for the real 2016 kickoff), and this was pretty much our understanding. The precision required was rather high, the number of points was not particularly high, and there were no rules preventing the opposing alliance from easily de-seating your replaced ball even if you did put it back on the overpass. Two of our three groups explicitly downplayed/rejected this as a valid scoring method, and the third did not even consider it in their outbrief.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Tyler Olds

Sorry youngins, but Eric takes the cake here. For those who were around and remember the awe of the 710 match, you also remember the feeling of hopelessness of the mastery of FRC71 completely having the game figured out and there was NOTHING you could do to stop them.

I just remember that each member of the alliance had to hit their E-Stop for the timer to stop and the Emcee just yelling "and STOP". The 710 matches were less than 60 seconds!

2015 is the worst game in the last decade but it was still way more exciting then what 2001 was.

I saw a video for the 2001 game. It looked so awful.
Of the games I was actually involved with 2002 Zone Zeal(the only game that complexly changed from qualifications to elims) edges out Lunacy(snails jousting).