'02 or '03 Game

[Ian W.]

i quite honestly, did not like this year's game. there was too much new stuff, and no one could come up with an effective, UNIQUE solution. sure, anyone can build a box with wheels to smash stacks down. anyone can build a drivetrain with tons of power (now looking back, i should've taken my 2002 bot, we would've won no problem). but that's boring. i want to go to a competition, and see four robots doing the exact same thing, but doing it four completely different ways.

for example, last year, RAGE had a unique way to pick up balls. compared to all the other ball bots i saw, no one did it the same way RAGE did. this year, no robots stick out in my mind the same way RAGE did last year. sure, i can name a few ones that were cool, but i never really saw anything that made me step back and go "wow, that's amazing."

i guess what it comes down to is, FIRST needs a simple game, with tons of ways to score points. some easy, some hard. the only problem is fairly giving points out, as i believe 25 points for KOH was way too much. if not for that, i'm pretty sure many more teams would have made stacking robots. oh well, maybe next year...