Bringing Rules Back

[D@ve]

I deffinatly agree with 2 out of three for the finals.......more matchs ...more fun.......Hey Grady you forgot lifting the 98 no flipping rule... Just kidding everyone ........I Also agree with leaving objects on the feild in the intent of scoreing .....(only scoreing)......it proved to be pretty cool in 97 like Andy said earlyer.....

[Andy Grady]

6 long years Dave......6 very long, painful years!

We got our revenge though...its too bad that we did it when we actually grew to like you guys! Of course, you wont be getting my vote to re-instate the allowance of tipping mechanisms!

Good Luck!
-Andy Grady

[D@ve]

I bow down to your greatness Andy.....and give you that sweet revenge...

Its true with want Andy's saying ....even though things that happen in the past made for a great rivalry...Today the alliances off the feild proved to be the best rivalry yet.....See you guys in March ( next pit over that is.)

Dave Ferreira

121 Mentor / Ambassador

[Joe Johnson]

All I say to many of the ideas posed for bringing back this or that rule is this: The CASUAL FAN is the standard we should judge everything by.

While WE all love this or that complex strategy, such things generally are huge confusion factors for the casual fan.

Bottom line: if it confuses my mom, it is bad for FIRST.

That says it all in my book.

Joe J.

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

All I say to many of the ideas posed for bringing back this or that rule is this: The CASUAL FAN is the standard we should judge everything by.

While WE all love this or that complex strategy, such things generally are huge confusion factors for the casual fan.

Bottom line: if it confuses my mom, it is bad for FIRST.

That says it all in my book.

Joe J.

Joe and I have been agreeing on this issue for the past 5 years on this forum, and I gotta agree with him again. If (and when) FIRST gives us a game that EVERYONE can understand, then everything will fall into place. More teams will want to join, peers who are not on the team will understand the program better, television will become interested in FIRST again, sponsors will be easier to get, cancer will be cured, the Israelis and Palestineians will live in harmony, and we will have world peace.

Well, a guy can dream, can't he?

Andy B.

[Joe Matt]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

Joe and I have been agreeing on this issue for the past 5 years on this forum, and I gotta agree with him again. If (and when) FIRST gives us a game that EVERYONE can understand, then everything will fall into place. More teams will want to join, peers who are not on the team will understand the program better, television will become interested in FIRST again, sponsors will be easier to get, cancer will be cured, the Israelis and Palestineians will live in harmony, and we will have world peace.

Well, a guy can dream, can't he?

Andy B.

And if you play the Kick-Off backwards, durring Dean Kamen's speech he says, "Complexity is dead. Long live inflatable clowns." I understood the first thing, but the clowns?

As for the multiplyer, I think that the time one would be bad to bring back, but instead do something that FLL does. Make it so that if a team fails to do a task, or does something wrong, they take away a multiplyer point. In FLL it was a ball in the middle of the field. If the robot had to be brought manualy back to the start point, they would remove one multiplyer ball. There were three at the start.

[tysonwormus]

Can we just have the 2000 game back? Scoring was quite simple, put balls in your team's bin, and do a pullup, or at least try to get on the ramp. But it had just enough complexity to keep your head spinning strategy-wise.

Fun to watch, Fun to play. If FIRST can top 2000 for me, I'll be impressed.
Tyson

[Warren Boudreau]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

Bottom line: if it confuses my mom, it is bad for FIRST.


Joe J.

While I have rarely found the need to disagree with Dr. Joe, on this point I disagree. Think of it this way. If your mother had never seen a football game before, would she understand it?

These games will never be so simple that someone can pick them up on the first viewing and still remain competitively stimulating to the teams. It is too much to ask. Unless you want to go full "BattleBots". I don't.

[JVN]

Originally Posted by Warren Boudreau

While I have rarely found the need to disagree with Dr. Joe, on this point I disagree. Think of it this way. If your mother had never seen a football game before, would she understand it?

These games will never be so simple that someone can pick them up on the first viewing and still remain competitively stimulating to the teams. It is too much to ask. Unless you want to go full "BattleBots". I don't.

1998 -
Ball on rails = good. (1, 2, or 3 points)
Ball in center = VERY good. (2x multiplier)
All balls are colored, the color with the most balls scored is winning.

2000 -
Yellow balls in goal = good. (1 point)
Black balls in goal = very good. (5 points)
Robots on ramp = very good. (5 points)
robots hanging = GREAT. (10 points)
Troughs are color coded. Team with the most balls in their trough is winning.

I would argue that both of these games were simple, fun to play, and easily understandable to the casual viewer (and yes... to my Mom). They also yielded a wide variety of robots, and contained plenty of good design challenges.


It HAS been done before, and it CAN be done again.


Don't get me wrong, I know it isn't easy, and I know the game design process itself must be quite the undertaking. I just wish I had been a little older during 1998 and 2000.

Imagine playing the 2000 game this year. 15 seconds of autonomous mode, newer more "modern" robot technology.
Sounds like a blast to me.

John

[Matt Adams]

I'd just like to comment on some things about what made the 2000 game so great...

• More or less once you scored, you got your points. There were some clever teams that were able to remove balls, but overall, it was easy to see one pile bigger than the other
• There were enough playing fields objects that one team couldn't control them all. They were also well spread out.
• The end of the game scoring zones were somewhat wide and worth enough points to make it worthwhile, but not enough to make it dominate the point tally. Sometimes the final position points caused a victory. Sometimes it didn't.

Those three things made it a model game for FIRST.

$.02,

Matt

[Joe Matt]

Here's the general rule of thumb: If you can't see it, it's confusing. Like multipliers, bonuses, and other objects from other games. Frankly, it's that that's confusing. You must be able to see the game and the scoring system.

[NateBot16]

Just get rid of the "double your opponets score" and I will be happy. A team that totally controled the match last year and cleared their opponets score zone, could get a lower score then a team that didn't move but had a few boxes in their score zone. I know it adds strategy, but it seems kinda stupid.

[generalbrando]

While I agree that it's great for everyone to understand the game easily and at the same time agree that it's not necessary for Mom to understand it (football was given as an example), I feel like there's no link between our viewing audience's ability to understand and the complexity of the game for us. Put more simply, how easy it is to understand doesn't have to effect the ingeniuity of our robots. As long as the game challenges us to come up with something new and exciting, it can be easier or harder to understand as far as I'm concerned.

As a separate argument: If the game is easier to understand, we're more likely to attract he public's eye and bring more people into FIRST. I'm not saying we need to have our own prime time special or that it would be a good thing for that to happen. I'm saying it would be good to get more people interested - that's the infectious purpose of FIRST.

[Melissa Nute]

I think that your QP should only be the points your teams earn. Losers of a match get no QP. But that might be against the message FIRST is trying to send.

[Steve W]

How hard was last years game to figure out. Number of bins in scoring zone * highest stack + robots on ramp at the end of game = score. The spectators don't really care about the QP points just who wins. The QP aspect brings in the strategy parts that the teams had to worry about. Football has 1 point 2 points 3 points and 6 points that can be earned at any part of the game. Making 10 yards as long as there is no penalty brings a 1st down. However refs can call back for multiple infractions that are judgemental. Very subjective. Airobics, sync swimming and skating don't even seem to have rules, just judges. These things do not stop people from watching the above on mass. Last years game was fairly simple to understand BUT as with all other games , had its complexities. Enough ranting!

I would like to see best 2 of 3 in elim rounds. Let the games begin!!!!!!