On Game Design

[Matt Leese]

Originally Posted by P.J. Baker

I don't accept that herding small balls was easy. Without capping, your HP needed to make 10 shots to offset a hanging robot. Many teams thought they could accomplish this by simply pushing the balls around, but had trouble with it. The only ball machines that I saw make an impact were the catchers or gatherers. I would describe both of these as intermediate tasks

Terming it as "easy" wasn't really my wording. From what I was told by Aidan Brown, FIRST thought that herding balls would be something "easy" that rookie teams could accomplish. I agree that it wasn't nearly as easy as it appears at first. That said, there were a number of teams that made a difference with balls that didn't catch or gather them explicitly (there were some on the Newton Field at least).

There really were only two ways to score this year since the 2x ball meant nothing without the small balls. There were many tasks (hang, cap, herd, mobile goal manipulation, defense, etc.), which I feel made it more likely that both teams in an alliance would have to contribute for a win, rather than having the "dominant" team in an alliance take over the match. I'll also point out that the 2002 game had three ways to score (robot position, goal position, balls in goal). What it didn't have was very much strategic variety - control the goals and you probably win. I disliked that game, the combination of the "mouse bots" and the fact that a match could be effectively over in the first 10 seconds made it a complete disaster in my book.

When I say two was to score I don't mean literally two ways to score (I realize that's rather unclear). What I mean is that there are two "major" ways to score. Putting your robot in a certain position in 2002 I wouldn't qualify as a major way to score as it's a general assumption that your robot needs to be able to move to score. There were definite problems with the 2002 game, I'm just trying to highlight some of the things that went right with it (in my opinion).

While with so many ways to score this year, you'd think that both teams in an alliance would have to compete, it didn't appear that way to me. At least from watching the Championship finals, it seemed that one team of the alliance would immediately go and hang and the other alliance member would then proceed to attempt to herd small balls, cap with the big ball, and then go hang. That doesn't seem like a fair dividing of resources so I wouldn't say that a more complex game helps make all the teams participate.

I hear what you are saying, but the logical conclusion of limiting the build budget is that a very small number of teams (as you pointed out previously) will have a huge advantage. Don't discount the psychological impact of knowing that you simply can not compete with the elite few because they can make parts that you can afford to buy but are not allowed to.

Unfortunately, I think we're already at a point where there are teams that don't feel they can compete with the elite few because they can't afford to purchase the parts or design a complex system that purchased parts would allow. I think there's a wider gulf between teams because of the ability to purchase such parts than there would be otherwise. There would be a more natural gradation as opposed to a huge step between the contending teams and the non-contending teams.

Matt