RACK & ROLL Reaction

[=Martin=Taylor=]

Originally Posted by Tetraman

My thoughts? This game is boring. (read carefully to get my point please)

Where is the innovation that the past three years had in their design? First Frenzy gave us all multiple directions we could have taken our robot and the way the alliance worked in combination won the game. Triple Play introduced a new game piece, alliance structure, and a look into how we can manipulate it. Aim High took the boring ball and gave us a new system to use it with. Also there were periods and a critical auto-mode. I see nothing to go overly ballistic about, other than robot stacking.

I'm predicting that the robot design results are going to end up like Triple Play robots, where a vast majority of all them are going to look/act alike. It will all boil down to who's robot is faster. To me thats rather dull.

Now, I see game play as a different story. I can say I expect to see really fun matches, team working alliances, and crazy point totals. But the game, how it works, and how you win, is rather boring to me.

Unfortunately that is why this game is so hard. I keep coming up with designs in my head and then saying "No can't do that, everyone will do that."

Finding a niche will be very difficult.

On another note, just because the robots "look" the same doesn’t mean they will be the same. The crucial autonomous mode and the prospect of scoring on the other side of a goal where you can't see, present daunting programming challenges.

I think this will be a great year for software and sensor innovation.