Week 1 Impressions of Rack 'N Roll

[Joe Matt]

I've had my worries about this game from day one, but now I feel confident that we have a great game on our hands. Is it perfect? No. I still think Aim High was as close to perfection in a game we have ever come to, but I see this game more as a new Stack Attack, while the scoring on the field is important, the end-all-be-all is the end scoring/ramp.

[Scott Perry]

The first week is always very clumsy. Making any lasting judgement until the next regionals would be premature.

Eventually, we should see successful platformers that will be in dire need of competant scorers who can block and stack. I also hope to see bonus-dependant alliances begin to be beaten by a team of robots that really hang the ringers quickly.


I do agree on two things. So far, the ring scoring has been a disappointment. Also, the radomizing algorithum has needed a VAST improvement for years.

[Uberbots]

The lack of autonomous scoring was quite a disappointment. i mean, i know that it is difficult to an extent, but i still would think that some teams would have been able to get it a lot better than i saw.
it was also surprising how much impact that a good defensive robot had. seriously, alot of the 0-0's were a cause of high defense.

[Rich Ross]

Lets get real. This game<decent. At least so far.

My thoughts...

1. A robot should really need to do more than unfold (mind you, i love the unfolding robots and i would build one given the chance now. Imagine a robot that unfolded across the entire home zone... it wouldn't even need drive wheels!!) Even the best ramp bot should need to play some defense or do something besides open up.

2. Spoilers should matter. Nuff said.

3. Keepers are not valuable enough. Teams dont care that much about it. Last year, teams had incentive. This year? not so much. Until MANY teams score spoilers, the keeper just isn't that big of a deal.

4. I do not want to play against the same team over and over again. I dont care if its a great fight every time or not. more randomization is needed. ASAP

5. if there arent more serious scorers, the ramps are going to be the difference. Three ramp bots could easily win a regional (based on what's happened so far) if the opposing alliance doesnt have a ramp. 45's vistory came not because of tubes, but because they had a strategy that integrated the ramp of their teammate (my apologies to 45's alliance partners. I beleive they are 1444 and 829)

Grats on the regional wins for those teams and also grats to all chairmans and other award winners.

[wilsonmw04]

Wow, i just can't get over the amount of negativity there is about this game. Today at VCU, the crowd was going wild. The game is great in concept and good in practice. The only thing that I would love to see changed before next week, would be that more yellow flags be issued for, how shall i put it, "Aggressive Defense". If we want a more exciting game we need to give the scoring bots a bit of protection. We had great scoring bots at VCU (1086 and 384 come to mind) who couldn't play their game because of aggressive defense. Having a robot who's job is just to keep folks from scoring is not what I feel FIRST is about. We had robots breaking, being slammed into the rack and being flipped by “defensive” play. Only 2 yellow flags were given. The Refs need to start letting those yellow flags fly. Defense is too strong, we need a clarification of what is allowed for defensive play.

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

The only thing that I would love to see changed before next week, would be that more yellow flags be issued for, how shall i put it, "Aggressive Defense". If we want a more exciting game we need to give the scoring bots a bit of protection. Defense is too strong, we need a clarification of what is allowed for defensive play.

You already have a very clear clarification - no ramming, no wedging, and no tipping.

Teams must be egregiously violating the rules to warrant Yellow Cards. I believe the rules are clear on what constitutes legal defense and what is over the line. I thought the refs did a good job this week of letting teams display both styles of play.

The scoring bots should give THEMSELVES protection by designing in the ability to hold their own against or maneuver around a defensive push. Many veteran offensive teams have learned how to do this effectively. It's something that comes with experience.

It's all part of the original design challenge. Remastering the rules or referee guidance as the season goes on to favor one style of play over the other is not a good idea.....

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by T. Hoffman

You already have a very clear clarification - no ramming, no wedging, and no tipping.

The scoring bots should have given THEMSELVES protection by designing in the ability to hold their own against a defensive push. *cough* 25 *cough*

It's part of the design challenge. Remastering the rules as the season goes on to favor one style of play over the other is not a good idea.....

I not asking for a "remastering of the rules", i'm asking for a clarification. When is defense too agressive? I saw one bot go out there and play defense and get one of the few yellow flags of the event. The next 10 matches I saw multiple robots use the same tactics not get a flag. "Defense" is taking the rack out of play for most of the matches. If we really want this game to be called "rack N roll", we need to get the rack back in play or it's going to be a battle of the ramps.

[Dan Petrovic]

I don't find this game boring at all.

It is definately one of the most edge-of-your-seat games I have seen. A lot of the time, no one was completely trounced, but then again. A lot of the time they were.

Autonomous isn't a very big bonus, but it is certainly exciting to watch a robot (or two... it happened!) score in autonomous.

The stragety of the finalist team was to score in autonomous, play defense and let one robot to the scoring.

One of the most exciting matches was a semi-final match, I believe, when an alliance won 2 to 0. What made this so intense was that it was original 2 -2 because of such rough defense (It's New England, what do yo expect?). The fact that a team was outside of the 6x6 box ended the match there.

I like this game. It's quite exciting.

[overlord]

The finals today during the NJ Regional were a completely different story. Spoilers became a more common thing in the elimination rounds. A big turn was Hawaii taking away a 256 wrap around from team 25 by placing one spoiler. I am sad that my team is so tight on budget and cannot go to any other regionals. I think that Rack 'n' Roll got off to a slow start but ended up being a huge success especially in the NJ Regional Final. Maybe the NYC and Philly finals will have more success.

[Tomasz Bania]

To clarify a few posts that i've seen and from what i've heard (Haven't been to a regional yet this year) FIRST no longer uses HATCH's algorithm. I've heard some complaints about hatch from last year, but I thought that for the most part it was decent.

Anyways...

This years game is slightly more interesting than I thought it would be. I thought it would be a complete failiure. Autonomous is fairly pointless this year. The Telooperated period is pretty good as it is a little more competitive than i thought it would be. End game is basically a battle for the ramp. This years game is focused on 2 things: Ringers and Ramps. Nothing else in this years game has any real need. Keepers are fairly useless and Spoilers are more of an accessory rather than an important part of this years game. Just my thought...

[(Click_Here)]

It was simply the exact opposite of what I expected!

[WaterFreak]

Having spent 3 days watching matches & fixing robots, I am BLOODY exhausted!!!!!

Guess I have to agree on a couple of things....

#1 The Autononomous should have had a higher encentive, make it worth the effort it would really take to get it working. In MOST of the matches I saw, basically nothing happened in autononomous time. Even in the finals, only 2 of the 6 robots made any attempt to hang a ringer. Perhaps if a hung rung counted as a full vertical row or double points for any row it was part of, perhaps that would have triggered more effort into it.

#2 Ramping was a pretty huge thing, at least in the qualifying rounds. Come the playoffs, the teams that did well were ones with 2 good scoring robots & 1 ramper, with the ramper playing defense for the first portion of the match.

#3 The top row was pretty much not in play, all three days. Again, this could have used some incentive as the risk to attempt to hang rings on the top is pretty big.

#4 The spoilers ended up almost never being used. Seems that most teams were focused on attempting to score and not paying much attention to what the other team was doing.

#5 Lastly, seems the "best" thing to have done was pick ONE of the two things (ramps or scoring) and focused on them. Most of the robots that I saw that tried to do both suffered from compromise disease and ended up really doing neither one with much effeciency. The teams that won in NJ had 2 goods scorers (no ramps) and 1 ramper (that really only played defense). The finals was somewhat of a letdown, IMHO, both matches were pretty one-sided.

While this is NOT my favorite game, it is also NOT my LEAST favorite game. They always present challenges for teams to attempt to solve and expand the mind, think it has achieved that.

[John Gutmann]

It is deffinately more exciting to watch then I origonally thought.

[Chief Samwize]

i can't wait until Detriot, our first competition. After seeing the game this past weekend I'm really excited to see how we match up to the competition.
I love the game but i was suprised with the no spoiler thing.
Anyway...
Congrats to all teams this past weekend and good luck to everyone else.

[s_forbes]

After watching the practice matches, I had some doubt about the possibility of high scoring matches. But after watching the eliminations at VCU and New Jersey, it looks like high scoring matches will be fairly common later on (I can't wait to see nationals...)