2008 Game Format Preference

[efoote868]

There will never be a perfect game, and I would like to applaud the game designers (maybe if I suck up to them, dave will give out easier hints )
But seriously, I doubt that there will ever be a game that appeals to everyone, and in fact, it will never happen. Many of my team mates disliked '05 compared to '06, but I found that I was the other way around. Its just their opinion and my opinion... and GP demands that we respect it.

I would recommend that we post carefully here, so as not to hurt anyone's feelings.

Pertaining to bonus points, I enjoy them. I especially like when they don't have anything to do with the "meat" of the challenge, so a wider variety of robots can be found. The strategy that my team has taken to heart has been, pick one thing, one game element, and do it better than anyone else. When the bonus is entirely separate from the main game, it makes it even funner, especially the discussions held with teammates. What can we do better than everyone else?

To Game Format Preference, I would like to see the "meat" of the game easier? than the bonus, so that more teams can participate effectively. However, the bonus should be lucrative enough to attract teams.

[WEHickok]

Thanks to all that have posted your comments. Having good constructive feedback is always great.

I do want to make a few comments about why we started this thread. FIRST is not about winning and losing and we did not post because we are upset about not winning this year or in an attemp to slant the game so that we would have a better chance. As a Hall of Fame team we feel that we should be helping all teams to have a great FIRST experience and helping to improve the game whenever possible.

With that said, we have been in the competition under both circumstances. The only difference is that when teams competed by themselves the level of engineering for all teams seemed to be higher. Teams tried to complete all parts of the game. Now we are seeing specialized robots that can only run around the field and climb on others. I would like to know, what type of engineering inspiration was given to those students? I talked to teams this year that had an arm, but it put them overweight, so instead of trying to remove the weight and use the arm, they just took it off and became a defensive robot. In real life, do engineers do that? Edison tried hundreds of materials before he was successful with the light. (I know he had more than six weeks.)

It is the belief of the Heroes Of Tomorrow that the most important part of the FIRST experience is the build season, not the competition season. Yes, we come to win, but our high (from the mentor's point of view) comes from seeing students work with some of the best mentors and them move on to careers in science and technology. We are asking the question, is the curent game format providing the excellence that we expect from FIRST? Or are we becomming Battlebots (win at all costs at the expense of inspiring students)?

I was an ambassador at the GLR and it is hard to show sponsors the positivies of continuing their sponsorship when all six robots on the field don't interact with the tubes at all and only push one another around. While this is leagal and a part of the game, we want to ask the question of teams, Are we doing the right thing? I ask that you look beyond the game to the real object of FIRST, changing the culture of the students.

Disclaimer: My comments in this post are not ment to be condemming of any team. Teams seem to be playing to the rules of the game and are right in doing whatever they want within the rules.

Thanks for listening and helping make the total FIRST experience great.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by lynca

What about having 3 teams of 2 robots each ?

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

If one were to choose no alliances, one way or another, alliances would be made. I'd prefer they be part of the game at the outset.

Having three (or more) alliances would not work for the reason Jane posted. Back in the days of pre-alliances, if you had two average robots going up against a third powerhouse robot, the two other robots would form a secret alliance before the match to take down the other team. I'd rather have known alliances than secret ones conspiring against ours.

[TetraBot]

Wow!!! I like all the ideas presented here. They're really cool. I especially like the 2v2v2 idea. But there is one suggestion I would like to throw out to you guys.

I think that the game next year should be divided into 2 parts.
1) Individual Based
2) Alliance Based

The first part of the game should include a section where teams play by themselves and try to score depending on the means of the game so that people don't limit themselves to building a robot based purely on defense.

The way I see it, there should also be qualification points based on the robot's abilities, ie. scoring through the normal method and gaining bonus points (so blocking doesn't gain any qualification points). This should be determined while the robots are playing during the test matches and qualifying rounds. And robots that don't have enough qualification points aren't allowed to continue into the final round, even if they do well during the qualification rounds.

Then the second part of the competition should include alliance matches were teams work together to achieve the goal, something like this year's competition. Then during the alliance selection, teams form an alliance of 2 or 3 (based on whether you like 2v2v2 or 3v3 matches) and teams w/o enough qualification points should be removed from the list of teams that can compete.

To give an example of this (based on this year's game), lets say Team BLUE has a bot which can score on the middle and low rack easily and has a ramp. That team would get 3 pts for low scoring, 5 pts for mid scoring and the ramp boosts there score another 5pts, totaling up to 13 pts. Then lets say Team RED builds a robot which can reach all three heights for the tubes and score well. Then this team would get 3 pts for low scoring, 5 pts for mid scoring and 8 pts for high scoring, bringing their total to 16 pts. Now since both teams have more than 8 pts, which would be the cut-off for qualification points, both teams could possible make it into the final rounds. And robots which can't achieve this minimal requirement are automatically disqualified. (Qualification points don't affect your actual score in the game)

Don't ya think this is much cooler!? At least we'd see MUCH MORE robots achieving the tasks given during the competition and less robots designed based purely on defense.

Don't get me wrong. I think defense is still a vital component of the game. And it is what makes FIRST competitions fun. But teams should really be focusing more on the task at hand.

Plus (and this has little to do with the competition format), I think that there should be an award for teams who manage to gain the highest number of qualification points. That way, more people would try harder to build a cool robot and just some defender.

[StephLee]

Originally Posted by TetraBot

Don't ya think this is much cooler!? At least we'd see MUCH MORE robots achieving the tasks given during the competition and less robots designed based purely on defense.

Don't get me wrong. I think defense is still a vital component of the game. And it is what makes FIRST competitions fun. But teams should really be focusing more on the task at hand.

Plus (and this has little to do with the competition format), I think that there should be an award for teams who manage to gain the highest number of qualification points. That way, more people would try harder to build a cool robot and just some defender.

I think you're underestimating some of the effort teams put into their defenders. We were on the recieving end of plenty of defense at regionals this year, and let me tell you...some of those drive trains are pretty intense. Just because someone doesn't have a massive, shiny, high-scoring arm doesn't mean they're any less inspiring to the students or any less capable of competing.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by TetraBot

To give an example of this (based on this year's game), lets say Team BLUE has a bot which can score on the middle and low rack easily and has a ramp. That team would get 3 pts for low scoring, 5 pts for mid scoring and the ramp boosts there score another 5pts, totaling up to 13 pts. Then lets say Team RED builds a robot which can reach all three heights for the tubes and score well. Then this team would get 3 pts for low scoring, 5 pts for mid scoring and 8 pts for high scoring, bringing their total to 16 pts. Now since both teams have more than 8 pts, which would be the cut-off for qualification points, both teams could possible make it into the final rounds. And robots which can't achieve this minimal requirement are automatically disqualified. (Qualification points don't affect your actual score in the game)

That's.... distressing. You have basically designed a game wherein you tell teams, "You MUST build a robot that can successfully do two of these four things, or we just won't like your robot and refuse to let it play." You could just as well put into the game rules that every team must have an arm on their robot. Forcing teams to build arms, etc. under the threat that their robot automatically loses everything if some of thir systems don't work.... The just rubs me the wrong way. I think putting things in the rules to artificially force teams into design decisions will do the opposite of inspire students. Notice how much grumbling there is around here when teams are forced to use a giant heavy power distribution block, or design their robots to start with the longest dimension vertical. Teams really don't like contrived restrictions on what they can and can't do.

[Steve W]

I am for alliances! If we drop back to a 4 team match then there will be a lot less matches played.

Offense is nothing without defense.

How can you tell if you have made a good robot if you have no competition to test with. Auto manufacturers test and retest so that when products are put into extreme conditions they should not fail. What would a car race be if the best designed and best looking car got on the track and went 10 MPH around the track and then drove to the winners podium. It would mean nothing. If you were to sit down and play a game by yourself then you would have no competition and really would never know how good you were or what was needed to improve.

[TetraBot]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

That's.... distressing. You have basically designed a game wherein you tell teams, "You MUST build a robot that can successfully do two of these four things, or we just won't like your robot and refuse to let it play." You could just as well put into the game rules that every team must have an arm on their robot. Forcing teams to build arms, etc. under the threat that their robot automatically loses everything if some of thir systems don't work.... The just rubs me the wrong way. I think putting things in the rules to artificially force teams into design decisions will do the opposite of inspire students. Notice how much grumbling there is around here when teams are forced to use a giant heavy power distribution block, or design their robots to start with the longest dimension vertical. Teams really don't like contrived restrictions on what they can and can't do.

Well, if you don't like this idea, that's fine.

What I'm trying to say is that the game should be divided into 2 parts, with individual and team control. That way more teams would focus on building a robot that can actually score and not just push other bots around.

Defense can be a very good strategy, but if that's all your robot can do, then your at the mercy of you alliance and opponents. Having matches were the teams must play by themselves should at least motivate next year's teams to build robots that can score and defend (if necessary)