fundamental flaw with GDC?

[Justin Montois]

I really don't think a GAC needs to be implemented. I think that the game goes through several revisions before we ever see it and a lot of the Quality Control is almost done. What I would like to see is some way for the GDC to foresee possible problems that can only be seen through gameplay.

Watching kickoff and seeing Aidan reading the newspaper talking about how few penalties would be called made me so happy. Yet somehow this game seems to be one of the most penalty filled yet. Why? The Human players. Worst of all, I think in most cases these penalties could be largely avoided if someone was responsible for making these small subtle changes.

For Example...
1. Penalty for the human player breaking the plane of the porthole in the outpost.
There should have been some sort of "airlock" device attached to the hole to render this penalty moot. Human player sets the ball in and pushes some sort of lever to push the ball out. The penalties from this should not influence matches, but they do.

2. Penalty on human players touching the balls .5 seconds or so before the match starts.
I have to blame this one the lack of uniformity about how a match is started. Game Announcers would say 3....2....1...GO! But GO! didn't actually mean go and human players would grab balls a little early. I saw this called at GTR a number of times. If GO doesn't mean GO then don't say it. It should be 3.....2.....1......(Match Starts with the "Charge" sound).

3. Penalties on human players for "touching" the super cell early.
This cost us one match because our human player touched the super cell around the 25 second mark on accident. Never removed it form the rack, just placed his hand on it for a second. Is that really worth a 20 point penalty? Especially when the rules say nothing about "touching" only REMOVING?

Now I know it's easy to say "well the human players should know the rules and therefore avoid them." I agree with that to an extent, but if small changes can be made to easily ELIMINATE them, then I think it should be done. It's these kinds of things that bring down great games. And they wouldn't involve huge rule changes. It's this subtle fine tuning that we are missing IMHO.