Boring Game

[Valley Raider]

This is my first year as an alumni and i wad looking forward to watching my team on the web casts. However upon doing so I found it was not exciting.

From a distance most of the robots look the same, i found the numbers on the bumpers harder to read than in past years, making recognizing teams really hard, and the ranking system made the scores of the match meaningless.

Then i realized that that i never saw a single shot made from more than two feet, or a hang (there were only like 2 or 3 in the whole portland regional, i have watch some other highlights of hangs sense). I recognize that there probably were shots made from longer range and the web feeds don't catch everything, but i would say most points are scored from herding ball in from two feet away.

My conclusion was that this year game is just boring. I don't see two robots going at it, fighting to hang a ringer on the rack to double the alliance score at the last second to win. Thats what makes FIRST exciting.

So my question is, do people who watch the game live think it is exciting? Are there really cool designs across the board or are them really mostly the same? Is this year game just boring, or is it just the web casts?