FIRST Rule Changes

[EricH]

I don't think it would improve gameplay. One example was suggested earlier--the wall-bot. You might also get a robot wedging itself into its opponent's tunnel, just to prevent tunnel traffic.

And, as I pointed out earlier, it's too late to make the change. Any time between Kickoff and Ship Day, great. Between Ship Day and Week 1, not the best, but OK. After Week 1, you don't make a change unless you really need to--and the change that was made was made because the game wasn't being played the way that was intended, and it didn't really affect gameplay, just strategy. But if you change anything after Week 2, something just hit the fan. If the GDC did make this change, especially if they gave you the credit for suggesting it, you'd wind up on the receiving end of a lot of criticism.

As for equal access to the balls: Given no loopers, that is the fact. Having a looper, though, is like having an sports defense that has a bunch of turnover-creation specialists. Would you complain if you were watching an NFL game, and every time one team got the ball, the other team forced a turnover before the endzone? How about in basketball or hockey? It's not fair, but the rules are fair--they allow that team. They also allow the creation of the team that can go up against that team and never turn it over.

I think that's your beef with the rules--any team that can avoid the turnovers can't do it by expanding at that end of the field. Just means that the easy way is gone; if you don't like having to do it the hard way, then you don't have to do it at all. Instead of trying to get people to support making the easy way legal, use engineering skills to solve the challenge of doing it the hard way. A number of people proposed strategies to beat the loopers very quickly after the fact that there were loopers came out. I'm not saying that you aren't doing that, but when you're actively trying to get people to agree that there is a loophole in the rules, and seeming to spend all your time doing that, you're making yourself look like a complainer (or a lawyer or a politician or a lobbyist) instead of an engineer.