How on Earth are spectators meant to easily discern who wins?

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by jpsaul7usa

There was a call at VCU the announcer said today over the webcast that has me worried. He said a robot (I'll just call it red) bumped into an opposing robot (blue) that was stacking a tetra. In the process of being bumped, the stacking blue robot unstacked a blue tetra from the goal. The refs called it against red, saying it was red's fault for unstacking the tetra, and gave blue possession of the goal and 3 points for the unstacked tetra.

I'm worried, too. Should we ask the event-goers to all hold hands, put flowers in their hair, and sing songs pining for the What just happened? Is that all? Who the heck won? days of 2001? Geez.

I understand and agree with the often stated desire to introduce as many tetras to the field as possible in as safe a manner as possible with as little interference from the opposition as possible. The rules and penalties for infractions during tetra introductions are well documented and have been well enforced so far this season. That's great. However, I think we should separate that situation from the one described above, where two robots, one offensive and one defensive, are in direct competition with each other near a goal, and the field officials are artificially limiting one team's ability to execute their strategy, LEGAL ACCORDING TO THE RULES, in order to favor the other team's ability to execute theirs. It's NOT an issue of safety at this point; instead, it's an issue of someone attempting to impose upon teams their vision of what type of robots and gameplay they want to see displayed ("behavior modification", as Dave put it). Of course, it's their right to do whatever they choose - the NFL and many other sports leagues tweak their rules attempting to achieve a desired effect all the time. Like these other leagues, they should also explicitly state ALL of their revisions in their rulebook well ahead of time, and they should recognize there are risks involved with heavily favoring one style of play over another, not the least of which are having enough teams with the offensive capability to give you the large amount of high scoring matches you desire and seeing teams who cannot possibly adapt to the directive lash out negatively with even harder hitting and more penalties than before (which some have observed). You can skew the rules toward offense til doomsday, but if a team ain't got the horses to compete on par with the big dogs, they're still going to do poorly and do so in a far more uninteresting or dangerous manner.

I don't know about you guys, but whenever I'M a spectator, I'm much more excited and entertained watching an offense that's strong enough to bust through and score against a tenacious defense than one that scores at will against A.) a poor defense, or B.) one that's rendered toothless by flag-happy refs who are inclined to do anything to keep the star quarterback from hurting his pinky. With the absence of defense, how often are the competing teams that evenly matched in offensive capabilities to provide a thrilling outcome? A balanced robot sporting adequate offense and a strong defense can counteract an all-offense team; take away their ability to play defense, and they have very little chance of victory. Take it away and wait until the season starts and the refs start tossing the flags for them to realize it, and you have a team with little chance of victory and a whole bunch of anger and frustration heaped on top of it.

Many of these rookie teams (and probably many vets as well) have not created robots with arms that function nearly as well as they'd like; because of this, many may often feel that a defensive strategy will give them the best chance to succeed in a match, especially when they're facing teams with super wowee spiffy gee-whiz uber-arms. Is this apparently offense-skewed application of the rules early on making it harder for the "little guy" to succeed, therefore giving the "better" teams an advantage they probably didn't earn? Is it causing these teams to take a "Who cares? We've been hamstrung to the point where defeat is certain, so let's go mash metal?" approach to the matches? We shall see. There's a fine line between allowing vets to showcase their technology to better inspire the younger teams to elevate their game and overloading the balance of power to the point where the young teams feel they can't compete and simply give up or give in to their more un-GP emotions.

I know there are a bunch of offensive minded people out there who would love to see these "protect the QB" referee rule interpretations continue. I feel obligated to present an opposing viewpoint in an attempt to draw people's opinions back toward a middle ground. From a ref perspective, in my mind, the best referee is one who's presence is barely felt, in part because the game rules are so balanced and well defined that a referee's interpretation is rarely needed. It was very much that way most of last year, and I hope this game and its refs eventually shift into that pattern. If they don't, I'll deal with it, as I'm sure will many other teams. It's those teams who aren't equipped to deal with it I'm most worried about.