Was Aerial Assist Better than Ultimate Ascent?

[allen.mays]

Originally Posted by Vupa

However, the game is also flawed simply in the way that it restricts the potential of teams that aren't in-bounders, but are not technically capable enough to be a high-level truss shot or finisher..

I am not trying to be antagonistic, but essentially you are saying that a robot that is not very good at performing the tasks of the game should have more opportunity to prove itself?! It's kind of like saying I can't throw well, catch well, or hit well, but I deserve a tryout for the MLB.

In Ultimate Ascent, our fledgling team was sometimes told to "stay out of the way and we will win" by more experienced teams. A team - typically a well-resourced veteran team - could design a scoring machine and forget that anyone else was even on the field. For Aerial Assist, the emphasis on passing points forced top-level teams to find ways to incorporate lesser robots into the match. While this year we felt the frustration of having an overall well-designed concept that did not advance, I fully understand the reasons why. As with any competition, if you are not THE talent, then you better at least have something significant to contribute.

Overall, this year's game raised the floor without lowering the ceiling.

[Link07]

Absolutely not

[Bryce Paputa]

Nope. Worst game in the last 3 years that I've been involved.

[dodar]

Originally Posted by Bryce Paputa

Nope. Worst game in the last 3 years that I've been involved.

Worst is such a strong word. I'd call it the lesser of the 3 most recent games which were all pretty amazing.

[Max Boord]

I still think its the worst game since Lunacy.

[SkittlesCharge]

At first, I didn't really like Aerial Assist, with it being such a break from the norm and whatnot. However, as the season progressed, it grew on me and I became more tolerant of it as I saw the strategy involved and the teamwork of good alliances. It did have definite flaws (subjective rules and fouls, lesser robots dragging alliances down, etc.), but overall Aerial Assist is my favorite game of the last three. Rebound Rumble and Ultimate Ascent were both great games, but I personally feel that Aerial Assist was superior in terms of strategy, teamwork, and entertainment.

*hides under desk*

[Koko Ed]

All the dislike of the game aside I cannot wait to see this game on display at IRI. The qualification rounds won't suck there.

[DampRobot]

Even if you disregard all the terrible bugs, and the parts of the game design that didn't seem to be thought out from a teams perspective (Gee, what if a robot breaks with a ball in it! Gosh, what might robots want to do if they can't help score at all?) this was still a bad game. You routinely got screwed over by your alliance partners, despite your best attempts to help them out and "raise the level of competition."

This game would have been much cooler if it had two balls (or safe zones, or something else). It would have basically been an offensive shootout where the assist points would have been basically just bonuses. There would be something for teams to do besides defense in most matches. You would no longer see 3+ team scrums in the middle of the field preventing scoring from happening essentially every match.

In UA, if you built a good robot, you could put up a lot of points and put on a good show, no matter if you were paired with bad people or not. Fancy that, better robots winning matches...

[dellagd]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

All the dislike of the game aside I cannot wait to see this game on display at IRI. The qualification rounds won't suck there.

Yep. Team's could easily have their win-loss record more or less determined by the match schedule. Carrying an alliance, although very hard in any year, I feel is particularity impossible in this game.

This game I do feel is the most strategically interesting in a while however. There are so many cool and different ways an alliance can go about trying to win; it's not just "you score as much as you can while we all do the same" like 2013 mostly was. I still have a few strategies I'd still like to see played out in the off-season.

On the other hand, with the random match schedules, (and my team's horrible luck for them) I feel particularly irked with this game. To have your rank determined by your performance directly correlating to randomly selected teams is so frustrating. In previous years you could easily show your robots capabilities even if your partners were poor and you lost matched, but now, with partners who really struggle to assist with you, doing even that is hard. No matter what way you pitch it, some teams are better than others. Getting paired with the lesser half, despite all you can do to help them, takes a much bigger hit to your own performance/appearance in this game over previous years. I know this is a more negative view of the situation, but while some do, some teams simply don't want help even if you offer it.

While I don't think OPR represents this game that well, we ended up 16th in our division for it, but ranked 91st in the official rankings. I know of a few teams this happened to and it feels like the game just didn't really work with the old style of rankings. Good teams should at least do fairly well in the rankings.

[Pretzel]

I found the game itself to be much more fun than Ultimate Ascent from last year, but that is likely due in part to our team's strategy towards this game. We went for a robot that could shoot the high goal and truss this year and were successful with that strategy, whereas last year we designed a climber for a 50 point climb and dump.

While we did manage to get the climb and dump down to about 20 seconds before our final competition in the offseason, it was more fun from a driver's perspective this year where there was always something for me to do that directly affected the outcome of the match. With the safe zones last year defense wasn't quite as effective as this year, which led to some periods of time sitting and waiting to disrupt their cycles while they traveled to their preferred shooting location.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by dodar

Worst is such a strong word. I'd call it the lesser of the 3 most recent games which were all pretty amazing.

Also known as worst?

Up until division eliminations, there were still teams that could barely contribute. Yes that happens every year, but it wasn't nearly so devastating as this year. All other problems with this game aside, that was the killer.

[Orion.DeYoe]

Aerial Assist can't even dream of thinking about coming close to being better than Ultimate Ascent...

Originally Posted by Gregor

Up until division eliminations, there were still teams that could barely contribute. Yes that happens every year, but it wasn't nearly so devastating as this year. All other problems with this game aside, that was the killer.

I agree completely.

[wasayanwer97]

In concept, I think Aerial Assist is the superior game by far. A game that actually required an alliance to function as a team in every part of play is a change I have been waiting for. Ultimate Ascent had some great gameplay, but it was nowhere near as exciting as Aerial Assist once you hit top tier play- which brings about the fundamental issues in Aerial Assist. We shouldnt have to wait for Elims or Champs to consistently see a game played well. While this happens every year, it was far worse this year.

Aerial Assist was amazing in how it forced coopertition between different teams. It really raised the ceiling for what an alliance can do- but it also raised the floor. Robots were far more valuable this year, and a non functional one was a near-insurmountable handicap. Aerial Assist was a huge wakeup call, in that we need to start paying more attention into improving not only ourselves, but the teams around us too. In addition, the plague of rule issues and the overwhelming responsibility put on the referees really killed the game at times. The game itself was brilliant, but it was dragged down by the rules, refs, and community being unprepared for it.

Ultimate Ascent on the other hand, didn't suffer anything close to the degree of issues that plagued Aerial Assist. Teams could win on their own if they needed to, as weak alliance partners didnt necessarily kill any chance at a win. The rules were also pretty sound, and the absence of enormous technical fouls added to smoother match play. Combine this with fast paced scoring and a captivating endgame, and you have a great game.

The strategy aspect of Ultimate Ascent was weaker though. I'm going to miss the deep strategic interaction every alliance had to go through before each match. Teams felt a lot more connected out there on the field, and. I found Aerial Assist far more engaging than ultimate ascent.

In real practice, Ultimate Ascent was better on an overall level. It just went smoother over the whole season. We were ready for a game like ultimate ascent, because it didnt diverge too far from what we as a community are used to.

Tl;Dr The good parts of Aerial Assist (coopertition, gameplay) were some of the best FIRST has ever released. Aside from teams not being ready to cooperate, the other issues like badly written rules could have happened to any other game. Ultimate Ascent didnt have those issues though, so it wins in practice.

[Oblarg]

Yes, by a large margin.

After experiencing how much more interesting/exciting this game was to watch and to play than the previous structure of "seeing which set of three robots can score the post points in parallel," I hope Aerial Assist signals a fundamental shift of focus to games requiring teamwork and cooperation for success.

[asid61]

Waaaaay better than last year, except for endgame.
Watching Ultimate Ascent was like watching 6 little scoring matches going on all at the same time. No teamwork or coopertition was particularly involved. It was pretty much the same at every level to watch.