Would you like End Game back?

[bduddy]

Autonomous has gotten easier pretty much every single year since 2005, down to the point where last year the GDC basically said "Just drive forward, please, we'll give you points!" and a lot of teams at early regionals couldn't even do that. Unless something big changes, endgame autonomous is a long way from feasibility.

[Jefferson]

Originally Posted by bduddy

Autonomous has gotten easier pretty much every single year since 2005, down to the point where last year the GDC basically said "Just drive forward, please, we'll give you points!" and a lot of teams at early regionals couldn't even do that. Unless something big changes, endgame autonomous is a long way from feasibility.

I'm guessing the drive forward and score ruling came out of the GDC being tired of seeing matches where 6 robots sat on the field doing nothing for all of auto.

An autonomous endgame may be a terrible idea and completely unwatchable except for the very highest level of competition, but it sounds like a fun challenge to me.

[safiq10]

I see everyone is posting their thought and thought I'd chime in my own thoughts about the subject.

I personally enjoyed this year's no end-game, It provided a much more tense game throughout the match and competition making much more diverse and fun. I know their were times when we were in matches that could have swayed either way because we were just points away from each other. I think if they didn't bring end game back I would not be disappointed as long as the game is sufficiently exciting enough.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by GrifBot

But would it take away from the focus on the actual game, and would people operating remotely mess up those working autonomously? That is the question. Or would the autonomous end game component be completely ignored if the points for doing the task were too little?

Whereas in 2014 there were no teams that just sat there for 2 minutes and did nothing?

[g_sawchuk]

Originally Posted by Gregor

Whereas in 2014 there were no teams that just sat there for 2 minutes and did nothing?

No matter what you're going to make the game and it's specifics, you're always going to have a few of those people. However, by making the game one set task, with a few role options, teams focus on one task, and that task only, making more robots able to compete, run and/or do something.

[IronicDeadBird]

Oh I am going to love this conversation but I will start by not reading any of it to get my initial impression and then I will edit it after what I see.

FRC has always had this certain game "feel". To be honest the only components that I feel are required for that "feel" I get from standing behind students and yelling are auton, and tele op. I participated in FLL if you haven't done that when competing you take your robot to the field put it down and press start. BEST never had the robot to robot to interaction. FIRST has done a great job with having an exciting game to view between the size of these robots, robot to robot interaction, and robot to environment action it feels exciting. That being said you don't need to have an end game to still provide that same feel.
Outside of that End Games do provide additional engineering challenges which is great for STEM. It "GENERALLY" will provide for more depth in strategy. Anyway time to read the posts and realize how ignorant I was...

EDIT: After viewing what everyone has said I still am standing by the fact that you don't need an END Game for a good match. Seeing something mechanically similar to an endgame a window of opportunity or a window to score in a different way that is high risk high reward. I always thought it was a shame that the hot goals were used in one portion of the game, why not make it so the Hot goals were toggled on randomly throughout the match and bonus points added then. I will admit that when I started the END game was the equalizer. If you don't have the sharpest auton you could make it up with a good end game.
Anyway my proposal to the GDC you know as some random dude on the internet with all the mad street cred that comes from it. Design instead of an End game include in the matches periods that slightly deviate from a task in a high risk high reward manner. Make the hot goals random during tele op (balanced of course.) Signal mini bots to climb at any point in a match to make shot calling more dynamic. Challenge teams to instead of designing for such a routine system of Auton->Tele Op->End add a wild card to Tele Op lets mix it up.

Granted I've only experienced the 2013 and 2014 seasons, but I'd really like to see the end game come back. It adds an extra challenge for teams and an element of excitement to the end of a game, especially if the alliance scores are close.

The end game element is a bit 'easier' for higher-level teams or bigger teams because of experience or dividing-and-conquering, but my rookie team was even able to rig up a 10-point hang for those extra points in Ultimate Ascent, which really came in handy when our shooter wasn't working.

The problem with an end game in a team-based challenge like Aerial Assist is that if one team focuses mainly on the end-game, the alliance as a whole loses out on a whole ton of points because that one robot isn't involved in the main game scoring. I'm thinking about robots that would take the entire match to climb to the 30 on the pyramid in 2013... In a team based game like Aerial Assist, are those points really worth it compared to the points that could be earned if they played the main game?

(...maybe the end game should come back just to make teams really think about that question.)