Nerf Co-op and Litter

[ttldomination]

Nerf (v)
To weaken or make less dangerous.

Dear FIRST,

When you released the game this year, I was a little disappointed, but if my time in FRC has taught me anything, watch the game before you judge it. Watch 254 and 148 play the game. Watch the rookies play the game. And then, you may judge.

I have seen both, and FIRST, nerf co-op and litter in qualifications.

Nerfing the co-op points and unprocessed litter points would not only help balance out the rankings a little bit, but it would also greatly improve the quality of the game.

Currently, if your team can manage a co-op stack and you have a Noddle Jesus on your team, you can manage in the neighborhood of 60-80 points every match.

Now, co-op will normally shake up the rankings, but in week 1, this was particularly bad. Your robot can can stack two totes and your human player has the great divine on his side, and all of a sudden you can break into the top 8.

But to me, that's not even the worst part. The quality of the game drastically improves when you remove these components.

I recall in one qualifications match where the alliances messed up the co-op stack early and do you know what we saw? A close match with multiple stacks on the scoring zone. The match was insane and intense. And you know what? The crowd loved it; so much so that one person ran up to me yelling "This is how it's supposed to be played."

In the playoffs, the co-op totes are completely removed, and alliances can focus their strategic efforts towards getting the most points with totes and RCs, and what did we see? Everyone was getting in the game. The weakest alliances were posting some of the best scores, teams were daring to stack higher than ever, and the game really came into its own.

The crowd loved it. The teams loved it. I loved it.

- Sunny G.