Why I like the last 2 games--dual challenge levels

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by TDav540

The counter argument I have to both those two games is that they are both very complex. While that design makes it super interesting for the majority of participants in FRC, it makes it significantly more difficult to explain to the average sponsor, parent, or newbie. And, at the end of the day, isn't that the target audience?

I'm hoping the GDC will pull out a much simpler game in 2018.

I can put this game into a tweet: "Play by putting balls in a goal. High goal is worth triple. And deliver gears across the field. More rotors turning and airship lights wins."

FIRST Stronghold? "Play by driving over obstacles the opponent picked. Deliver boulders to the tower. Whichever color has more lights on is winning."

Recycle Rush? "Create stacks of totes, with recycling containers on top. Generally, stacks of 6. Whoever has more stacks with recycling containers wins." (Or, the more snarky: "Grab recycling containers from midfield when the match starts, stick them on top of 6 totes. Whoever grabs more recycling containers wins.")

The GDC is usually pretty good about this, it's just on us to be able to communicate it.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Siri

I'm interested in what game mechanic is making gears so much of a better fit for folk on this score than other years' low goals (herein meaning a goal within robot height whose game pieces can be received at a higher altitude than they are scored).

I'd argue that that gear pegging could well end up significantly more difficult even than low goaling frisbees in 2013. I saw more than one box on wheels just consistently collect 4 frisbees in a static tray, run across the field, and ram into the low goal to send them tumbling. A consistent static loader may be around the same level of difficulty both years, but the goal alignment (including the obstructed vision) looks far more difficult at least viewing it from build season. And certainly running two slanted hooks into the bottom rung of the pyramid is far easier than rope climbing. Low goaling in 2014, for its part, was far easier than either 2013 or now. In fact, I'd argue that 2014, between the chair assists and the low goaling and the Aerial Assault defense--and the number of points they were all worth--was the most versatile, valuable, and strategically interesting for Dozer bots in recent years with 2016 also being similar. The actual 2017 low goal (for fuel) is among the more difficult low goals for good throughput that we've had recently. 2015's was less exciting (in oh so many ways), but you could indeed push bunches of single or double totes onto platforms and people did this.

I do agree that gears have a certain je ne sais quoi, but I don't think it's about challenge levels or strategic complexity. We've long had both of those if you knew where to look (and you don't look in Lunacy :P). My current conjecture is that we simply like the balance between the two tasks better in terms of match effects and design prioritization. This, for instance, is something 2013 arguably really struggled with in the point/complexity difference between 10, 20, and 30 point climbs. This year teams that might otherwise say "but we have to shoot high to be worth it" are saying "yay, passive gear mechanism" simply because of the point potential they're anticipating.

Some of the differences I see:
2013 - You had a fixed number of frisbees that could be scored, and if you had a good high goal bot or two on the alliance, you didn't want to waste them on a low goal bot. In that way, your low goal bot could get squeezed out from scoring.

2014 - This is still my favorite game. It was accessible to everyone pretty easily, and required alliances to utilize all of their members in order to score the most points.

Until we see the game play out at events, we won't really know how good it is. But gears do appear to be high enough in quantity that you'll need everyone involved to get them all scored, and the robot mechanism can be simple enough to implement that everyone should be able to build one for it. After that, it just comes down to driving ability in order to line up to score. Even if gears end up scoring quicker than anticipated, your high performing bots will have other things they can do (like shooting fuel) to allow others to score points with gears and keep the alliance balanced and everyone contributing to scoring points.

Defense can be critical to a good alliance in most games. But it's not really all that fun or exciting to always play defense. Unless you're exceptional, you often get overlooked in alliance selection because everyone is looking to maximize their points scored.

I envision this game mostly consisting of teams trying to score points. Defense will happen mostly opportunistically, although it may be tried when there is a large imbalance in the scoring potential between the alliances. And frankly, I like that... I want to see team's robots be able to do what they were designed for, and not stuck in a corner unable to reach the goals.

[GreyingJay]

We've had lots of opportunities to demo our Stronghold robot. I always introduce it as "it was a medieval castle defense game. 3 on 3, red versus blue. We storm their defenses and shoot boulders at their castle." Pretty intuitive, and if you watch some match video, you pretty quickly figure out what's going on.

For Steamworks I've been saying it's a steampunk airship race. We need to pick up fuel and throw it in a boiler to build up steam pressure to launch our airships. Airships are incomplete so we need to grab and deliver gears to make the rotors turn. Finally we need to grab the rope to climb on board before take-off. All intuitive concepts.

2014 was inherently a very watchable game. I found this 2014 FIRST in Michigan championships video and despite it being an hour long, watched it all the way through like I was watching a football game. Any time I showed a segment of this to someone who had never seen FIRST or FRC, they got it right away.

2015... let's not talk about 2015.

[JesseK]

This game's description is pretty simple:
3 robots work together to smash through opponent robots and put 12 gears on an airship. Then they all climb on board. Wiffle balls are involved too, but for some reason the team that spits out the most of them keeps losing.

I do love that there are 2 levels of challenge, but I disagree that dumping fuel from the hopper to the low goal is more difficult than running gears

[mjc49]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

My favorite games are the ones where rookies can contribute by scoring points. They could last year with the defenses without too much difficulty. They should be able to this year with the gears. Other years in the past, though, most rookies had no hope of being able to score points, all they could reasonably do was play defense. Of course, there are exceptional rookies every year that surprise us, but I see rookies every year that have little more than a driving robot.

I agree with this not only for the first year teams but for the teams with new mentors/students who are rebooting the program as well. If they can go to a tournament and be more than a 'pushbot' then they will likely have more fun at a tournament and that enthusiasm will likely be spread to their non-robotics friends back at school.

[BethMo]

Originally Posted by JesseK

Wiffle balls are involved too, but for some reason the team that spits out the most of them keeps losing.

I'm glad I didn't have a mouthful of tea when I read this! Funniest comment of the day. We'll see whether it proves true or not.

[tjf]

The best way to make everyone happy imho, is to design a game that is simple in theory, but can be played a multiple of ways. The difficult part is making it that you can't easily block one "level" of play from another, in either direction. Otherwise, new teams get crushed and those experienced destroy the newer teams.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Until we see the game play out at events, we won't really know how good it is. But gears do appear to be high enough in quantity that you'll need everyone involved to get them all scored, and the robot mechanism can be simple enough to implement that everyone should be able to build one for it. After that, it just comes down to driving ability in order to line up to score. Even if gears end up scoring quicker than anticipated, your high performing bots will have other things they can do (like shooting fuel) to allow others to score points with gears and keep the alliance balanced and everyone contributing to scoring points.

The only thing I'd add is that while the basic mechanism for gears is high and the reward for having high throughput is high, the consequences of screwing up are abnormally steep. There will definitely be struggling gear runners who do way more harm than good for their alliances, especially with dropping gears in front of lifts and at loading stations--which has an absolutely massive cost especially against alliances with gear floor pickups. (This is on top of normal problems that have unique consequences with this game mechanic like crowding lifts and congesting bottlenecks and getting fouls.) In terms of actual match play, those kinds of issues could end up being far more common and far more costly than the relative rarity of something like running out of frisbees high goaling in 2013.

[Tungrus]

If I had to explain this year’s game to elementary school kids this is how I would go about..

Our space ship crash landed on an alien planet. The captain and crew except one pilot are locked up behind the bullet proof glass shield. Pilot cannot step out of the space ship due to toxic environment. Our crew is trying to send the spare gears to the air ship. Pilot will pull up the gears and fix the air ship. If he collects enough gears he/she will be able to start the engines. There are three booster engines and one main engine at the center. The flight will take off once all rotors are spinning. On the other side our nemesis are trying to fix their flight and take off before us. Our crew is trying to sabotage their flight with the yellow rocks and debris, our robots will take and drop them in their steam generator. In the last 30 seconds our pilot will drop ropes from the ship and our robots will climb up and ring the door bell!

[Super84]

Usually I just show anyone who's curious the game animation video and they can pick up themselves most of the game and I just answer questions from there. As a student I love the complexity of the game, it gives excitement to watch and my family loves to see it aswell.