I’m a little surprised that there hasn’t been any discussion yet about how much people liked going 2 v. 2 at BattleCry. I guess I’ll ask - what did everybody think?
As a spectator, I found the matches were definitely more interesting because you did not always not what was going to happen.
As a team member, I’m not sure. It might have just been that the whole question of bridge possesion was a bit too difficult for flag people, robot operators, and refs to handle on the fly, but I think that 2 v. 2 made it much more likely that people would be unhappy with the refs, their opponents, or both at the end of a match.
In the end, I think that a 2 v. 2 v. the clock with limited interaction (a la Dr. Mario) might be the the thing I’d like to try next.
So much more entertaing, from the audiences point of view, and more mind churning for the drivers. 2 v 2 is the best of both worlds, for now. Can’t get much better than it.
I liked the race feel of it, trying to get as many base points and still clock out for the 2.5 multiplyer before the other team was fun. It took a fair amount of planning and on the site thinking to beat out the other team.
What I didn’t like was pushing and fighting over goals and such. I watched most of the final matches, and it seemed that they were just brutal, lots of pushing and locking up. I know thats what a lot of people wanted to see and play with, but it just didn’t seem fun to me. Perhaps playing a bot with armor would calm my fears, but still, its just not the kind of thing I’d like to play with.
So I’d like to see a 2vs2 game with out a lot of contact between bots. The qualification matches for the most part were a blast for me. The last few finals… well, part of me was glad our bot didn’t end up in that.
i appreciate everyone’s commentary on this weekend’s CHAOS… We definitely would not have pushed ahead with the modified game if people weren’t curious to see what happened.
I think that we can take the experience and help us all come up with some good feedback for FIRST at the Forum… I think that everyone thought that 2v2 would be the instantaneous end all to the problems but this was some good medicine.
But the truth is that i had a great time, had no clue what was going on half the time, was just as confused as everyone else about the calls and scoring sometimes… and it happens… but we can all learn from it and go “well this was good and this could change…”
so please think about what we did, what you liked, why you like what FIRST does better, etc and let’s talk about it now so we can have a great game next year!
Given I was totally just a spectator, I can say that Battlecry was about as exciting as the rest of this years competition. Basically, not too much. I know the guys at WPI tried their best and I really wouldn’t say that this is their fault – they could only modify to such an extent. Basically, what happened (in most matches, not all) was that instead of four robots trying to accomplish the same task, the field was split in half and two sets of two robots were trying to accomplish the same task. There wasn’t all that much defense played. I will say however that it was a bit more interesting because the outcome of a given match was not known in advance and there were some interesting strategies played out but the robots weren’t designed for the competition which makes the task of making an exciting game even harder. That said, I think the organizers did a great job of setting the whole event up and running it. I also think it was great of them to try something different even if it didn’t turn out perfectly.
Being a spectator at both nationals and BC2, I think BC2 was definately more exciting – especially in the elimination matches. At nationals, I knew who would win, and what their score would be, before the elimination matches even begun. At BC2, there was no way of predicting, because there is unique interaction between any two given sets of teams. Therefore each match in eliminations will play out differently. I think this was much more the case in the eliminations than in the qualifiers.
Even though I thought BC2 was better than the FIRST competitions, I don’t think BC2 was nearly as exciting as BC1 because of several reasons – confusion over rules and bridge control, too complex rules for audience (and sometimes players) to understand, and… as Matt was pointing out, most matches were actually two matches, each on half of the field occuring simultaneously.
First off, I had a blast at BattleCry just like last year…but as for the game mods, I’m not sure. Part of me loved seeing 2 v 2 return, but another part of me was screaming that this game was just not a game to be played as 2 v 2. Perhaps it was with the clock…if that factor had been removed, forcing people to play to the end of every match, there may have been more excitement.
Overall, I think it followed the pattern of the season – started off low scoring and rather boring to watch…but by the elims it began to pick up in intensity and scores. Though I have to say, with BC I didn’t even bother to try to figure out scores in my head!
I liked BC a little more than I liked the 4 v 4. Though in all honesty, for this game, 4 v 0 seemed to work better. I am still for the return of the 2 v 2 alliance games though…with a game that will support them without confusing everyone.
Well I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to voice my opinions on BattleCry in this forum or not. But I would like to try and make a few observations about what I saw there in a, hopefully, constructive manner.
1- Reffing issues. I think that everyone at BattleCry saw at least one call that wouldn’t agree with. I think everyone @ a FIRST comp saw at least one call they wouldn’t agree with. I think when people started to get more than a little concerned is when a certian call benefited the host team in a postive way. My suggestion would be to get a truly independant group of reffs. Someone from another team w/no alligences to anyone team. For example Plymouth North used to have Gaelforce’s adults reff their competition. In fairness however…the reffing job was complicated not only by the fact that many of the reffs may not have been intimately familar w/the FIRST rules…there were BattleCry specific rules layered on top of those FIRST rules.
2- This game desprately wanted to be exciting. And I desprately wanted it to be. What was unfortunate is that it turned into one team doing one thing and another team doing their thing…and no true interaction between the alliances. I think that perhaps this is simply because of how offensively minded we became this year. I am not sure what the solution to this problem is. I thought that things would just revert back to 2on2 mentalities and things would be peachy. After seeing this…I question what a transition back to a 2on2 defensive oriented game would really look like. I also question whether FIRST (Dean?) will be that drastic.
3- Consitency, consitency, consitency. This kinda goes with reffing…but I think it’s also a seprate issue. Teams running need to make sure that they follow the precedents they set and set the rigth ones. Why does situation a deserve a rematch and situation b doesn’t?? Why qualifies “contact with the ramp?” These things need to be explained to the refs before hand and well thought out. Most importantly they cannot be changed mid-stream 3 matches before the finals. That is not an accusation simply a statement.
4- Lastly, I really do commend BattleCry for having the courage to take a risk and desing their own game. I look forward to BattleCry 3 and Kickoff 2002.
posting as a coach from T190 and not as BC staff or organizer… i’ve got a few opinions to share.
I think 2v2 was a fun change to the game and definitely spiced it up a bit. For the first time I saw our drivers getting psyched about what they could do in a match to outdo the opponents rather than just praying that no one else messes up so our score doesn’t mess up.
As for the ref-ing… there was no one from the ‘host team’ ref-ing. The head referee, same as last year, was from Aces High. Eric from FIRST was also a ref… as well the others were from other teams/companies. Same as in the past, from the referees’ standpoint, the game was called fair and without bias.
And from our very first match, to our very last match… our respective alliance argued several calls that seemed to be cleared contradicted by the rules of the game… but the referees’ calls were final whether or not our college sponsor also supported the event.
In any case, I’m very happy that BC2 went 2v2 and I would like to see more people try it out. Part of the confusion was the newness of the game… quite logically as it is the same with FIRST… the first regional of the year is more of a mess of what to do and how to call it when by the time you get to nationals and then off-season comps in september/october… there is no question about rules or game play, and you can simply play. It’s to be expected in a new game… and dispite me personally not being happy w/ some rules being called oddly, I think everyone did their best considering the situation.
So go 2v2 and creative energy. And thanks for the referees for doing their best in tough situations. I doubt very few people could have called it much better in their shoes, no matter where they are from.
So thanks to everyone working the BattleCry staff… and congrats to everyone for trying something new.
3- Consitency, consitency, consitency. This kinda goes with reffing…but I think it’s also a seprate issue. Teams running need to make sure that they follow the precedents they set and set the rigth ones. Why does situation a deserve a rematch and situation b doesn’t?? Why qualifies “contact with the ramp?” These things need to be explained to the refs before hand and well thought out. Most importantly they cannot be changed mid-stream 3 matches before the finals. That is not an accusation simply a statement.
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I’m just gonna emphasize what Colleen said again, and reiterate none of the referees were associated with team 190 or wpi. the closest to such status was Eric as he is a wpi alum, but no one with a current stake in things.
Second, We attempted to play the game in our minds and try to work out the scenarios before hand so we’d know how to call them but there are only so many possibilities that we thought of. This was both good and bad. Everyone was introduced to this game at the exact same time and everyone went through the same process of discovery but the referees weren’t seasoned with the benefit of experience.
Modified-Game or not, in the future, we will have full game dress rehearsals to try to flush some of those pesky calls out early.
(and if we do another mod-game, i will push for simpler not more complicated:))
I know I’m a little late in coming to this, so I apologize for that.
To be honest, I drove up to WPI to see Battlecry because I was really skeptical that this year’s game could be turned into a competition. Though I commend WPI for trying, I don’t think that the rules changes were comprehensive or thoughtful enough to really encourage competition.
Like Matt said, all we were seeing was the same teamwork with half the number of teams on half the field. There was no use fighting over goals at all, since their placement made that almost impossible. Toward the end, some teams tried to move the opposing teams goal, but it didn’t really do much for the excitement of the game.
In my eyes, the biggest fault with the modifications lied with the addition of a second bridge, as well as the ‘control’ rules that governed the bridges. I think, though, that the mere presence of something like the bridge made competition difficult. Obviously, nobody would have balanced a bridge if those control rules weren’t in place, but they also allowed a team free reign over the bridge, and all the opposing team could do was watch them go at it. How can you have a competition with rules that specifically prohibit competitive actions?
But then, I can’t really think of anything that could improve that situation. The bridge is what disallowed competition, and without changing that element, this year’s game has no hope of ever being competitive.
I’d just like to say taht I agree with Mike’s thoughts on the bridge. I was kicking the BattleCry game back and forth with someone last night and I came to many of the same conclusions. There was no way that the bridge would ever have been balanced w/out the control rules. Also you can’t really eliminate the bridge because then you tick off teams whose sole function is to balance the bridge. I think that the non-versitale robots hurt competive hopes for 2001 as well. Look at 2on2 games many teams tried to build a robot that did many different functions. Very seldom did you see a team that did only one task do well into on to. Foucs was on being both offensive or defensive becauase you never knew which task that your robot would have to perform. (There are exceptions to this the 2000 robot from Central HS CHAOS comes to mind.) This year however you knew there was no defense…so u didn’t have to build your robot for defense. You also knew that chances are you would get in the match with a team that could do big balls…so you might not even need to manipulate balls maybe you just did the ramp. This is contary to all of teh 2on2 thinking. I think this year we are just to far on the opposite end of the specturm from 2on2 or competion.
We definitely would not have pushed ahead with the modified game if people weren’t curious to see what happened.