An OPR of 1 roughly corresponded to one goal per match by a robot. Most robots, IF my memory is correct, could shoot more than 1 Frisbee, basketball, tetra, tube, or tote. The average team any other year could score more than 6 or 7 game pieces, whereas only the “best” in 2010 could score that much.
Given the number of zero-zero ties, that might be a fair assessment. OTOH, there weren’t all that many of those without a penalty assessed somewhere.
The #1 biggest problem with 2010 was the possession rule. For those that weren’t there, you had to work with one ball at a time–inadvertently grabbing another got you a penalty. (After Week 1, the rule was modified somewhat to allow inadvertent violations to try to clear out any extras.) And you could only have about 6" of the ball under your control, 3" or less actually inside your frame (or other ball-control device, if that was on top of your frame) and the rest under your bumpers. And the real kicker was that the kicker had to be inside the frame perimeter. 3" on a size 5 soccer ball ain’t a lot of room to work with!
If that one dimension was somewhat larger, I think the scores would have been a lot higher. The game was good as a game, just that particular number, and the ranking system were really annoying.
You cannot compare games by the number of “scores” a team can make. Look at it like this, how many opportunities to score that soccerball did a 2010 team have per match? Now, compare that to how many opportunities teams had to score a frisbee in 2013, basketball in 2012, a tote in 2015, etc…
If the average alliance score in 2010 was 3, and the average OPR was 1 which came out to 1 goal per team per match, that would be the equivalent of scoring 20 points this year.(if the average alliance score was around 60)
Like I said, OPR isnt a good way to compare robot ability from year to year.
Thank you for your insight. However, I feel you missed my main point.
My point was not to compare OPR from year to year. My point, in a nutshell, is that if it takes a robot the entire match period to get one game piece in a goal, then that game is probably harder than a game where a robot can score many times in one match, regardless of the point value of scoring; this supports Knufire’s claim. If an average robot can only score once on a decent match then the game is probably too hard. That being said, there were some great robots in 2010, but they came around less often than most other years since the game was harder to play.
In other words, even though 2010 had fewer opportunities to score (i.e. fewer balls on the field) there were still many cases when none of those opportunities were completed anyways and that led to a bunch of “0” scores. Our team won 7 matches in 2010 against a 0 score and lost 6 matches the same way - tell me Breakaway wasn’t hard.
2004-2007, and it’s not really close.
2010 was ungodly bad during the early weeks (even setting aside the ranking shenanigans that were modified after week 1). Yes, most games are bad during regional qualification matches. But we’re talking a level of bad where 57% of matches during the DC regional had at least one alliance finish the match with 0 points. Two elimination alliances at Peachtree scored 0 goals combined in the quarterfinals.
All games improve dramatically as the season progresses. Looking at early week video of just about any game is pretty depressing. But Breakaway took this to the extreme. Compared to many FRC games, it already involved scoring fewer game objects per match in general. But when that figure hits 0 as often as it did in Breakaway, it makes for a poor game. It was simply too hard for the lower level teams to corral the soccer ball given the stipulations that game had.
This! My opinion, subject to other’s opinions:
2015 is too soon for me to fairly judge, so I am excluding it.
2014 was one of the most dynamic games of all time (close with 2004).
2013 was a solid game but had problematic defensive zone interactions.
2012 was an all around solid game.
2011 minibot race was disastrously overvalued. In the playoffs, if you lost the minibot race 1-2, you did not win.
2010 had too high of an entry for minimum competitive teams. Too many 0-0 QRounds.
2009 is a personal favorite of mine, but a nightmare to keep track of the score for spectators.
2008 was just a bad game with minimal intentional robot-robot interaction.
2007 was a better version of 2011, defensive play allowed for different roles, no minibots.
2006 dynamic game play (offensive time vs defensive time) and well tiered scoring.
2005 one of my favorite games to watch videos of. Alliance score could increase or decrease as the game progressed.
2004 probably the most dynamic game of all time. Organized chaos.
2003 neat concept, ultimately became a bulldozing competition ending in a king of the mountain contest, lacked role variance.
2002-earlier: no autonomous, not much knowledge/video of games.
Am I in an alternate reality where the 2009 FRC game wasn’t Lunacy?
Nah, there were just a few people who liked Lunacy. At higher levels there were some cool strategic plays you could make, and it required a very different style of thinking from other years.
However those very few positives were outweighed by a boatload of negatives that cause most people to hate the game. (Similar reactions to 2015, mind you- a few people liked that the lack of size restrictions allowed for a ton of creativity, but most everyone else hated this game).
I’d make an argument for 2009-2012.
Lunacy was a game that had a cool theme, accessible game objective, useful human players. Very simple pump-and-dump robots could be successful, and the Fullest-Trailer-Loses concept made it easy to track.
2010 featured an easy to explain game with a bit more mechanical sophistication. Still accessible to BLTs, rewarding and exciting for more elegant designs.
Logomotion was a cool celebration of FIRST; an easy to understand and score game; exciting and impressive to watch great matches.
2012 was, in my eyes, the GOAT game. A fantastic way for a student to end his/her high school career. Exciting gameplay, exciting endgame, balanced scoring, not too penalty-ridden, plus the concept of the Coopetition Bridge was a great way to bring in people new to this style of robotics competitions.
Except 2013>2009 every time.
2013 was the coolest game (this coming from a guy who had his first good year in 2013 and plays ultimate frisbee, to be fair).
2013 had a few minor flaws, like climbing being undervalued, and fouls related to climbing being very punishing.
But 2013 also had an incredible design challenge for higher level teams, accessible and competitive lower level designs, dynamic and exciting strategy at all levels, and some of the coolest robots I’ve ever seen in FRC playing some of the most exciting matches.
/rant
I don’t disagree that Ultimate Ascent was better than Lunacy.
However, as a progression from Freshman (Rookie) to Senior (Veteran), and the progression of games along that span, I’d be partial to 09-12. With '13 as the first Mentor Year.
So every 6 years FIRST makes a game that is predominately disliked by the community , that’s interesting. Wonder what it’ll be in 2021?
I also enjoyed Lunacy, a good robot and being the driver were probably added factors.
Trying to design a traction control device and strategy to pin robots or design autons to load robots, always drove us to improve and really get the sense of continuous improvement.
(Funny that I now run the continuous improvement program at my job).
I would pick 2004-2007 as the best years with 2011-2014 as a close second. My personal best were 06-09, since I was on the drive team :yikes: .
-Nick
^
Personally, I think 2011-2014 is the strongest. The games were diverse in terms of game type, mechanisms and strategy.
2011: placement game, claws were common but some were better than others, unique endgame if overcompetitive, good strategy was required in order to win at a high level, no single “ideal” alliance.
2012: shooting game, primarily flywheels but other methods were viable (see: 548 and 16), endgame was exciting, strategies were somewhat diverse, no single “ideal” alliance.
2013: shooting game, all flywheels which was dissapointing (except for 1503 and 1024), endgame was exciting, diminishing returns on auto and endgame required smart design in order to be successful, an “ideal” alliance clearly was established, sadly.
2014: shooting game, many different mechanism styles, auto required teams to value consistency, a huge variety of strategies that were all viable, no “ideal” alliance because of diverse play styles.
I don’t see how you can argue that 2011-2014 was diverse when the first two words used to describe 2012, 2013, and 2014 were all “shooting game.” 2012 and 2013, in particular, were astoundingly similar for games played in back-to-back years. They were both flywheels shooter games with 1, 2, and 3 point goals, limited payloads, no muzzle velocity, and tiered end-games. Both years also severely lacked design diversity compared to most other games. Sure you can point out exceptions in each game, but every game has a handful of exceptions.
That’s not to say I don’t like 2012 or 2013 as games. They’re two of my all time favorites. But the diversity argument during that timeframe is completely bunk.
2013 had all sorts of successful robots. When discussing 2012 or 2011, for example, you come up with what was essentially the best design, but not in 2013. In 2013, there were cyclers and floor pickups and full court shooters and climbers and very few of these robots looked the same.
Take a whole bunch of floor pickup robots and compare them- very few were similar in design aside from the fact that they probably had a flywheel shooter and roller collector. But those flywheel shooters might have been 1 wheel with a curved wall, 2 or 3 wheels with a flat wall, those collectors might have had top rollers with a tray to pull the discs onto or top and bottom rollers. Their release points and shooting locations were often different too.
Cyclers and Full court shooters were generally more homogenous, but often still different (were they tall or short, how did they shoot, what was their drivetrain)
Robots with climbs were crazier still.
I don’t think the idea that 2013 lacked design diversity holds water whatsoever.
2011 and 2012 had many homogenous robot designs, but 2014 also had a lot of different designs.
2014 had roller collector captaults and Simbot SS’s, sure, but the exact design details of each were still often way different. 20’s roller collector captault was totally different than 469’s or 340’s, and 1114’s Simbot SS was totally different than 971’s or 2791’s.
As while they were all shooting games, the style of shooting was remarkably different each year. 2012 required a lot of backspin on the balls and the ability to account for differences in density, 2013 was a totally different game piece that required unique systems to deliver the game piece to the shooter, and 2014 had giant balls that required giant mechanisms, and you only needed to ever hold one ball at a time.
TLDR: 2011-2014 absolutely had diverse robot design and variance in game design.
/endrant
All games have certain degrees of design variance. None of 2011-2014 were particularly exceptional in that regard. In fact, 2011-2013 are among the most homogenous games in recent memory.
2012 and 2013 are shockingly similar for back-to-back games. Both games were [predominantly flywheel] shooting games. Both games had 1 point, 2point, and 3 point goals. Both games limited the amount of game objects you could carry (3 in 2012, 4 in 2013). Both games had specially designed feeder stations. The autonomous mode in both games simply added a scoring bonus to each object scored. Really the only big contrast was the end games, and even those were both tiered scoring.
Compare that with 2004 or 2007 where robots could do mutually exclusive game objectives and still be successful, and I disagree.
2013, in my mind, was a weak game. Nice to watch, but sub-par in every other way. However, it’s the visual appeal that matters- 2013 was fun to watch, and since everyone else on here seems to think it was by far the best game ever, I’ll give it the credit everyone thinks it deserves. We would think of 2012 as an awesome game if 2013 hadn’t copycatted half of it.
The thing about “shooting game” is that the majority of games since 2005 have been shooting games, so the 3:1 proportion is perfectly reasonable. I’ll agree, though, that 2013 and 2012 were very similar. Their only difference was in how constraining they were, in terms of design diversity, and strategic diversity. 2013 wasn’t as tolerant of unique designs.* It also didn’t require a huge amount of cooperation between teams when it came to the endgame, and it didn’t offer many options for autonomous. Neither game was particularly diverse, but 2013 was definitely the worse of the two.
*Basically, at the level of an average team, there was only one viable design in 2013- a cycler with a 10-point climb. More complex designs (usually) ended up not working well. Those that did successfully have a climber or teleop collector were almost exclusively high-level teams. And yeah, someone is going to make the argument about full court shooters being doable for average teams, but I’m talking about designs that were proven to be viable, even at a high level. 2013 had minimal strategy. Generally, there was nothing beyond “okay, you do your thing, you do your thing, you defend.” At least in 2012 you could do more complex strategies without significant losses- see 16 on Einstein.
However, even with the shortcomings I find in 2012 and 2013, they were still undeniable crowd pleasers. Both games were fun to watch, and there’s something to be said for an FRC game that is appealing to people who have never even heard of FIRST. Watching a robot climb a pyramid, or sitting on the edge of your seat to see if an alliance would get the triple balance, a good FRC game always has a little fanservice. (hmmm… I wonder why everyone hates 2015) Combine the fanservice of these two games with 2011 and 2014, which had stronger diversity and strategy, and it’s a well-balanced combo.