Hi CD,
After week one of competitions is over and the Israeli regional is ended, I definitely can say that the game is not reaching FIRST missions and goals. The game is designed for assists between teams, its clear that FIRST wanted to increase the value of coopertition but it does the opposite.
A good seeded robot is not the best robot in the competitions. A good seeded robot is a robot that does nothing! A good robot that shoots many balls and does assists in one game may lose all what he have done because of a FOUL made by human player mistake.
My team had a situation that can happen to every team, We didn’t have good robots in our alliances at the qualification matches (all 10 matches). We were not able to do a single assist because our alliance mates were not able to get a ball and pass it. We had to do our second strategy to take the game on our team and do all the work without any help. Our rank was 18 but our OPR was one of the Highest in the whole regional http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2014ista
Another team 1574 ranked 25 with second highest OPR.
Both teams didn’t have partners for assist
Another problem is that the game can be broke with defence, the is no need to score points. In last years games teams had to build good robots in order to win, what do the kids learn by building a robot that doesn’t scoring and preventing others from scoring. The kids needs to build robots that does something and doesn’t preventing from others from making. We should buid robots with a positive attitude, not negative. We need to see inspirational robots, teams, students and not a kitbot gladiators war.
I found my self shouting during matches like soccer fans which is not typical to me. If FIRST intention is to provide shiny games that attracts audience it should not reduce the professionalism of the game
We cannot come to these conclusions after week 1. Defense is a big part of the game, but that just reinforces the need of a solid strategy. The reason it does not seem like the game is working out as they planned is because it is early; people want to play the game like they always have and until they realize that traditional strategy is not going to win the game, the true beauty of Arial Assist will not be revealed.
There are ways to get assists without your alliance partners being able to pick up a ball and pass it. Try placing the ball in front of the goal and have them push it in. Place the ball along the wall and have your partners push the ball and then pick it back up and shoot it. You don’t need to pick the ball up to add to your assist totals.
Be careful about blindly using OPR…
Wait a week or two. Week 1 should have magnified defense because teams have not yet figure out their offensive strategies. As the season goes on, teams will figure out how to play offense and the defense will be partially neutralized.
This will always be a defense heavy game but it will start to get prettier as the season goes on.
I don’t hate the game, but I’m not in love with it either. It’s 2003 all over again…
I was at the Inland Empire regional last week and for the first day I thought that this game was terrible and really boring. But once the eliminations started, I really started to love Aerial Assist. Good alliances in elims are incredibly exciting to watch. 1678, 399 and 4161 had a great flow going and it really showed how great this game can be. It was really exciting to see them pass the ball down the field, over the truss (with a few catches by 399 in there) and scoring at the end with the triple assist was really impressive and awesome 
EDIT:
I also think that defense is kinda fun to watch, because even a rookie team can really do something that contributes a lot to their alliance and possibly (temporarily) stop a powerhouse team that would normally just steamroll the rest of the teams on the field. I think the intense defense in this game makes the matches a lot less one-sided when a lower-seeded alliance faces a higher seed.
Defense is what makes this game exciting to me. The catch plays by 1678 and 399 were incredible because both of their robots were heavily defended. Good defense will force offensive bots to get creative with their strategies and execution. For example I think we will start to see teams start to pass out of defense instead of trying to carry the ball across the field by themselves. Who knows, we might see teams pass to each other in the same zone just to get around a good defensive bot.
Edit: here is the match I mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhY_p3qhSkY
The first catch cycle starts at 1:20 and the second catch cycle is right after the first
One other problem you guys don’t see as Yarden sees is that an israeli team can participate in one regional, we only have one regional in here and the amount of money you need for another regional with a flight to America is huge and almost not possible, it only happend once in the last 10 years.
And also the israeli regional is in week 1
Yarden’s team’s robot was pretty great but the ranking are very effected from the teams you randomaly play with.
Just one more porblem, we had a game with a team that did not come, what chances do you have in Ariel Assist while playing 2 VS 3?
GTRW Match 26, we played 3v1.
Video coming later this week.
Depends on your strategy, the highest score of week 1 was played that way.
So what? You beat 3 teams by yourself, how many other teams could do that? Very few. For the vast majority of teams, having one robot not functioning or not even showing up will destroy the rest of the alliances chances of pulling off a win.
I see where the Israeli teams are coming from. Having only one competition to introduce new people and sponsors to FRC is stressful, especially when the game still has major flaws that needed to be fixed. I could see this eroding interest and support by new sponsors who went to the regional thinking that FRC still has major flaws with the competition aspect.
I am glad that FIRST addressed most if not all the problems to this years game, but sadly for all but a few Israeli teams, their competition season is over.
It’s great, but I guess you had a good robot against three robots that wasn’t in the same level.
it is possible to win 1 VS 3 or 2 VS 3, but you do need to be much better than the other teams or they should have problems because the game score is based about 3 robots on the field.
The main thing I try saying is that altrough you can score in other ways the ranking becomes a mirror to the robots you played with more then becoming a mirror of the acctual robots quality.
At least in my regional and in my opinion.
from the video it seems to be robots and drivers quailty, it does not depend on the strategy because the other allaince could not use the same staregy or another one to win.
That’s because it does…
If you’re expecting stellar, high level gameplay with no field issues or game updates needed, at a week 1 event, you need to step back.
I’ve been pretty vocal about my dislike for the game, but this thread is a bit much.
While I think Israel got a raw deal having to take a Week 1.5 slot when it usually sits between weeks 2 and 3, it was on event personnel who should have removed the no show from the FMS algorithm before the schedule was run if that is the case, and there has yet to be a true instance in the modern era where rank perfectly describes robot quality (2013 being probably the only exception where it was somewhat close).
And when that week 1 event is the only one within 5,000 miles, maybe they don’t think that way… Not that I agree entirely with this thread, but saying “it’s only week 1!” is not an excuse.
In fact, the three robots against 1310 were all good teams (two of whom played in the final). It’s not all about the robots on the field, that’s only about 30% of the game. The rest is all strategy and if you have a good strategy for a match you’ll always have a chance to win.
I think my teams strategy is one of the strong parts, but I’ll put it away for a seconed.
So we’re saying strategy is 70% of the game, well what if the other allaince also has good startegy? they have more tools, they have more options for a good startegy.
if strategy is 70% of the game, why do we fight so much on building a good robot?
Please, I was not ranked bad(4th) and personaly I don’t think we desreved winning,
but this year I saw too many teams that gave everything they had for much more than 45 days and lost their chances because of bad luck with no other opportunity to show what they’ve made.
Is this specific to Aerial Assist?
Yes, in my opinion in other games it were more balanced,
If a robot don’t show up you lost the points he can does or the defence he can make or any kind of other help,
This year if a robot don’t show up, or more common, don’t function well, you don’t only lose his help, you lose the main way to get points.
I also think startegy matters, but I do not agree startegy can ignore a missing robot in this game as it could in others.