We’ll undoubtedly see some recency bias in this poll, but those of us who were around for Ultimate Ascent will probably vote for it. 2014 is a close second for me.
The existence of long-shot bots pretty much ruined Ultimate Ascent for me. It was 4682’s rookie year and teams that could make full court shots were effectively playing a different game from those who couldn’t.
My first year was 2017, but regardless 2014 just looks like such a fun game. Not only that but imo it was one of the best games to watch for people who didn’t know a whole lot about first.
We built a terrible drivetrain with a giant wall on it and helped our alliance beat one of the best Full Court Shooters in the world at the MN state championship. 2013 was an amazing game with many different designs. The winning alliance that year had no FCS’s on it… strategy was king that year. It was also visually incredible to watch the frisbees fly across the field and into the goals…
We tried to add a net, but in our regionals it never worked. You just showed up to the match, watched the other team constantly score, and left the field after you lost. Nobody could block them, nobody could move them, nobody could outscore them, you just were waiting to lose. It wasn’t very fun when you couldn’t find any counter-strategy at all. At least that’s how it was for us.
First, you should do the poll in 3 year blocks to eliminate some of the age biased. (and request that people only vote if they’ve seen all 3 years)
Second, leave the polls open to view without voting. I just checked off Maize Craze cuz I wanted to see the results of the poll. Why Maize Craze? Because it was the first one, I don’t know anything about it.
We got the biggest net we could fit, still didn’t work even when we were right next to them.
We were a rookie; usually you can at least go brick-bot and play defense via ramming but in 2013 you needed another mechanism dedicated to defense to be effective. Sure, a better team could have cheesecaked an optimum net onto our chassis, but I think there’s a reason we’ve seen limits placed on where you can score from in every game since then, and a physical separation of these scoring zones from acquisition zones (though I think some years they restrict it too much).
On a positive note the reason why I love Arial Assist is because it’s the only game I know of where a team actually has a reason to cooperate with other alliance members more than “score points”. Add in it being a simple game to explain, good sight-lines for drivers as well as the audience, and a high floor for effectiveness; it was a great game.
Wall bots. You shouldn’t tear down others to prop yourself up. Defense is one thing, but wall bots took it to an outrageous level. My team didn’t have a FCS, but I had a lot of respect for those teams who made something so great.
I loved Power Up because it really felt like a competition. You were fighting for control over something. Not scoring on two different sides of the field with minimal interaction besides ramming each other or trying to block shots. Plus the main scoring happened in the middle of the field which was amazing for spectating.
Stronghold was a pretty good challenge because it was relatively easy to explain to spectators. Hard to go wrong with obstacles and shooting.
2019 might move up as I see how it plays out. One thing that I do like is that it seems to promote a wide variety of robots (like 2016). I’d say 2017 was the worst for this as from the nosebleeds every robot was ultimately a box on wheels.
2017 had potential but the scoring was pretty unbalanced. And while I understand the reasoning behind the restrictive sizing constraints, it led to most robots looking pretty similar.
I think on the whole, my 4 years in high school will have been 4 pretty good games. But looking back, I think 2011 2012 2013 2014 might have been the best 4 year stretch.
the final 10 or 30 seconds(cant’ remember) of the match the human players could throw all remaining white disks in an attempt to score. Back then human players could score game pieces if they were good enough. Back in 2012 in the last 30 seconds you could human players could throw game pieces. Our human player one us a match because he made a basket at the last second.
Far too many good ones to have to choose only one.
I chose RACK n Roll because they moved the goal 2ft in any direction, just prior to starting the match, so your autonomous actually had to find the goal. Always thought that was fun.
I was also a fan of Triple Play. Giant Tick-Tac-Toe with an unusual shaped game piece, tetrahedrons IIRC.