Lunacy = Greatest Game Ever

FIRST General Forum
1

This might be a little over dramatic, but i am bothered by all the complaining about this years game, because i for one, being a six year veteran of FIRST, loved this game, and heres why.

The floor/wheels: Totally changed the game, i loved that, in life, ur not always going to have the same challenge facing you when ur creating machines, we need something to completely throw us for a loop. it makes us better engineers.

The overkill rule: This rule really pushed the ideals of FIRST and tried to teach teams something FIRST always tries to say we are about, professionalism and sportsmanship. In other sports, cocky teams blow out the terrible ones all the time and they never stop, thats not good sportsmanship. FIRST was trying to say, hey we are different, we encourage respecting your opponent by not destroying them. my only complaint is i would have just made it one penalty for tripling their score, and removed the doubling the score

Human Player: Robots in real life are going to interact with people, and have tons of outside sources affecting them, so the robots should not only be able to be good scorers, but be able to evade the human players. It adds another layer of dephth to the driving strategy instead of just drive around, score, repeat, you had to avoid the human player as well

Entertaining to watch: every person that i know that has watched FIRST events with me in the past and not knowing anything about robotics said this year was highly entertaining (over say, overdrive, which was one of the least entertaining games to watch). There was alot of robot interaction, high scoring, and just fun thigns to watch. Games like this and AIM high, IMO attract more spectators.

I’ll come back and post more things later as they come to me, i just had to get them off my chest and respond to alot of the hate this game has gotten

2

i agree but for very different reasons.

this game more than any other in my opinion incorporated good strategy and good driving because any team with good enough strategy and driving could take out any other entirely. this lack of dominance by one team in a match made every match a toss up and made it exciting for me.

also i liked how the human players decided matches in which there really weren’t any scorers but when there were good scorers they won the matches no matter how good the other human players were.

and i liked how the floor played such a huge role in making the game possible. if this game was played on carpet it would not have worked at all. no one would be able to pin anyone or any trailer and scores would be terribly low unless the teams were really bad. the floor really played into the game well and despite the problem with static i think it was a great decision by the gdc.

lastly i would like to comment on everyone who constantly said this game was boring because it wasn’t. sure when no one could score in a match it was boring but that is true for every single game. when the good teams came to play the excitement was unmatched in any other game.

3

Thank you! finally someone not on my team agrees with me on here

4

You may find some more people that agree with you here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76878&highlight=Lunacy+review

5

I did like Lunacy, and I appreciated that it was a change of pace from past years, however I would not go so far as to say that it is the greatest game ever.

6

I was a FTC Member at the Championships this year (and FLL Last year), and both years, I went on saturday to watch the FRC competition, and I, as a spectator, found overdrive much more entertaining, although real time scoring, was quite nice.

7

Lunacy ranks just ahead of Rack and Roll and just behind Aim High on my list of favorite games, but mostly because Overdrive came right before it did. The best way to learn is by facing a variety of challenges, and this game is different from Overdrive in almost every way. Last year’s game was nearly a pure display of robot performance, as close to playing in a vacuum as FIRST has been in a while. The fact that there was only two trackballs severely limited the role of the alliances third robot and as a result, most effective robots were able to carry alliances by themselves. This year was almost the exact opposite. The addition of defense and the fact that the goals were on the robots made the least effective robot on the alliance just as important as the most effective one, and made strategy and teamwork integral parts of this game. Human players and super cells added many outside variables for teams to consider, mirroring real life much more closely than Overdrive did. In addition to this, the game is much more entertaining to watch than overdrive was. Overall I really enjoyed this game.

8

I thought it was an interesting change up, but in terms of entertainment I found it a bit slow and hard to follow. I thought 08’ and 07’ were a lot better from the stands point of view.

9

It’s unfortunate your rookie year wasn’t a year sooner, otherwise you’d probably have a much different opinion of this year’s game. :wink:

FIRST Frenzy was probably among the best FRC games of all time. Light years ahead of Lunacy. And while I wasn’t around in 2000, some of the older veterans around here will praise that game as the best game of all time. Ever since 2005, all of the FRC games have been very “one-dimensional”, and lack the excitement of truly amazing games like 2004 or 2000.

10

I definitely agree that 2004 was a great game. This years game had basically one thing to do (scoring wise). Where as in 04 you could use the hp to score (same as this year), use the robot to double the score with the doubler ball and hang a robot from the middle bar. I know that year my team was lucky enough to win a regional with specialists in each area. One robot focuses solely on hanging, we focused on hp scoring and dealing with the doubler ball and the 3rd partner played amazing defense and also hung. This year, if you could rack up points in the opponents goal, it was MUCH harder for you to be successful on the field.

Also, being a drive trains guy, I didn’t like the lack of impressive drive systems. Sure, people still did swerve/crab systems, but I love to see team with similar system being able to push others clear across the field. Also, the absence of mecanum drives and omni wheels made me sad, I love seeing the insane maneuverablity of robots in the past.

This is all just my $0.02.

11

i dont understand how anyone enjoyed overdrive, just my opinion

12

It always amazes how different people’s opinions are of the different games. Personally I place Lunacy just second form the bottom of my list, just above Aim High, and I put Rack and Roll at the top of my list, but I know many people who feel just the opposite.

13

Two words: Hockey sticks. ::safety::

Trobotics (1346) Overdrive robot was wonderfully entertaining to watch.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/31070

14

I’ll start off by saying I respect your and other differing opinions.:slight_smile:

The whole part about not using wheels we wanted was the very first thing I almost hated. For a lot of teams there was barely any development of previous drive systems (cept for that wicked pseuo crab).

Entertaining to watch? Yea sure. But for the one robot you could actually pay attention to. There was barely ever a match in which you could tell what was going on on the field overall, unlike 04 and 00. (By the way I liked 00 far more than 04 b/c it was the first event I attended with my brother on MORT =D)

Second, I see sportsmanship and professionalism as something you step onto the field with, not what you come off with. Meaning that if a team “blows you apart” or out of the water then how is that them not being professional? YOU as the losing team should know you played your hardest and that the other alliance did too. I don’t see teams being maniacal about beating other teams when they know they can. Hell, at our regionals there are teams who can pummel others without really trying, but when we lose to them there is no distaste, there is no contempt, there is no lack of sportsmanship. We all play as we would in any other sport. If FIRST believes this is not the meaning of sportsmanship then perhaps they should reevaluate what professionalism means as well.

+$0.02

15

I wasn’t around pre 2005. But I thought 06,07, and 08 were awesome games. I agree with Jeff (from FirstCast) that this game was very boring to watch. The 2008 finals seemed to be more impressive to me. I have a different view on this but not being able to USE YOUR OWN WHEELS! Oh well, can’t wait for 2010, it might be the ten year aniversary of 2000?

I also agree with what Kyle Love mentioned earlier in this post. Can you handle the carpet?

16

Lol something that just reminded me of this.

“President Bush; great president? Or the GREATEST president?”- Stephen Colbert

17

I don’t understand how anyone enjoyed Lunacy, just my opinion.

EDIT: I guess the internet has trouble with sarcasm, I didn’t mean that statement literally.

Luncay wasn’t 100% horrid, yes I enjoyed it, but I don’t like it compared to other games.

I made my statement because I find it funny Dan is shocked by people criticizing Lunacy, then is so bold to say nobody could like overdrive.

I’m not trying to be mean, I just find it funny.

18

i don’t understand how anyone enjoyed overdrive, just my opinion

I don’t understand how anyone enjoyed Lunacy, just my opinion.

I don’t understand how anyone can not enjoy any FIRST game.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, the GDC has never failed.

Every year, we have to work like crazy to design, build and operate our robots
Every year, we are kept awake, thinking of how to make our robots better
Every year, the competitions are as amazing experiences as ever
Every year, someone builds something that makes us go “WOWW!!”
And every year, someone is inspired.

.02

19

Well, that is great that you have an opinion. I also have an opinion and it differs from yours. Maybe some day you can understand how people can have different ones.

No seriously, I wasn’t a fan of Lunacy, just my opinion. I didnt think it was as amazing to watch as Overdrive. I do believe this is because I too enjoy a good drive train. I also enjoy a cool manipulator. I didnt see any truly awesome ways of scoring this year. (Opinion again, Im sure people will disagree with me here but hey, Im ok with that)

20

This just blows me away. well said