Now that the season’s over, what is everyone’s final opinion on the involvement of the human player in this year’s game? Personally, I liked it a lot, combining both human and robot skills together to get points, but I remember it being a big surprise to me at the kickoff and I wasn’t sure how it would work out. Should they keep the level of human involvement the same next year? More? Less?
I personally enjoyed the level of human involvement this year. Moreso than the last two years I played where the human players didn’t do much than add a few points on the chart. What was it in Zone Zeal? 1 point a ball thrown in? And in Stack Attack, I don’t remember our stacks every staying up… and certainly that’s all they did during the match; just did that and they’re done… just standing there for the rest of it.
This year they worked all the way through, and I think evened the playing field that little bit more. If the rules were such that the robots had to score the small balls as well, it’d be that much more difficult for the less experienced teams to participate… not to mention there would be even more for the robots to do this year… Herding balls is one thing… scoring them with the robot as well? Well, that’s a large undertaking, and if they did that, they’d probably have to raise the weight limit. (hint hint? 140 pounds next year? 
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FIRST will never raise the weight or size restrictions, at least not for the next 2 years. Remember those doors from the pits to the dome? Yeah, you try to make a robot bigger than that and then get every team in and out without taking out the door frames (and yes there were other ways in, but none as easy as using those doors).
Yeah, I was my team’s human player in Stack Attack, and it wasn’t really that valuable. First of all, the stacks almost never stayed up, and second of all, there wasn’t really a challenge in getting your stack our onto the field and back on the mat in 10 seconds, I usually made it in 6 or 7 seconds, and I’m not a fast guy at all. I really liked the human player aspect this year, it threw a lot more into strategy and the interactivity of the game. Now, do drivers not only have to worry about robots on the field, but people off the field!
even as a rookie, i felt like this was the best way ever to involve the HP into the game (i have seen lots of past footage)… and i think that FIRST needs to keep this extra involvment into the game because it is the 1 thing that you can not blame either the robot or enigineer’s or pit crew for messing up… it’s all 1 person… there was 1 match (our first match) we lost by 5 points, i missed 1 or 2 shots, and the other HP missed 3 or 4 (out of about 12) so it’s great that it is the final and greatest impact on the game outside of the robotics side, and i hope the game again next year will have a huge HP involvement.
I don’t think the human player involvement was a popular part of the game for casual observers. I usually bring a lot of “outsiders” to FIRST events (I always convince a lot of friends, family, and associates to come to the events). I always ask them for their feedback on the game. Virtually all of them stated that they didn’t like the fact that the human player was so important. They basically thought that it cheapened the event, and it implied that the robots weren’t good enough to do the scoring (they knew that this wasn’t true, but they felt that the casual observer would feel this way). It is easy to discount their statements because maybe “they just don’t understand”, but if FIRST is to move forward and get the competition on TV, these people are the target audience, and their opinions matter.
I think it worked out better than I thought it would at kickoff. At kickoff, many of my team members and I were wary of the increased human player involvement because we felt that it stressed more athletic involvement as opposed to robot-building talent. However, the task really wasn’t that difficult (there were enough people on our fairly small team that could do it well) and added a bit more excitement to the game, even allowing teams that didn’t have robots to compete (which helped us, because our alliance partners were robot-less in two of the Pittsburgh qualifiers). I don’t mind the current level, but I wouldn’t want FIRST to increase it.
At kickoff time, I was bummed because I though veteran teams who worked with big 30" balls or who hung from bars in previous years were really being given an advantage.
In retrospect, this was the best game I’ve seen out of FIRST. The difficulty of all of the tasks involved in upping one’s score really seemed to level the playing field this year. For the most part, the frenzy part of the game was where MOST teams were frantically still building their robots in the pits between matches because they weren’t given enough time during the build to fully complete them. WHAT A GREAT, GREAT GAME!
The part about the robot having to feed the human player balls was ingenious and I hope that in the future Lavery and his homies incorporate that same kind of robot-human interaction into all of the games.
It was so awesome!!! I loved how the human player was important throughout the whole match unlike last year whereas after the first 15 seconds there was no use for them… I hope they are as important next year as they were this year…
I agree with most of the above opinions.
I liked the fact that ONLY humans could score the balls. Otherwise we would have all been filling robots at the glass with balls to go dump.
While I also agree that may be a bit spectator unfreindly, a simple analogy about how robots are supposed to work with humans to accomplish a task should work to explain it.
At kick off I didn’t like the human player involvement. But it grew on me quickly.
All in all this was a great game to play and watch because there were many ways to finish a game.
This year they worked all the way through, and I think evened the playing field that little bit more. If the rules were such that the robots had to score the small balls as well, it’d be that much more difficult for the less experienced teams to participate… not to mention there would be even more for the robots to do this year… Herding balls is one thing… scoring them with the robot as well? Well, that’s a large undertaking, and if they did that, they’d probably have to raise the weight limit. (hint hint? 140 pounds next year? )
Higher weight limit? Why?
Picking up and scoring these balls is nothing new. It was acutally the main challenge of the '00 year game, and scoring the soccerballs in '02. Some teams are acutally quite fantastic at it (95, 175 come to mind, although there are many others). Theres no reason why a 130 pound bot can’t score these balls. Sure, it could mean sacrificing some other function, but who says thats a bad thing? Any body can push balls around, but sucking them up and scoring them takes a little finese. My own view: this game seemed to cater to rookie teams a little to much. Lets face it, most teams really did end up with a box with big wheels and a hook. Allowing the bots to score points in more then one way would have really opened up the field a lot more (and yes, there really was only one way to score points with your bot, the multiplyer was dependent on points already scored by your human player). There may have been a lot of things for the 'bot to do, but only one really seemed to matter.
I think the game would have been much, much better if 'bots had been allowed to score the small balls. I still don’t understand why they wern’t. I’m sure there were good reasons, but none are clear to me. In my view, the human was way way way over involved this year, and it really detracted from the game. This is a contest of robots, not basketball players. I don’t really see the reasoning behind having a human player at all anymore. Maybe it gives the rookies some easy points, but is that always a good thing? Yes, the learning curve is steep but so what? FIRST isn’t about making things easy, afterall.
-Andy A.
I remember in the Pittsburgh regional, a team… and correct me if I’m wrong because my memory is all (@!#&@( after staring at the computer screen for XXXXX hours I think it was the Robocats… liek 379 or something or other… anythehow, in one of the qualification matches (or more than one… I was the field coach so I didn’t watch too many) their robot wasn’t on the field. All they had was their coach and human player, and their entire team (w00t pom poms!) was down on the field level cheering their alliance and human player on.
I thought that was VERY impressive and showed the kind of enthusiasm I would hope all teams share. I remember trying to get my team down to the field to watch our matches (instead of in the stands) and they were pretty much… “ehhh… why? What’s the point?” Apathy kills eh? 
… and I think I’ve digressed… anyways… GOOD WORK ROBOCATS! I saw you at the CDN regional too… looking for an alumni member to mentor your team?
i think this year was the best human player year ever. in stack attack like everyone knows the stacks got anniahlated instantly and eventually stacking became moot. even in zone zeal with the human player balls, the robots could still score 'em. this year the balls werent worth 1, but 5 and robots couldnt score em making human playering very very vital to a teams success. i hope they keep the involvement just where it is and i cant even start to imagine next years contest yet
I really enjoyed the greater human player contribution. It setup many more interesting scenarios when it came to choosing alliances. Last year, the human player was really insignificant. This year, though, it really added another dimension to the skill of the team. Like others have said, if a robot became dysfunctional, the entire team was still not dysfunctional.
We had tryouts on our team, and we narrowed it down to two HPs (myself another student). We ended switching each match… so we both got to experience what it’s like down on the field. Depending on our objective for the match, we’d sometimes switch. He was often better at the mobile goal, while I was more consistent shooting at the stationary goal.
It was really a lot of fun!! I think they should keep the same level of HP participation next year, yay!
I guess our rookieness made this year normal for our team.
I’d have liked to see some more ways for the robot to score points this year. Human players should be important, but without a good one your team was limited to 0/50/100 points, depending on the robot designs.
Perhaps that’s me…overall, I think things got better as matches progressed. It definitely looked that way on Archimedes.
Maybe next year we’ll see something with human-robot interaction. Defense, perhaps?
Yeah, we were their alliance partner in that match (or one of them, I think they were robot-less in multiple matches). It was nice having at least a human representative from our allliance partner with us, as opposed to just being there alone.
Admittedly we lost that match 90-20 (nice work, teams 63 and 398!), but we had to admire the spirit of the Robocats.
I doubt that there would be human/robot interaction because if a robot ever malfunctioned or something and the player got hurt then I couldn’t image what would happen… I do wish there was human/robot interaction but I highly doubt it…
I liked it because it added a new level of competition to the game. Any team could just go and play each match exactly the same, but the human player caused that strategy to have to vary. The advantage of having an awesome human player as great, on all teams. If you were a small ball team, then you could maximize your points, and if you weren’t, you needed to make the most of those 3-5 balls you might get per game. Because of this element, the matches were more exciting and different. Also, perhaps most importantly, if you lose by something like 5 points, you now have a scapegoat (just kidding!).