Perhaps I’m biased, but I thought FIRST Overdrive was the best game we’ve had in years, partly because of certain rules and penalties. In specific, the hurdler interference rule really changed the way the game was played this season. Teams could design a robot to score points and be offensive, and know that they would be free of interference while trying to score. To me this is a very good thing. In the same way that you can’t touch a basketball player while he’s shooting, or a wide receiver while the ball is in the air, robots were free of contact while hurdling. At the Greater Toronto Regional, we saw teams who usually never score with any degree of effectiveness become offensive threats, since they were no longer subject to overt contact while trying to score. Teams could finally showcase the creations that they had worked so hard to build.
In terms of G22 being to punitive of a penalty, I’m going to have to disagree. FIRST Overdrive would not have worked as a game if teams didn’t move around the track in one direction. G22 needed to be a harsh penalty to ensure teams didn’t intentionally violate the rule to gain an advantage. Unfortunately, it did punish teams who accidentally broke the rule, even in the slightest amounts. To me the positive of keeping FIRST Overdrive as a flowing offensive game, outweighed the negative of those painful G22 calls.
You couldn’t be more right with either of those statemants. G22 was a necessary penalty. I’ve seen many teams complain when they lost because of penalties. It isn’t difficult to stop youself from going over the line backwards, so if you lose one match because of penalties you just be careful the next match and it shouldn’t happen much in the future. My team had a swere drive that was fairly hard to control and we still very rarel had G22 violations. It is just a matter of the GDC wanting the game to be played a certain way and putting penalties in place to ensure that it is played that way. If Overdrive was much different that it is it probably wouldn’t be as good.
I also agree that Overdrive is one of, if not the best, game FIRST has had. I am perfectly happy with the direction the games have been heading in the past few years. From my prospective the games keep getting better. I hope people posting on this thread are not discouraging the GDC from creating games the way they have been. People are so quick to criticize but not so quick to compliment. Making suggestions about what the GDC does seems out of place to me. Every year they make a great game and all people do is telll them what to do or criticize them. I would like to say thank you to the GDC and compliment them on another awsome game.
The GDC must know that the majority appreciates what they do, But it seems that people don’t take the time to say what a great job they did.
I’m not saying discussions like this are bad but I feel like it has gone too far.