Problem's with 2015…

FIRST General Forum
#51

I completely agree that there are no hard matches this year. I think as teams tune in their robots this year, it’ll be a match against themselves rather than against another alliance. Teams will have a set limit of how many points they can earn.

This, I think, is a problem with this year though. Using finals at Michigan States as an example, I believe that it will be extremely predictable. Anyone paying attention to what each single robot can put out will be able to add together that alliance scores and predict who will win. The only variance upon this is teams that grab from the center 4 RCs.

To put that in contrast, 2011 Michigan States finals saw some of the most competitive strategies I have seen. The number 1 alliance was knocked out in the quarter finals by the 8th alliance from strategy alone. No team broke down, no minibots exploded, just pure strategy (sorry to bring this back up 217, 469, and 201).

The lack of defense this year is a double-edged sword. On one hand you aren’t purposely trying to break your opponents so you can get points for it (looking at you, week one 2014), but on the other higher levels of play will lack any diverse strategy.

#52

I was rather surprised by our playoff scores being over 100 at Alamo…we had an alliance that was better than the sum of it’s parts. Using the robots together to best advantage can give you a pretty good score this year. #5 alliance was in second place in the quarterfinals, and third in semis.

#53

I completely disagree. We just removed some factors from it. A match where you are playing with two toasters is a hard one not to have drop your ranking.

#54

Different perspectives will lead to different conclusions on the match schedules and ranking systems. For teams with legitimate aspirations of the #1 spot, this ranking system is an improvement. You can’t be completely “sunk” by alliance partners or opponents the way you could in some other games. However, this is not the vantage point of the vast majority of FRC.

For the middle of the pack teams, these rankings are just as random as always. Your average can be considerably buoyed by great partners, opponents willing/able to co-op, and some good luck. 708 vaulted from the middle of the pack to 9th at Chestnut Hill after scoring 165 points with 225 and 1218 in the last qualification match. Your average can plummet when paired with teams incapable of scoring (or worse, teams that knock over stacks) or working opposite of teams that fail to get their yellow totes on the step. There are still “easy” and “hard” matches this year, they just look different than in years past.

#55

It was interesting (but heartbreaking) watching our rankings throughout the qualifications. We started out alright, but a string of mechanical failures and software failures prevented our robot from doing everything we wanted it to. Then, one of the few matches where everything worked, our two partner robots both died!

#56

The change to eliminations really made elimination strategy one of my favorite things about this year’s game. At Alamo, it was a little boggling before quarterfinals, but once we had a strategy down it worked really efficiently. Having a seperate strategy for each match was interesting as well.

“If they take the two center cans in auto, which totes should we clear first so that our alliance member can get the remaining cans on the step?”

Before actually working with our alliance members, I thought we’d be lucky to make it out of quarters, but by playing on each others strengths really well, we gave one hell of a fight. Before our last semifinal, the difference between us and the #2 seed was .33 of a point.

I think this year’s game is great.

#57

Your alliance was awesome, working in near perfect sync. From our perspective it was a little scary!

#58

A while back I made a post about Stacking vs Capping vs ???. I talked about how the resource pile splits were interesting, two feeder stations, two scoring platforms, two landfill pits. I’m starting to wonder if the GDC underestimated teams abilities and thought teams were going to take one resource and tackle it instead of these teams coming off doing everything. I really wish at some point post season the GDC would step forward and say. “Hey this is what we envisioned would happen with the game, this is what we did to try and accomplish that.” Just start an open conversation with the people who just played their game. A lot of game developers when analyzing game health do extensive research and review including interviews. Does the GDC just do this and I’m not aware?

#59

Put the question to Frank Answers Fridays when that starts back up. That one could go a while…

#60

This game has been great skills wise. I’ve seen some teams really excel, and some teams really have to explore new types of boundaries, thinking outside the box. Technically, this is a really cool game for engineering purposes. However, like I’ve said before, this game is really like playing competitive solitaire. For the past few years, between things like GameSense and the competitive and quick gameplay, I thought FIRST was going for an exciting, crowd enticing type of game, relaying it to more of a sport-atmosphere. However, they are completely cutting that aspect of gameplay out this year.

Honestly, saying “I helped build a robot that competes with and against other robots in competition, and we lunch 2-foot-big yoga balls through goals 10 feet of the ground!” is a lot easier to say and makes being a geek much more okay than saying “I helped build a robot that stacks boxes, and then puts a trash can up on top.”

#61

The game design appears to be an attempt to fix the problems with stack attack, which turned into a game of attacking (http://youtu.be/uiZQJLMgXVU), instead of building, stacks. Removing all defense went too far. One of the best aspects of Rebound Rumble and Ultimate Ascent was watching teams maneuver around defense to get to the protected zones.

#62

I truly believe that this game is in alignment with a cycle…

Not just ‘odd year vs. even year’ or ‘round game piece vs. other game piece’ - but more in terms of the life-cycle of the RoboRio and the accompanying components.

We saw two games in that allowed for wide open fields in 2013 and 2014. Why? Because the CRio was in it’s last stages of its life-cycle. Why not allow teams to ‘have at it’ and go after each other without question of the CRio? I know that FRC 4607 had it’s share of CRio reboots on field when hit hard…

However, if the GDC allowed this style of gameplay (open field hits) and team’s RoboRio resetting in the middle of matches - we would all be calling foul. I think that the GDC is safeguarding their investments and will eventually open up the field as the RoboRio matures (and more teams become acclimated to its nuances). This is a perfect game to keep the RoboRio ‘safe’ while the GDC works out other bugs…

So in my estimation - do not hold your breath waiting for another AA or UA style field for at least 2 more years. When that happens, hopefully you have stockpiles of the RoboRio… and when it does - Have at it!

#63

I’m not seeing how this is true. 2014 SVR results Am I missing something?
1st seed was 11-0, 8th seed was 8-3 (6 QS difference)
9th seed was 8-3, 42nd seed was 5-6 (6 QS difference)

Each of these was a 3 match difference.

#64

While I found your observations incredibly astute and thought provoking, I don’t necessarily think the assertions made hold.

#65

Playing with two “toasters” is always hard to carry. However, unless they are directly interfering with your robot, they should not affect how many points your robot can put out. For example, look at 1114 and other “powerhouse” teams, and compare that to last year.

Last year if you were placed with two “toasters”, the other alliance could focus your robot and easily outscore you, resulting in the same amount of QP as the two “toasters”.

With this year though, if your two alliance partners can’t score, their average scores will show that. Likewise, if you can consistantly put out X amount of points, your average will show for it. For example, two “toasters” get placed with 1114. Sure their average score will get a boost, but because it’s only for one match it won’t matter in the long term. For 1114 though, even though they didn’t score as many points as they could have, they still scored what their robot could put out, so their average won’t be dropped that much.

The only robots that are affected by alliance partners are the robots that focus primarily on the RC. They could steal all 4 RC in auto and be able to cap 7 6-stacks, but that doesn’t matter if their partners can’t make them. That is a risk that I can imagine they took into account when they were designing their robot. Those robots, however, will do very well in high levels of play when their partners can easily spit out 6-stacks.

TL;DR
Average score > Win/Loss
RC bots struggle with Quals, but will kill in Finals.

#66

While I agree with you in theory [1] in practice it doesn’t quite work out. I watched a robot actively play defense on their partner in a few matches last weekend and it definitely hurt their average score. This robot was a toaster in the biggest sense of the word (incapable of scoring a point) and was simply getting in the way. It didn’t help that they were ~4’ long and had almost 0 control of their robot.

As for why my simulations didn’t see it? Because I didn’t want to deal with the flak for saying that, on average, probably 15-20% of teams are actually worth NEGATIVE points in that they do little more than get in the way of scoring robots.

[1] http://beyondinspection.org/post/108175043070/sa-2015-ranking-visualization

#67

Which is why 2014 was amazing for alliance play! Top tier teams couldn’t take their QPs for granted. They had to get into the pits before matches and really work on their partners to get them up to snuff. Instead of 6 teams doing their independent thing, alliances had to develop new strategies to eek out assists (our playbook was changing well into the post-season!). Matches, even ones featuring big-budget teams, were nail-biting. It was a fun, dynamic game.

I really hope the assist mechanic (or something like it) returns in future.

#68

2014 was great for those reasons. I’m hard on this game because of the troubles it had week one, but once those were corrected it became a very great and exciting game. It was alliance-dependant, but that added to the level of quality and GP teams demonstrated to help their partners, and the FIRST community as a whole.

#69

It’s true that those teams exist, but they have always existed. Last year, for example, teams could slow down a match by holding onto the ball for a while, or dying. Those teams exist, and have about the same effect on both ranking systems (losing QP and lowering avg score), so we should not take them into account when comparing systems.

#70

So we should ignore a portion of the system just because it exists in both systems we’re comparing?

It’s not a valid comparison if we do that because the negative point teams have drastically different results on the point floor.

Last year a solo bot could ignore their partners completely and put up X points. There was very little the NP teams could do to interfere with this unless they were being outright in the way. Yes, an alliance could put up drastically more points but the point floor was almost always the best team running solo cycles.

This year the solo bot can ignore their partners completely and put up X points but just by driving the NP teams can drastically alter scores by knocking over stacks. Meaning the point floor is exactly 0.

The teams are present but, due to the game design (crowded field, easily de-scored game pieces), they have a much more pronounced impact on point floors.