Stronghold rant...

FIRST General Forum
1

Ok, now this is my opinion as a spectator looking in on the game, and again this is my opinion, i’m not trying to change anyones perspective of the game or anything… Stronghold. I did not like this game particularly, and in this post ill give you all the reasons I can.

So it all started when they released the trailer… I feel like releasing the name of the game and the theme really kinda ruined some of the excitement. Sure it got people wondering, but the little clue drops every year is, in my opinion, best. But that’s not a main issue to me. The second is that FIRST moved away from their idea of “its the sport for the mind”. It became a automated medieval times, and a little boring at that.

When the game was released, I thought it was interesting…until I saw the end of the video. Then the first and only conclusion I came to was that this was nothing more then a game from the App store. And the medieval theme was contradictory. The theme would only attract a certain group of kids who are not already in FIRST Now lets get to the field. The fields looked cheesy, and the scoreboard and the sound effects where horrible. The game play was kinda boring, too. Everyone was mainly going for the one task, drive over the defenses. Cool at first, boring 90 matches later. There wasn’t that much defense, either. Besides the obvious field defense, robots didn’t pay too much attention of defense. The goal had too many obstacles, and it basically forced many of the robots to do the same thing.

I ventured out to watch the Orlando regional, and it was, for me, about a 2 and a half hour drive. I didn’t stay more then an hour before losing interest.

Now I will say its much better then 2015, by a long shot. But taking away the sports aspect of it, adding gross sound effects, and overall game play I feel weakened this years game.

These are my opinions, and I may get hate for it, but its what I believe. My team did good this year, and I’m proud of them for doing good this year, but as a spectator, I feel that it became boring.

Also the whole foul thing is interesting. I don’t have an opinion on that though.

2

Just to address a few points from my point of view:

Sure, the early stages of the game became boring: driving over defenses, again and again. But, from what I saw, there was plenty of peril and heart-pounding moments: “Will they get to the batter?” or “Can they finish off the CDF?” It’s these moments that make the game good. And, as the game progressed into DCMPs and CMP, more and more robots were shooting, defending, etc.

Isn’t every game after you’ve watched it over and over again?

I would tend to disagree. Sure, in qualifications there was not much defense, due to the extra RPs for what you do (not what you stop your opponent from doing). But, when the alliances got really good, defense became a big factor. I think it was 1405 on Einstein that had shut-down defense, leading them to finals. That was exciting to watch.

Anyway, these are my opinions.

3

I respect your feedback, and thank you for commenting.

4

Although your opinion is probably not the majority, you made some interesting points. Although I was initially unsure about the “themed” game, in the end, I think it made the game more approachable, because everyone has heard the stories about knights and castles. I also feel as if this theme did nothing to take away or distract from the competitive nature of the competition, because in the end, we know that the best robots aren’t judged on embracing the theme, they are judged on how they are made, and how they perform.

I’m not really sure what you mean about it being like a game from the app store, but as far as “the theme will only attract kids not already in FIRST”, I think that is the whole point of the theme! If the theme has attracted more kids from “outside the tent” it has succeeded!

I am not really sure that the field was cheesy, but IMO, the scoring displays were pretty nice.

While I appreciate the sharing of opinions, keep an open mind about stronghold.

5

Out of the 3 games I have watched in person its ranked 2.

  1. 2014
  2. 2016
  3. 2015

My gripes of 2016
The outer works provided too much protection
climbing should have been worth more
the reffing was terrible (I saw soo many bad calls this year more then usual) not due always to bad refs but too many game aspects for them to handle.
not enough defense
the field was too cluttered
the defenses were boring

Overall it was fun to play and watch imo but was not as interesting as 2014 after a few weeks of the season.

6

I mean it kinda just looks like clash of clans to me. Or a crude knock off. I mean that how you can choose where you want to put the defense, and which defense to use, etc.

7

I agree. This game wasn’t the worst, but its not nearly the best. Also i had a hard time really trying to keep up with what was going on. I would watch a robot go over a defense and hope it was about to do a cool play, only to turn around and go back to the middle.

8

This is also one of my favorite games that I’ve competed in (since 2010). Not as good as 2013, but it’s a tossup between this and Rebound Rumble for #2.

9

With all due respect, if you’ve lost interest at a regional after an hour because of the game alone, then you’ve missed out on the other 90% of a FIRST Robotics Competition event. I think the fact that 600 teams and 20,000+ students and mentors will come to play Recycle Rush is a clear indicator that the game isn’t everything.

That being said, the seniors on my team are the only ones that remember all the way back to Ultimate Ascent, but even they have been totally absorbed by literally every aspect of Stronghold. The theme, the challenge, the standards, and despite my increasing lack of tolerance, even the Monty Python puns… :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ll admit, I was skeptical when FIRST released the Disney teaser video. However, they backed it up with a great engineering challenge and some incredibly strategic gameplay. There’s a reason that medieval themed App store games have had such success, and I think FIRST really hit it out of the park with Stronghold.

10

You should know what happens when you make the gripe I’ve bolded…

If you’re out in SoCal in late September, I think I’ve got a ref shirt with your name on it. Otherwise, I suspect any local offseasons that are short on ref-power would be more than happy to put you on the crew. I assume that you know the game at least as well as the refs do in order to make that statement.

That being said, I did see some “odd” calls. Whether or not that means the reffing is “terrible” is up to the viewer, I suppose.

11

already signed up to be a ref at a few offseason comps.

I have no problem becoming a zebra if it means teams have a better experience.

12

Oohohohoh shots fired by Eric! Nice!

13

And ably deflected, I might add. Seeing as how he’s already volunteering, there isn’t much I can say further. Must have read my mind. :rolleyes:

14

Opinions will vary on how fun Stronghold was to watch, and how hard it was to ref, and so forth. But the fact remains that the GDC made a game that less experienced teams could still compete in. A drivebase alone could score 20+ points this year. Much better than last year where a drivebase could maybe spend the whole match carefully pushing a tote over to the scoring platform.

15

I think he took your metaphoric ref tee-shirt. ~groovy~

16

I suppose if we’re all airing grievances, next year please don’t make me look at both sides of the score board if I’m curious about one alliance. (I’m looking at you, Red-defenses-breached-on-the-Blue-side-of-the-board. -.-)

17

Stronghold was definitely a great transition from Recycle Rush. I see this game as having a fairly low skill floor where rookie teams/low resource teams can still help their alliance out, with the skill ceiling being extremely high and allowing for some of the most entertaining matches at the highest level of play. While the theming of it was a little cheesy, it was a fun game.

18

Can we please stop this “you can’t blame the ref” culture. I know they have an impossible task and it is very hard to make every call right, but there are definitely times where people can say that the refs screwed up and made a lot of bad calls. That isn’t to say they aren’t trying, or they weren’t prepared, but it is to say that the refs are not as good as would be expected of a normal sport. The GDC can design games that are easier to ref or require more training etc. to fix this problem. Also, some people are not in the position to just “get up and grab a ref shirt”, for example they may be actually competing, or have a day job. Just because someone criticizes a group as a whole doesn’t mean they can do better themselves. I can’t play professional football but I sure as hell can say that U of M’s kicker screwed up on the last play of the game vs. MSU and tried to kick the ball instead of falling on it leading to a MSU win on the last play of the game.

Please stop allowing anyone to even have a discussion about the quality of reffing, because it clearly needs to be talked about.

19

Thoughts on stronghold.

I have been in three years. This was my favorite game. However, as a spectator sport, Aerial Assist was much better.

The obstacles provided some great engineering challenges, but by the end of the season, they were just dull to watch. Teams either did them, or didn’t do them, and there wasn’t really any tension associated with the effort. One of the great disappointments for me was the “sally port loophole”, which was that you could drive backwards through it, do a momentary flick to lose contact, and then drive forward, with no real loss of time. One of the great engineering challenges of the game suddenly became a triviality.

I think if they had been a little bit harder, and worth a little bit more, that would have made a better game. In the initial stages of design, it seemed like we could try and decide to do a “sapper bot” that concentrated on the obstacles, with boulders as an afterthought, or a “tower bot”, that put its effort into shooting. In the end, everyone was able to be the sapper bot, and it was pretty much a given that there would be a breach, so the deciding factor was always being the best shooter.

The tortugas were fun, though, especially at the beginning of the season.

I, personally, liked the “themed” game. I would like to see more of them.

Overall: Very nice game. Four out of five stars.

20

Did you ask the refs at your events if any of them had a team competing or had a day job or had college classes to attend? I will be dumbfounded if more than 5% of FIRST Stronghold refs can say no to that question.

I am not going to say that refs are infallible, but I will say that they do a thankless job for no money, often at expense to them, and never get to hear the end of people that have never done the job trying to get them to do even better. For every match that CD gripes about, I expect there are 50 that garner no complaints[1], 98% success is pretty good for volunteers.

[1] I might try tracking this next year.