When I first saw the reveal video, I thought that Ultimate Ascent was pretty lame. It seemed like a combination of Aim High and Breakaway, but with frisbees as a gimmick. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the game. I loved seeing the variety of different strategies and designs of robots this year, especially compared to Breakaway, where most peoples’ robots were just basic drive trains with shooters attached, plus an extendable climbing mechanism (at least at my regionals). I have seen numerous threads complaining about many aspects of the game, most of which seem to have began since competitions actually began, and I wanted to see how other people’s perception of the game have changed since kickoff.
Although maybe I’m biased because there was a team with a defensive fan robot this at my regionals
I really like this game so far. I think it offered a lot of design variety. I like that it haves more activities than one robot can do. It forced teams to prioritize and specialize. I am looking forward to seeing what shows up on Einstein.
Gotta say it’s a great spectator game. I fully expected this to be my favorite game yet. End game kind of ruined it though. Outside of a few spectacular climb/shoot robots, disc scoring and 10 point hang make the game very predictable. Autonomous is very telling of who will win the match. Will Einstein be fun to watch? Of course, it always is. But I have very little interest in watching tons of webcasts because more than 50% of the robots turned into the same thing, unforunately. I’m sure there are other debates on CD whether watching webcasts and open bag hours stifle creativity, but that’s not my point here. Just that this game promised so much, and so far: if you are a full court shooter, you have a giant target on your back; if you are a 30 point climber, you’d better be able to do more than that; and if you are a human loading shooter, you’d better be the fastest. Otherwise, you can get lost in the shuffle.
Of the games that I know here is my list:
2006
2010
2012
2013
2008
2011
2007
2004
2005
2003
2009
Keep in mind I wasn’t on a team for the majority of these seasons, but based on what I’ve seen this is my opinion. As you can see, 2013 is fairly high, but not quite at the top.
I usually look at how audience friendly the game is, how "good’ teams distinguish themselves from the “average team” , and how championships plays out before assigning a personal rating to the game.
I think this year’s game, even with the nets, is fairly audience-friendly. We can talk about intense strategies and chokeholds all day, but the audience just sees machines throwing frisbees at a hole in the wall and robots trying to climb a pyramid. Normal people in the stands can understand the gist of the game just by looking at the field, and they don’t need to ask any further questions when watching the game in action, since the general objectives are self-explanatory. Props to the GDC for designing another game where anyone in the audience can understand what is going on. This may be the most audience friendly game in a long time.
When talking about distinction between an “average” team and a “good” team, things get tricky. Logomotion was inherently a good game in my opinion. While it wasn’t audience friendly, it was exciting, fun to watch, and championships was epic. However, (and I think the EWCP blog does more analysis on this point), there were way too many teams that could not score. Just look at some of the eliminations scores in various regionals that year! I don’t know whether it was the nature of the game or the teams, but there were way too many robots that were ‘designed’ to place tubes on the top row, but always failed at doing so.
That being said, you only need to look at week 1 scores this year to understand that every team can score. Whether it be thanks to Ri3D and other open design logs, or the nature of the game, many more ‘average’ teams can knock a 2 or 3 pointer, and many times a series of those. What distinguishes an ‘average’ team and a ‘good’ team is the speed and efficiency of scoring cycles and the time of the climb. The game has been played out this brilliantly so far. In 2011, the differentiation between ‘good’ teams and ‘average’ teams in my opinion was whether they could put up a tube or 2 on the rack, regardless of their position and launch a slow minibot. Scores are high this year because of how many teams can score 20+ disc points and put a 10 pt hang. I don’t think i’ve seen a game where so many teams can put up good scores or where the difference in ‘average’ and ‘good’ teams is purely in efficiency.
The only thing to complete the trifecta is a good championships showing, and based on what we’ve seen from the stacked events like Waterloo, it will be grand.
This one is one of the GDC’s best. I won’t say it’s the best, but it’s up there.
–Multiple scoring options
–mutually exclusive scoring options (or else there’s some great engineering going on) in the 30-point climb and dump versus the 3-point shot
–Protection in dangerous areas, but it’s only small areas
–flying objects–need I say more?
And last but not least:
–HUGE variety of robot designs. I think this is one of the biggest years for diverse robots I’ve seen since bumpers were optional. Sure, most pack a wheel-and-plate shooter–but somehow, every robot especially the climbers is unique at the first glance.
Out of curiosity, do y’all think we have seen everything? OK, the 254 30 pt climb has me intrigued, but this isn’t what I mean.
Have we seen everything in terms of effective strategies? Sure, teams will improve climb times, add more discs in auto, climb higher, etc, but is there anything we just haven’t seen yet?
My favourite part about this year’s game is that scoring at all is relatively easy compared to other years while doing everything is relatively difficult.
I was initially stupified by the game this year. It required a little out the world thinking. You could reference aspects of games and old robots but you couldn’t clone a robot. Nor have I see an Ultra Robot. So when the Eliminations started at Virginia, I was eager to see how it would go. The action was constant with a few but not a great number of penalties. The Quarters were good warm up with the Semis and Finals being the best I’ve seen, minus 2005 Newton Division Quarterfinals 3-2.
If you had to name this year, I’d call this year the year of choices. You had to select what you were going to do and build your robot to do it. Did you give up on a 3rd level climber or did go that route with a dumper/shooter and drop the pick up mechanism? If you did go for the top, did you go up the corner or up the side like a gymnast? Do you copy Robot in 3 days or learn from them and build an original machine? Full court shooter that can be neutered by a well installed pool noodle?
Top 4 years/games I had a hand in:
2013
2004
2012/2006 ('12 was the proper evolution of '06)
2005