I personally like this game better then last year’s because this year teams actually play the game. Last year, from wat I saw, it really looked more like a bunch of robots smashin the crap out of each other
This game has no real edge of your seat excitement, other than the adding of the penalties. I liked last years game better, but I didnt like the basketball aspect of it.
FIRST games are always great, but I personally liked last years game better.
I agree, they made this game much much better than last years. They designed it to completely remove defense from the strategy. We used to think having 2 scoreres and a defensive bot was the way to win, but 3 scorers is way better.
Playing defense just wastes time and takes away from the number of people your alliance has scoring, while not necessarily taking away from their scoring abilities.
Some of our better strategies in the elims at Detroit were to force the other teams to score so they would not try and defend us. Since we could outscore them, there was no stopping us in any way. (We didn’t lose a single elim match because of this… only tied once 
)
All it really takes is somebody who can play defense well.
My only gripe is that there is really no difference in what robots look like. Of course there are the few that are just awesome, but most do the exact same thing as any others. No really neat ideas on how to play the game a la 93 last year.
It seems like for a few years you could do a lot of things:
2002: Pick up balls, grab goals, both, tether 
2003: Push things around, stack (though it wasn’t used a lot), KOTH
2004: Hang, just get balls, cap, any combination
2005: Cap and … cap?
the game seems better to play however watching it is a different story. Someone told me during the regional that even reading the rules and gameplay 2 times they still didnt know completly what was going on with penalties and the like. The game to play is extremly fun though. Having to keep your eyes moving around your bot and the like of where to put the tetra, quite fun. Hopefully next year will have the constant strategy and choosing of where to score and up the excitement of watching the game. All in all, this years game was pretty good, cant wait till next years.
I personally like last year’s game better. It was much more exciting. Such as hanging at the very last second for the win. Also there was just much more you could do in a match. But this year’s game is still fun. IMO.
This game is not just better than last year’s, its just unusually fun to watch. No need to cheer, or scream, or do anything else. You can just sit there, and watch, and enjoy. Grab the popcorn, Dew, and go to upper bowl seating for an impressive view.
Why? OK. It’s the playoffs, and you have the best robots out there. Your eye watches one robot as it picks up and stacks a tetra. Meanwhile, a whole bunch more stuff goes on. A tetra could have been stacked at like 3 other goals, a huge tower of them could’ve been toppled, or something else. Sensory Overload.
this game is good for an offensive stragdey point…you don’t have to really worry about your bot too much being pushed around and being smashed
a lot of teams always are really great at the offensive part…and this year it seems to work really well
Lets keep this thread focused on what is better. So, I think having 6 robots is better because it adds more challenge, more action, and more scouting and strategy. I think the “one manipulative option” was a good change for this year beacause it forces everyone to do that one thing well. This year everyonne does everything, because there is only one thing to do. And everyone does it pretty well. When teams had 130 lbs to herd balls, cap doubler balls, and hang, we were often left with a bunch of flimsy little poorly thought out mechanisms that didn’t work too well. This year, all there is to do is stack tetras (besides contain, any boxbot can do that and most don’t bother). So, you still get roughly the same 130lbs but you have less you have to do with it, so you can be better at what you do.
i guess the reason people didnt like this year too well was that since the one task was picking up tetras could be done and most of the robots have the same looking gripper. I think what they really tried to do to get people really into it was in that first 15 seconds of autonomous. Seeing 237 cap that goal using vision was a thing of beauty. People over look the vision aspect because not many teams used it. I hope some sort of vision device is used next year.
heh…my brother’s first thread! I guess I should respond to it…
This year’s game is obviously much more offense oriented. Sending one team on defense usually doesn’t make sense because there are so many goals that it’s pretty easy to go around to another goal if there’s something between them and a goal.
I liked last year because there was SO MUCH to do! There was some defense played, but for the most part, it wasn’t bad. I think the offense still outweighed the defense bu far.
Then there’s the 2003 game…there really was no offense. If you want to talk about robots smashing the crap out of each other robots, look back to that game.
The one aspect this game misses compared to the last few years is sieging a scoring zone. It is not worth it to go home at the end of a match, and that is where all of high tension battles occured in the games, either getting onto the bar or playing king of the hill. Even watching toungs go accross was quite entertaining. Not to say everything else is exciting, it is just missing the race to the finish.
This games lacks one thing: a final ending. Other games have had a climactic ending, while this one is only penalties.
I liked last year’s game better. I think that this year, you can only work with tetra’s and arms and all that. But last year, you had a choice, you could go for the bar, you could push the balls in the holes and fill up the little things that caught them, and you could play defense. I know that some teams this year did not have their arms to be fully functional, therefore, they didn’t have a chance. Last year, if one of your arms to do something wasn’t fully functional, you still had the option to work with the balls, I mean come on, if the robot moves, it can push the balls and play defense and you could still have a chance at winning the match. But this year, if you didn’t have something to pick up/drop tetra’s you’re screwed. This year, all the robots basically look the same. You see some that have the elevator thing, the arms, the flippers, and last but CERTAINLY not least…the scissors lift! Last year, there were so many different robots in all shapes, forms, and sizes. This year, it looks like they’re all the same. 
I like this years game more but I wholeheartedly disagree on the defensive strategies. In the quarterfinals a robot from the opposing alliance was assigned to keep us from scoring. They avoided penalties by just sitting there when we where loading but once we moved from our spot on the human loading zone the just kept on us. It kept us from scoring and it worked once and failed once. In the finals we went on an all out defense. We assigned one robot to cap the home row and the other two robots just took off. The only tetras they got where the two they knocked down in autonomous mode. The final score was 2-0 (we got a 30 point penalty.) However if you play defense like the other alliance did (just stop moving when someone loads a tetra) defense is unstoppable. Just my 2 cents. Defense also makes the matches much more exciting to watch.
After watching every match at the UCF regional…I have some thoughts
This game does have a “final finish”, but only when there are 6 decently good bots on the field. In elim matches it was so awesome seeing a bot cross the field in the last 15 seconds and try to get a 23 point swing. With the average scores being in the 20-35 pt range this is huge. Is the game as exciting as last year. I don’t think this can really be answered till nationals, but my first assesment is that it is just as good.
I personaly like this game more then last year’s game because it requires a bit more finess in stacking then in last years ‘shove everything that moves’ gameplan. Although stacking tetras is the only physical thing you can do it takes tick-tac-toe skillz to truely master this game.
No offense(no pun intended), but are you serious?
There are two other robots and 9 goals on the field! If one robot from a team defends another robot and keeps them from scoring, both teams now have 1 useless robot. Unless your alliance can outscore theirs, its more useful to have that 3rd robot helping you score rather then keeping them from scoring (QPs baby!)
That time spent waiting for them to load a tetra could be used to get a tetra of your own, so as soon as they cap a goal you can cap right over it.
Not to mention, unless the defending team is spectacular, some robots can outmanuever or score right through them.
Sure a defensive strategy might work in qualifying matches, when the other team might have 1 good scorer and 2 mellow ones. However, in eliminations, defense is useless (from what I’ve seen at FLR and DTR).
Case-in-point: We lost FLR by deciding on a 2 cap 1 defend strategy. We decided to change our strategy for Detroit and won with 3 fast cappers.
I do agree that defense is a bit more entertaining to watch. Its kinda boring when everyone is just staying on their sides capping their home row and maybe fighting for the center. When someone comes rushing over and slams another robot, however, the sympathetic “oooooh!” from the crowd never gets old!
Another thing that makes this game a lot better is rookie teams can make a simple robot and still do well yet there is still a place for veteran teams to be “enriched” (autonomous). Rookies can do something with dead reckoning where as veterans can be challenged with the camera. Even though there isn’s a “nail biting finish” it can still be exciting to watch. There are a lot of times when teams have to book it back to the starting area and just make it back. Also there is a lot going on during the matches so you can take it all in. It’s a game that you really don’t know who will win until they announce it (due to penalties). But all in all, I prefer this years game. It’s easier to understand (giant game of tic-tac-toe) where as FIRST Frenzy was a little confusing.
The two things I like about this year’s are: point swing and autonomous options
The point swing with the rows is great. One cap on the center goal could mean a 43 point swing. This makes huge last second comebacks possible and that is the most exciting thing in any game.
This year there are an incredible number of things to do in autonomous mode. With starting tetras, hanging tetras and vision tetras, the possibilities are numerous. Unfortunately, the low percentage of bots with good autonomous routines disappoints me. Pretty much everyone with a programmer should able to knock down a hanging tetra, right?
Overall, I like last year’s game better because it had more robot diversity, as I explain in this post.