What year do you think was the most exciting for human players?
Personally I think 2017 as being inside the field while the game goes on looks like a lot of fun.
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2004, human player was the only way to score balls. Robots could only give the balls to the human players.
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Going by how much effort our human play put into preparing for the game, 2009. Going by how important the human player was for winning matches, 2017. But this only counts 2006-2019, as those are the only years I know about first hand.
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If I recall, in 2005, after game pieces were loaded, the robots couldnât drive until the human player jumped back on their pad to stand on.
I will echo 2009 though. There were a couple epic long throws into the moving goals of the purple and green power cells.
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2014 Aerial Assist. Some matches had as much interaction with the human players as with the robots.
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You do recall, at least for the manual loading side of the field.
I was going to say that this year would be high on the list⌠but it probably wouldnât be for GOOD reasons. Sleepy HPs (or just didnât understand the rules) could cost a team a lot of penalty points.
2004, 2009, 2005, 2017 come to mind.
And then there was 2003. Human players on the field, during the match, on the carpet. (Robots werenât enabled yet, but the HPs were timed. Match couldnât start until all HPs were off the carpet.)
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This year wouldâve been fun
Imagine Einstein - the physical stress on the human player as they race back and forth, trying to have less than 15 balls
And imagine Chezy, where like 2017 they decide to do an âall-starâ practice match and make the human players go absolutely nuts. At least in that year human players had nothing to do with fuel cells.
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Although I donât remember much about the power ups from 2018 Power Up, it looked like the human player behind the driver station had a much better time than the other two human players.
I donât know how interesting being that human player was firsthand, but being in charge of activating the power ups at the exact right time sounds like fun.
I can say firsthand that being the human player on the opposite side of the field in 2018 really isnât all that interesting (I did this for one match at an offseason event)
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Out of curiosity⌠How would you rate 1998 or 1999? (Or any of the other late 1990s games, for that matter?)
I saw alliances win and lose based upon the skill and attention of the human player in 2017.
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And hereâs an example why 
:
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did they just steal the gear from the other airship?
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2014 and 2017 human player roles were pretty important and impactful
Yep!
Also: Bring back the MC Dave Verbrugge & GA Andy Grady combo.
I peaked at Inland Empire 2015 and its been downhill since thenâŚ
Being a human player on the side in 2018 was only fun/useful during Worlds
IMO, I loved 2012. We got to fire the game pieces through the inbounding port; if you could through it with enough mustard, you could make a 1 point goal. Also, throwing full court shots was pretty fun.