Not going to knock too hard on the GDC here and I respect what they do every year in creating games, but you’re giving them a little too much credit here… They create two games a year (VRC and IQ), they don’t know every little thing about the game before it is played…
They all have other jobs at the RECF, VEX etc… Thinking they all spend 2 years fully developing the game is just ignorant, considering the amount of time it takes to manufacture game pieces and field elements for a worlds worth of VEX teams.
They also make changes to things that were
almost every year… Search “Manual Update” in the forum search bar.
False. Increasing clearance by shortening the “front” posts and raising the second ring will fix the “problem” of the ball’s clearance coming out of the goal, but it does not prevent balls from being “locked”.
(In this scenario, the “locking” of the balls can also take place as a result of pressure from the goal. However, by increasing the height of the second ring, balls can still be pushed into the same position, and with two others on top, as in the picture originally posted, they cannot be easily removed.)
Either way, as @Xenon27 explained, creating a new spacing will have many negative effects:
Teams who have practiced and used goals standardized at the beginning of the season will be forced to play on a field with new tolerances, and their mechanisms will perform worse on the new fields.
Field elements might be damaged by teams who have to readjust their already assembled goals.
Variations in goal assembly can negatively effect the teams who have practiced on different goals.
Balls can still get stuck in corners, despite the suggested changes.
I need to post some additional pictures… the one I put up does not show just how far back the ball actually is. It also does not show just how little clearance there is to grab onto. BRB.
The simplest fix is to run a long 10-12" zip tie between the posts on the back. This will prevent the balls from getting pushed in and stuck in the corner.
