Which game do you guys think was the most challenging or ITZ the hardest?
I would say that Skyrise was the most challenging game I ever played.
Historically, I would say Toss Up or Quad Quandry (those PVC rings were hard to pick up).
Skyrise, because it wasn’t until very close to worlds that very many teams could fully score the game and then even at worlds lots of robots (even good robots in the round robin for example) didn’t work consistently.
I’m curious, why do you say toss up? I would have considered that one of the easier ones
Yeah, Toss Up itself was easy. The only real challenge was doing everything WITH THE OTHER ALLIANCE IN THE WAY.
Next year’s water game is by far the hardest
Sky Game you mean? 
Yeah especially if you played against 127C.
This game is strange because the stacks are going to lean and possibly tip but i would have to agree on skyrise because even at worlds a crazy amount of teams had very noncompetitive robots.
In my personal opinion, from hardest to least difficult:
- Skyrise
- Round Up
- Toss Up
- NBN
- In the Zone
- Gateway
- Clean Sweep
- Starstruck
- Elevation
- Battle Under the Bridge
- Sack Attack
I have only been doing this for around six years so before Sack Attack I don’t have a very relevant opinion, though I did first see gameplay in a competition in Round Up.
I find it interesting that you rate NBN as harder than this game. Maybe it’s just that I’m much more ambitious, but my design for ITZ is going to end up being much more complex than my NBN robot.
Here’s my ranking of games I’ve played from hardest to easiest, from Round Up onward:
Skyrise (highest lifts ever, a lot of precision needed)
In the Zone (It seems to have the same challenges as Skyrise, so might be easier since it comes after)
Nothing But Net (very different from any other game)
Sack Attack (sacks are annoying)
Round Up (a very simple design could be competitive, but the best designs were more complex)
Starstruck (easy to be able to play the game but hard at the highest level)
Gateway (six bars and side rollers for everyone!)
Toss Up (easier than Gateway because it came after, also 393s).
I didn’t include games I didn’t play (Clean Sweep, Elevation, Bridge Battle), but they look like they would be on the easier end of the spectrum, and mainly difficult because of more limited parts and limited prior examples for inspiration.
The only game I have played is starstruck, but from watching videos I think the hardest game is Vex Skyrise.
I personally think this will be the hardest game yet. We have to handle 2 completely different objects with two completely different weights, while trying to balance the light cones on objects as we get them over 1 inch and 2.5 inch bars. Also, we need to stack the cones with a 4pi square inch margin of error, which may be one of the smallest ever. While doing all of this, we need to strategically place the cones so specifically have the highest stack in 5 different areas. This game is definitely one of the most difficult ever in the history of vex.
Just 3 different areas: there’s only 4 highest stack bonuses, and the 5 point zone bonus isn’t worth getting; you get the same number of points for moving your goal to the 10 point zone.
Also, I didn’t play Toss Up, but I think it had significantly smaller margins of error on scoring the bucky balls, at least from what I’ve seen from match videos. They also had very different objects with very different weights, and I think the Toss Up bump was a much greater obstacle than these bars; a clawbot (kitbot) can drive over both poles with relative ease (We just had some new members build a clawbot. It can indeed drive over a hanging pole.).
Moreover, Toss Up imposed an artificial height limit on all bots, something that is not a limit in ITZ. Personally, I’d rank both Toss Up and Skyrise over ITZ.
Well actually it can be worth it because if I have a goal if one team has the highest stack bonus in the 5 and 10 point zone, then it is a total of 25 points while putting 2 goals in the 10 point zone equals 20 points.
You are wrong there as well. The bucky balls could be placed on the edge and sometimes could roll into the tube so it had a large margin for error.
I really am looking forward to this game, it has a great balance of mechanical challenges and strategic challenges.
Suppose you have a choice. You have a mobile goal, and can either place it in the 5 point or 10 point zone. By placing it in the 5 point zone, you get 5 points and can contend for the 5-zone bonus, resulting in a minimum score of 5, and a maximum of 10 points. By placing it in the 10 point zone, you get 10 points and can contend for the 10-zone bonus, resulting in a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 15 points. Thus, as the minimum scored by placing the goal in the 10 point zone is equal to the absolute maximum number of points that can be earned by placing the goal in the 5 point zone, it is always advantageous to place the goals in the 10 point zone.
EDIT:
My bad. Like I said, I didn’t play Toss Up.
To be honest, I am starting to believe that this game we are currently at may be the hardest of all. For every other game, the game objects almost always land at the same orientation, but this game it has around 3-5 orientations the cones can be in. Trying to pick them up and bring them to one position may make this game be one of the hardest of all…
While I’ve only competed in NBN and Starstruck, I’ll have to say Skyrise was probably the most challenging competition. The game elements were larger than most years, weighed more, and had to be lifted higher than any other VEX competition. Plus, it was more or less the first time teams had to build extremely tall lifting mechanisms, so no one knew what was going to work.
NBN is a close second for me, however. The insane amount of game elements on the field, the ball density (which probably screwed over a lot of teams), and of course the lift turned what appeared to be a simple game into a nightmare for some teams.
Wouldnt it be the oposite, when people are challeneged they see something that works and they copy it, making design convergence worse