So I want to make a robot reveal but my teammate says that they only make it for worlds. Is that true?
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No, you can make a Robot reveal at anytime. However, most teams that do make a reveal do it for worlds.
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Oh okay. We were going to do funny one
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Can’t wait to see it 
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Lets just say. Janky is our middle name
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In my opinion, any reveal is a BAD IDEA. You do not want to reveal your robot to ANYONE, as that tells people what to expect from you and how to strategize against you. And probably the worst part, if your robot is good, people will copy off of you and take your ideas. There was once a team that made it to worlds, and they had done robot reveals in the past that season, and do you know what happened? one of their most primary functions on their robot that made it so good as to get to worlds was stolen by almost every team there. You might say that “oh, well that’s because people just saw it at competitions and copied it from sight.” And to that, I say No way. Although it is possible, you would have to have a great memory to remember exactly how it was built. A Robot reveal allows people to pause and really look at the mechanics used to make that specific good part of your robot. I STRONGLY say that making robot reveals is not wise, especially if you want to keep those things about your robot secret. If you want to give away your robot to literally everyone that has internet and a smart device then go ahead. I don’t want to be rude, but the fact that teams post robot reveals just for views is very unwise. It just does not make sense to me why you would want to give away your whole robot to half the world.
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I disagree. most people reveal there robots very shortly before worlds, far too little time left to holecount and copy the robot. reveals are an excellent way to get your team number out there, and showcase a robot you’re proud of.
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Ok I can kind of see your point there Xenon27, but any reveal before that in my opinion is unwise. The reason I only kind of agree is because you would be surprised by how fast teams can make changes to a robot before a competition
Sad this attitude exists. Inspire others. If you are good, you will develop your design further.
If you don’t develop your idea further and others make it better, you can sleep well because you were the catalyst for innovation and inventiveness.
@Curio_Bot32 can you really say you were original for every part of your robot?
Seriously, be open and drive everyone to be their best!
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As the club/team that did annual early season reveals and pre-worlds reveals, i have to totally disagree with your views.
Main purpose of early reveals - to help other teams, especially the newer teams to kickstart their season. It served almost like an advance level of proof-of-concepts of what works and what doesn’t.
The mentality of these (or at least for my) teams that do early season reveals are normally about sharing, and even if other teams copied their designs, it is ok… simply because we know it is only our verson 1.0 robot, we will definitely be building better versions robots after that.
Main purpose of pre-worlds reveals - it is mainly to create awareness of your team and for alliance selection purposes.
In any case, most of the pre-worlds reveals are like about 1 week before worlds, so it is a case of:
a) even if other teams can hole-count it, they will lack the time to fine-tune and practice with it
b) teams that made it to worlds normally will have too much pride to “hole-count” other teams’ robots
I do hope teams will continue to share their ideas and designs in the forum - in fact, this season especially, we have seen a big drop in the quantity (and quality) of sharing. This is not healthy.
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Agreed. Personally, my team has done a reveal for worlds every year. The purpose of this is to help get the team number out there perchance a team is looking for an alliance in selections. Since reveals are for sharing robot ideas, I’d advise against sharing reveals that are mainly for jokes, or memes. These can even discredit your organization, showing the lack of professionalism, and overall passion for robotics.
As @meng stated, there has been a huge drop in professionalism and quality of content shared, especially on the forum. It may not be possible, but the ideal forum is one where everyone is respectful, and all ideas shared are meaningful and contribute to the topic at hand.
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Ok, I make reveals to give exposure to my org and my school. I’m immensely proud of both and want to share it to the world. I’d also like to have the skill ceiling of robotics go higher and higher.
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Looking back on this forum I have been getting a LOT of negative posts about mine. Look, I was not trying to be rude in any way but I feel very strongly about my opinion. Sure, reveals can be made for a number of good reasons, but bad things can grow out of it that I do not feel that teams should take a risk to do. I do not want to be one of those teams that posts a reveal of a robot that has an idea that we came up with, and then everyone copies it, then regret it because now we are not the only ones with a tournament-winning idea. and now that everyone has it, it makes our game a LOT harder. This does not work for me and I just wanted to get my point across that it is not wise. A lot of people underestimate the infection that a reveal spreads. It can destroy teams. These teams have a great idea and then they go share it with the world. When they get to a competition, they find that many teams have their design and it is not trademark to them anymore. I’ve seen teams with many different robot designs, and it is fascinating to see how people solve problems in their own way. Then there are those people that solve a problem in their own way, and then post it on Youtube without knowledge of the negative effects. Then they go to the competition and think that their design was not trademark and that they cannot come up with their own good ideas. Why? probably because you posted them on Youtube… The purpose of the thing I posted was to warn against those negative effects, and to emphasize that because of them, that it can be devastating.
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So quick question: do you think the decrease in quality of reveals is due to people revealing robots that have nothing unique or that they’re just meme bots?
EDIT: Mostly just cause I’m debating whether or not to reveal my early season simple tray.
I disagree, yes ideas can be adopted from reveals I understand that but, the idea you show in a reveal kind of links that concept with your team. For example, lots of people have been referring to goofy whenever a complex traybot is mentioned, people would have figured out eventually and now that idea is forever linked to your team. If you have a game breaking idea then yeah maybe not reveal it, but otherwise, I don’t think the effects are catastrophic. Personally our team plans on doing our first ever reveal this year and we are very excited about it. I recognize that reveals have negative effects, but I believe that the positive strongly outweigh the negatives.
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Happy cake day!
Also goofy is the stereotype for a complex traybot
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Actually i am referring to the quality of sharing in general. Not just about robot reveals.
Interestingly, recently another mentor and I just had a discussion about the dropped in quality of the posts in the forum.
And what i said was basically I was not that active in the past few months because i was put off by the amount of garbage going on in forum… i really don’t have the time to sift through the posts and try to look for something meaningful to reply to.
But guess it ended up as a vicious cycle of sort?
Some regulars got less involved, and ended up the vacuum was taken over by some irresponsible users and more garbage appeared and more regular users got put off, etc…
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An important thing to consider is that not all of the small details of a robot can be shown in reveals. It is one thing for a team to “holecount” a robot that they see online, but as a general rule of thumb, the clone of the robot will never be as well executed as the original. This is due to how so many small factors play into the success of a robot. Reveals don’t show the tightness of a screw joint, the exact width and looseness of spacers.
It is a great thing to share your ideas with others. Many of those teams that “stole” your great idea will innovate, and post those on the internet for all to see. If no ideas were shared, and everyone built their own thing, would the quality of robots still be the same at the end of the season as the first?
The idea that one should never reveal a good quality of their robot is selfish; it is likely that you have seen and adapted many aspects of your own robot from one that is shared online. Why is it wrong to return the favor?
EDIT: none of these posts are explicitly directed at, and intentionally meant to hurt anyone’s feelings. The forum is a place where individuals should be able to have professional discussions, and keep in mind that no post here is a personal attack on any specific individual, no matter how much one disagrees.
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we made one like 2 weeks ago so like its to showcase your bot ig. Some teams don’t so they can keep their designs more hidden
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