This year’s skyrise challenge is the best vex challenge ever (my thoughts). I don’t think any other challenge can be this great. Anyone have any ideas or thoughts about how the new vex challenge will be like? I would like it if it had a part where you build something similar to this this year’s skyrise sections.
If I rack my memory as much as I can about the shapes of scoring objects… theoretically, it’ll be circular/cylindrical.
I hope it’s not as offensive as Toss Up, since the “knocking down” rule had unclear areas.
I think since this year’s challenge was massive height, next year will have to vary from that. Perhaps difficult obstacles (similar to the bump) to drive over/around. Maybe more difficult objects to manipulate and in finer detail. I would like to see a game where you have to pick up many smaller objects that have many colors. The game would have to be “doable” without, but a robot capable of auto sorting the objects would be cool and something new. Perhaps each color object can only be scored in certain goals. Maybe several different shapes of objects, each having to be scored in a separate goal (again, sorting robots would benefit).
I have also thought about something that would require a more precise manipulator arm. So something like small rings that would have to be hung on pegs of some sort. This would require more precise design. (this sounds like round up, but I’m talking much smaller objects and pegs would be horizontal)
It seems like most VEX robots end up having to be able to carry lots of weight and drive fast…etc. I would like to see a game not focused on the “toughness” aspect, but instead the precise design and programming aspect. (which is why I think of some game based around object sorting)
That would cool but, unassigned color scoring objects would be cool like sack attack.
If building a skyrise doesn’t require precision, then I don’t know what does, haha.
In my opinion, gateway was the best game up to this point. Or at least of all the games I have played. I have competed every year beginning with round up, and gateway, I feel, had the best scoring objects, field layout, and scoring rules. I would like to see something similar to the 30 second doubler/negater.
Its a ball Year
Bridge Battle: baseball kinda things
Elevation: Cubes
Clean Sweep: Footballs, and small green balls
Round Up: Donuts
Gateway: balls and tubes
Sack Attack: Bean bags
Toss Up: Bucky balls and beach balls
Skyrise: cubes and skyrise sections
???: Balls again?
I can only hope that they never again use the beach balls. Those things blew up so easily. Once our robot fell over on one and popped it. It sounded like a sonic boom:)
I am sure that this year there will be more precision required like most of you have said. And the scoring objects will probably be really small. I hope they bring back the parking bonus. I loved that.
Lets hope not.
I like the idea of smaller objects, more precision. The parking bonus was cool too…wouldn’t hurt to bring that back.
I hope they keep the no interaction during autonomous.
I hope to god we will have balls. #VEX2016Balls (Get this trending).
But seriously, if you think about it, there is always some sort of challenge to the game. This year it was high lifts, even though cubes sounded intimidating to intake, they weren’t too bad. Everyone has pretty much perfected ball intakes, so there will have to be something else to it. In toss up, the real challenge was getting under the barrier, over the bump, and hanging. In gateway, we had balls, the challenge aspect were barrels and high goals. In Sack Attack, the challenge were the high goals and the sacks. This year (if we have balls) I’d expect it to have an interesting challenge paired with it. Also, if the online challenge is anything like last year, we might have tetra-pods :mad: Should be fun…
BTW, Karthik if you are reading this… we want spherical game objects.
I want the parking bonus, maybe a limt to one touching of the robot in autonomous, and no cap on how many objects you can hold.
If this is the case I hope they don’t call it “autonomous” mode. They should call it human-robot mode. That rolls of the tongue nicely. 
I get your point, and I think it’s a valid point but it would be easier for newer teams.
I think next year they should make it like VEX U where they have half autonomous, half operator control.
This is understandable, however you have to think about the fact that VEX has to design a game that is playable by new teams, but still difficult for experienced teams. If it becomes too simple, then the experienced teams will never maximize their potential. It’s not all about winning/losing, its about learning tons of awesome stuff along the way.
Personally I think half and half is a bit extreme for VRC, just my opinion though. Depending on what the new game it, sometimes I find myself thinking it would be nice if autonomous was 20 seconds long. Five seconds goes a long way.
Next year I don’t want to see ANY spherical objects. It’s getting too predictable and teams have already figured out how to pick them up. It usually ends up with side rollers as the primary intake.
What I want to see next year is the GDC completely breaking the mold. Something that none of us have ever even thought about. I agree there should be more field obstacles to navigate, but maybe they require active movement by the robots in order to pass (I’m thinking like the gates in Gateway, but what if the robot had to raise the gate itself instead of the human drivers in order to continue to the other part of the field?)
I’d also like to see some of the intense back and forth action from Toss Up, but perhaps with objects that are a little more difficult to pick up. (For some reason, small marble pyramids, about 2 in by 2 in, keep popping into my head as a scoring object.)
How about a new division where high school and middle school teams can have two robots, like on VexU?
Moveable bases that aren’t weighted with tubes on them to score in, but the goals can be tipped.
I would like to see long pipes. These could be different lengths and diameters. you would get points for moving them or tipping them up on the end and stacking them.
This has been mentioned in Next Year’s Game threads before, but I think it’s worth mentioning again.
Every VEX game has been very similar. Robots have to pick up some kind of game object from some lower height (usually the ground) and then lift those game objects up to some greater height where they are scored. The shape and size of the game objects has changed and so have the relative heights, but otherwise the games stay largely the same.
I would love to see a VEX game that is not based around lifting game objects. One simple means of changing this would be to have robots reach out rather than lifting up. For example, the robots could start in one section of the field where game objects are located. The rest of the field tiles could be off-limits. The robots then have to score the game objects at relatively low heights on the off-limits side of the field. This would force teams to reach over the off-limits tiles in order to score. Sure this would be fairly similar, but at least it breaks the mold of previous VEX games.
To make it more diverse, teams could have a choice of climbing over some difficult barrier or just reaching across it in order to score. Although, then VEX would have to make sure it was balanced for each solution and prevent d-bots from stopping any reaching robot from scoring.
I think it may be some kind of pyramids- on a small scale about the size of cubes this year or smaller. They would probably have to be hollow or else they would be almost impossible to pick up, but we have not had pyramids or cones yet. Keep in mind too that it will have to be something that a vex claw can pick up so that the schools that buy the clawbot kits can still compete. I’m really curious too and I can’t wait for the game reveal at worlds!