Typically, the season isn’t considered “started” until after the August 31st update, since that’s when most of the big rule changes occur that massively alter how the game might be played, at least that’s how I view it.
Oh, I assure you they realize both sides of the coin when they make decisions, that’s evident in Q&A posts (at least I’m hoping that’s why it takes months to answer them.) I’m sure that the decision to outlaw a specific type of design was not taken lightly in the slightest, but they felt that it was necessary to ensure the longevity of the game.
All these arguments simply comparing a dumping bot to a flywheel bot is missing the key point: It doesn’t matter whether a flywheel bot can do something just as effective as a dumping bot or not. What matters is the GDC felt that dumping bots were not good for the health of the competition, and took action to remedy it. What specific reasons, I don’t know, you’d have to go ask them. However, this:
Is ridiculous. They aren’t going to ban a design because it doesn’t conform with their ideas for what they expect it to be. Out-of-the-box-thing is usually encouraged, and the GDC wouldn’t step in unless they felt it was absolutely necessary. The purpose of this year’s game is to score as many points as possible using game and field elements.
Or… health and longevity of the competition? Once, again, same reason Change Up Skills was changed.
What is the fun, and where is the learning in a game that there is 1 defined way to max the game that can be easily copied by anyone. Events won’t run if everyone has the same bot that can do the same stuff.
Would you like to go to an event where everyone is getting tied in all their matches?
^^^ exactly. Everyone wants to find a game breaking strat but no one wants to play a broken game. Better to change the rules now than to wait until the pre-worlds update to make a major change like that
Personally to me you are missing the point of vex. We do vex to compete and learn and as fun as winning is its the journey to get to the top that will make it worth it. You might remember fun times at comps but what I will remember the most is dumb things like going to the dollar store to get ramen on a Friday because we hadn’t seen eaten al day or hanging out in the McDonald’s parking lot or even just long hours messing around in the robotics lab. The point of vex is to pose kids a challenge, to give them something to work towards as a team so that they can learn and grow, If the gdc decides that the way the competition is going is not the way they desired it to go they have full ability to change whatever they want. I know it sucks to have spent so much time on something only to have to start again but that is something that is important to learn, in the end the only thing you can control is your own attitude so stop moping around and go win worlds
I think this captures an important point - the game should allow multiple designs and encourage iterations. Teams design process should reset at the end of competition and apply what they learnt from the competition to improve or completely redesign/rebuild their robot (I do not subscribe to the latter in the middle of Worlds - it does not end well).
My definition for season start is when the August manual is out AND referee certification training is available. To have quality events, you need to support the volunteers with the necessary training about rules and their interpretation.
I agree with your point. The final games will surely be boring for advanced teams.
Also, imagine when a rookie team show up with their proud hero bots, then get asked by their partners to just stay away while their partner’s dump bot clears the floor. It’s going to be a terrible experience for both the rookies and experienced teams.
However, what Vex IQ GDC could have done better, in addition to designing a more solid game, was better communication when they issued such a “game-changing” rule update. I will not be surprised to find clueless teams showing up in actual competitions in November or December. Some will say it’s each team’ responsibility to keep checking on game manual updates and it’s part of the game. But I think it’s just bad customer service on VEX’s side. How hard can it be to send a curtesy email notification to all the registered coaches or customers who purchased this year’s game elements? This is an example of lack of customer obsession.
Also, the only tournament to post scores to the World Skills rankings for middle school before the 2.0 update was on 8/26, but there were only 4 teams at that competition.
I’m not sure how that’s a “figure of speech.” It seems more like I “read what you wrote.”
That’s never been done in August… February, March… Never August. The customers that provide 99% of RECF’s revenue might not even sign up for a design problem that’s already been solved.
Yes, and 62A went with an off-meta robot and dominated in their divisional playoffs and in round robin. Although the robot designs converged towards a common meta early on, there was still enough design differences that made the season somewhat more enjoyable (like 6007X’s pneumatic & lexan internal stacker and 202Z’s OP chain bar mech).
Going 2-3 isn’t dominating the Round Robin. It was an ingenious design and philosophy, but that’s technically wrong. The genius of 62A was that you had to change up your gameplan and prioritize possessing all your mobile goals immediately to face them, kind of like having a wedge against Tombstone in Battlebots. If you didn’t, you were going to lose badly. (I think the two matches they won, their opponents only scored 40ish points?) However, three elite alliances did, including the 5225A, the team with the passive intake.
Toward the end of the season, it took four robots to practically clear a 12 by 12 field in about 100 seconds. Vex IQ’s field is a third that size, there are only a fourth of the scoring objects, and instead of having to balance the scoring objects across 10 different targets, there’s only one central target, and there’s no opposition for the scoring objects. I expect the VRC to have anticipated that design, but not for it to be so effective, and it would have come down to whether they were going to whether they were going to implement Match Stop Time into the qualification rounds, banning the design, or letting qualifications be a luck of the draw if your opponents didn’t have the meta design. They chose the second option, which sucks if you were building such a bot, but it’s a great learning experience.
