Currently in Push Back, Single Parking is NOT viable, with Double Parking being even less so. My solution is to implement a mechanic similar to High Stakes, where in the last 15 seconds (though this duration would likely be shortened for Push Back), certain areas are protected. However, instead of protecting the corners as in High Stakes, either the long goals—or potentially all goals—would be protected.
This video by @9MotorGang effectively demonstrates why parking is not a viable strategy.
Do you all think this is a Viable way to Fix Parking in Push Back?
Not everything in a game needs to be meta or viable. This would be like if high stakes banned all types of scoring except for climbing after the clock hits 30 seconds. And also from what the field walkthrough suggests, they don’t want parking to be a “viable” strategy during every match. I think this year having an endgame where you have to decide whether to park or not is very unique and should stay.
However if this is not true and VEX does want to make parking more viable, altering point totals will be a much more fair way to make parking more viable rather than forcing teams to park at the end. For example maybe single parking is now 12 points and double parking is 38 or something like that would make parking more worth it.
I’ve been talking to my kids about the possibility of the same basic thing, depending on how the year goes… a brief 5-second protection on the high goals at the end of the round. 5 seconds would allow an easy park, but double parking from the high goal in 5 seconds would be tougher. Teams would have to weigh the risk of leaving a few seconds early and risking a de-score. The goals in the middle could be left unprotected or included as well.
This feels like it’s probably a bit too long. In high stakes you could do other things during endgame like scoring on mogos not in corners and wall stakes. If a subset (or worse, all) goals are protected, there’s not much else to do in push back.
Another interesting option could be to protect the center goals. These seem the most vulnerable to descoring and protecting them could hurt the strategic viability of filling two long goals and sitting on them until the end of the match.
Either way, there havent been any tournaments yet (to my knowledge), so we’ll have to wait and see how things work out in practice.
I feel like “last X seconds” it’s relatively basic–not that it’s a bad thing.
I believe some form protection is inevitable. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised that they add protection relatively soon.
However, a protection that would be slightly more intricate (while not being too painful to ref) would complement the game quite nicely, in my opinion. As to what, I don’t know. But, Over Under is a good example of how you can make descoring more intricate.
Right now in Push Back it feels like all you have to do is slam a long goal that has a lot of your opponents blocks when they’re not looking–and BOOM you win!
But, because of that I do fear that camping at the ends of the goals are going to be a major strategy (especially during the early to mid season) which does give me some High Stakes vibes, NGL.
Though, if we do have a long protection to all of the goals (i.e. last 30 seconds), then the game will be incredibly boring IMHO. If they protect long goals (which is a better option) for the same amount of time, it still isn’t the most exciting game, IMO.
If they do a simple “last X seconds” protection then I think it should be the last 10 seconds for long goals only.
This would ensure that park is a viable solution, make the center goals even more iconic (I could see some exciting fight over those), while still keeping the end game a last second (or more like last 10 seconds) decision like the GDC had originally intended.
Sorry, my original post was a bit confusing. I said “… in the last 15 seconds …”, but 15 seconds is far too long. I was referring to the High Stakes 15-second protection rule, not suggesting that the goals should be protected for a full 15 seconds. I think something like 5 or even 3 seconds would be more appropriate and wouldn’t significantly affect gameplay.
(Note: I don’t envision that all the goals should be protected—just the center or long goals individually.)
Wouldn’t adding protection incentivize long goal camping even more? As the alliances who get the long goal are able to leave and score points elsewhere with protection while the alliance who do not have the long goals are fighting for the other goals against the other alliance. Currently, the winning alliance camps the long goal while the losing alliance scores on the middle goals.
I do think the solution is to increase the points of the middle goals and parking in order to make camping lose you the match. I don’t think the points of double parking to be increased by much or else last second parks will always happen. Having single parks being 12-14 points might be the idea.
Who says that parking needs to be optimal. It’s really easy to do so it will see plenty of use at lower levels of play. Compare it to something like Low Flags in Turning Point. Most high level teams ignored them or at least didn’t go much out of their way to do them in matches, (but they would for skills). But they were a great source of points for lower level teams. Additionally, for skills, I think parking is completely viable and plenty of teams will do it there.
A protection period would just lead to even more camping, as then you can camp then park.
I don’t think that camping will be as advantageous as everyone thinks as long an opposing alliance works together.
ex:
RED1 is camped at a long goal while RED2 camps at the other, protecting each from one end. BLUE fills the middle goals. Red feels pretty confident and holds their camps.
BLUE can now work together to win. BLUE1 is loaded and ready to quickly score (or just de-score) at the other end. BLUE 2 only has to push RED1 a small distance away from the goal for a few seconds. This would be enough for BLUE1 to act and drastically change the status of a long goal.
I think that the easiness with which goals can be filled or emptied could make long camping trips ineffective against an alliance that works together well. There are too many goals with too many open ends. There should be a lot of exciting finishes.
As someone with 2-years of tournament experience, I believe that the last 15 seconds would help Single Parking become more viable considering the issue that non-protected goals become a critical component in Alliance strategies during the Endgame. Considering the idea that VEX decides to implement this solution, there is a possibility, knowing how matches usually go, that there could be 30 seconds that could be used to make Double Parking viable.
I’ve seen some discussion pop up in various mediums with similar “click-baity” titles or vibes to the conversation topic. I just wanted to butt in to add some thoughts.
I think its really important to note that we have not seen many matches of this game played yet. For me, all I have seen are the Blank’s Beginnings scrimmage matches (though if there are more videos of match play out there, I’m interested in seeing them!).
As much as strategic conversations are important, and determining what strategies may or may not garner more points or value in a match, it is near impossible to confidently say that a game needs X or Y or Z, yet. We just haven’t seen it played enough, yet.
Conversations are good, but none of us can confidently say that the game NEEDS something that isn’t there already. Maybe it does, and maybe we will learn that as more events occur in the next couple of weeks.
And also -
Games that are 100% perfectly balanced take away strategic depth and decision making. If everything has an equal and opposite dynamic, every match would look just about the same, hard real-time decisions wouldn’t be made, and the matches would be quite boring.
Forcing decision making to figure out where your time is more valuable during a match is actually something we should desire…
Though, I can concede that it is unfortunate that in some cases, some opinions seem to fall back on “camping” or “locking” goals, again.
I feel like they should add a lockdown to either the long goal or the center goal - not the parking zones bc it doesnt make sense for the parking zones to have a lockdown when the opposing robots can just descore all the blocks in the goal in one push