As the new season game Override was released, compared with other season’s game, I found that Push Back game is verrrry different from others.
In vex games, teams score with items in different ways and try to get bonuses, this never change. However, while teams are not allowed to or can hardly disscore(remove scoring items) in other games, they can disscore items by using wings. Even scoring might be a kind of disscoring itself.
That makes a big difference. Push Back game is more exciting——I mean, the result is more unpredictable. Even if one team gets an huge advantage, one time disscoring can turn the situation. Meanwhile in other games, teams that are more powerful can keep scoring, and the advantage can be accumulated, an early leading can affect the final result. Though we can see several things are there to make the game more exciting (troggles/neutral pins/parking/etc), but Push Back is the one which from the basic rules can turn the match situation.
At the higher level games will still be exiting. close games are close games. Plus this game has plenty of swing points through toggles and king of the hill. almost all games have some sort of swing element to allow for a come back.
HST: pos and neg corners that could swing points a ton and high ring bonus and top ring bonus and climb.
OU: descore components and buddy climb potential as well as end game matchload dump
SU: String expansion and roller control
TiP: tall yellow + low zone goal steal
CU: no clue didnt care about this game enoughf
TT: had color combo bonus though the elevated “cups”
just a few from the last 5 or so years.
IMO the swingy descore quality of Pushback was fun, but not something i want to see year after year. It makes the game more and more driving dependant. WHich i think being a good driver should be rewarded but not over having a good robot, which this kind of game mechanic does.
Pushback is under the genre of swing game - scoring for one alliance will mean descoring of the other alliance.
And if you looked through the history of VEX games, there were many other swing games in the past. And I wouldn’t say pushback is more exciting than other swing games of the past.
Every VEX game has an “end game” element that will caused a big change of the score.
Eg.
Pushback - double parking (which was not attractive enough for teams to go for it - poor game design)
High Stack - T3 climb + ring
Spin up - shooting out of the strings
etc.
Not gonna list out all the past games, but you should get the sense of what I am trying to say.