What makes it boring is that the engineers optimize for the arena, and the arena is boring.
They made it an almost perfectly flat metal surface with no features of any kind. Robot Wars was more interesting. Not only did they have house robots which looked like The Shrieking Maimer, the arena was also more interesting with pits, house robots, flame areas, etc.
IMO a more interesting arena would lead to more interesting battles, especially if the arena weren’t perfectly flat so it wasn’t optimal to have one that had a 2mm clearance. Even better would be if you had a variety of arenas, and the contestants didn’t know until the day of the battle which one they’d be in. Some might be flat, some might have a water hazard, some might have sand, some might have a dirt floor. Then you’d have more walking robots, more tank-tread robots, etc. so they could tackle a variety of terrain.
It’s cause it’s approached as a sport, in which you usually want to have an even playing field metaphorically and literally.
Football and tennis would arguably also be more “interesting” (a better word is probably “varied”) if there were random playground elements on the field.
Can’t quickly think of ANY sport where it wouldn’t be the case, actually. But then running 100m in a straight line wouldn’t be that anymore.
Football (futbol) is actually played on varied pitches. A legal pitch can be anywhere from 45m wide to 90m wide, and can be from 90m long to 120m long. Legally you could play a game on a square shaped 90m by 90m pitch, although in practice those are rare. The City of Manchester stadium is the biggest pitch in England’s premier league, and it affects the way the team plays and gives them a home field advantage.
Anyhow, I don’t think there should be an “even playing field” because that’s not realistic. Where would you ever encounter a perfectly flat steel floor, other than at battlebots? It would be fine if that artificial constraint led to more interesting robots, but it doesn’t. It leads to boring fights. I mean, imagine if there were a competitive first person shooter game where the teams faced off against eachother across a completely flat, featureless expanse. It would be awful. As long as every robot has to deal with the same conditions, the conditions are fair. So, I think they should make the arena more interesting.
I feel like my point was missed a bit; let me repost a part of your comment with one detail (the sport) changed:
Anyhow, I don’t think there should be an “even playing field” because that’s not realistic. Where would you ever encounter a perfectly flat tennis court, other than at a tennis game? It would be fine if that artificial constraint led to more interesting humans, but it doesn’t. It leads to boring matches.
Tennis games aren’t perfectly flat. Wimbledon is famous for being played on grass, which isn’t flat even before the wear and tear sets in. And that’s in a sport where judging the bounce of the ball is critically important.
This always baffled me. It really was so lazy and boring with the sets. It is weird when you think about how they had all those creative engineers making frickin’ killbots at their disposal. Let them eat… But no, just flat areas and stupid hammers and floor saws too slow and weak to do anything… so everyone makes indestructible wedges to push other bots up on the edge, or a spin-hammer that is undefeatable.
Yeah, the saws and hammers in Battlebots might have been a good idea, if they actually did anything. I can’t remember them ever having a decisive effect on a fight. Given the armor of the bots, it was like using a feather on them.
A pit, on the other hand, can end a fight. Frequently in Robot Wars, a really good robot lost by being pushed into a pit. Having said that, a pit doesn’t discourage wedge robots or flippers. It only slightly discourages spinners because they sometimes aren’t easy to control.
I’d just rather have a wavy / bumpy or otherwise uneven surface so that a low-to-the-ground design might get stuck.
In a sense, I understand why they designed the arena the way they did. It’s extremely uniform so it’s the same for every competitor. If it’s damaged in some way it’s easy to put it back the way it was. People can make their own versions at home so they can test their robot in a similar arena. It’s basically trying to avoid having the arena itself become a decisive factor in any battle and leave the winning or losing to the robots. But, by doing that they lead to all robots being boring and optimized for that one arena. That means a battle over who can have the tightest possible ground clearance tolerance.
I want wheels, legs, tracks, not ground-huggers. So, I don’t want perfectly even, perfectly level, perfectly boring arenas. I want arenas that will challenge bots. Ideally, I’d like one where there are different sections of the arena. Maybe there’s a “plains” section where the low-to-the-ground bots have an advantage, but then there’s a “hilly” section (even if it’s just a steel floor with some dents bashed into it) where you’re screwed if you designed a bot that has a clearance that’s too low. Then you might have certain bots trying to make sure the battle happens in their section of the arena. That adds interesting strategy.
The problem with that is that the matches tend to be win or lose, and end when one of the robots is unable to continue. If you lose but the audience votes for you, does that mean the winner doesn’t get to proceed?
What makes it boring is that the engineers optimize for the arena, and the arena is boring.
They made it an almost perfectly flat metal surface with no features of any kind. Robot Wars was more interesting. Not only did they have house robots which looked like The Shrieking Maimer, the arena was also more interesting with pits, house robots, flame areas, etc.
IMO a more interesting arena would lead to more interesting battles, especially if the arena weren’t perfectly flat so it wasn’t optimal to have one that had a 2mm clearance. Even better would be if you had a variety of arenas, and the contestants didn’t know until the day of the battle which one they’d be in. Some might be flat, some might have a water hazard, some might have sand, some might have a dirt floor. Then you’d have more walking robots, more tank-tread robots, etc. so they could tackle a variety of terrain.
It’s cause it’s approached as a sport, in which you usually want to have an even playing field metaphorically and literally.
Football and tennis would arguably also be more “interesting” (a better word is probably “varied”) if there were random playground elements on the field.
Can’t quickly think of ANY sport where it wouldn’t be the case, actually. But then running 100m in a straight line wouldn’t be that anymore.
Football (futbol) is actually played on varied pitches. A legal pitch can be anywhere from 45m wide to 90m wide, and can be from 90m long to 120m long. Legally you could play a game on a square shaped 90m by 90m pitch, although in practice those are rare. The City of Manchester stadium is the biggest pitch in England’s premier league, and it affects the way the team plays and gives them a home field advantage.
Anyhow, I don’t think there should be an “even playing field” because that’s not realistic. Where would you ever encounter a perfectly flat steel floor, other than at battlebots? It would be fine if that artificial constraint led to more interesting robots, but it doesn’t. It leads to boring fights. I mean, imagine if there were a competitive first person shooter game where the teams faced off against eachother across a completely flat, featureless expanse. It would be awful. As long as every robot has to deal with the same conditions, the conditions are fair. So, I think they should make the arena more interesting.
???
I feel like my point was missed a bit; let me repost a part of your comment with one detail (the sport) changed:
Does that illustrate better what I am getting at?
Tennis games aren’t perfectly flat. Wimbledon is famous for being played on grass, which isn’t flat even before the wear and tear sets in. And that’s in a sport where judging the bounce of the ball is critically important.
This always baffled me. It really was so lazy and boring with the sets. It is weird when you think about how they had all those creative engineers making frickin’ killbots at their disposal. Let them eat… But no, just flat areas and stupid hammers and floor saws too slow and weak to do anything… so everyone makes indestructible wedges to push other bots up on the edge, or a spin-hammer that is undefeatable.
Yeah, the saws and hammers in Battlebots might have been a good idea, if they actually did anything. I can’t remember them ever having a decisive effect on a fight. Given the armor of the bots, it was like using a feather on them.
A pit, on the other hand, can end a fight. Frequently in Robot Wars, a really good robot lost by being pushed into a pit. Having said that, a pit doesn’t discourage wedge robots or flippers. It only slightly discourages spinners because they sometimes aren’t easy to control.
I’d just rather have a wavy / bumpy or otherwise uneven surface so that a low-to-the-ground design might get stuck.
In a sense, I understand why they designed the arena the way they did. It’s extremely uniform so it’s the same for every competitor. If it’s damaged in some way it’s easy to put it back the way it was. People can make their own versions at home so they can test their robot in a similar arena. It’s basically trying to avoid having the arena itself become a decisive factor in any battle and leave the winning or losing to the robots. But, by doing that they lead to all robots being boring and optimized for that one arena. That means a battle over who can have the tightest possible ground clearance tolerance.
I want wheels, legs, tracks, not ground-huggers. So, I don’t want perfectly even, perfectly level, perfectly boring arenas. I want arenas that will challenge bots. Ideally, I’d like one where there are different sections of the arena. Maybe there’s a “plains” section where the low-to-the-ground bots have an advantage, but then there’s a “hilly” section (even if it’s just a steel floor with some dents bashed into it) where you’re screwed if you designed a bot that has a clearance that’s too low. Then you might have certain bots trying to make sure the battle happens in their section of the arena. That adds interesting strategy.
another easy fix would be to let the audience vote on style, so a sufficiently awesome robot can win so long as it does okay in the fights.
The problem with that is that the matches tend to be win or lose, and end when one of the robots is unable to continue. If you lose but the audience votes for you, does that mean the winner doesn’t get to proceed?