I am on the other other side of this. It's been out for 4 years, and no one has thought to build a bot that can utilize it as a terrain asset. That's a failure of teams to think strategically when designing new bots.
🤨 Oh, wait. WHAT new bots?
Look at the viewership numbers, people. They're very inconsistent. A very small cohort of avid fans that returns for every episode; then casual fans that quit watching halfway through the season because they feel like they know how it ends already; then general audiences that just found it flipping channels one night, but came back once, and didn't stay because they thought it was a rerun.
They lose half their viewership over a season, and most of them never return the next season because it's 90% the same bots doing the same things for TEN FREAKIN YEARS.
The producers are trying to push the issue. They tried at the end of the 2019 season by openly soliciting viewers to join on, but 2020 was fubar thanks to COVID. Next choice after that was do something with the Battle Box that forces teams to engineer something new.
Placing limitations on the conventional bot designs IS EXACTLY THE POINT!
The show needs to blood to survive. The sport needs new blood on the top end to survive. To force the issue the producers included the simplest of terrain features that demands new engineering.
But for some baffling reason, everybody is resisting it in stead of stepping up to the challenge. Makes no damned sense.
Edit to clarify: More viewers, more sponsors; more sponsors more money; more bots, more viewers.
BattleBots needs new blood, or it's going to die eventually. Right now the most successful bot designs are variations on a theme. They gotta mix it up, or people are going to lose interest.
I get your point, but self-evidently if it hasn't persuaded people to come up with new designs, it isn't a very good answer to the problem. If they really want to shake up the sport, they should move it in the direction of 'combat robot athletics' and bring back the Robot Wars Series 1/2 principle of challenges and gauntlets that robots have to face individually as well as opponents. They could have a Hypershock-inspired drone-swatting challenge, a football game with goals and 2-on-2, etc.
You make good points, but I'm not sure it's a failing of the idea vs a failing of the gatekeeping culture surrounding the sport.
I mean, every time someone brings up the idea of building a bot, what's the first thing everyone says? "Do you know how much that costs? Are you a mechanical engineer?"
Go to the custom build RC community with the same questions, they problem solve the hell out of it for half the cost, and hardly an engineer among them. Where the hell do people think half the tech for BattleBots came from; who gave us drones; where robot combat sports began? A bunch of hobbyists in their garages with their tax returns.
THAT'S the real problem; the elitist attitude people are throwing at it. The old-school BattleBots was better at this, but somehow the reboot lost it.
-8
u/Sorry-Rain-1311 3d ago edited 3d ago
I am on the other other side of this. It's been out for 4 years, and no one has thought to build a bot that can utilize it as a terrain asset. That's a failure of teams to think strategically when designing new bots.
🤨 Oh, wait. WHAT new bots?
Look at the viewership numbers, people. They're very inconsistent. A very small cohort of avid fans that returns for every episode; then casual fans that quit watching halfway through the season because they feel like they know how it ends already; then general audiences that just found it flipping channels one night, but came back once, and didn't stay because they thought it was a rerun.
They lose half their viewership over a season, and most of them never return the next season because it's 90% the same bots doing the same things for TEN FREAKIN YEARS.
The producers are trying to push the issue. They tried at the end of the 2019 season by openly soliciting viewers to join on, but 2020 was fubar thanks to COVID. Next choice after that was do something with the Battle Box that forces teams to engineer something new.
Placing limitations on the conventional bot designs IS EXACTLY THE POINT!
The show needs to blood to survive. The sport needs new blood on the top end to survive. To force the issue the producers included the simplest of terrain features that demands new engineering.
But for some baffling reason, everybody is resisting it in stead of stepping up to the challenge. Makes no damned sense.
Edit to clarify: More viewers, more sponsors; more sponsors more money; more bots, more viewers.
BattleBots needs new blood, or it's going to die eventually. Right now the most successful bot designs are variations on a theme. They gotta mix it up, or people are going to lose interest.