Robot wars and Battlebots are TV shows. Their purpose is to be entertaining. If all the robots are giant blocks of armor then it is boring to watch. However that does not mean it is not a fair competition for the robots that are actually accepted.
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Robot wars and Battlebots are TV shows. Their purpose is to be entertaining. If all the robots are giant blocks of armor then it is boring to watch. However that does not mean it is not a fair competition for the robots that are actually accepted.
There are real competitions. Some take 1 weekend to determine the "champion".
Others take a few weekends during 1 year, and then the points get tallied up, reaching a conclusion.
But the only arena in Europe at the moment allowing heavyweight spinners to fight with the weapon active is the one used for the TV Show Robot Wars.
To be fair, there are plenty of fantastic athletes who don't get picked for the Olympic Games every year. Just because not everybody in the world can/has entered, doesn't mean you can't have a champion. The fact is that many competitions have invitationals, and nobody's saying you've got a bad machine if you simply don't get selected. More often than not, the best of the best end up getting invited anyway as far as I've seen, so I really don't think it's a thing to worry about, especially since there's no great prize at stake. As far as I know, most people do this sport purely for the love of it.
Theres a difference however with maybe choosing the 2nd best for reasons of team compatibility, current form ect rather than picking a 72 year old with a hip replacement in the 100m against Bolt for the hell of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by R9000
Unfortunately we dont know what the selection criteria is, and they "party line" of looking for "Technology and innovation" is provably false due to the nature of robots like Big Nipper which have been rejected. Even last year it was only through desperation of all the 72 year olds not being fit enough in time that robots like the current UK Champion got selected - and even then they had to put high heels on in order to qualify alongside Bolt.
Unfortunately, roboteers dont know what TV wants. Hence they cant build for it - however TV wants you to already have a built robot and commit thousands of pounds before they will select you. There are ways to get selected, but from a competitive standpoint theres no fun in that.
Only bad thing i see about that is: with heavies, you don't have many chances to compete at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by R9000
So even if you don't build, but only plan one, you invest a LOT of time into that project, assume you could actually stand a chance (or at least survive the heat), and see bots picked where you know none of them would survive even half the time against yours. Be it because they are made of unsuitable materials, are in the wrong weight class or any stuff like that.
So while it's good for the Roboteers to have the show back, and it surely promotes the hobby, at the same time it limits possibilities and causes frustration.
Just imagine you've build something like Tombstone/ Last Rites. Now you want to apply to the show, and get a "sorry, we can't have you in there". Okay, sure, there are others, maybe better ones.
And then you see Obwalden Overlord, Creepy Crawlies, Sweeney Todd, Nuts and i forgot so many names...
Sure, all of them got something interesting, all of them got something the audience might want to see or something innovative, showing future possibilities. But at the same time... you could kill all of them even if they work together, and wouldn't even use the whole three minutes. And you weren't allowed to participate. And there is no other arena. So you either don't build the bot, or if you already did, quiet likely wasted a lot of money into it. Because if one day you may participate, chances are there is already better tech on the market.
So before starting a heavy project, people think twice or even more. And as long as they do so, there won't be another arena for heavies around anytime soon... It's quiet expensive and big after all, so there'd have to be a big demand for one.
So actually making qualification fights, maybe with a youtube-minishow to it (you can make money out of that stuff, too) would be way better in my opinion. Maybe reserve one place per heat for "interesting" "innovative" and other bots who else would never be seen in the final show to spice things up. That'd leave 3 qualified and 1 wildcard per heat, and about everybody who build a bot get to use it at least once.
Building is fun in itself, but at least for me... if i finished something, i want to use it, too.
I'm not by any means saying the selection system in Robot Wars is perfect, and of course there's room for improvement. It would certainly be nice to have more transparency over what makes you more likely to qualify for the show. I suppose they're hesitant to give quantitative information on how to qualify because they still want to pick and choose to an extent. However that doesn't make the competition unfair, whoever wins has (for the most part) proven themselves to be the victor from those that were selected.
It'd be nice to have a more community-oriented arena to fight in or at least somewhere spinner-worthy outside of the show, but that obviously isn't possible without major funding, which needs many people to be invested in the show, which needs more exposure from the show itself. It would be nice if they'd rent the existing show arena out for practice or amateur matches, though I can't imagine them being that charitable somehow, and you'd need staff onsite, etc.
lol I think this thread needs to be renamed too .... who is pissed off with the bbc !
Hi Olivia, is your day job being a troll? You are definitely well qualified as you have managed to attack, annoy or insult everyone on this thread with just 11 posts (so far). If you can't play nice, perhaps you should find another hobby.
Getting back to Robot Wars and Battlebots; they are only in it to make money so of course they will pick the teams and bots they think will produce the best ratings. That's just the way it is and you just have to accept it like everyone else.
Hi Nick, that's rather direct. I implied that Olivia had a good chance to get into robot wars as the "bad guy".
Unfortunatly, I underestimated the trollpower in this one. Intended, natural talent or just coincidence, I don't know.
But it's obvious that I was trying to be subtile, and that's not my strong point.
While the selection process for Robot Wars is an audition/application process, the actual competition itself is genuine. No rigging of fights by producers, no shifty editing. In fact, Mentorn were really keen to avoid any of that and let us all slug it out fairly and competitively, even if it didn't make the most interesting TV (Foxic v Mr Speed Squared, second half of PP3D v Eruption).
They don't need to be transparent with their selection process for what makes it on, you don't see that with X Factor or other such shows. They want what's different, interesting or good-looking for TV; that's the main priority as it's an entertainment programme. If you've got a wedge flipper like almost every other ready-to-run heavyweight out there on the live circuit, don't expect your chances of success to be high.