(rant) battlebots since after season 7 has been a self-sabotaging pile of dogshit manned by a bunch of morons who have zero clue what they're doing
the amount of self-sabotaging that battlebots does to itself as a show is fucking incredible. ever since season 7 ended it's been like watching two planes crashing into each other at 0.1x speed. i genuinely cannot believe that they probably looked at this in post and deadass thought "yeah, this looks like actual dogshit. send it." like what the FUCK ARE WE DOING HERE MAN
we had ALL the makings of a great first episode. an insane upset on probably the best bot in the competition right now and two other really solid fights. just put those fights together and splice them with a bunch of footage from the pits, (which is ANOTHER thing that everyone's been asking for considering this is a STEM show without ANY FUCKING STEM PARTS IN IT SHOW THE PITS OH MY FUCKING GOD), and you'll have a pretty decent first episode.
like these people HAVE EXPERIENCE RUNNING THE SHOW. they've only been doing it for 7 goddamn seasons now with their absolute best one being the MOST RECENT SEASON. HOW THE FUCK DID WE GO FROM SOMETHING LIKE SEASON 7 TO THIS TRAIN WRECK OF A "SHOW." it's all just so frustrating to watch and it's equally as frustrating to know that they've simply refused to listen to any amount of feedback that they've been given for the past 3 years
i'm so glad that something as well put together as NHRL exists, because without it i'd just be a depressed husk of a man rewatching the same old battlebots fights over and over again to try and fill the combat robotics hole in my heart. even now i'm still willing to put myself through rewatching the first pro league fights simply because they're actually INTERESTING. unfortunately, we'll only get to see about half of the fights considering how incredulously putrid the camera angles and editing are in these fights.
i feel so bad for malice here; they get the best win of their entire career and it's shown like THAT. what a fucking disgrace man
EDIT: this is not a post intended to slander the filming or production team in any way. THEY'RE ONLY DOING THEIR JOB AND WHAT THEY'RE BEING TOLD TO DO. this post is meant to be directed towards the entire upper management at battlebots who have consistently screwed over their hard-working team and their loyal fans by approving subpar content and offering zero communication as to why they're making the choices that they are. fans like myself have been respectful and constructive with our criticism since the first episode of proving grounds was shown on the facebook supporter's group, and we have been met with the same issues over and over and OVER again. the production staff and the teams competing deserve to have a fanbase willing to show some spine to the management, especially considering the fact that fans have paid for facebook and discovery+ subscriptions to support the show's funding.
that's only part of the reason why this post is worded so aggressively. the other part of it is that i'm fearful that this may be battlebots's last shot at being able to make an actual show. the management needed to get their shit together and learn from ALL the kinks that they needed to iron out from the live shows, the proving grounds, and the vegas showmatches, and use everything that they learned to put out a quality product and prove that we deserve to have a place on a streaming platform. unfortunately, the fact that several people have made posts here saying that they couldn't even get through the episode makes me worried for the future of heavyweight robotics. maybe this is too doomer or whatever, but it's been clear that battlebots as a company has been struggling HARD and they really needed the leadership to make the pro league land. unfortunately, we've been disappointed yet again and i find myself struggling to believe that there's a future for them in this state