Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Definitions:

By definition, every year when a team signs up for an FRC competition they are buying a ‘pig in a poke’. It is the nature of the system. Registration has to happen before the game reveal. Most of the time, they receive a reasonably healthy pig, one that meets or exceeds their expectations. There are sometimes a few blemishes and imperfections (there are not very many perfect pigs in the world) but for the most part the vast majority of purchasers are satisfied.

This year, the pig arrived barely alive, with very little meat on the bones, and once prepared, the meat turned out to be severely infested with Trichinella, so consumption was immediately followed by Trichinosis. Most of the people with whom I spoke at the competition agreed that this is the worst game to come from the GDC in recent memory. I saw one of the best head refs in FRC extremely frustrated and upset. At the conclusion of almost every match, there were one or more angry kids in the question box wanting to argue a call. This is not the fault of the refs. There is no way a ref can watch two robots collide, and then go through the mental flow chart necessary to decide if a foul occurred, and if so, what foul, who initiated it, was it intentional, consequential, strategic etc. and still perform the rest of their duties.

Compounding the ref / foul issue, there is the single game piece aspect. With only one game piece, there are always at least four robots on the field with nothing to do, so they end up just bashing into each other, creating multiple action areas on the field that the refs have to watch for these fouls. And since it is the refs’ job to assign fouls, assign fouls they do! I have seen stationary robots assigned technical fouls for “contact inside the frame perimeter” when they were hit by another robot while waiting to catch a truss shot. It appeared to me that if a robot was damaged in a collision, the other robot was given a foul, regardless of who initiated the contact. It adds a new strategy where a team could simply affix fragile items all around the robot, inside the frame perimeter, then run into an opposing robot’s appendage causing said fragile item to break, and get 50 free points.

What was the goal? Did the GDC foresee the outcome? Was the goal met? Was the result intentional? Or is it possible that they did not realize what would happen? As soon as I read through the rules I knew that reffing was going to be an awful, thankless, and near impossible task. A long time ref is a friend of mine, and we discussed how bad the ref’s job would be right after kickoff. As the season went on, and more responsibility was heaped on the refs, things just got worse. At Peachtree, the top four OPR robots were eliminated in the quarterfinals. Perhaps that was the goal, to “level the playing field”. I have never been a fan of the “randomness factor” in FRC, where you are at the mercy of the alliance scheduling algorithm for your seeding position. As a mentor I have been on both sides of the equation. There have been times when we were matched with only great robots, and we seeded first, as well as times where we were matched with pizza boxes or no-shows and seeded low. This year put much more emphasis on alliance partners for seeding. If the goal of the GDC was to teach kids that “life ain’t fair”, they succeeded. I’m not saying the kids were not inspired, they were. They were also frustrated, disappointed, and disillusioned.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I don't think the seeding is any worse this year than it was for Rebound Rumble, and it's nowhere near as bad as week 1 of Breakaway where you could beat an opponent and end up ranked below them as a result. This game forces you to actively think of ways to create assists, and even with the "pizza-boxes" there are ways to do that consistently. This is not a game that you can win on your own, and I'm perfectly fine with that. I think they did a better job of trying to force teamwork this year than in the past.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I find this concept of "forcing teamwork" extremely frustrating. Every team, by definition of being a team, ensures that the students are doing teamwork. Throwing in two more randomly-chosen teams as alliance partners and forcing you to rely on them to succeed is just excessive. It's very demoralizing for the kids to have their awesome robot, which they spent so much time and effort on(as a team, don't forget), be seeded at a horrible spot due to a random number generator and a game that forced that random number generator to be a deciding factor. Ultimate Ascent was, in my opinion, one of the best games FRC has ever seen because it was a game where one great robot could carry their alliance, while at the same time, 2 or 3 great robots in alliance together made things even more awesome.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Then what it the point of having alliances if you want each robot to just do their own thing? We should just play one on one if that is the case. In understand it can be frustrating to end up ranked low because of partner pairings. I've been there too, but only creating games that teams can win on their own is not pushing the teamwork between teams (coopertition) that FIRST wants to promote.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Emphasis is mine.
I truly believe this was the core goal of the GDC with this game. If I am correct, then they achieved their goal, and I for one, really like that as the objective.

Now here comes the "but".
Too many other aspects of this game fell short of the standards FIRST has demonstrated over the last few years. Threads like "Hot Goal Timing Issues" and "paper: Spanking the Children" are examples of the frustration teams are dealing with (Martin's proverbial Pig).

In defense of both FIRST and the GDC, I understand how difficult it is to develop a game each year that is a serious challenge to the elite teams as well as having contributions to the game that the struggling teams can achieve. Although, I believe they missed the mark this year.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

These are my thoughts exactly. It's like saying Apple and Microsoft have to work together to make computers. It's called a competition for a reason. You're trying to defeat other teams. It makes everyone better and forces teams to turn out higher quality robots. GP is one thing, but this game is another.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Teamwork between alliances is great, it just shouldn't be the major deciding factor of success or failure for an individual team. Take a look at what I said about Ultimate Ascent:

In 2013, teamwork and strategy were required when you got to elims, because you were playing alliances just as good as yours. However, you could still make it to elims if you were paired with poor alliance partners in qualifications if your team built a good robot. This year, they're forcing teams to rely on factors that are completely beyond their control to get to elims. It doesn't matter nearly as much how well-built your robot is this year; if you get paired with box-bots all day, you're toast. Teamwork between alliance partners should definitely be a factor when competing, but I don't think it's a good idea to build games that force it to happen.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I don't think they missed on the difficulty level at all, the number of teams that cannot shoot into the high goal consistently is no higher or lower than in the past. I like the addition of the mobility bonus in autonomous especially. Where they missed was in the requiring the refs to do too many things at one time. They needed dedicated scorers so the refs were free to actually ref the game.

I thoroughly enjoy watching this years game. I think the strategies that develop throughout the competition are awesome. Where teams are having issues is they are going into each match thinking that they can play the same strategy each match and do well. This game is about adjusting your strategy for each match and adjusting on the fly during the match. You can't win this game on your own, so come up with a way your partners can contribute each match. If you don't do this you will not like where you end up ranked come alliance selections and that is your own fault.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Does it force better quality? Or do you just end up with battles like the ones between Google and Apple and fighting over who is allowed to use what?

I don't necessarily agree with this. All you get when you have a game that robots can win on their own all on the same field is higher scores. Does higher scores necessarily mean more excitement and more entertainment? I don't think so, all I see is 6 robots doing their own thing and trying not to get in their partners way. But when you have an objective that robots need to work together to complete it is much more exciting in my opinion. You are forced to win on strategy, not just your robot.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I see two perspectives on this issue. The first perspective is from the standpoint of the game itself. The second is from the perspective of FIRST as a whole.

From a game standpoint I think it's safe to say things are less than ideal. The issues surrounding Aerial Assist are numerous and well documented, and hopefully the GDC takes these lessons into account next year. In particular I would love to see the following:

1. Better care taken into field and game design so that robots do not ram into each other at full throttle while crossing the field. An obstacle in the center of the field would go a long way towards mitigating the damage robots are experiencing.

2. A more thorough review of the workload that the refs are experiencing from a game design and personnel allocation perspective. The fact that the refs were burdened with additional tasks over the course of the season is unfair.

3. Better care with the infrastructure. Hot goal timing, issues with the lit cylinder, and similar problems are all things that should not have occured.

4. Mitigation of the subjectivity and impact of fouls. A 50 point foul is a massive, massive penalty in a game that rarely exceed 200 points on a side. Particularly since the enforcement of those fouls is so uneven.

Now that's the game perspective. But what about the FIRST perspective? Has this season met the mission objectives and vision of FIRST? I would argue the answer is yes. The game is secondary to the experience being provided to the students, and at least with my team (3650) it's been an incredibly successful endeavor. While the game may not be the best for the top tier teams, the bottom tier teams have a genuine chance to contribute and feel useful. Team work and working together are critical, and even a simple box bot can assist with the ball and play meaningful defense.

In my opinion "buyer's remorse" only applies if you consider the success of the team to revolve around the success of the event. While the game is not perfect, it opened up the field to many of the weaker teams and gives everyone a chance to participate. I think that's an important fact that should not be thrown out with the issues related to the game itself.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

This so many times. In my opinion, if you are not using the weaker teams in your strategy you are not playing this game correctly. Everybody has a role in this game, everybody.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

This is just my opinion but I don't think that's very fair at all. I can understand that a team who ignores their alliance partners and just keeps the ball for themselves deserves to lose. But I've seen way to many matches where teams work hard forming strategies, and robots drop that strategy the first moment something go's wrong. Someone might miss a truss shot or miss scoring in a goal; the ball may fall out of a bot. As soon as this happens one or more robots on the alliance will just abandon all plans and take the ball to do whatever they want. Other times the match will begin to have robots just lose communications and sit on the field dead for the whole match.

What I'm trying to say is that it's not about the robots. There are robots for every strategy, but their are some teams that don't play well with any strategy.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

1 v 1 v 1 (add as many competitors as you please) often turns into 2v1 or something of that nature. It's been done in the distant past and it wasn't a great outcome. There are also logistical reasons for alliances as well, namely just making sure everyone plays an adequate number of matches.

Incidentally, Apple was (is?) partially owned by Microsoft. For a time Apple was kept alive in part due to support from Microsoft in the form of money and publishing Mac compatible versions of Office. Microsoft didn't have to do that, but it made sense to do so for a variety of reasons. Another quick example is Samsung and Apple. They both compete fiercely in the mobile phone market (and in the courts), but Samsung has also supplied parts to Apple for those same phones.

Competition in the real world, be it in business or anything else, is rarely ever about just clobbering your opponents outright. You're often dependent on those same people in complex ways (just try to wrap your head around car manufacturing joint projects). FRC does a pretty good job of simulating that while also creating a nice atmosphere that isn't like traditional sports.

To me it's less that 2014 is a bad game and more that 2011-2013 were all really good.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

GIVE THAT MAN A PRIZE. He wins the internet for the day.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I don't know if we have been watching the same game. I think this game is awesome. Yes, Qualifications points are hard to get because your score depended on your two alliance partners. Now if your robot is wicked awesome (think 16) you can win these on your own. We have a pretty good robot, however, it was hard to win games with the alliance selections we had. Sometimes we lost, sometimes we won. I was just thankful that teams were a good job scouting and as able to see what our robot could do.

What makes a good robot this year? You need a robot that can do EVERYTHING reasonably well. You have to be able to possess, pass, and score effectively. When you don't have the ball, you have to find ways of disrupting your opponent's cycle. This is truly a drivers game. A strategy game. There will be very few bots than can win on their own. This is why I love this game.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I recognize that it's ultimately a matter of phrasing rather than one of essential meaning, but seeing someone say it that way makes me sad. The goal should be to play better than the opposing alliance, not simply to defeat them. I prefer to think of it as competing with other teams instead of competing against them.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

It must be a Matt thing because I agree completely.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

What is inherently wrong with competition and even saying you want to defeat the other teams? This seems to be a common theme around the FIRST community, and frankly seems misguided. FIRST, just like the real world has winners and losers, so why not start encouraging students to pursue winning?

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I think it's pretty well established that this game was not thought through very well by the GDC. Too many calls, including scoring are up to the subjective judgement of the refs, and making 4 refs keep track of all of the silly foul rules and all of the scoring is too much. I really think the GDC should look for community input when they're designing games. They could recruit experienced mentors to review the rule book and look for errors, or loopholes (since there seem to be a ton of them) and have them sign a NDA until the season starts. This may be hard to enforce, but the GDC seems to overlook things that are far too obvious, specifically this year the logistics that refs have to handle, and the overall unreliability of leaving so much of this game up to subjectivism. I'm just curious how the GDC went from making quality games from 2011 - 2013, and suddenly making this blunder.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I have been hesitant to jump into this fray on any of the many threads, but here goes. The difference I try to keep in mind is the same one I keep in mind in coaching other sports. I am a competitive person by nature, and I think it is healthy to try to win. Whether I am coaching robotics, cross country, track, soccer or basketball I try to prepare my team to do their best and to devise strategies to win. But winning should not be THE goal. Not if you are actually trying to change the culture.

Many people will talk about all of the great benefits of competitive endeavors like this. They will talk about teaching the virtues of hard work, of overcoming challenges, learning to deal with frustration and how to deal with failure. But if you want kids to actually get those benefits you have to actually work to make sure they do. Because way too often what they see is adults giving lip service to all of those things but modeling winning being the measure of success. I see it this all the time in coaching other sports. I see it less frequently, but still see it, when I coach FRC.

I have never gone to a FIRST Robotics competitions and not had fun. Even years when our robot has not been good and we have not played well. This game is FAR from my least favorite, but I still had a ton of fun even with my least favorite game.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

It's one thing to get them to understand these concepts when the challenges are borne out of a relatively pure competition experience, when the mistakes and failure are theirs to own and to live up to, to learn from. When excessive challenges are thrown in their path that are out of their control, when failure and struggle is made more likely by a flawed COMPETITION SYSTEM that should be designed such that it works so well it is invisible but instead randomly and frequently penalizes teams for no just reason, that is something I don't feel students should have to cope with at an event.

It is natural to expect some level of "built-in" unfairness at a competition, as no system is perfect, but NOTHING like the sustained assault of blar that has been levied against teams this season. It is natural for teams to expect and require corrective action from the governing body to restore the competitive system to some semblance of sanity.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

There's nothing wrong with competition. Life is a series of competitions. You compete for jobs, you compete for a partner, you compete to get ahead. FIRST is not kindergarten where everyone gets a participation certificate and a pat on the back for showing up. There are definitely winners and losers and a competitive spirit is critical.

But at the same time FIRST is not just a competition, and focusing on winning and losing ignores the importance of GP and ensuring everyone has a good experience. The goal is to win, but not at the expense of someone else. If winning was the most important thing then teams wouldn't go out of their way to help each other with tools and spare parts. Nor would a team send a student over to help another team fix a problem with their robot, like our neighbors did last week when our robot was having electronic/programming/everything issues.

The bottom line is this; competition is just part of what makes FIRST so special. It's not even the most important part, which is why I suspect the culture of FIRST doesn't really focus on defeating an opponent. Everybody wants to win, it's ingrained in who we are. But the second you tell your students to focus on winning you lose a key part about the purpose of FIRST.

This is a fantastic point. Aerial Assist is not a "pure" competitive experience when you consider the subjective nature of the rules and how significant foul points are. As I understand it the purpose of the game within FIRST is to provide students with a design challenge and then give them a metric by which to judge the effectiveness of their designs. The arbitrary nature of much of this year's game harms that intent because the metric is subjective.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

In my opinion that's not an issue with the seeding system, but an issue with teams not making sure they get assist points in their matches so they seed higher. Knowing that the assist points are the first tie breaker needs to be planned for in your strategy. You can win most qualification matches on your own (if uou have a good robot), but if you don't attempt to get any assist points in the process you are not going to like where you finish in the rankings.

The top 3 teams at VARI in the rankings in my opinion were the top 3 teams at the regional. I honestly don't think it is messing the seedings up more than in the past.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Please don't fall into the trap of thinking FIRST is a competition to see who can win the most matches. The ultimate goal is to promote a culture where science and engineering and technology are celebrated. What I think is misguided is choosing to focus on defeating other teams.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

One thing I like about this game is how easy it is to build that "good robot". it's not rocket science to make a roller that can suck in and spit out a ball, nor to make a simple device that can make the ball fly up in the air.

Some of us look at the game as something that we play with the robots we built with the students. From that perspective, this pig looks all right.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I like this game from a concept perspective. I think the idea of making everyone rely on one another is a good thing, and if you want more robots in your area to be capable of helping you during qualifications, try mentoring some teams. You would be surprised to see how much it can help. In my opinion, leveling the playing field is exactly what was needed for the large amount of rookies joining FIRST this year, and I am happy to see that they have a game they can be useful in and not just be told to sit in a corner and let the 'elite' teams do all the work.

In terms of how it effects teams chances in participating in eliminations: As long as you show what you are capable of during qualifications, teams who are scouting will know that your qualification record does not reflect your robots ability to perform. Take 254 for example, they selected 973 and 2135 (43rd and 41st seed at CVR) because due to scouting they knew that they were capable robots.

I am not a huge fan of how difficult it is to track penalties this year, but complaining about it is not going to change anything. If it was, we would have had large changes to the rules after week 1 or 2. It is a little late in the season for the GDC to make so many large changes to the rules and many teams would complain that it is unfair because they did not get to play by the same rules at their regionals.

So lets just play with the cards we are dealt and enjoy the rest of the season!

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

You got it.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Find me a FRC game in which two immobile robots wouldn't severely harm your qualification score.

I think, if you overlook the reffing issues, this game is fantastic.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

One of the advantages of Districts is that compared to a traditional Regional you're allied with a larger percentage of the teams at the event and typically against almost all teams.
With 12 qualification matches each one also has less impact on your final ranking than a traditional 9-10 match regional.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Had the seeding been done based on autonomous points and not assist points you still would have been punished in the same way from not having alliance partners.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Please don't trivialize the challenge of getting inexperienced teams with rougher robots to cooperate as part of an alliance in qualifying.

Vet teams KNOW they need assists to seed high. Sometimes, partner teams simply don't have "it", no matter how much you try to "rally the troops". Robots don't move. Their pickup devices are poor to nonexistent. Their complete lack of knowledge of the rules and game cannot be overcome with a two minute refresher course. And please don't drop any "well you should work harder to get those robots to work at the event" line. Three NEOFRA teams (48, 3193, 4601 - part of a regional support alliance) arrived in Pittsburgh who were all very capable teams precisely because we support each other ALL YEAR LONG to ensure teams arrive at the event in solid shape. Let's stop with the patchwork help in the span of three days at an event - if you want all teams to be better at a competition, then START WORKING TOGETHER AND COLLABORATING WITH OTHER TEAMS IN YOUR REGION AHEAD OF TIME. It's not that hard...when you TRY. Then maybe these "forced teamwork" scenarios FIRST seems to adore may actually have a chance at bearing some fruit out on the field.

Anyway, after a few match cycles at Pittsburgh, I could quickly sort the wheat from the chaff, and based on how much chaff was on each stronger team's alliance, I could pretty clearly tell who was going to have a more favorable time seeding higher at the event. The final rankings (and assist scores) bore that out quite well.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

^^^^^
This

I have seen refs this year that I know are some of the best in the biz and whom I have nothing but respect for struggle with this game. I love the basic structure of the game, the auton that anyone can do but still gives better teams a challenge, and the lack of an end game but the refs were totally thrown under the bus.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I agree with this, too many people are lumping in the technical issues and the poorly planned ref issues with the game itself. I love the game, there are issues that are effecting it, but the game itself I think is solid. I feel really bad for the refs this year, there is just way too much on their plates.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

One of the fundamental problems with this game is that fate of teams is partially sealed by the random number generator. It's simply impossible to overcome bad alliance partners, especially with the assist points having such a huge impact on the game and the foul points being weighted so heavily. Take a look at this match. I'm sure there's video of it somewhere, but Red alliance barely won, and that was because of 40 foul points. The only robot that was capable of scoring at all on red alliance was us. Even with our double ball auto and 4+ single assist cycles, we could only win due to foul points because the other alliance had a robot that could move and actually hold onto the ball. 2283 easily had the highest scoring machine at Peachtree (I have data to back this up, and they were the first pick on my list), but their schedule made them go 4-4-1. How can a robot that scores 600 points by itself over the course of 9 matches only have 4 wins in qualifications? 3 words: Random Number Generator.

Yes, great teamwork is highlighted in this game, but so is the disparity between robots, and this combined with the random scheduler makes great teams have mediocre records in quals. If there's bad scouting ,these teams may even miss elims alltogether (see the 2014 palmetto regional).

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

The real challenge here is not creating a robot with YOUR team. The real challenge is to bring up the lower tier robots and have them compete on your team all the while contributing. Truly figure that one out and now you have accomplished that much more and maybe even will seed well.

I thought the season (post 85) would play out with teams working together during build more this year, but I have not really seen that play out.

In reality, there are times in life where you are paired up with someone that may not have as great of abilities as you. Do you bring them up, or try to work around them? All depends on the situation I guess.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

It seems like many of the FIRST elite, for the most part the same teams that you commonly see on CD, have just accepted it as a fact of life that most of FRC will continue to exist on a level far below him. Every year you see people here talk about how easy it is to score a few points in autonomous, build a simple manipulator, etc, but more than half of the teams in FRC come to competition without those things - then (some of) the "elite" teams complain when they are placed on alliances with them.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Calm down, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, just stating what has been used previously. Unfortunately, unless you can get a complete round robin done in your schedule there is always going to be ranking issues. I'm just stating that I don't think this year's is any worse than previous years.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I was not trying to trivialize it, if it came off that way I apologize.

I agree completely with your statements about bringing the level of the people up around you. That has been one of the big pushes the last couple of years here in VA and it only makes the competitions better when all of the teams continue to improve in quality.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

If you are arguing that you are "unfairly" being paired up with teams that don't necessarily build robots keeping in mind that assists are the first tie-breaker, just remember, this is similar to when in the past teams just sat still in auto when auto points were the tie breaker.

Did you try talking to the teams in your area during build season? The least you can do is inform young teams during build season and at competitions about strategy, for example this year emphasize the importance of assists. If you are in the hopes of having a level playing field, try and make sure people know how the game works instead putting it entirely on the GDC and the refs.

Using an example here, two rookie teams were Regional Winners at two different events in Ontario this year, namely Team 5076 and Team 4914. Both teams were mentored by a couple of veteran teams throughout the season, keeping in mind how the game was designed to be played, and putting emphasis on the little details. The two rookie teams came up with entirely different solutions to the game, but both were successful at their events because they knew what it takes, to do well in a game-to-game scenario.

Everyday, posts pop up simply highlighting OP's dissatisfaction with the GDC's attempt to make "teamwork" happen. If people want to keep talking about how FIRST is about teaching kids about real life, then this year should highlight "dealing with it".

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

The challenging thing is that these issues are related to the game's design. A game could be designed to avoid these issues, and this one wasn't. The game can't be good if the rules (what the refs have to deal with) aren't.

I like the physical challenge of picking up and scoring big balls. The game itself is fundamentally flawed. You can't do one game piece for three robots and not expect defense. You can't do one game piece for three robots where assists get you points and not have strength of schedule be the determinant of seeding more than any other year. You can't fix these by adding 100 rules that referees have to juggle in addition to tracking scoring or you'll get an emotionally charged mess. There are a lot of things to like about this game, and it's been fun, but it's just not compatible with the FRC format.

I think this game was pretty bad. Would I have not competed in this season knowing the game was this bad? I probably still would have done it. So in that sense I can't say I have "buyer's remorse" for paying the FRC entry fee. But I do expect far better. At a certain point, with the amount they expect us to take every rule seriously, follow everything to the letter, etc. we should get the same back.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

This is certainly possible at events this year, but in many cases, that involves taking away their auto balls, pulling the circuit breakers that control their catapults/shooters, zip-tying some protruding appendages into place, zip-tying their human players' hands behind their backs, and telling them to drive to the inbound station and sit there the whole match with their intake constantly spinning in reverse.

Is that more inspiring to those teams than a game where they could simply do what their robot was designed to do without the risk of dragging down their partners?

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I'm sorry, but in the 6 years I've been mentoring in FIRST I could count the number of times a teammate has "refused" to help on one hand. Maybe that is just the area I'm in but I can't imagine that happening so often that it effects your rankings that badly. I can't also imagine that you are stuck with 2 immobile robots so often that you have to do everything on your own.

By getting your opponents assist points you are now encouraging teams to not get assist points so you don't drive up your opponents tie breaker. They tried getting opponents points for rankings for Breakaway and it went horribly horribly wrong.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Strength of schedule is always an issue, this isn't anything new... and yet so many people are on here whining and complaining about it this year. Tough. Deal with it.

Last year, my team built an awesome robot. Unfortunately, once the game started playing out it was obvious we had chosen a losing strategy. We placed 4th at Lake Superior and were the first pick for the #1 seed, followed a few weeks later (with no changes to the robot, everything worked just as well as it did in Duluth) with 50th at North Star and the second pick of the #7 seed. I challenge anyone to point to results from this year that are any worse than those.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

For those that say inspiration is not about winning, think of the people you want to inspire as potential "fans". Winning teams have more fans than losing teams. I would be willing to bet that the University of Alabama could pull more fans to a game than the New Mexico State Aggies.

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For everyone saying that the ranking accuracy is worse or that elimination upsets are more frequent this year, I challenge you to provide evidence to support your assertion. Not anecdotes, not hypotheses, not thought experiments. Actual data to support your claim.

If that's your argument, isn't it a zero-sum game? Someone will always win and someone will always lose.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Inspiration certainly has winning as a big part, because that's one of the big ways we recognize those who excel. However, I try not to make a big fuss over winning when we can skip that and focus directly on the excellence/inspiration, particularly when we can control the latter and not the former.

The unfortunate thing about the inconsistent refereeing and strength of schedule and everything being pointed out here is it leaves those who work very hard year long and do excel without the recognition they deserve, while recognizing someone else. This does not send the message that excellence is something to strive for, but rather that you just have to get lucky and play the system.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

It's more ineptitude than refusal.

We went into Waterford with the idea that we would play for 3 assists in every match. Things went well our first match. Then over the next 3 matches we accumulated a grand total of 10 assist points (not 10 points per match - 10 points TOTAL over those 3 matches).

All three of those matches involved 2 boxes on wheels or a box on wheels plus an unusable intake. We tried our best to help them assist, but after 20 seconds of fumbling around in teleop and the referee still hasn't given an assist credit, the most recent bump into a ball by the partner sent the ball way across the field (with no assist credit), and all the while the opposing alliance is building up a lead, what can you do? At this rate we'll be lucky to get a single cycle completed and lose the match, or we can decide to scrap it and get 20 points a cycle using the one-man-show truss then shoot strategy. Since wins are still more important than assists, we had to abandon the assist strategy and just try as hard as we could to catch up and win the match.

Every one of those matches we had a good plan to get the assists, and every match it became clear that an assist just wasn't going to happen.

With all of that being said, that doesn't mean I hate the game. As was already mentioned, we would have difficulty with those matches in any game.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

This is extremely difficult to do, even with full scouting data - no one / two / three stats correlates perfectly with overall robot quality particularly with a multiple role game. You can't even accurately say how many points a robot scored in a match - who gets the assist points? I have data, if you have an idea what good evidence would be for this claim, let me know and I'll work on it.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

What about having your partner pin the ball against the wall? Or one strategy we've talked about is drop the ball in front of the low goal and have your partner push it in for the assist and the point. I understand it's easier said than done, we're making sure to ask the refs during the drivers meeting what they are going to consider an assist so we can attempt to think about some easy ways box bots can help generate assists.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

This data may be difficult to come by, since the results have been inconsistent across events. In my experience, where the foul-heavy, inconsistent, or even incompetent refing is taking place, there are upsets and anomalous rankings. Where these are not a problem, rankings are accurate and high seeds go far in elims. But as you said this is anecdotal, and even the preliminary judgments of foul prevalence, inconsistency, inappropriate rankings, and upsets will be somewhat subjective unless backed up by data, before any such conclusion can be drawn with confidence. Some suggestions would be to look at, for each event, Winning Margin without foul points stats, stats on whether red or blue won elims matches, stats on declines in selections, what sort of actions determined upset results (clean match, fouls, etc.), and things of that sort. Perhaps a correlation can be drawn, perhaps not.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I see an awful lot of people hating on "this year's game" as a bad challenge, but the only legitimate issues consistently sited are 1) Fouls and 2) The concept of one game piece at a time.
Now, only one of those things pertain to the main flow of the game. Fouls are like guardrails that you have to design your strategy around. The strategy part is robust enough, it is just that the guardrails are made of gasoline and spikes and are placed in the middle of the road this year.

I agree the foul system is broken this year. But let's stop harping on how the game concept itself is the worst in recent memory. The game itself has some issues, but let's stop blaming the GDC so heavily for the game itself.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Interesting you mention that: that was our strategy (to have them pin the ball against the rail). We even briefed the refs that we were going to do it. Then the ball got put in play and it got bumped, started rolling around, and it seems it becomes nearly impossible to track down after that starts to happen.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Comparing FRC to the corrupt debacle that is college football is an absolute dead end, in my opinion. I don't care how many fans Alabama has.

Follow that road where it leads and FRC teams should recruit top Lego League talent, and try to convince smart and talented kids to leave the teams across town because, you know, that team are losers.

The "fans" who show up to support my team are the parents, teachers, and younger siblings of my students, as well as our alumni. And each year that number grows because those kids accomplished so much to be proud of.

I'm sorry if your team has had a bad year, seriously. But my team, in our first regional, had an apparent victory in QF snatched after the fact due to the difficulties of reffing this game, and in the rematch their robot was torn in half. They have rebuilt from scratch the frame and shooter/collector to get ready for the next event. And they are HAPPY. In fact, the kids who came back from Utah say that it was life changing for them. I agree. They have done everything in their power, which was more than they ever thought possible. And that's enough to make me like FRC, and this (flawed) game.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Seriously though, the NMS Aggies have an awesome logo.



NCAA Imagery award winners for sure!

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Last year, many teams did not have any hanging or consistent frisbee scoring working by the Duluth event, not to mention very few consistent auto modes. Hanging consistently every match was a solid 50 points and no hanging and just a few frisbees made that hard to beat. By Week 5, there were several teams that had cycling more refined and could put up closer to 70 points with frisbees alone (plus auto!). By the end of the season, the more refined cycling strategies proved more capable than a dedicated climbing strategy. Like you said, you chose a strategy that unfortunately did not pan out at higher levels.

However, this year, the dominant strategy is undoubtedly to get at least one assist and consistently truss and score for 10, along side a consistent auto mode. While in Duluth, the rankings reflected this very well, with the best robots all in the top 8, at North Star, the 5 best robots were scattered across the top 30, with the third best machine (by my judgment), 3883, all the way down at 29. This was not because they chose a strategy that lost its effectiveness as the season progressed. This was because they played against literally every other good robot at the event, and never with one of them. 3928 was stuck at 12 and had no choice but to accept the number 2 seed, 4244, a box on wheels that never touched a ball once in their two quarterfinal matches. North Star also had several upsets in elims, while Duluth had none (the blue alliance won a single elimination match). All of this corresponds very neatly with my observation of the reffing and field reset quality at both events, as well as with the strength of schedule of all teams in question. Maybe you could say that the refs made drawing fouls and not having field faults a more competitive strategy at North Star, so the dominant strategy I'm talking about was no longer effective. But I think that would make a lot of people pretty unhappy, and I think that's what this whole conversation is about...

So it's a little rough to tell people to just "Deal with it" when they clearly have been and they clearly should not have to.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

We shouldn't blame the people who designed the game for the flaws in what they designed? Who should we blame then?

The issue with the fouls isn't that they exist. Fouls are necessary to shape player behavior and ensure safety and fairness for people and robots. The issue is that the fouls are being inconsistently enforced. You can't design a strategy around an arbitrarily enforced rule set.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I agree that's it's difficult to do, and harder still to separate whatever stats we can create from noise (given that all the historical context is flawed at best because of the constantly changing games). But I don't think decisions should be made on anecdotes or small sample sizes. We have these types of gripes about many games. There was a point last year where people felt that Ultimate Ascent was an upset friendly game as well. Commentary on the ranking system and serpentine draft happen for many FRC games, not just this one.

As for suggestions of how to measure the impact, there are a few ways you could go about it. None are foolproof, but they may at least begin to paint a picture of what's happening, and hopefully would be useful for the community as a whole in the future. First and foremost, tracking what alliance's win in each round, and which alliances win tournaments as a whole. There are some already compiled in this thread and this thread pertaining to partial data sets from 2012-2014. While it certainly measures the combined results of several different variables, I'm uncertain how much delta we'd see in the final evaluations.
As much as I loathe OPR for comparing teams, over a significantly large sample size it could provide some high level information as well. Tracking how well OPR correlates to rank for 2014 compared to other games would be interesting. If you have significant scouting data, picking any one or two meaningful stats to see if any correlation exists may also be interesting in terms of helping to establish a baseline, even if it can't be directly applied to the 2014 game. I'm not sure if the sample size would be large enough for tracking declines to be worth much, but it would be interesting.

Any single statistical analysis would probably be flawed. But if we saw that multiple methods suggested similar conclusions, there may be validity to it.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Go watch some videos from 2013 Lake Superior, and then try and tell me the seeding was because the nature of the game changed - there were plenty of matches we won where our robot climbing had absolutely nothing to do with it because we screwed up on getting set up for the climb. We were carried in those matches and ranked much better than we really deserved, based purely on robot performance.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Implying that blue alliance should never win because they clearly have the inferior robots. Nicely done.

You said it "so and so's machine was easily in the top 5 robots" according to your judgement. Why can't it be that they were ranked lower because maybe they DID adopt a strategy that lost its effectiveness as the season progressed. You are now simply undermining the improvements that the opposing teams could have made before or during the event. If you really think that a team can pick one strategy and stick to it from Week 1 of competition all the way thru Week 6 and Champs, I'm afraid you've got it wrong my friend.

Every team thinks they have built the best robot for the competition and to the best of their abilities, some clearly have. But that does not necessarily give you the right to openly criticize the robots that you may not be a fan of, or the game when the robots you are a fan of, don't do so well.

Now remains the question of the refs and the field reset who you have now called out in two separate posts. A lot has been put on the shoulders of these volunteers, as it usually has, and they are trying to do the best they can to make sure the event and the matches run smoothly and in a fair manner. If you are so concerned with the level at which the calls are being made or how the game pieces are being handled, try putting yourself in their shoes and see how it is from "that" side of the field.

And bringing up another point, think of going to an event with an odd number of teams. There will be teams playing "surrogate" matches, and even these teams are decided at random. So you keep your fingers crossed that the team you're partnered with moves, can pick up a ball, pass it, play defense effectively while they don't have the ball, and do this repeatedly over the duration of a match. Match schedules are designed to maximize the number of teams you face at an event. There is a reason match making is random as it gives each of the teams the same chance to face the others.

You really cant rant about you getting the short end of the stick in a randomized draw. Thus, deal with it.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

You answered it yourself:

The game is okay. The existence of the fouls is okay. The thing that's not okay is the system by which the referees, using too-slow touch panels, are tasked with assessing not only fouls but scores as well.

If you must blame someone, blame the engineers who implemented that system. (But don't blame them too harshly, because they're working within the limitations of using the materials at hand.)

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I blame whoever made the decision that dedicated scorers weren't needed and placed the extra work on the refs.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

This is exactly what FRC is about. If you measure your success by winning you are doing it wrong. Yes winning the game is awesome, and I get wrapped up in the moment as a mentor, but this year's game is about teamwork. We knew our biggest challenge going into Wisconsin was figuring out how to help getting less able robots to help get assist points. We still don't have any great insights, but it sure is awesome when you win a match with the help of some partners that didn't think they would be able to contribute.

It isn't as if less able teams aren't trying to win. They want to win just as much as you. But as veteran teams we need to find ways to help them become more successful. You cannot just tell a team 5 minutes before a match that they have this and that responsibility and then just ignore them when they don't come through. If you find yourself showing up to Regionals without competitive teams its up to your team to reach out and help them during build season. This organization is much better when we collaborate and help each other out, instead of letting new teams flounder and eventually die out because their students never get a chance.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I do agree that the game concept is not awful.

Most years, the elite teams could, by themselves, win most qualification matches. There were so many 2012 robots that couldn't get any balls in, or had extremely low accuracy. This year, a single elite team partnered with two boxes on wheels can do nothing against an alliance of three very mediocre robots.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Your own anecdote shows that there are plenty more factors in play than simply game design and reffing. The scheduling algorithm can carry certain teams or doom others to mediocre qualification records, regardless of game. The not-so-random algorithm in 2007 skewed rankings towards functional younger teams. Similarly, this isn't the only year a "box on wheels" has ranked in the top 8, and having them rank in the top 8 is proof that the disadvantages presented by lower quality partners is not a dominant factor in the ranking system.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I believe it would be more inspiring for more teams to work with other teams during build to make them capable partners in a game where it was clear on day 1 that viable partners were a necessity. I know that is probably a pipe dream given the constraints of a six week build and the limited resources of even "successful" teams.

Playing devils advocate, why should you "clearly not have to" deal with it. Most adults have had to "deal with it" hundreds of times in thier lives. Why should this be any different?

My answer would be for the amount of money spent going to these competitions, one has a reasonable expectation that the competition is played out fairly to all.


Going back to the original question of buyer's remorse, I feel that the game still accomplishes the goal of "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology". That is what I signed up for. It is a proven means to inspiring the students on my team for sure.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I must have misunderstood your original post. My apologies.

I do think your climbing helped you more in Duluth than it did at North Star. There is also something to be said for the fact that the 1st seed selected you in Duluth for your climbing ability, but the same climbing ability was not selected until coming back up the serpentine at North Star. But it sounds like this is irrelevant.

You have a good point. There are ranking inconsistencies every year, produced by the schedule. However, some people (myself included) feel that there are more severe inconsistencies introduced by the foul points, the field reset, and the inconsistent and unreliable refereeing.

The point of the ranking system is to predict robot performance in elimination rounds. An inaccurate ranking system is one that fails to do this. In elimination matches, the higher seed alliance (or the one which beated the higher seed) is red, while the other is blue. So blue winning is what is considered an upset, and is generally thought to be correlated with an inaccurate ranking system. It's just statistics, not an absolute.

From watching their performance both in Duluth and at North Star, 3883 improved their game and consistently demonstrated excellence at the game tasks during qualification matches, more so than many of the 28 teams who outranked them. Yes, anyone's judgment will be flawed and subjective, but I watched many of the teams at North Star play and actually put some thought into this, I hardly think it's just because I "like their robot."

My point is that there are ranking anomalies because of the refereeing. The schedule is a randomized draw every year, but the claim is that something makes the rankings less accurate this year, and I believe I have shown some evidence of that. The refs make an admirable effort to catch everything and do it right. However, we have had the misfortune to interact with some who are not so professional about making mistakes or missing calls, and some even stray from the rules and updates openly. This may be because they already have too much to worry about, but whoever is at fault, if anyone, it's a problem, and I would like the situation to improve. We can argue about this stuff, or we can recognize problems and try to improve.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

A bit off topic, but this stuff is amazing for quick robot mods (especially for building quick backboards/hoops to hold the gamepiece).

http://www.homedepot.com/p/SharkBite...B100/202033006

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

We ended up designing an Assist mechanism that passively contained and possessed the ball, easily loaded by a Human Player, until the drive base accelerated and it would dump it out. Made from Home Depot PVC pipe and fittings for <$15.

We marketed several of them at our event, but found it very difficult to work with the teams that had not read the rules and did not know how the game played. Even making the assembly and use as simple as possible, human players would have difficulty loading it and drivers would have difficulty using it. We learned a lot from this experience, mostly that these teams need help long before the event starts if it's going to be effective.

We have been using the same PEX pipe for various catcher and ball guidance prototypes. Really great stuff.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Give us Colin back. I know that was his idea.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Perhaps on offense, rules can be changed to credit an assist for mere CONTACT with a ball in a unique zone. Are you a statue of sadness? Partners can just plink balls off your motionless frame and get credit for the assist. Problem solved! Woot woot.

Defensive possession rules would remain the same as before.

Let's rolllllll for it.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

[quote=Mastonevich;1368054]I believe it would be more inspiring for more teams to work with other teams during build to make them capable partners in a game where it was clear on day 1 that viable partners were a necessity. I know that is probably a pipe dream given the constraints of a six week build and the limited resources of even "successful" teams.

I agree with helping other teams but obviously the 6 week build schedule makes it difficult. I would like to see rookies and perhaps 2nd year teams have an extra week of build season after bag night for veterans so that veteran teams would have more opportunity to help without loss of their own build time.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

You're kidding, right? 2 boxes on wheels and a robot that can do nothing but pick up the ball can still turn out 31 point cycles. Put a launcher on one of them and you're talking 40-50 point cycles.

I don't know if anyone has noticed, but "elite teams" like 254, 118, et al are still winning regionals. 118 cleaned up in Alamo and I can tell you as someone who went there only 10-15 robots could even play the game. When I mean "play the game", I'm telling you our scouting meeting eliminated 32 of the 64 teams on Friday night because the robots could not move, had repeated no-shows, or demonstrated a lack of understanding how the game is played. 422 is not an elite team, which is why we went 5-5 in quals. 118 is an elite team, which is why they went undefeated. As a drive coach who personally worked with them, their robot is a well engineered machine, but what really mattered was the collection and execution of data from the competition.

Please go look at results of regionals. Elite teams are still winning regionals.

People who have giant issues with the core tenets of the game are people who refuse to accept that some games do not cater to their teams. I don't think it's breaking news to anyone that this is the most fundamentally unique game in the 3v3 era, if not ever. And because it is unique and because of the turnaround for FRC games, there are blemishes. This is not an inherently bad game. The core of Aerial Assist is the part that is very well received. In both surveys I turned in, I marked the game as "very good" but detailed out what everyone already knows: the administering of the game is damaging to its potential and transitively the potential of teams that play it.

I'm mostly concerned that FRC is going to take feedback from the wrong people: those who fail to understand the difference between the game achieving its core objectives and the game functioning at its correct capacity. I think FRC's GDC has earned another shot at trying a game like Aerial Assist next year instead of reverting back to more traditional games.

The ranking system has been and will continue to be at least a litte screwy, and this year's ranking system ranks somewhere behind Ultimate Ascent's pretty good sort and far ahead of the comedy that was 2012 and 2010 sorting.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Is this necessarily a bad thing? Also, as noted above, I'm not sure it's true.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

After reading the rules at kickoff I told our RD that she'd need more ref volunteers to act as dedicated scorekeepers/assist trackers. I can't tell you how disappointed I was to later discover that something I recognized after 2 hours with the rules was technically impossible due to the design of the scoring system.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I'm kind of disappointed this seems to have gotten lost in the thread. Beyond the technical issues (pedestal, slow ref touch screens, confusing defense rules, weird interpretations of possession at some events, overpowered fouls, etc), this is the real beef I have with this game.

OP, if you really feel like FRC was a waste of money this year, there's no reason for you to of continue to compete next year. Not that I like the game, but I don't think it was so terrible we won't register next year.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Personally I really like that idea. It would be one solution to the problem for sure. I can only imagine the discussion if it were to be implemented however.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

As I've posted elsewhere, I think the problem is that the GDC didn't give the teams sufficient warning that this would be a full alliance game with team play required. Just building a robot in 6 weeks is difficult enough, much less trying to improve the robots of other teams. Instead, if the GDC has announced in September that alliance play was going to be emphasized and that teams should start improving the skills and abilities of all of the other teams, then relying on another team would be much less risky. (I have more thoughts here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=128301)

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Why?
In most team sports you need to rely on others. The alliance (match team) is made up of individuals (in this case individual teams). If you haven't planned on playing well with others, then you have not planned well.

Do you truly believe that your seeding had nothing to do with your robots performance, and was only due to a random number generator???

After playing this game, I believe that the game (this year more than any other) is won in the strategy session before the match, and that those that did a poor job at maximizing EACH robots strength (not just their own) are the teams/alliances that will do poorly.

The highlighted section is why I completely disagree with you. Teamwork (especially within the alliance) is a thing that is valued. Those that do not (and will not) play well with others should not be rewarded.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

When I play soccer, I don't show up on Saturday and take the pitch with 10 random other people. Tell me one, since you claim "most," legitimate sport in which you have random teammates.

I didn't see any alliance last year that didn't have some depth of strategy in the eliminations of CMP. I never saw a one robot carries all. Whether it was blocking a full court shooter, preventing a 50 point climb, or coordinating cycles and rotating defensive play, everyone had some sort of strategy. And I think you're making a blanket statement by accusing all the teams that haven't had the best schedules of "not playing well with others" or "not strategizing before a match."

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Keep bringing it strong. We went from 4th to 10th as a result of one really, really bad tech foul call that cost us a win (which numerous others on here have panned upon seeing the video of the call). I find that drop to be a huge roadblock dropped in our path by a failed system - one that prevented us from having the appropriate chance to pick our alliance and have more control over our elimination round journey - an opportunity that we had EARNED but were denied.

And that was just at one event. It so happened to be the one in which we were operating at our highest level this season. We've been smacked in the face by so many different types of game management transgressions this year, I've gone numb to it all.

My only hope for any type of recovery from this season of blar is an invite to the Championship off the waitlist, which as I've said before, I am very, very doubtful we will get.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

This is not a 'Pig in a poke'. When you signed up for FIRST, you knew you'd have random teammates. That is 'part of the challenge'. This is not a new rule from FIRST.

On the first day of competition you received your match schedule. If you did not go to each and every alliance partner (at a minimum) and MAKE SURE they could drive (drive train worked) and move during autonomous (just a few lines of code) and pin the ball for an assist, then you did yourself (and your alliance partners) a disservice. Helping to fix alliance partners BEFORE your match really helps this year.

Again, this game is won (more than most FIRST games) at the strategy sessions BEFORE any match, and is won by maximizing EACH robots capabilities, not just having 1 robot carry the alliance.

Last years strategies are not this years strategies. Last year was one of the worst in terms of teamwork between alliance members because 1 'uber' robot could carry an alliance. Again, this year teamwork starts before the match. Those that fail to plan are planning to fail.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Check, check, and check. But if you've been reading, teams have done this, and this year is different because you DO have to rely on your teammates to maximize points scoring, unlike last year, you're right. But what's to prevent the other alliance fom completely rolling over you due to a randomized schedule? The average team barely has the resources to manage their own robot. Now I'm hearing that if they want to win, they need to be bringing up all the other teams in their area, and then fixing mechanical and software issues for every one of their alliance partners at the regional. That's just spreading teams too thin.

To even further what I'm saying, we pretty much did exactly what you've been saying. But I would consider our team to be fortunate due to a relatively large base of members and experience.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

1> If an 'uber' alliance forms against you, it won't matter what year or game it is, you'll most likely lose unless you are also on an 'uber' alliance
2> If it's because your alliance is made of 'brave little toasters' then this is your year, because (unlike last year) those 'toasters' can actually help your alliance (as long as the alliance plays as an alliance and not a collection of teams). <-- This more than all else.

I know that is is very difficult to rely on total strangers, and this game does require that. That said, collaboration is a good thing in FIRST, and I suspect will be part of the next few years games.


Which is why the elites are still rising to the top.

Average teams are average for a reason.

... and we didn't because we are still building our program (but we're heading in the right direction :D ).

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

That isn't what I said at all. My point is that we need to cut this culture of negativity and focus on what specifically is contributing to the bad experience. The game as a whole works on multiple levels, provides a decent bit of action under certain circumstances, and has roles for each "level" of team. The game isn't fundamentally broken, there are just a few key aspects that are not positives.

I don't think you would believe that someone would actually argue that the existence of fouls is the issue in a game.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Daniel,
That was Abhishek criticizing this game for being too rough on average teams. Not for being too rough on elite teams. He's noting that elite teams with 50+ highly experienced students and mentors have even MORE of an advantage over average to average-plus teams that can just about manage to build a decent robot and keep it running. We simply don't have the time and resources to rebuild ten other robots at the competition so they'll have alliance mates that can help with assists. I know a heck of a lot about robots, but I'm the single best resource my team has and I don't have time to fix all the robots that I'd need to fix to give us assist-capable alliance mates in every match.

I think perhaps the side claiming that bad robots are a severe handicap haven't quite clearly explained the huge difference we see between this year and last. In Ultimate Ascent, the contribution of robots on the alliance was more or less linear. 3 robots cycling meant 3 times the points. 2 robots meant twice the points. A slow or non-functional robot could, at worst, block a feeding station and slightly slow down cycle times. Elite offensive teams were free to let other teams try their hand at scoring or climbing, or whatever they wanted to do. Elite teams felt safe letting other teams show off their robots and try to do what they designed them to do.

In Aerial Assist, a slow or non-functional robot is rather more harmful to an alliance. 3 working robots assisting efficiently means 4 times the points of one robot. 2 robots is twice the points. And slow or non-functional robots can severely hamper your offense, because they can (purposefully or not) hold up the only scoring object you'll ever get, completely choking your scoring abilities. This year, a bad robot can easily lose you a match through trapping a ball, missing an auton shot, or getting a deadly technical foul. This year, elite teams that want to win matches and control their destiny have to highly manage any of their alliance mates that are less than capable.

You have an intake that chokes on balls and jams occasionally? Perhaps you should go play defense. You have a good intake but a questionable shooter you're really proud of? Sit by the HP and run your intake in reverse the whole match so we can get that first assist. You seem to be having difficulty with your shooter and intake. How about we take that off and add some PVC so you can possess a ball briefly and get us an assist? No, we don't want you trying to do anything else with the ball because that will slow down our cycles...

You're right that winning these matches takes much more strategy and cooperation among teams. The downside to that is that the less capable teams are going to get told rather often that they shouldn't be trying to use that 50% working shooter they've been working on all season. They should be team players and drive around pinning balls to the wall to get that critical assist.

It's not about the robot, but students do spend 6 or more weeks building that robot, and they're kind of invested in seeing it work and do what they designed it to do. A game that encourages a team to give up on a system because it's not working 100% is a pretty frustrating game for a lot of people to play.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

On the one hand yes. On the other hand, I've specifically stopped helping with BEST robotics and stopped pointing people in their direction because their game designs are perennially silly, overly complicated, and not very fun to play or watch. I'd rather spend my time on and point people at VRC that has entry fees and kit costs than at the free-to-teams BEST simply because their game designs are so lacking. I'm not saying FRC is there yet, but it's not impossible for them to get to that point.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Interesting thoughts about BEST. I hyper-agree with your analysis of their games. We still use it as training for our new students and for upcoming student leaders in the fall, because of the similar timeline, and because our budget goes to FRC. Still, it's interesting to see a mirror of my opinion in your post.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Something like: 4967 (who won Gull Lake as #2 seed) clearly doesn't need more time, why should we give them more time? :rolleyes:

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Thank you. all of it, exactly what I was thinking too.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Actually, this was the point of this thread. My OP was a bit rambling, and lost the original intent which was this:

We are both customers and salesmen for FIRST. As customers, we expect a quality product that meets or exceeds our expectations. My expectations were not met this year. As a customer, I don't feel I got my money's worth. To be clear, I didn't invest any of my money (my company invested a good bit) but I invested hundreds of hours of my time. As salesmen, we need a product that is easy to sell, that any person off the street could walk up and say "that's cool! I want to buy that!". This years game was not an easy sell. Watching most of the qual matches was painful, confusing, and boring.

I am not saying I won't be a customer and salesman next year, I just hope that by letting the vendor know we are not satisfied with his product, the vendor will make the necessary adjustments to improve next year.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

Travis, this is a really good idea. If you guys are coming to the CORI event this year, we are still considering some rule tweaks. (Including changing some of the tech fouls to fouls.)

I read through these threads and I feel as though there are two distinct threads going. One is frustration with administration of the game (registering possessions, inconsistent fouls, cycles not starting on time) and the other is frustration with the basic rules of the game (you have to rely on your partners).

On the first subject I agree. At the start of the year (and even more after Crossroads) I have felt that what is needed are dedicated scorekeepers, so that a few more eyes are watching the match and the referees are focusing on fouls and not scoring. At Crossroads there were a number of matches with such problems. It may have just been my distorted perspective because I was refereeing there, but it seemed to me that at Queen City there were fewer big issues. It helped that the head referee had already refereed this year.

I am planning on recruiting enough volunteers for our off season event that we can have two people at each of the near side pads to watch for and record possessions, trusses, catches and scores. That way someone can stay focused on field at all times. Then the far side referees can focus on foul calls. This is not the first time I have felt that dedicated scorekeepers were needed. And in my opinion this is not the worst year for such problems. I think the inconsistent minibot races in 2011 might have been the worst example. "I know your bot slammed into the top of the tower first, but that wasn't hard enough to trigger the sensor, so you lose." Though the "automatic" scoring last year was certainly an issue. And there are always some issues. I can remember several times when controversial calls or no calls decided a match in the eliminations at a regional.

As for the complaints that this year's game makes good robots particularly vulnerable to bad alliance partners in qualification and thus to particularly unfair rankings, I am not buying it. As Sean pointed out already, I think nothing will ever beat 2007's match selection algorithm. I completely agree that this game is one in which one awesome robot cannot beat an alliance of three pretty good robots all on its own. The key is all on its own. I have yet to find even one parent or supporter (non team members) who went to watch this year and thought the game was boring. The consensus among the parents who have been to multiple competitions was that this one was more exciting and easier to understand than any they have seen since 2011. In spite of this being our worst on field performance in that time.

(Note: I am not directing this at posters in this thread. These observations were from my own observations.) I heard a few (not many) members from a few "good" teams being snarky about "bad" robots/teams needing to "read the rules and understand the game." And then complain that they got beat by a couple of mediocre robots and a box on wheels. When one of these comments was made, a team member for 3494, the Quadrangles asked the student "Why is it more important for them to do what you want than for you to do what they want? You are a team and you have to play the game together." Any response by me couldn't have improved on that.

I think it showed in the Quadrangles play at QCR. In my view they had were one of the two or three best performing teams there after the Bomb Squad. They had a good robot, but they (as well as 3266 and 3324) seemed to me to be the best of the teams at Queen City at adapting their style of play to compliment their allies. Their alliance in eliminations (with 868 and 3506) played very well. This is not a diss aimed at team 16. Their robot was just so good that almost everyone seemed to try to let them direct the flow of the game, and they were able to race down and help their allies with blocking or defense, then scoop up a ball and race down and score with it almost at will. And they showed in the finals that two teams that play well (2665 and 447) with an awesome robot are really
hard to beat.

I think that some teams who usually have really good robots are used to being able to dominate a game on their own. That is really hard to do in this game. I think that is a good thing. I think the laments that this system is really hurting the mid range robots is a little disingenuous. This year a team with a decent ball gatherer and a decent drive train can be a really effective robot. If they can score in autonomous and make truss shots they can be a top robot if they drive well.

We have never had one of the "awesome robots." So I would say that in terms of on the field competitiveness we are a mid range team. Our competitive experience at Crossroads was certainly frustrating. We had some cRIO issues (a couple times when other robots drove into us) that messed up our autonomous until Saturday morning. We scored in every match, but we had some relatively bad luck in terms of alliance pairings and fouls. We didn't get picked for eliminations, which hasn't happened to us at a regional since 2011. (Just to highlight an anecdote to show that random chance is not the exclusive bane of this year, in 2011 we didn't even get picked for eliminations at Buckeye and yet went 9-1 with a number 4 seed in qualifying at the Championships.) Yet my team still liked the game. They were down about not making eliminations, but certainly still had a lot of fun.

I coach cross country and track and field in addition to robotics. We have a saying we use a lot: "You can't control the quality of your opposition." My CC team won a big school state title in 2011. That same team would not have been able to win in 2012 or 2013. The team that won those two years was way too good. I had a 4th place team in 2010 that could have won in several years earlier in that decade. The second place team in 2013 is also in our district. They would have won most of the other years in the past two decades.

Which brings me back to my original point. You should be striving to win. And you have every right to expect the people putting on the event to do everything they can to make the event enjoyable and fair. And to be upset when mistakes, particularly avoidable mistakes, mess up results. (I am not telling people to stop complaining about the mistakes and issues. That is part of the process of improving. It is also part of making other people think about issues. When I talk to someone like Travis and hear what he is upset with, it makes me think more clearly about what is wrong and how to correct it. Hopefully this will make the Central Ohio Robotics Invitational a better event. Hopefully it also gives insight to those with the power to make changes in the regular season.) You also should remember that sometimes things will not go your way. Try not to confuse the frustration of things not going your way with the frustration of things not "going the way they should." Try to remember that winning is explicitly not the purpose of FRC competition.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

The issues I see:
1. The game requires more interaction between alliance partners to successful. That is a stated goal of the GDC. It certainly meets that goal. Personally I few this as a positive.
2. The field hardware (pedestal lights in particular) & MMI design have big issues. This really should be a major focus going forward since it very fixable.
3. The penalty point values are out of line with scoring. This is especially painful since teams often don’t know why the penalty was assigned even after the match. So it is hard for teams to modify their match play. This is much like the minibots in Logomotion.
4. A very hard game to referee. I don’t think the referee training is up to snuff. The referees have the hardest job at the competition. They are required to make judgments in real time with little chance of correction. Not a job I would want. Thanks to the volunteers that take it on. Many game rules are kinda sorta the same year to year, but change enough that you can’t make calls on last year’s rules. (I know that is a Duh, but it happens) Case in point is robot interaction with contact inside the frame perimeter. That changed even during the season.
I think this is a good game that should be a great game. Fortunately the management at First sees the same issues. I am looking forward to next year’s game.
5th week teams should fill out that were emailed to the teams contact. It closes today.

The answer to the too few seeding matches to get an accurate rank is scouting. It is one of the things that separate the good teams from the great teams.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

The interesting part of this is the diversity of the customers themselves. It appears some like the game as they are more "productive" than in the past, others dislike it because they are less "productive". Some really focus on the fouls, while others seem to let it slide and simply just enjoy the competition for what it is.

One of the sayings I have is "Everything is a compromise", this game included. Something will be gained and something will be lost.

It would be interesting to get the numbers. The survey seems to be one tool with indicators and it appears to me between 60% and 80% overall and around 90% positive rookie responses the game appears to be liked by more than disliked.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I am well aware of 4967 since we played with them and they are very good but I also think they are more the exception than the rule. Most rookie teams would benifit from some help from verteran teams and I would submit the veteran teams that helped out would also benifit by seeing new ideas that might be able to be implimented or gain a strategy they had not thought of.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

^^^^^^
This.

I once had the opportunity to visit with a ref at our competition. He shared with me something that I carry in my heart to this day. And yes I know some of you are going to say, 'Yeah right, whatever' but here is what he said and I believe as well..

"Yes, I want to beat you but only if your robot is competing at its very best. This isn't all about winning. This is about working together to help everyone compete at their very best."

Inspiration comes in many forms from within FIRST. Some teams find inspiration in winning and others simply in accomplishing the challenge of building a competitive robot each year. We fall into the later category. We are an 'average' team that tries to improve in some way each year. We find our inspiration in that fact and in what is possible. We compete against some of the best FRC has to offer in terms of talent and capabilities and I tell my team, 'If you cannot look at what they accomplished and appreciate it as a feat of engineering prowess you are not here for the right reasons.'

Yes, I get caught up in the competition. Yes, I enjoy a good match. Yes, I want to bring home a blue banner BUT it is not the end-all-be-all of my team and should not be what keeps us all coming back.

I personally feel our greatest accomplishments are what we (my team, FIRST, and everyone who competes in it) inspire my students to do. They are going on to bigger and better things in college and in life. They are better equipped to deal with disappointment, leadership, and teamwork. They are entering their careers earning double and triple what I earn as a 10-year high school teacher and even better than that, they are mentoring middle and high school engineering (mainly robotics :D ) teams in their towns. That is my ultimate goal and reward for every hour I spend away from my family during build season. It is what keeps my engineering mentors coming back year after year and it is why I will continue in FIRST for the foreseeable future.

Please, stop beating this game to death. The game is what it is love it or hate it. Like some things in life it's time to accept it for what it is and make the very best that we can out of it.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

This isn't the first year that CD has gone wild over how much they dislike the game and it won't be the last.
Remember that: No game will please everyone. Also, the forum's "consensus" could very well be a vocal minority.
Every year there are people who don't do as well as they would like, so they come here pointing out "flaws" with the game. What people seem to forget is that every single competition on the planet will have similar issues. If they aren't apparent, it's because they have gone through a long process of correction or because we've grown up with them.
Also, the secrecy of the game challenge is one of the things that defines FIRST. There are other robotics competitions that are the same every year. It is inevitable when trying to come up with something unique and interesting that there will be side effects.
I agree that there are problems with this game's design and implementation that might have been prevented, but let's not overreact as if this is a problem that we wouldn't face doing anything else competitive and exciting.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

I think if the GDC had given us lead time about the increased interactivity this year (e.g., see how the FTC GDC is giving an early statement about the water game next year), more experienced teams could have helped with managing the expectations of the newer teams. The older teams could have said "don't spend time on trying to accomplish every task, instead focus on doing specific tasks very well." As was pointed out, a single robot doing poorly had a much less impact than this year. In 2012, we nearly tied an alliance of three robots that placed 2-3-4 at our regional when our two alliance partners didn't even show up. I can't imagine that we could pull that off this year. (And I don't have a problem with that so long as we can prepare.)

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

This is standard advice I (and I'd hope many others) give to new teams every year. Unfortunately, it's not always followed.

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

You're aware that yesterday was April 1st, right?

Re: Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke
 

This. I think a lot of people are overlooking issues like this.

For instance--and I'm not implying this is what Kevin meant--there's been a lot of 'vocal minority' explanations floating around. Let's posit for a moment that this is true, and the general majority has no abnormal issues with the game.

While this postulate is certainly a positive, it overlooks the importance of that particular vocal minority. I don't say this as a back-patting method. If you woke me up on 3 January 2014 and said that Jim Zondag is going to write 'Spanking the Children' on this game, that Karthik would stop MCing Ontario*, that I'd personally know of multiple key and certified volunteers considering not participating as much next year, that my very-veteran head refs were going to warn us of the hardship, that they'd rightly need a vent valve to relieve the pressure of the question box and later apologize for a wrong call that ended an elim run, that we'd stress personally about possible missed assists and fouls, that top coaches and strategists would be unusually upset over by game quirks, that refs would stay up nights with a competition-Thursday team update...If you gave me a list of half of the top mentors and volunteers that have expressed uncharacteristic concerns about this game on CD or elsewhere, I would have been terrified. Not because I'd trust them that there's a problem(s) with the game, though I would worry, but because FIRST objectively relies on much of this vocal minority. These are our district organizers, our volunteer coordinators, our head referees, our FTAs, the volunteers, mentors and students that make the grassroots level (and above) work.

I suspect I've just opened up a can of flames. To be clear, I have the utmost respect for every one of these people. I'm not saying we're going to have a mass exodus here or that anything about it is somehow shallow, though I wouldn't blame anyone for leaving. Nor am I implying that anyone is somehow better or possessing of a more valid opinion than someone else. FIRST does need key volunteers though, and I'm worried by even the few (but unprecedented) number of discussions I've personally heard about people not returning. As Mr. Sevcik's BEST example indicates, continuing at this level is fundamentally jeopardous to FRC's volunteer base. We need to understand what's going on here to prevent it from continuing to erode this support.

---
Offensive trapping still is not being called consistently. It's not just that different referees see it differently (a flaw of the game, not so much refs), but because we are deliberately told to look for different things at different events. Seriously. Dear GDC: change the wording of G12d. I am not attempting to shield my ball by pushing it against my alliance partner or against the low goal. You answered the Q&A. Enforce it that way. garrgh.

*EDIT: I've since been informed that this one in particular may not be directly game-related