Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

Is this why the wild cards never extend past the finalist? A solution could be disregarding eliminations and giving it to the team that ranked the highest during qualifications, and is still unqualified for Championships.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

As a student on a team who got in on waitlist last year, I have to disagree. Had we not gotten in on the waitlist, I doubt my team would even have gotten the chance to make it to champs. For me personally, it was touched me deeply to be in such a huge stadium with other kids interested in STEM like me, and for many students I think experience is very valuable. Without the waitlist (or the future double champs) many teams wouldn't get that chance.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

As a district-to-regional transplant, I've been compiling my thoughts on the matter into a proposal for using District Points to award wildcards. I have attached it, feel free to give it a read and tell me what you think.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

I like that a lot. It basically says exactly what I want and adds some more. I'm glad to said something about district teams qualifying at a regional. I feel like 6 spots should be given to regional teams no matter what. It seems to be a lose lose situation when a district team wins a regional. The district loses one of its "next-in" spots and regionals get to send 1 less regional team.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

I'd personally like if district teams could not qualify for championships through regionals and would automatically generate wildcard spots at regionals if they are on the winning alliance or won a qualifying award.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

Remember a few years ago there were no "wildcards".

If the entire winning alliance had already qualified, then it was possible that no one from a regional would get the invite to the CHPs based on the robot competition. The wildcard system extended those invites to the finalist alliance to address this.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

Sure, but incremental improvement upon the existing system can only be a good thing, right?

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

The answer to this problem is switching to the district system, in my mind... the qualification system works exceptionally well.

When was the last time you heard about a particularly deserving team from Michigan, PNW, New England or MAR not qualifying for Championships?

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

Yep, and that's good. But it doesn't address the issue that at a 64 team event, in a normal best case fewer than 10% of the teams can be invited to Championships. (I'm going to ignore the edge case where the winning alliance used a backup coupon making the potential 7)

Last year after the North star regional where only 4 out of 60 teams were invited to Championships I suggested that the wildcards extend into the seeds after using the whole finalist alliance based on the regional size.

My equation was something like Ceiling(count of teams /10) would be the guaranteed number of Championship invites. So if only 4 new teams were invited to champs at a 40 team event, that would be the end of it. But if only 4 new teams were invited at a 61 team event, that would generate 3 wildcards which would go first to the finalist alliance, then through the uninvited top (regional) seeds in order.

That wouldn't punish large regional events simply for being large the way the current system works.

Additionally, since regional teams cannot enter district events, any district based team that wins a slot at a regional should automatically generate a wildcard at that regional for one of the teams under the regional system. The way the system is now, a district based team can come into a regional event and eliminate championship opportunities for a regional based team. Because regional based teams are not allowed to enter district events, the reverse cannot happen.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

100% agreed. Champs isn't just about bringing the best robots together to compete. Sure, that's part of it, but the biggest draw of championships is the ability to see the great things that other teams have done, get inspired, and then take and apply them to your own team.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

Definitely this. I'd like to remind everyone in the thread that the reason FIRST is moving to two Champs is because HQ wants to get more teams to a Champs experience. Specifically, they want every team to have a reasonable chance of getting to Champs every four years or so, whether through qualifying or waitlisting. You're not going to turn every avenue to Champs absolutely merit-based without first changing that mindset. Which first means you're going to have to convince a lot of people that Champs is only for truly worthy robots.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

With going to two champs and adding 200 teams, where will those 200 teams come from? Are all 200 from waitlist? Will we have 7 spot regionals? Idk. We can still make the wildcard spots more competitive. I don't think any of us are trying to eliminate the wait list. That's is a really cool and good thing. What if they had 100 mandatory waitlist spots out of the 800 spots in 2017? I'm not sure if people would be for that but I'm curious to see where the other 200 teams will qualify in 2017.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

As FIRST keeps growing, doesn't this become more and more unsustainable?

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

Not if they keep adding more Championships.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

Fixed that for you.


Headquarters might call them Championships, but lets be real they are super regionals.