Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

How about:

1) the two alliances that lost to the finalists have a one match playoff for the wild card slots.
2) the 6 finalists vote for teams to get the wildcard slots.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

2 is a terrible idea, sorry. Involving teams in the process of selecting what teams wildcard to Champs is asking for hurt feelings, complaints about favoritism, etc. You'd be better off with a poll of judges instead.

1 seems reasonable, except you're adding another match or more to the playoff schedule, which could ruffle feathers by making things take even longer. Maybe the bronze medal sudden death match happens in the field timeout between F1 and F2? That keeps delay to a minimum, as long as there's no alliance timeouts called or anything.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

FIRST should find a solution to the inequity of being a finalist to an eventual multi-win team in an early regional vs in a late regional.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

As W.S. Gilbert said, "If everybody's somebody, then no-one's anybody." It's all good -- let us have more inspiration by creating more Champions. Those who wish can go to IRI and sort it all out.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

You have to consider that before 2013, the alternative to wildcards was absolutely nothing. It was win or go home. Wildcards are an immense improvement over those days - just ask anyone in Canada.

That said, it's pretty clear that in the next several years, we just need to make every region a "district", and advance teams by points regardless of whether or not that region has district-style events and a DCMP, or regional style events with no DCMP. The "dream" for me is that teams get points at their first two events regardless of where they are (or 2x the first event if they are a 1 event team), they then qualify for particular regional championships assigned to them if available.

Wildcards are a stopgap.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

What you propose, could be done today. If FIRST wants 15% of teams to go to Championships, then at the end of the season, the regional teams with the highest points based on the district formula could be invited.

The logistical issue with that is that the invites would have to go out no earlier than Saturday night after the week six events finish which is kind of late for finding accommodations for a lot of teams.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

We've been dealing with that logistical challenge for a few season's now. Week 7 DCMP teams will find out if they qualify for CMP late Saturday afternoon.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

Here's an idea for thought: Should we even try to make sure more "good robots" make it to champs? If that were our primary concern, we could turn regionals into a show-dog style demonstration, and have judges and pick from there. Most of us could walk around a pit area and point out which robots are "good", so let's just skip the formalities (/sarcasm).

I would counter that the serpentine draft, strength of schedule, and the crazy things that happen during competitive matches, open up the opportunity for surprises. Teams that don't usually qualify could catch a lucky break and upset a powerhouse. That's a great narrative, and it's part of why sports are so compelling.

Don't get me wrong, I like the district point system, and I'm OK with the idea of regional wildcards extending beyond the finalist alliance. But I also don't think we should be too worried about who "deserves" to go to champs or not. The excitement is in the uncertainty!

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

Good discussion. That system is called "districts..." They need to be everywhere so teams can resume crossing over to other areas to play around the country. This will be even more important with Champsplit where certain areas will no longer see teams from other areas in one location.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

To add some more on Tyler's post, the current regional system is one way for a robot drafted 24th to make Champs. Extending the wildcard through the Finalist alliance is a natural step in this logic. This gives teams in the middle a stronger incentive to be competitive. At least the districts system preserves an intermediate championship event for those teams to aim for. We shouldn't undermine that incentive.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

Really the open question to me is should the wildcards generated at a regional go to teams at that regional or should they be returned to the waitlist pool.

At 10K over last weekend there were 4 wildcards generated and there was not a Rookie All Star award. 3 of those wildcards went to the finalist alliance. The 4th one is going to a waitlist team. The rookie all star berth is also going to a waitlist team.

My personnel opinion is I would rather the wildcards stayed at the regional. To be honest, I really thought the 4th wildcard would go to the highest ranked team after qualifiers and was really let down when I learned it was returned to the waitlist.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

I highly doubt that FIRST intends to do any more changes to the wild card system and I don't really think that they should. The first year it was pretty limited and that limit was needed as the space at CMP meant that if every Regional generated a full 6 teams there would have been more than 400 teams spaces needed and no room for wait list teams. With the additional number that can be given out now and the change to Districts getting a corresponding percentage of spots there is still some room for the new lottery system.

The fact is that FIRST wanted most of the US in the District System by now. It does address the concerns that may have cited for reasons to expand the wild card and who it should go to.

The system originally created by FiM was designed to significantly help those teams caught in the "valley of doom" where that second pick of the #1 or #2 alliance that more often than not went on to win it all and get a spot at CMP was a much lower performing robot than the ones in the alliance that ended up as a finalist. Much of the robot performance side of the current unified points system is taken from that original FiM system.

So in the current system here are the points earned assuming that we have a fairly common occurrence of the #1 and #2 Alliance meeting in the finals, based on robot performance only.

Wining

Captain 68
1st pick 65-67 (assuming a robot that seeded pretty well)
2nd pick 40 ish (assuming a middle of the road seeding)

Finalist

Captain 54-55
1st pick 50 ish
2nd pick 30 ish

So it is common for the two top robots on the Finalist alliance if they are the 2nd or 3rd seed to get more points than the coat tail pick of the #1 Alliance.

If of course also addresses a proportional number of teams from a given area going to CMP. So you don't have the case where a lower percentage of teams get to go from an area just because they attend a larger event. A District just goes down the teams in order in case a team declines so that there are no unused spots.

As we move to more and more Districts and the .5CMPsl that are coming I do expect FIRST to reserve a number of spots for the lottery.

FIRST has repeatedly indicated that they want every team to make it to CMP at least occasionally. That is one of the stated reasons for the .5CMPs

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

I really believe that split champs is a means to an end to get to super regionals (and thus an additional level of play). I could be wrong, but that's honestly what I believe. The program does not yet have the scale to support that, however the current system was unsustainable as well. Something had to be done, and split champs was the "least bad" option.

Re: Wild Card Spot Reform?
 

I like the current wild card setup. Keep it until regionals dissolve and districts take their place.