Re: Championships in 2017
 

All I got to say is God forbid FIRST puts out a bad game next year. It'll make an already difficult transition even more painful.

Re: Championships in 2017
 

Since the two "champs" are on different weekends, how about FIRST pays for the Winning Alliance (10 members of each team) of the first Champs weekend to go to the 2nd Champs. On Saturday, the Winner of Champs 1 plays the Winner of Champs 2.

Re: Championships in 2017
 

While your post is incredibly edgy, the shift from one championship to two postseason expos is at best an unknown quantity. The idea of increasing inspiration is entirely subjective, but you can potentially quantify inspiration by team count I guess. If that is your sole metric for a direct increase in inspiration, I guess you might be right. However those of us who subscribe to an idea that an unsupported team is worse than no team also believe that two poorly supported expos can be worse than one adequately supported championship.

Fewer things in life can be more powerful than participation on a FIRST team at a FIRST event, but it's important to realize that fact can swing both ways. Putting at-risk kids into failing teams is damaging. Having volunteers who don't put students first can be damaging. Sponsors and sponsoring organizations who don't understand why a team wants 15k+ to go to one of these expos instead of one championship is confusing for them and can be potentially damaging.

Re: Championships in 2017
 

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to PayneTrain again."

Re: Championships in 2017
 

I saw this mentioned earlier in the thread but didn't see anyone link to it directly: FIRST has put out an official update with regard to the changing Championship structure at http://www.firstinspires.org/2017-20...mpionship-info

Notable (for me, at least), was that they mentioned they are looking to put together a "Culminating Event" to have the Champs from each event face off at a possibly televised event.

Re: Championships in 2017
 

Yes it's unknown. To grow, we must adapt. We must reach more students, and quickly. While a single world championship is certainly inspiring and a very worthy aspiration, does the lack of one stop millions of high school students every year from striving for and being inspired by their state sports championship? Does knowing that you are "only" class 4A champ vs. class 6A champ, or "only" Illinois champ vs. Indiana or US champ, so significantly impact students' and coaches' drive to participate, succeed, and win that we can't go on?

I agree at some point of saturation the split would be a net negative. We are so, so far from that point yet in the reach of the program, we must take risks and exponentially grow.

At this point, in my opinion, the more people we reach, the higher chance of creating successful teams, of bringing more into the fold, of changing young peoples', and our country's, lives for the better.

Re: Championships in 2017
 

This should be a thread by itself and warrants discussion. I'm definitely in the same boat. I encourage other teams to think about sustainable growth.

I would actually like to see data that shows the number of teams that are able to transition from being a 2nd year rookie team into a 3rd or 4th year team. Someone with time on their hands can probably use TBA's APIs to snag that data.

Re: Championships in 2017
 

My thing with a televised event, while it would be awesome is that for 8 teams on 2 alliances, playing a max of 3 matches that are 150 seconds each... that's just under 8 minutes of total action. How much stuff would you have to jam in there for a made for TV event?

Re: Championships in 2017
 

How much of battlebots was actually bots battling? You could have 8 minutes of match in a 1-hour programme. I think this would also be an opportunity to play more than a best-of-three.

Re: Championships in 2017
 

Yes, battebots is a good example of this. But I suspect if FIRST is going to spend a significant amount of money bringing the alliances together to play each other, then they will organise more than three matches for each team. Also I think it would be the type of thing that FIRST would subsidise for the teams involved.

Re: Championships in 2017
 

This is something I've been interested in as well, especially after working with a second year team this year who were struggling after the rookie support dropped away. I've got the data on longevity based on rookie year - I'll grab data on how many teams make it past year 1 and 2.

Re: Championships in 2017
 

This is something I think people need to remember. Not being able to see all of your friends on other teams is a real frustration with the two champs system, and I get that. But when it comes to not being able to see all the good teams, there will still be plenty to make it feel like champs. Can you give me any combination of four divisions from this year that, put together and separated, wouldn't feel world class?

Re: Championships in 2017
 

Champs doesn't feel the same since they have gone to 8 divisions. MSC is already more competitive than Champs. The reason why I'm inspired by FIRST was watching some of the best robots at Champs in 2013 (1114 and 118). FIRST is just diluting the Champs experience. If you have 30 robot points, it's better to make 3 things 10 points than it is to make 6 things 5 points; the same thing applies to Champs.

Re: Championships in 2017
 

I find that hard to be plausible, even if FIRST pays for it all it takes is a couple people who can't make it or whatsoever for the plan to cancel. We also have to realize the students and mentors on each teams have jobs and school to attend.

Also, the match up would be unfair because the Winner of Champs 2 would be "more in rhythm" driving wise because they just got done with wining Champs 2 whereas the winner of Champs 1 will be less in rhythm because they had break from driving since the weekend of Champs 1. Giving them some time to practice could make it better but nothing beats getting into the rhythm more than driving in your subdivision elimination matches and Einstein matches.

Re: Championships in 2017
 

Here's a solution. The two winning alliances could play each other over Skype. To substitute for the other alliance at each championship, three field volunteers will be selected at random to dress up in robot costumes and recreate what the other alliance is doing.