Looking from a different point at "Fixing"
 

Hi,
We were at AZ regional and I know everything that was going on. Before we discuss if "Fixing" is right or not, let me explain how it works:

Teams meet with their oppnents, and decide to leave each other's stacks alone. Teams don't decide who wins. The wall of boxes on top of the ramp is open for competition, and the team who is better will win, but with more score than they would have if they hadn't made the deal.

We made the deals twice in AZ. In one of the matches, we scored our highest score, and in the other, we scored our lowest score. Our team decided that we won't do it again because it takes the fun out of the game.

I was the team manager of our team, andx didn't make any more deals after our team's decision. But here's the deal.

I personally believe it is not against the FIRST spirit. FIRST encourages competition, but with cooperation with each other. The deals do not destroy that spirit. The football and all these examples other people are giving do not apply in this case. This is because teams do not decide who is going to win. As a matter of fact, it encourages cooperation because one small mistake, and the "deal's off"

The competition is still there in the games that teams make deals in. The outcome of the match is not decided. What is decided is that bother alliance will score higher than they would if they didn't make the deals. I know how hard it was to try to win a match, while keeping the deal we had made.

Therefore, I think it is not against the FIRSWT spirit to make deals, but I will follow the decision my team has made.

You are entitled to your own opinoin, but, judging by current posts, the FIRST community is in strong disagreence with you.

Just some questions...


Isn't this game, Stack Attack, partly about manipulating, creating, destroying, and protecting stacks? Doesn't "leaving each others stacks alone" take away from this? Just my thoughts...






*These opinions are mine and not of team 710*

Does this subject really require 3 threads?

Greg

Thats what the game was supposed to be about, but I think it did not work out as FIRST intended. The stack aspect of the game appears to be a dominated strategy. I think the only way to have stacks play a serious role in the outcome of any game (or even exist at the end of a game) is to make a deal with the other team.

If a team's robot was not intended to do anything with stacks, but instead they have to make "deals" with other teams for keeping stacks, doesn't that give them the false ability of being able to stack?

But if they play against a robot which IS designed to stack, they will be at a disadvantage, because the stacking team will obviously not agree to any deals.

The reason this strategy is against the spirit of FIRST is. If you have a bot that fights its way all the way through the qualifying matches, but doesn't make it because another team has fixed its way into the finals. That just blows.

You can't just look at it as fixing a single match. You are fixing the entire competition and your actions affect the placement of all the other teams.

But what is stoping this team from also agreeing not to ruin stacks?

With or without the deal the competition is there.

WIth the deal the scores can get high, and certain bots play a important role. Think about rampdoms with this deal. Ouch. My personally deal I would offer teams a general agreement for both teams to avoid knocking stacks of 4 or less over. It is an advantage for both teams. Instead of losing with low point scores, you could get as many a 118 QP's. From the match scores I've seen, that's a nice score. The competition for boxes and for the ramp is still there. Anyway, since few teams have attempted to stack why should we unstack to win. Many people have failed to look at the whole picture. Yes a team who works hard and attack the others stacks and wins a lot of matches, may score low why a team who wins with a deal make it farther. The low scoring team made a strategy choice that was bad in the end. Cooperation is not against FIRST spirit, a general strategy which improve point scoring but not take away from the competitive nature of the game isn't bad.

Although I'm only a human player (PLEASE LEAVE MY STACKS) I will urge that my driver don't attack opponents stacks if all possible. THis is still within the bounds of competition. I can't gurantee another team as to incidental knocking over. But when their stacks goes down, our is now a target. For those of you who are purely competitive, is this not competition still? Maneuvering to score as many as possible but making split second choice when it comes down to the line.

I see deal-making as a valid strategy and one that may affect many future matches.

This isn't really my place, and it is rare that I get angered enough to voice my actualy opinion on CD, but here goes.

I've seen 1st and 2nd year teams saying "fixing matches is not against the spirt of FIRST"

Guess what, you guys are rookies, you don't know exactly what the spirit of FIRST is, perhaps you should take a note from seasoned veterans who have 6 or 7+ years of FIRST uunder their belts. They know what the true spirit of FIRST is because they've expierenced it from the early days when it was a handfull of teams in a room with Dean all going at it head to head best bot comes out on top. And all the veteran teams are saying that "fixing the matches" is very much so against the spirit of FIRST.

The growth of the FIRST community is great, but I've witnessed alot of new teams that simply don't quite unnderstand what it's all about. Rookie teams didn't even get the 3 hours speal from Dean on Kick-Off(not to say that I didn't enjoy the break).

My hope is that the people who are "fixing matches" will realize how it is actualy "fixing the compeition" and will begin to change their ways.

ugh, venting is good

Slight problem with this reasoning. If you have robots that are not competitive by any stretch of the imagination, which i noticed at least 25% of the robots at annapolis fit this description, the teams against these robots as well as the bad robots themselves, automatically got higher scores, because these robots COULDN'T destroy the stacks. so even robots that are not necessarilly the best would get high scores by loosing. Higher scores, in fact, than some of the matches where 4 very competitive robots were together. Although this was a problem in previous years, never to this extent, because most of the other games one team got the points, the points didn't just dissappear into thin air.

The highest QP score at annapolis was when two mediocre robots, both of which didn't make it past the quarterfinals, went against two robots that virtually stayed in their starting positions.
One of the lowest scoring matches i saw was when 3 of what i thought were the top 4 robots at the competition were against each other, and duked it out until virtually nothing was in either zone.

In this game, even if no agreements are made, the stacks are going to survive in some rounds because of the competitiors. So if i were to choose between agreements, which put the poor robots at the bottom rankings, and the better ones at the top, and one where poor robots got higher scores by totally loosing, and the competitive robots got low scores by fighting till the bitter end, i would choose the agreements.

I may be a rookie, but I know GP.
Deciding the matches outcome beforehand is not GP.
Making an actual agreement that you won't compete is not GP.
But I get seriously lost when people are unwilling to see most of this as a strategical choice.
I hope my team will choose to leave the opponents HP stacks. Our teams thoughts on human player stacks will be consistent, we will let one 4 and under stand, if they knock ours over, for the most part they will lose theirs, and in competition the decision to attack the stacks will be always present.
I don't plan to make agreements like a said in my previous post. That would be un GP like. But this will not keep me from trying to convince alliance partners into such thoughts, and It will not stop my telling the opposing team what we will do if they attack our HP stacks. Gope, I am sorry that my previous post may have caused you to disappreciate the efforts of first and second teams. I hope to prove to be GP in my competition and hope that previous comments may not effect my team. Thanks again, Gope, for your insight into creating a more GP FIRST and continuing to challenge the rookie teams to new standards. My team will give our best efforts to make you proud!

you forget that teams define the "spirit of FIRST"

I'm not condoning the match-fixing, but if there is a MASSIVE influx of teams one year that all think building bots that are shaped like giant donuts and roll around the field is a good idea, then that is then the spirit of first

Why are we calling this "Fixing"
 

You know what fixing means? Fixing means you make sure certain partner of yours loses in qualifying matches to help my ranking, and I'll pick u as my alliance partner. That's what fixing is, and I COMPLETELY agree that it is against the FIRST spirit.

But just making an agreement of leaving each other's stacks alone and competing for the rest of the boxes is not. Maybe I'm not from a 6 or 7 year old team, but I've been in this competition for long enough to realize what FIRST spirit is, I think.

Making an agreement is just a strategy that maintains the sense of uncertainty and competetiveness in the competition. And again, why would FIRST make your score your score + 2 X loser's score if they didn't want the cooperation? Making agreements is just taking that cooperation to another level.

making agreements also limits this "cooperation" to four teams. if we all agree not to make agreements, and figure out other ways of cooperating, it is no longer limited to the four that are in the agreement.

Cooperation is not just for those 4 teams. The idea of everyone agreeing not to do it is the same as the everyone agreeing on doing it. It requires more cooperation and skills if we all agree on doing it. I think that would better promote FIRST spirit of "cooperative competition"

I tend to think of FIRST's spirit of "cooperative competition" as the comraderie that exists among teams working toward a fair competition. As an example, teams will gladly share tools, parts, expertise in the pits to help another team in need to make their robot competitive. I doubt any team's reasonable request for such assistance would be refused by a FIRST team able to help out.

I spoke with the player who admitted he came up with the idea and his rationale was one of "cooperation" among teams. I told him that the "cooperation" was only to the benefit of the 4 teams involved in the match, while the other 30+ teams were put at a distinct disadvantage. Since his team employed this strategy in a few subsequent matches, the "cooperation" then become a benefit to his team.

I saw another team attempting to utilize this strategy - you should have seen the reaction by their human player when an opponent's robot autonomously rammed the tall stack he'd just created. :eek:

Lesson learned: autonomous robots do not make agreements!!

I think that the reason FIRST made the score equal to your team's + 2 X the loser's is so that 10 year veterans don't totally beat the new teams. Personally I think that the scoring system needs to go. Other ways need to be found to make it easier for rookies to compete. FIRST found some successful methods this year with the kit of parts having gear boxes, and the mid-field bar favoring low uncomplicated robots. (We chose a rookie team to join us in the elimination round partly because they caused havoc with our bins and stacks in a qualifying match.)

The problem with making agreements with your opponents is that it violates the basic idea of a competition. FIRST had cooperative matches in 2001, but then FIRST decided to go to a competitive format which is what we have this year. Teams expect that other teams will be competing. Audiences expect to see a competition between 2 teams. That is what the game concept is all about--a competition. If you want to change it to where all the teams on the field are working together to compete against other teams of 4, that should be announced as the format for the competition.

To really see the problem with making agreements with your opponents, project that practice forward to all the possible ways of doing so. If all teams left each others stacks standing, no one would have an advantage, so they would have to come up with another way to cooperate to have an advantage: letting all the robots get up on top. Soon everyone would be doing that, and soon there would be no competition because they would be sharing the bins also. (They could push the 45th bin out of the scoring zone.)

Making agreements with your opponents violates the basic idea of what a competition is. People watching such a performance will think that we are really weird. (Dean announced at the kickoff that we need to make the competition friendly to audiences so that we can grow faster and allow all schools to participate.)

For a competition to be fair, everyone needs to know the ground rules. True there isn't anything in the rule book which forbids a player from making agreements with his opponents. Most competitions don't have to worry about such things. What advantage would a tennis player have if he made an agreement with his opponent? Not much. I guess they could agree to split the first 4 sets and then play hard on the last one to save their energy. Wow. Could you imagine the outcry if that happened? Our competition gives points based on matches which affect a team's ranking with everyone, so all the teams are affected when such an agreement is made.

Basically we turn a competition into a fake because suddenly people who are listed as competitors are secretly working together. We had parents who went from LA to Phoenix and watched who were quite upset by what happened with the "agreements" between opponents. And as I said in the other thread on this subject, one team said they were going to vote on whether to withdraw from the competition and go home because they witnessed something occurring which they felt was unethical.

Ultimately we need to get the rules on points changed so that they do not encourage teams to make agreements with the opposition. In the meantime, don't do it, because you will find that it does not bring about the rewards you thought it would. Winning by making hidden agreements would cheapen your victory. You want to win or lose without resorting to hidden agreements with people you are supposed to be in competition with.

Teams should talk to their partners but not their opponents. Otherwise, we will have a fake competition and audiences will not want to support us. Do you want to take the chance of losing your sponsors? Would you like to see a newspaper article stating that some teams quit a FIRST competition and went home because teams were collaberating with their opponents? Think about it.

If we are going to say that each match is a competition between teams of 2, then they need to compete. Otherwise it's a fraud. Fake. Not real. Phony. Dishonest.

The point system does reward making agreements with your opponents, but I have talked to Jason Morella of FIRST and it wasn't intended for teams to do that.

Actually it's a trap (unintentional, but still a trap). My advice to other teams is, don't fall in the trap. I guarantee that you will not be happy if you do. Witness teams in Phoenix who changed their ways, but still wound up feeling like they had lost the respect of the other teams. True, you can gain that respect back. Team 68 wrote a letter apologizing and getting other teams to agree not to make such agreements. I respect them because they took responsibility to restore the integrity of the competition. See the dictionary:
"Compete: To strive against another or others to attain a goal, such as an advantage or a victory."

You are supposed to be competing as a team of 2 this year, not a team of 4!

I'll leave a stack up if it benefits my score. If that stack will give my opponent (and through them, my team) a better score, there's no reason to knock it over. What I will not do, however, is make any sort of agreement regarding that stack. If it is in both alliances' mutual best interests, I will leave it alone, but I will never, ever make a deal with my opponent before the match.

Um, no. My team can and has succesfully protected stacks up to 7 bins high. Wether hman players, or other robots made them. Stacks can be used efficentlly, and the practice of agreements is not in the spirit of F.I.R.S.T.

and for god's sake, stick to one forum.

and sign our petition against this.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=19301

I bet that something similar to this is what happened to pro-wrestling.
:D

Let me start this post by clarifying that this is MY opinion ONLY and does not necessarily reflect that of my team.

1. For those who have said that "winning the match/event is not important", If that is the case then why even put our robots out on the field? Winning is an important aspect of FIRST ... granted FIRST is about MUCH more, but winning the battle on the field is a significant part. The intense 2 on 2 competition is what makes it so exciting.

2. If you play this game with ANY brains, you realize that you don't want to go after your opponents stacks right away, but you should wait until you see if you need to knock their stack(s) down to win the match. We all know how the scoring works, and that by maximizing your opponents score you maximize your own ... NO AGREEMENTS NEEDED ...

3. If any team approaches our team to pre-arrange inflated QPs, I will encourage our team to agree to do it, then with 15-20 seconds remaining have one of our alliance partners attack your stack while the other guards ours (maybe this will at-least keep us from being approached on this subject).
:D

Couple things:

I reject the idea that the number of years in FIRST shows how much you understand about the spirit of FIRST. Thats just absurd, a freshman can understand the purpose of FIRST just as clearly as a 10 year veteran. So don't say 'You are just a rookie, you don't understand the spirit of FIRST.' Thats really really obnoxious. Both veteran teams and rookie teams have established pregame plans, so don't let it turn into a veteran vs rookie thing.

Second, don't agree to a deal with an opponent and not carry through on it. If you don't think the deals are gracious professionalism then don't go with them. Making any kind of deal with no intention of following through on it is in no way gracious or professional, its a lie. That is far far worse then any pregame deal.

If you make a deal, follow through, don't ever agree to something just to stick it to the other alliance. That really pisses me off.

-Andy A.

edit: Speling

I'm really sorry if that "pisses you off" Andy, but soliciting pre-match agreements with your opponents pisses me off ...:mad:

If you don't like it ... don't approach us ...

this is not stu's first year, he's not stupid. so lay off his back!! :mad:


[edit] this thread is ridiculous and absurd. it should be closed[/edit]

I think the 3+ threads have accomplished enough discussion about this.

Let's put it on the back burner and bring it up in a week or so if there's more to be said.

Ken L said it best: