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The team forum that I refered to is the one done at the end of each season by first to find out what teams liked and disliked about the years game. It is also meant to bring up problems. FIRST does watch cd...but they ALSO listen to the people who bring up problems at the team forums. Many, many changes are made when enough people mention something at the team forum. I agree that a petition would very likely not be as effective in this format however. Actually BRING a petition to the team forum to present to them.
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I am going to look into information on that team forum, and see if I can attend it.
I think that complaints/suggestions/comments have a much stronger chance of being considered then, post season, than now, in the midst of competition. |
Team 698 at the Arizona regional
I ask that you kindly read my whole post before potentially dismissing it. Thank you.
As the primary strategist (although the alternate driver might disagree <wink>) for team 698, I'd like to state that I disagree with this thread. I understand the purpose of it, however, I'm concerned with the possibility of many teams reading this that might not understand the situation for themselves and are agreeing only because of the buzz words used. For those who weren't there, my team rose up from around 13th place to 1st in about 4 matches during seeding in the Arizona regional last Friday. We did this by cooperating with the opposing team in an effort to get drastically more qualifying points. We agreed to have the four human players place a stack of 4 each, and for neither side to purposely knock down the other two stacks. If it worked, both sides would have multipliers of 4, but the winner would still be determined by who got the most boxes, which was EXACTLY how it was determined before. Prior to this, most of the time, both sides would have their bots knock down all the stacks. (Albeit, yes, there are robots that stack, however a total of about 4 in the nation have proven themselves to work, ours NOT included.) My team and I thought this practice was quite boring, and were simply tired of only getting 40 qualifying points in a game that has a theoretical maximum of something in the 400 range. Nowhere in the rules did it say anything against such a thing, and in fact, it encouraged it with the concept of getting your score plus double the opponants for qualifying points. Also, think about how many times you've heard of FIRST being called a simulation of a real engineering project for a company. Limited deadlines, limited supplies, limited money, and limited help. Obviously, all companies compete, however many work together not to undercut each other unfairly. Isn't this simply what we've been doing? Instead of the opposing team losing with 20 points, they'd lose with 80, in turn not falling quite as far in the ranking. We figured that if we lost in the match, we'd at least lose in style, catapulting someone else higher up in the ranking. It has nothing to do with "fixing scores", or cheating. We've been playing within the rules. As such, you can't simply modify the rules so that it better benefit yourself -- to do so would be against the idea of gracious professionalism. Also, in spite of "fixing the scores", we were only about 150 net points higher than the second place team. Had all of their matches been 15 points higher, they would have tied with us. With this in mind, did what we do really change the outcome of the game? In fact, an engineer from team 980 suggested the idea that we would have been 5th seed even if we didn't. FOUR positions isn't necessarily that much of a difference for "cheating" or "fixing the scores", wouldn't you agree? Which is why from my point of view, it seems that many people are blowing this entirely out of proportion. I have no problem with people not agreeing to do this, but petitions, signs, and hateful words are COMPLETELY against the spirit of FIRST. FIRST is NOT about competition or even building a robot. It's about building connections with other people, with students to engineering, and generally having fun. Putting up signs only puts up barriers, which is why I chose to directly speak with several other angry teams at the event and make amends. And as a final note, don't you think Mr. Kamen thought about this very thing before this competition year started? Thanks everybody! <steps off his soapbox> If you would like to debate/comment/flame/agree/whatever with or about this post, please feel free to email me at soup@tank.dyndns.org. Sorry about the length, but I really wanted to make sure I got my point across. --Jonathan Tate (primary driver, vice president of team 698, the Microbots) |
Re: Team 698 at the Arizona regional
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You claim that what you are doing is in the spirit of F.I.R.S.T., and that by creating this petition, My team is doing the opposite. A statement like that can ruin a team's reputation, so use your words sparingly. To clear this all up, F.I.R.S.T., as well as thousands of people in the F.I.R.S.T. community, disagrees with you. They have stated here that your actions are not in the spirit of Gracious Professionalism. Yes, I am aware that there is no rule against what you are doing. However, there are a lot of people out there who think that it is wrong. And yet, you continue to defend your actions. I am fine with that, but it think that putting down my team as well as others is absolutely ridiculous. I am not asking for an apology, I am asking you to please express your opinions in private, or you can email me. My team will continue to keep petitions going. As “useless” as people think they are. They have worked, and will work. |
Re: Re: Team 698 at the Arizona regional
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I'm also confused about you insisting his opinions be addressed in private, when your opinions are publicly addressed. Jason speaks for himself |
I apologise, i dont speak for Dean, and never meant that i did. I took offense to that post, and i overreacted. You all know how i feel about the Gentalmens agreements, so i wont go there.
This is a competition. People will play it how they see fit no matter what i say. Im just trying to help. |
Re: Team 698 at the Arizona regional
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I appreciate that you tried to make amends, and as you pointed out the next day, you ceased making agreements with your opponents. Are you now suggesting that we all make agreements with our opponents? The purpose of this thread is to try to get the competition back to a 2-on-2 competition, as it was designed to be. Do you want to change it to a 4 team coooperative event? If so, start your own thread and vote or petition, and we will see who has the most votes. Then we can present the matter to FIRST. I sure don't want a repeat of this situation in S. Calif. Do you? Quote:
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The "Gentlemen's Agreements" that have been taking place throughout the regionals are definately not in the spirit of FIRST, and do not benefit any team in any way, shape, or form. I was scouting at the Arizona Regional... and I won't mention any team numbers, or names, but I was approached by one opposing team to leave the human player stacks up during the match. I was shocked... This idea hadn't even crossed my mind yet... I just kind of ignored the remark and then shortly left that pit. Oh yeah, we won that match anyways.
These competitions do include strategy... no doubt I worked hard talking to team after team after team... and fixing matches never crossed my mind. 234 definately does not support the fixing of matches in any way , shape, or form. And if your team does support fixing matches, and somehow makes it to the finals, you're just more likely to be eliminated in the finals - which doesn't do your alliance partners much good either, especially if they do not support the Gentlemen's Agreement strategy. I know there won't be a rule against this, but one would think that teams would have enough common sense and a sense of morals to do the right thing. What ever happened to doing the right thing? Has our society infected the morals of a few in FIRST? I hope not... maybe I'm just looking into this all too much... However, the Arizona Regional was still excellent and amazing , and I'd be glad to do it all over again :) |
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I meant your statement that Mr Kamen did not think about this before the competition year started. I believe Jason's post addressed that. |
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I read it. The rules never accounted for people to go and rig the match. The spirit of the rules was just to add another dimension so that teams would flat out win 100-0. That would be the opposite extreme of what is going on now. Unfortunately now we need a middle or else these competitions are going to get really boring fast. |
I suppose my only real response to all these "fixing" discussions is really, who cares? Why make such a big deal out of it? Some people disagree with it and don't feel it should be part of the competition. Some people think it's just an interesting feature of the strategy of the game. So far, the actual act of "fixing" a match has hurt exactly no one.
However, the finger pointing and accussations surrounding the "fixing" have hurt people. There have been complaints about various teams and practices as long as I've been in FIRST. I've found many of them distasteful. However, the acrimony that was created by the discussions of these practices have probably caused much more damage than the practices themselves. Personally, I think there are still a number of teams and individuals who don't "get it" (and I'm referring to groups on both sides of the argument but most definitely not specifics as I haven't been paying enough attention to know who they are). There have always been people who don't get it in FIRST. They have a tendency to either leave or figure out what it's all about. As long as the FIRST community stays as strong as it is, I don't worry about the so called problems with the "fixing." Matt |
222 Has never and never will participate in a fixed match that is all i have to say.
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