[martin417]

From the events I have watched, the rankings at the end of the quals this year more closely represent the actual ability of the teams to play the game. In the past, this has not been the case. I remember in 2009 at palmetto, late in the quals, there was one team that had not yet placed a robot on the field (or even been inspected) and were ranked as the #1 seed. They later fell a few places in the rankings, but were still highly ranked at the end of quals. This year, better robots and teams tended to be highly ranked, and teams that were not as effective were ranked lower.

That might partially be due to the rule change that will not allow teams that are not inspected to get the points for a win by the alliance.