[martin417]

Originally Posted by Jim Zondag

Amen, Karthik:

To me, the real problem here is that someone at FIRST still misses the key point:

They keep trying to change the motivations of the teams by changing the Qualifying promotion system to depend on something other than winning matches. This goes back for over a decade and keeps coming in and out of the game design. They seem think this will somehow change who wins. This does indeed serve to change how teams will play the game in qualifying. However, all such attempts fail to change anything in the end because we then proceed to play an ELIMINATION series that is ONLY about winning.

So, FIRST's attempts at trying to change what we do on the feild really don't change much after all, since the teams who know how to win invariably end up as the leaders at the end of the tournament anyway. What these attempts do serve to do is:
- Make the game more bimodal and more confusing to the spectators, since the robots do different things on the field depending on what part of the competition you are watching.
- Make the game less sport-like, since bizarre concepts like this are found no where in any main stream sport.
- Drive a lot more 'noise' into the qualifing process, since advancing in the rankings can often be most out of an individual team's control.
- Set up a lot of built in upsets in Eliminations, since the teams best equipped for winning the tournment may not be the qualifying leaders.
- Cause a lot more frustration in the actual execution of the gameplay
- Open the door for attempts to "game" the qualifying system, since the motivations of the opposing alliances may not be the same.

With 3 on 3 alliance play, we already have so many reasons to help and cooperate with other teams that we do not need more deliberately injected into the game design.

I still believe that if we are legitimately trying to make FRC be recognized as a real sport than the GDC must treat it like one. These 'social engineering experiments' do not really belong here and they really don't work anyway. Good atheletes and good sports teams win tournments, and no one seems to have a problem with this. Good Robots should excel at Robotics Competitions.

If FIRST wants to try to level the field, maybe they should create some kind of handicap rankings. This is done in golf and other sports to allow players of different proficiency to play against each other on somewhat equal terms in the same league. I personally do not think this is necessary, but whatever the solution, messing with the Qualifying promotion system has never really worked, and probably never will. The best games are the ones in which the teams with the best execution will rise to the top in both Qualifying AND Eliminations.

Amen Jim! Well said!