I'm happy to say that I think I have more positives than negatives this year...
The game this year was amazing. Fun to watch, fun to play, fun to design. No absurd rules that ruined defensive strategies and no rules that refs called excessively (such as lane violations)
MAR: Upon finding out that NJ/Eastern PA/Delaware would be moving to the district system, I was pretty skeptical and unsure about it. I was afraid to miss the flair of traditional regionals and to just end up with dull, uneventful, lame events that felt like offseasons. Boy was I wrong. Not once did I feel that way. Everything was planned out perfectly, and it feels like FIRST gave MAR some nice leeway towards doing things on their own (Ed Petrillo gave a great analogy at Rutgers, comparing it to a 17 year old being handed a driver's license and keys to a car...that one was personal for me
). I can't wait for next season; I'm sure the few flaws of MAR will be fixed and it'll get better and better every year. And of course, how can you NOT love a water jug in the pits?
The actual format of the manual: The new, online manual was nice to have. It felt a whole lot easier to search through than in past years. It's easier to just click around than having to CTRL+F through a huge PDF document. Sure, the content had its flaws, but the format of it was great.
Instant scoring and instant penalties: No more thinking, "well, the score shows we won, but I'm not sure if there were any penalties". And I was skeptical about the loss of the dramatic wait to find out the final score, but having the instant score was awesome and a welcome change.
KOP: Motors, motors, motors. Add that to vouchers and FIRST Choice and it was awesome.
This is all I can think of now, I'm sure I'll come up with more later. Overall, many great things were done this great season*.
Of course, Dean's List Finalist is always a healthy ego boost