Quote:
Originally Posted by Justin Montois
I think you meant to say quals.. and i'm not trying to pick on you specifically but all rules change threads have had someone say something along those lines and it bothers me.
Rebound Rumble was the game we were all given. It wasn't just scoring baskets and balancing. Each game is a strategy filled, complex game that requires teams to excel in many different areas in order to be successful. To infer that The Top 8 robots must be all around great robots takes away from what makes FIRST so addicting. If a team ranks high by specializing, they deserve it. You're devaluing teams that made decisions that they thought early on in January would make them successful. Now, in July, you're asking them to play a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT game. That's truly unfair in my opinion. Teams that chose to excel in quals by dominating and specializing in CoOp balancing are now SOL. And i'm speaking as a team that did not go that route.
IMO, the CoOp bridge was the most unique and paradigm breaking aspects to a competitive competition that I have ever seen. I thought it was awesome.
I've always thought that IRI reserves the right to make changes to fix the little things that end up being annoying through the course of the season. A lane infraction here or a contact penalty there. Not to make large, game altering changes. Rebound Rumble, as it was played all season, will go down as one of the best FRC games of all time. To change it this much was unnecessary.
Also...
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=106213
In that poll, the FRC community voted 120-92 to keep the CoOp bridge at at least one point. I think that would have been a fair compromise. |
Justin,
I agree with you on some points and disagree with you on some others.
First, I agree with you that Rebound Rumble was an amazing game to play. Challenging, inventive and exciting. Along those lines, I certainly agree these changes are quite drastic. I would never have imagined that IRI would remove the coop bridge. But they have. And here is where I disagree with you.
Secondly, I don't think a team that specializes in one thing is deserving of a #1 Seed finish. I believe the #1 seed should be the best robot for the game. If that means they specialize in one thing and dominate the field for it, then they'll take the #1 seed spot. But I think that's a different discussion we can have elsewhere.
The main point I disagree with you on is the removing of the coop bridge being unfair to some team and that those teams are "SOL". I agree that it is a change that teams will have to account for, but no one is "SOL". It's down to a "Win-Loss" situation, so those teams will need to play Rebound Rumble. Make baskets and balance on alliance bridges. If teams weren't prepared to do that... Well, I don't know what to say. Maybe IRI isn't a great place for them. Maybe that itself is not a fair statement, but I don't see how the removal of the coop points leaves anyone at an unfair disadvantage. This isn't regional competition. This is an event where the best of the best play off.
Drawing a loose tangent that will probably be torn apart by others, take the change in minibot points last year to 20-20-15-15 (I think that was it...). Say you have a team that put up 3 or 4 tubes, which is "good" for regional levels, but a minibot that broke speed records. They were good in teleop, but astounding in the end game. At IRI, their tube scoring ability would be "just okay", and with the new minibot spread, their end game was FAR less valuable. It's the same thing. A game change hurts teams who planned for the minibot to be a game changer. You find ways to adapt. You find ways to succeed. If the lack of coop points is truly what cripples a team, I feel that they may not be ready for IRI.