Quote:
Originally Posted by Ed Law
To people who says it is not about the robot and championship is a showcase, celebration or science fair, I have this to say. I have no problem with teams with varying capability at the championship. However qualifying round means just that. The best teams should qualify for elimination round. They should be alliance captains. Hence the number of teams and matches per team must allow this to happen. Otherwise, why have qualifying and elimination rounds. We can just all show up and play some friendly matches to showcase and celebrate. And to take it to the extreme, why even bother to keep score!
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This brings up an important point about the inspiration of competition. Yes, Worlds can be inspiring to all teams in and of itself. "Lower level" (however you'd like to define it) teams can learn a lot and be motivated to work harder and try more simply by attending.
But what about the teams that are already that inspired and worked their tails off to make the best robot they've ever made? Organizing a qualifying round that can't give them a fair shot can--and has, I heard to examples just this year--led to students on the verge of the "next level" becoming
demotivated and
uninspired. If you put all that work in and get hurt by the number of quals and your allies' caliber, is it any surprise that some students lose faith? Is more always better*, or is it such a stretch to see the uninspiring downsides?
*Note that I'm not saying 400 is necessarily too many or 8 is necessarily too few. (I happen to believe that's so, but I'm more concerned about the concept than the threshold.)