In 2013, despite all the successes of all the teams represented on these forums, the Median OPR of the league after 1 event played was 10.3.
Over 1200 teams had a net contribution of 10 points or less per match. This level of accomplishment could be achieved in Ultimate Ascent by simply building a kit chassis with two stationary hooks on top. Since HALF of the league cannot achieve this basic level of play in their first outing, it is very hard for me to understand statements that say that we are giving teams enough time to be successful. We are not. 13% of the league has a sub-zero OPR at their first event. This means that our league is producing over 300 teams per year who NEVER EVEN SCORE AT ALL in their first event. This is a design failure of our system. (and I doubt than any of those teams are represented here).
Sure, many of these teams would still not be successful if we gave them more time, but many of them would get much better. Look at the data. After two outings the median MORE THAN DOUBLES to 24 points per team per match. This is huge. The average of the top teams does not change very much, but number of negative almost completely disappears.
What this is telling us is that with some time to work on their machines, get on a playing field, get help from other teams, and benchmark other's solutions,
HUNDREDS of teams move from a position of NOT BEING ABLE TO PLAY, to a position of BEING ABLE TO POSITIVELY CONTRIBUTE to their alliance's success. However, since 1400 teams only played once this year; many, many teams never get this opportunty to improve. And because of this, many of them fail and do not return to the FRC. And this is the real problem. The most difficult place to start a FIRST team is at a school where they previously decide to quit FRC in the past. Our current system is somewhat designed to kill teams early in their life cycle.
These trends are essentially the same, year after year after year, regardless of game design. When registration closes next fall, take a look at where all of the teams who drop out of FRC fall on these charts. The key to improving the sustainablity of FRC is to get teams to a reasonable success plateau early in their team history, ideally in their first season. Then they are likely to stay. Right now the FRC system works against this goal in many ways.
Some of the people on this post say they may quit if the rules were changed, however we already have a system which actively kills teams by the hundreds each year. Which is worse?