[magnets]

Well, here's one of my friends opinions he asked me to post for him.

I've been a part of FRC since 1995, which is longer than most drivers have been alive for. I'll probably be attending my 100th competition this year (or maybe only 99th). During my four years as a student, I was a member of a really competitive team that won a world championship, and has gone on to win others. When the small parts restriction was lifted, we as a team (in a very "un-GP" way), complained that we would no longer have the massive competitive advantage we used to have. While many people's memories of 90's and early 2000's robotics remember teams like 71, chief delphi, wings of fire and wildstang building extremely great fantastic swerve driven, fancy articulated drives (111 in 04 is the coolest robot, ever...), what you don't remember is that many teams were, to be honest, really quite horrible. Look at the 2003 finals that were just posted. The robots really aren't doing any stacking. They're just running into each other. All you needed was a working drive system to be competitive. Yet, as many successful teams found, most teams at that time were bad at driving in straight lines at a reasonable speed. Teams had just two (or sometimes one) driven wheel, powered by poorly set up gearboxes with as few as two window motors.

With the small parts restriction gone, we knew that we wouldn't have an advantage of being able to CNC our own nylon sprockets, and that other teams would (gasp!) be able to have as many moving parts as us. Looking a few years in the future, there were still teams that were just better (HOT suddenly became very competitive). Next was the kitbot, which people claimed would make custom drive systems useless. Team 118 still managed to do great with their swerve they ran from 05-08. Then, out came the new control system, off the shelf shifting gearboxes, off the shelf robonauts swerve, off the shelf 111 swerve, and the affordable vex product line. There are still teams now (1114, 254, 118...) that manage to stay super competitive, except now, a new rookie team might not be easily able to win regionals single handedly, but they'll at least be able to play well, and trust me, that really means a lot.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that significantly better teams will always exist, and the playing field (yes even in 09) was never, and will never be totally level, so why should we complain if the previously uncompetitive teams are now competitive?