[Joseph Lewis]

I have spent the last four hours reading through all of the discussion on this thread, and found that while most ideas are plausible, some are more so than others. Post #411 was especially helpful, although it received very little attention on this thread.

My thoughts on the ideas that have come throughout the thread:
1) Autonomous being moved to the end of the match: Although this idea does propose a unique challenge both to the drive team and to the programming team, I don't think FIRST will take this direction for a couple of reasons (although, who knows, Frank did say that "Change is Coming"). My initial concern here is safety. Having robots start auto at the end of a match means that autonomous could begin in any multitude of positions for however many robots are on the field. Knowing how finicky robots can be, even being slightly off in the position that a team reaches can lead to drastically different results in the autonomous period. Having robot on robot interaction during autonomous then, is a huge possibility. FIRST has, for safety reasons, tried to minimize this by making rules about not crossing over the middle of the field during Auto. Although FIRST is making big changes this year, I don't think making events less safe is on their list of priority changes. Not only this, but it would be very difficult to regulate the transition between Teleop and Autonomous. As it stands now, players stand behind a line and wait for auto to be over to step forward, making it clear that the robots are acting without driver controls. If auto were at the end however, many people would find themselves in the heat of the moment trying to hang on to the controls for as long as possible. Even if a large penalty were assigned to teams that didn't step back in time for auto (which seems only to promote the foul based victories that we saw in 2014, albeit not at the highest levels of play), many events would have difficulty regulating this transition. The multitude of positions also brings up my second concern. Autonomous programming being as difficult as it is for most (or many, however you say it without offending anyone) teams, it would feel very unsatisfying to have made a great Auto code and line up your robot in the right spot at the end of the match, only to see it not work 90% of the time because another robot sat themselves in your way. Lastly, this auto at the end seems very anti-climatic (as was mentioned previously, sorry I forgot who mentioned it). Only the most competitive of robots would do anything useful during this autonomous period, but even then other robots can get in the way (since auto does the same thing every time, it would be easy to set up and block). This leads to an end game where all or most of the robots are sitting on the field, not scoring, not moving, or anything. How boring.
2) 6v0 or other v0 format: I really caught on to this idea, considering the name change of "Elimination Matches" to "Playoffs" Teams compete in a time limit to earn as many points as possible. These points go towards ranking in qualifications, you pick a permanent alliance for "Playoffs" then each permanent alliance goes 2 or 3 times, you take the sum of their scores, and the highest one wins. No "elimination", because there is no bracket.
3) Hockey or Puck related game: This idea also seems plausible, and could fit in with the v0 or a XvsX(vsX, etc. if you'd like, although anything more than two alliances seems unlikely due to the "Enemy of my enemy is my friend" game-play that results from such formatting) format. I can definitely see the 3"x3"x60" object containing some number of pucks, considering how well the math works with the weight(as worked out previously in the thread). As to how to play such a game, knowing that a hockey puck is the scoring object means nothing. Manipulators are highly dependent on what rules they must abide by in the manual, which we will just have to see on January 3rd, 2015.
4) Recycling 2014's Game: This one upsets me. As much as I liked 2014's game, I do not think it would be interesting for spectators to see the same game being played by basically the same robots. Recycle does not mean repeat.
5) Switchup of Video Footage, no '99 game, 2x '97 game: I saw a summary that said the thread believes that the switch-up was intentional, and that FIRST was incapable of making such a big mistake on accident. Does no one remember last years hint, when they literally released the wrong numbers, giving the birthday for the soccer player who DIDN'T actually hold the top number of assists? That seems like a pretty big mistake to me. This mistake is not huge, its just an editing error by someone who was rushed to put together a hint and accidentally clicked on the wrong file, chose a random spot to include, and didn't recognize that the game was not from '99 because they weren't around in FIRST during the '99 or '97 games. (kudos to everyone that has pointed this out before).

I'm not sure what the game hint means, but I think there are definitely great ideas out there. Although we have to wait until January 3rd to know for sure, nothing says that we can't have fun while we wait. Keep speculating!

TL,DR - Autonomous shouldn't switch to end because of safety concerns. Different alliance format likely, but not more than 2 alliances. Hockey Game is a good idea. 2014 game reuse isn't. Footage switch was not intentional. Have fun speculating while waiting for January 3rd.