Quote:
Originally Posted by Justin Montois
This game is not about "winning solo" and I think your match schedule has a more drastic effect on your ranking than any prior year. In years past, if you were paired with 1114 for example you would likely win but you only gained 2 QP's. However, this year, if you play with 1114 and they (and you) put up a big number, that's a huge advantage over teams that don't get to play with 1114 cause it's not 2 QP's it's a huge boost to your QA that other teams won't get.
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Lower ranked teams do get helped by good partners, but this is largely negated by their score being averaged over 10 matches. If they put up 180 points in one match, and only 40 in the rest, they have an average of 54, only 14 points higher than without the good match. Last year you needed 3 very capable robots to be able to consistently possess the ball 3 times and score it, and if you couldn't then you were probably getting 0 points for the match. 2013 was a very solo-able game similar to this year in the way that a single very good team could keep up with an alliance of 3 decent teams.
Also, I'd say this game is actually more easily playable solo (in both elims and quals) than 2013 because scoring lots of points while still losing a match doesn't hurt you as much (since it gets averaged out) as getting 0 qual points for losing, as you did in previous years. 1114 perfectly exemplified this, they essentially played every match in GTRC with little to no support from their alliance partners and still dominated the event, that could not happen last year.