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Unread 18-03-2015, 09:58
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Mechanical Marauders - Alumnus
AKA: Paul Mangels
FRC #0271 (Mechanical Marauders)
Team Role: Mechanical
 
Join Date: Jan 2012
Rookie Year: 2011
Location: Bay Shore, NY
Posts: 406
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Re: This year's "game" is a job, not a game

I have to be honest, I really do not like this game. I think the field of robots is spread so much wider this year than others between the best teams and the worst teams. Also, as previously mentioned, it's hard to get the game to appeal to people outside of FIRST. And, for me at least, it's painfully boring to watch most quals matches, though elims can get pretty cool when an alliance really grooves.

That being said, there are a lot of things that this game does right. Primarily, I think the eliminations format is a step in the right direction. The switch from "win-loss-tie 2 out of 3 head to heads" to a round robin system is something that I like very much. Here's why:

Suppose somehow we had an objective way of measuring which elims alliances are the best (obviously this is an idealized situation). Now suppose that at a given event, alliance 1, 2, 7, and 8 are objectively the best alliances. In a round-robin style format these alliances can all advance, and the best four alliances move on to the semis, instead of two of them getting eliminated in quarters. The same logic applies to semis. I am not pretending to have all the answers, and I'm not sure how we could combine a round-robin playoff model with the win-loss-tie format (because, it is a competition after all, and there are and should be winners and losers), but I do thoroughly believe that this is a big step in the right direction for FIRST.

Oh, and if you're still reading this, here's one more good thing about RR. This game has changed the way teams think about drivetrains. Tank drive is still fine, but this is a year where omni-directional drives can really own it. I love how many stupidly simple drives there are this year, and I look forward to how teams wrangle their newfound loves for low-traction omnidirectional drives (H-drive, mecanum, etc) with the fact that next year there might be robot-robot contact again.

tl;dr: I really don't like this game, but I do like round-robin elims and drivetrains
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