[shhrz]

The problem with this year's system is that it is unusally suspicable to luck in qualifications. If there are two average teams in a regional with, say, ~6 good teams, and one of these average teams is drawn to play with 4 of these - compared to the other team who is drawn to play with 1 of them, the gap in QA will be substantial.

This is where the average team with the worse QA, who might in fact be obviously better than the other team in terms of points it can score, needs to hope that scouting is done properly by teams.

Still, like Dan (Nemo) said above - the top teams will usually come out on top since they consistently score well. The middle and lower tier teams rank according to luck of the draw (not ONLY, but it is a HUGE factor).

My main issue with this game is that it is REALLY hard to recover from either a mechanical problem or just some bad luck - your robot fell, another robot knocked some stacks, etc.:

1. In one of our regionals, a really good robot fell over at the start of the match. He was ranked in the top-3 at the time, and were he to be playing with middle/lower tier teams - he would have fallen far out of the top 5, in all probability. Luckily, he was playing with another good team, so the team's average was almost unaffected. But again, luck of the draw. In other years, a loss would hurt, but not be as subsantial.
2. In the playoffs, these issues simply 'kill' your chances. Especially in the QF, where you have only 2 matches, there is no room for error. Unlike other years, where the best-of-3 system allowed you to lose a match and still have a shot.

I find this ranking system to be ... just not good enough. Less so in qualifications, but it is horrible for the playoffs.