I watched a couple of the super high QP matches of the Central Florida and they were incredibly boring. Teams carefully drove around their opponents delicate human player stack of 8 so as not to disturb it. They fought hard on the top of the ramp to fit everyone in.
The collusion in these matches is insanely blatant.
At least pretend to compete by pushing each other around a bit.
Watching fixed matches is like watching Professional Wrestling without the violence.
Not all the high scores were fixed but some certainly were. Replic is absolutely correct that finger pointing only makes everyone mad and defensive so no good comes out of it.
After one of the matches the announcer said something to the effect of :
"The 3 highest scores in the nation have been right here at the Central Florida Regional. That is because we have the best teams right here."
That statement was unbelievably disturbing. Manipulating the QP system was taking the spotlight off those who worked hard building great bots and putting it on those who could bargain their way to the top of the standings. Without fixing matches it would take a great deal of luck to achieve those high scores so the best teams with the best bots there were not necessarily getting that luck so they had reasonable lower scores that no one notices.
If FIRST wants to move into the realm where this event is televised on a commercial station, they needs to stop match fixing because no one wants to watch a sport where teams dont try their hardest to beat each other. FIRST needs to abandon the policy of giving the winner points based on the loser's score or go back to the 4 team alliances of 2001. Sure this QP system keeps more capable bots from blowing away less capable bots, which would discourage the less capable bot makers from competing. However, awarding QP's based on the loser's score has lead to the "chokehold" strategy (score 0 so the other bots get 0) of last year and match fixing this year. Koci has the right idea for a qualifing system. Unfortunately, it depends too much on the strength of schedule in your random pairings, but what are you gonna do? Please dont say BCS system. At least FIRST didnt make the same mistake as I-A College football.
P.S. Strange how quickly so many threads turn into ones about match fixing isnt it?