Quote:
Originally Posted by Caleb Sykes
I really have trouble imagining any ranking system that isn't WLT which won't cause qualification gameplay to differ from playoff gameplay. Take this year as an example, the ranking system discouraged many teams from playing defense in the quals matches where they would have if we had a WLT ranking system or if they were playing in the playoffs.
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I think i see where you're coming from. Generally speaking, any ranking system that factors in performance relative to a standard outside the scope of that single match (i.e. bonus RP for secondary objectives, tournament average, etc) leaves room for teams in a given match to collude in order to maximize their own gains. I think this is a necessary evil, as purely looking at each match in a vacuum (which is basically what WLT does) leaves you more at the mercy of the schedule gods. I don't think this really happens enough in FRC to be a major concern, and with the 2016 manual, is explicitly discouraged by FiRST.
The differences between qualifications and playoff rounds that concern me were more related to game design, such as tasks being worth RP in quals and points in eliminations (2016), disappear completely in playoffs (co-op 2015, co-op 2012), or don't exist in the qualification rounds but are important to playoff rounds (triple-balancing 2012). These are almost all related to game design and not the ranking system. IMO, make everything worth points and let the ranking system do the work of filtering teams into rank.