[wgardner]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

I think that it is wrong to say that FIRST didn't think of this strategy before the season began. They want to make it clear that close looped scoring is not legal. No team posed the question they answered. They simply were making a statement in the Q&A.

As a point of fact, many many teams posed the question that they answered. I know mine did and I know several others did too. The GDC was responding to the overwhelming confusion about what was and was not legal. Check the ftc reddit to see the multiple discussions and debates that teams were having.

Originally Posted by orangemoore

I think it is also important to point out that FIRST has said many times in many forms (including the game manual section 1.6) that teams must stay up to date with the Q&A.

I agree with this statement: it has always been said that teams have to follow the forums. This is even say at the end of the game video every year.

That said, there are many many FTC teams that do not check the forum. Students are young. Mentors are rookies. People are busy. The forum has 100s of posts. This year, they even broke the rulings forums into many subforums, making it even more work to check them all and be up to date on all of the rulings.

There is only so much they can do to let teams know about new rules and updates.

Well, one simple thing they could do would be to release updates to the game manual only for major rulings that fundamentally affect the way teams design their robots. Some examples of rule changes that were only communicated in the forums that numerous teams missed are:

• 2016: no closed loop recycling.
• 2016: only turning the center vortex by touching it at 1 horizontal point, and turning it only at a rate less than 5 rot/sec.
• 2015: plowing debris, scoring autonomous debris by plowing, etc.
• 2014: no touching the ball tubes (even though it was shown in the game video).

Couldn't the GDC at least update the game manual with these major changes? If FIRST's goal is really to grow, shouldn't they take simple steps that minimize the confusion and frustration that teams experience?

We can all respond to MeBeMe's post #5 saying that they should have read the forum, but the fact is that the MeBeMe is frustrated and may leave the program because of the way rules are difficult to find and understand. Fixing the problem by making rare-but-important Game Manual updates isn't that much work. Why can't FIRST do it?

Originally Posted by orangemoore

They really didn't change anything besides clearing any possible confusion about their intent.

I respectfully disagree. They made a fundamental change to the game that resulted in teams completely changing the way that they design their robots.