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Originally Posted by Gabriel
The problem isn't necessarily the scoring system so much as the fact that teams have to compete AGAINST each other so we don't get to judge each robot on its own merits all the time. Maybe FIRST should switch to the kind of system we see in many olympic sports, there would be one common challenge and groups of teams would compete in heats. Say, the challenge was to autonomously pick up multicolored balls and deposit them in different spots according to their color just to pick a dumb idea. The overall top 8 teams would go on. It wouldn't be as interesting strategically (or maybe it would be depending on how the game was set up), but it would certainly avoid all the problems with scoring systems, coercion etc. as well as making it easier for a team to practice and the overall result would reflect the performance of the robot, not the performance of the alliance.
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What you describe is pretty much the way the 2001 game was, although eliminations were handled the same way they are today, with the top teams picking alliance partners. In a nutshell, four teams played as a single alliance against the clock to perform a task. The faster they performed the task, the higher their score could be. I personally loved the game, and even if my team wasn't on the national champion alliance I would have still loved the game. It was as exciting as watching the last minute of the final four B-ball games! Trouble was, it was oh-so-difficult to explain the complicated multiplier-based scoring system to anyone other than a FIRST-a-holic.