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Originally Posted by cdr1122334455
I have to say, they raised the standard of competeing very high this year, the standard kit transmision is pretty good. they set the stage for a brutal competition where only the strong survive. And this year, it will be clear in the seperation of the good and the bad.
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I disagree.
In fact, I think that we'll see markedly less competition this year, and that this is the way Dean and Co. wanted it.
Think back to kickoff and Dean's speech.
Now, look at the three partner alliance. This means that
1) Three teams will be awarded the same number of QP's, not 2, which means that there will be more teams with the same QP's than there were last year
2) More teams will have the same Ranking points, for the same reasons.
3) Threee teams means that it is more unlikely that a good robot can carry an alliance. If one stellar robot is, by draw, paired with two less-than-stellar robots, that alliance will probably lose.
This is unfair. This is unfair because it is disingenuous to the very spirit of competition--any competition--to have hard work, ingenuity, and talent rewarded with loss.
It is, as AnonymousMan said, a microcosm of the same reasons Communism failed, although on a vastly less melodramatic scale. I simply draw parallels.
I predict that, at comp, you're going to have a bunch of dissatisfied teams with good robots and good strategies who are being held back by their alliance partners, and a lot of mediocre teams being vaulted to a position of prominence and winning that they do not deserve.
I know, I know--it's never been in the nature of FIRST to assure that the best team wins and moves on. But this year, we've seen a step that, instead of correcting this misguided habit, has indeed worsened this discrepancy.
--Petey