[Kyle]

I have been reading this thread and I think it is time I got my chance to rant and stuff too.
I attended the Pittsburgh regional and went to Chesapeake on Saturday to watch, I did notice a difference in the way teams played the game and in the calls the refs made. At Pittsburgh, one of the very few our bots auto went didn't do what it should have, a controller reset was blamed, our arm broke the plain of the drivers station. I was frozen in the stands waiting for the refs to shut us down, it did not happen. I am on the that is a bad "rule" bandwagon breaking the plain is a bad rule, there are to many reasons a team can break the plain unintentionally and then be DQ for it.
I also think that the penalties are like rewards for the other alliance, I also agree that they are to high, well the 30 pointers are but I can see the reason for the 10's. We lost Pittsburgh because of a penalty, I am not going to complain about it because it was the correct call and the other alliance beat us fair and square in the next finials match. I think that FIRST should really look into the penalties to score ratio in next years game.
This years game and rules seem like they were made to try to insure that teams would play less defence and score more, that is probably why the tetra points are so small, the less hitting you do the more scoring you can do. I think that is a good call BY FIRST but it is also making the game less liked by each week of regionals.
When a rule change comes mid season it is completely un fair, At Pittsburgh there was a rule change on Thursday night that effected the regional. What about the regionals before that where those new rules could have made the difference between a team winning and losing? I hope next year the up dates stop at 13 or 14 and then the rules are set unless a major problem occurs.
When I first saw the game animation this year at kick off i kept wondering why there wasn't any protection over the drivers station or on the sides of the field, I think that the sides of the field other then the loading zones should have a raised wall at least 3 feet on each side from the upper rail. That would make the matches much safer.
sorry about the randomness of all of that, I am horrible at long posts like this where I could rant for hours.