Quote:
|
Originally Posted by T. Hoffman
3. FIRST better get their act straight SOON when it comes to the numerous field control and scoring glitches, or you are going to have a mass uprising on your hands. I returned home to Warren, OH at 3:25 AM after driving back from New Jersey. This late return was due in no small part to the HOURS of delays teams and spectators had to endure from the ridiculous amount of restarts and field downtimes. This is at least the 2nd year in a row these problems have been permitted to leak into the competition season, especially during the first few weeks, and it seems even worse this year. FIRST, HATCH TECHNOLOGIES, and whomever else is responsible for developing the field control systems - FIX THE PROBLEM, or find the number of registrants for 1st week regionals dwindle away and die. WE ARE NOT YOUR GUINEA PIGS!!!! My registration fees are not there for you to spend on people who develop buggy, regional experience and audience interest-degrading software and hardware. If you do not do more to improve your quality control and accelerate your testing and debug, you may find those fees absent from future seasons. I will gladly pay a lot less money to someone who isn't FIRST to attend more offseason events like the IRI where the probability of playing on fully debugged fields is 80000% greater. This is one area where I will be more gracious when FIRST starts being more professional. I can only imagine how these numerous problems could hurt teams who work their hardest to scrape together enough dough to attend a single Week 1 event.
|
We were 45 minutes behind at the end of Friday, but had gotten our match cycle time down to 5 minutes by then. We did lose a lot of time early in the day due to scoring system and field control issues, but were able to make most of it back. We actually ran ahead of schedule on Saturday, and had few major system issues.
Bear in mind that this year's field and scoring system is much more complex than ever before - necessarily so because of the demands of counting balls and enabling/disabling goals. Sarah, the Good Scorekeeping Fairy of NJ, said the scoring system is the best she's seen and she has been head scorekeeper three years running.
Quote:
|
Despite all the problems, the New Jersey Regional proved to be a fun, spirited albeit way too freaking long event filled with a bunch of great teams. Our team is very excited heading into Buckeye next week. I have heard, however, that the New Jersey field is scheduled to be shipped to Cleveland next. This makes me cringe (although I'm sure all the fields have been experiencing problems). I hope the problems plaguing the field control systems and causing stress for all the valiant volunteers responsible for keeping it limping along are minimized.
|
Actually, the NJ field is on its way to Pittsburgh. Cleveland gets a brand spanking new field.