[EricH]

The field control system should be kept. It's the best they've had yet, and if the scores were sometimes slow, I think that may have partly been humans trying to input the score. The auto pause was a needed addition. The one annoyance was the pairing algorithm. (And that wasn't too bad for us at our regionals.)

The issues that came up during build were handled promptly and professionally, and those were some "new equipment" issues. I haven't heard much about those since about Week 3 or before.

My personal pet peeve is the mid-season changes to rules (or lack thereof). There were only two of them, but they affected teams. One was rescinded, the other was in reaction to a strategy that had already won a match (or was it a regional??) However, a clear definition was needed and was not provided. Those are the main failings in the rules/updates this year. And, considering that very few rules were in need of updating, I would rate the rulebook a solid 8-9 on content/clarity and a 5 in thinness. (Starting to be too many rules for most people, but 90% or more of those rules are needed.)

Overall, I'd give FIRST a 9/10 for this year. Most of the few issues were resolved quickly, and the rest were made livable.

Atlanta--I withold judgement until the evening of the 13th, or maybe later.