[benhulett]

I've only been involved with FIRST for 2 years, my junior and senior year in high school, 2 of the 3 years that team # 1895 has existed. I'll probably come back a little bit as alumni to give some pointers to next years team and such, but to be honest, I have seen some things I don't like in the actual games....

But before I go on, I have many more positive points (in fact WAY WAY WAY more) than I have negative points

First thing on my mind is "mentor built" bots....

In my opinion, this sort of ruins the game... the mentor is supposed to be there to mentor, not build the robot. You have mentors that have way more experience in engineering than your everyday FIRST robotics high school student. The student is supposed to gain the experience, not let the mentor do the work, give a quick run down of how it works, and then go do the next part of the robot. How is this helping the student. Our team is focused on the students building the bot, while the mentor gives tips. You go to these competitions, and we look at some of these rookie teams, and we sit there and think to ourselves, there is no possible way just the students built that work of art. I don't know if any of you all have seen this, but it just bothers me that they get that advantage.

The only other thing that has bothered me the past two years has been the ranking system. A team could have the best engineered bot in the entire game, but be matched up with other robots that impede their ability to score points and be last in rank. A team could have a not so up to par bot but rely on their partners to give them an awesome rank. At first I thought well everybody must be thinking the same thing I am, the ranking system really doesn't determine how well your bot really does. Your performance as a whole is basically decided upon by your team mates. This is a random selection, so it's hard to counter it. But it turns out from my view (@ annapolis) that every team doesn't see this. The top 8 teams were given the choice of alliances, and only 2 bots outside of the top 24 were selected. I saw much better bots than some of those inside the top 24 that were impeded by team performance but were outstanding performers. So I thought that maybe the bots should be graded on their individual points, assists, and team wins. That way you wouldn't have such a ridiculous drop in rank if your team loses.

These are just my thoughts.... I personally think that FIRST could come up with a better ranking system.

I just want to hear YOUR thoughts, am I being completely unreasonable here? Have I missed a point or two? I appreciate comments from anybody regardless of whether or not they agree.