This is a great point; my team has a brand new driver this year, and we found that he got a ton of experience at this competition compared to other ones. I know my team is not the newest team in the world, but having those 12 seeding matches left us room to 1) Train our drivers about in the field playing 2) Give my team some matches to fix any problems with our robot (luckily we didn't have any
). I know that many new teams had problems with their robots at Traverse, and because of the increased elimination matches were able to recover and be successful overall.
For those of you who are still skeptical about the FiM structure here is the conclusion after one event.
It works. Teams get to play four or more matches than most regionals, and they get to play them at a small fraction of the cost.