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Unread 24-06-2002, 03:23
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#0047 (ChiefDelphi)
 
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Re: More thoughts..

Posted by Kevin at 04/11/2001 4:10 PM EST


Coach on team #308, Walled Lake Monsters, from Walled Lake Schools and TRW Automotive Electronics.


In Reply to: More thoughts..
Posted by Kevin Sevcik on 04/11/2001 10:49 AM EST:



I watched a number of matches at nationals, and when a 400 - 700 point match was played (not all that frequent) the crowd cheered wildly. When a 0 - 200 point match was played, there was no cheering, despite big balls being placed. There was no winner and no loser. Again, in previous years when teams went head to head, even in a 3-0 scoring match, the crowd would cheer for the winning team. The crowd would be involved in every match, and there was cheering every match. While it's true this year's match might be closer to golf or bowling, it was as exciting as watching golf and bowling on television. The crowd responded similarly to that of players making a birdie / strike or a double-bogey / double gutter.

When it was every team for themself, a great team would advance through the double elimination tournament, regardless of opponents. At least with bowling and golf, each player completely controls their own destiny, and the best bowler / golfer will necessarily rise to the top. With 2 team alliances, this was not quite guaranteed, but very probable. With 4 team alliances, when one team falls down on the bridge, or when one team knocks the bridge off the 4x6, all 4 teams were negatively effected. The point is that the best robots (even if they could do everything on their own) had to depend on luck to survive, and that robots that would have been eliminated in two consecutive rounds of a double elimination tournament would likely do much better in this year's game.
As a result, I believe there was a much better correlation of robot design to ranking in prior years than in this year's competition.

I honestly don't believe the problems with this year's game resulted from a lack of a destructive / defensive nature, and hope that a better team-work game concept can be derived, but use less teams such that luck is not as big a factor.


: First off, are you absolutely sure you were at Nats? I don't know what you're talking about with the batting practice thing. I'll grant that things were kind of quiet after a match when a team did poorly. But after a match when a team did well, it got REALLY loud. And during a match when a team scored a big ball things got loud. And you could almost feel the audience trying to will the bridge to balance. I think that while pattern of cheering may have been different, the cheering was still as enthusiastic. Frankly, I think this whole cheering thing is just another excuse people use because they just feel uncomfortable about the game. On that note...

:
: I'm gonna try t explain just why I think people feel weird about this game, and try to answer a few points those people have. :^) Be prepared, cause I'm bound to be long-winded.
: First, about the whole luck thing. Luck has almost always played a part in competitions, and it always will. In any previous game, who you competed against was still a matter of luck. A fairly bad team could still move high in the rankings if they were paired against other bad teams, or more recently, teamed with really good teams. I don't think this has changed all that much. I think the facts are that FIRST is just bigger, and there's bound to be bigger statistical variances. I think peoples real problem with the luck factor is that it's affecting them more directly and obviously than it was before, because all the robots are now on their side.
: As for depending on other robots, no one said you had to depend on other robots. The lead robot of the alliance that won could do just about everything themselves. You also had the option of designing a modular robot that could adapt so it'd fit other teams better. And again, in the head to head competitions, you were still depending on the quality of the other robots. The only difference is that then you were depending on them to be worse than you.
: About the wrong lessons learned thing. While it does appear that this years competition was all about teamwork and a warm and fuzzy "everybody wins" scoring system, I'd like to restate my claim that I really think it was more about putting an end to the violence. Basically, the only way to do that was to force everyone to work together. Violence is inherently part of almost any head to head competition. I know I can't think of a way to keep head to head while stopping robots from pinning, bashing, etc. So I think this is a sort of "chicken and the egg" kind of thing. My belief is that the non-violence stance lead to a game with lots of teamwork, but it could be the other way around.
: And on a more philosophical note, I'd like to comment on a reply to an earlier post of mine. Bill Beaty noted that while people feel bad about cheering for another team's failure, the don't feel bad if they're directly causing that team to fail. I think this points out the whole problem that people have with this year's competition. People just don't feel right about beating another team unless they directly take a hand in it. I imagine this is just some weird quirk of most people, but it sure seems to explain most people's problems with the competition. All the complaints seem to boil down to the fact that we're just plain not competing directly against other teams, and it just doesn't seem right. I'm hoping that this is just a bout of growing pains, and that we'll all eventually embrace the new kind of competition. Like I said before, I know that I enjoy not having to design a robot like a tank to have any hope of winning. And I know that a sport without direct competition can succeed. There's all kinds of examples. Golf, Bowling, Drag Racing, almost all of the olympics, junkyard wars.... :^) So I know it can be done, the only question is if we're brave enough to make the switch.
:
: Told ya I can be long winded. I think I just like to hear myself talk. Or type, as it were....


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