Quote:
Originally Posted by BrendanB
Unfortunately after nearly 20 years of FIRST being a competitive outlet for those interested in engineering they are trying to change that... BAD IDEA. My grandfather plans to write Dean Kamen about how those who build good robots should not be hurt because other teams don't do well.
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I would say this year's qualification seeding is consistent with the much of FIRST's history (at least since I joined in 2000). Last year's Win-Loss-Tie seeding is a relatively new concept (introduced in 2004 making its run for 5 years, RIP). Before that (if you think back) we had a system of Qualification Points that were determined by an annually changing formulas of the winners and losers score. I guess it is true that "you don't know what you got till it's gone". The only thing I believe to be a new concept is that the loser gets the winner's unpenalized score (correct me if I'm wrong). This allows for a losing alliance to get more seeding points than the winning alliance if the has more than twice as many penalties as the loser has unpenalized points. I'm sure this has happened several times already with all the blowout wins and penalties. This concept still baffles me
Quote:
Originally Posted by iCurtis
It's designed to make both alliances play all out offense. Don't bug them, they don't bug you, it's as close to 2001 (4v0) as you can get and still have two opposing alliances on the field.  |
I dont know about "closest to 2001". The years immediately following 2001 and before 2004 it were pretty close.
2002: Zone Zeal. Winner got none of their score and 3X the loser's score in QP which lead to interesting strategies like
this . Highest QP was #1 seed. Everyone remembers Beatty's BEAST (Team 71) that year as one of the most dominate bots ever. Few remember that this domination caused them to seed near the bottom before being picked 1st overall on route to a National Championship. Since the nature of the game was to battle over a finite number of points (the 3 goals) that is significantly different than 2001
2003 Stack Attack. Winner got their score plus 2X losers score in QP. This lead to some
collusion and debates about its role in the game. Even in the Elims wins didn't really matter all that much. Each round, two matches (no more no less) were played between opposing alliances and whoever compiles more Elimination Point (scored exactly like QP expect renamed EP) advances. Often the winner of Match 1 would purposely score very low in Match 2 to assure victory. I think this makes it the closest game to 4v0 and 2001.
(Note: I don't like to make that comparison because 2003 is infamous and I personally loved my first full year in 2001. At least 2001 was advertised as 4v0 point scoring competition instead of sometimes being a defacto 4v0 like 2003)
Even before 2001 in 2000, Team 25's National Championship bot was able to descore and score balls between alliances to ensure a close victory and tons of QP in the Quals. With the W-L-T seeding, some teams still scored on themselves to improve their ranking. FIRST Rules always encourage high-scoring, close matches and lead to strategies to accomplish that (and perhaps debate about those strategies). The new qualification seeding is not unprecedented, but it is perhaps a step backward.