[dtengineering]

I'll put a big caveat here that I was only watching webcasts, and do believe that the competitions will get more challenging each weekend.... and with the BIG caveat that there are always a few great rookies teams (those aren't the ones I'm talking about) but....

Is it possible that FIRST has expanded the number of teams so quickly that the average level of robot competency has dropped?

I expect to see a certain number of incompetent robots (meant in the sense that the robot is not competent at playing the game... not as a slight to those who built it) on Friday morning... but I was watching elimination rounds at several regionals and saw an unusal proportion of robots that appeared to be... playing like it was Friday morning rather than Saturday afternoon.

It is also possible that the rules this year prohibit a team from building an uber-capable, ultra-dominant robot of the kind that 1114 built for Overdrive. I have to say that after watching 148's video, I'm looking forward to seeing them play. Or perhaps I have underestimated the difficulty of the challenge... or maybe I'm just getting grumpy in my old age ("Back in 2004 we had to climb steps... not these sissy ramps! And we had to do it with just two robots! And we had bigger ba..." oh, never mind.)

So yes, the scores were lower than I expected, the matches were less exciting than I expected, and (some of) the robots (in semi-final action) were less impressive than I expected (for robots at that stage of the tournament).... BUT.... BUT.... I want to make really sure that I leave myself lots of room to change that opinion once I've tried playing the game.

Jason