[JABot67]

I think that this year's ranking scheme has worked very well, and that is because now in order to be ranked in the top 8, you must beat good teams. Winning a great offensive match against good opponents is now worth much more than winning a match against three robots that do not move.
Take a look at the Kettering District top 8 qualifiers:

67
910
2619
33
2834
27
245
201

All of these teams were very deserving of their top 8 spots. (2619 is a beastly scoring machine; same with 2834. If you don't know them now, you will know them by the end of the season.) The reason 67 got seeded #1 was because we won q45 with 33 and 2834 and against 910, 70, and 894. Not only did we have good partners... the opposing alliance was amazing as well. 910 was ahead of us by a large margin in seeding points, and when we won 12-11 without penalties, it boosted our seeding score by 34 points.

If 910's alliance would have won, it would have boosted their score by around the same number of points, and they almost certainly would have been ranked #1. But the thing is that the ranking scheme didn't screw 910 over for losing that one match. They still ended up ranking second.

What I liked about this is that our matches against powerful opponents (such like 2619, 27, 910, 201, 51, 2834, and 245) gave us more points than "easy" matches where we were allied with good partners and didn't face very much opposition. A not so good robot can win a lot of matches if it has an easy schedule. But that robot cannot win a high scoring match against good teams, and therefore will not be ranked high. This is the reason why I believe the new ranking system better determines which teams should be in the top 8.

Also, I do not think that the new ranking system encourages you to score for the other alliance. Say your alliance can score 11 balls in a match. So you can either get 11 seeding points by scoring for yourself, or you can score 5 of those balls for the other alliance and win the match 6-5. This gives you 16 points, 5 more than if you only scored for yourself. But then the other alliance can score a couple balls or hang at the end of the match, or your alliance could get penalties, and bam, you've lost. In my opinion, that's too much risk.

But what about the other regionals/districts? Do you think the ranking system worked well for determining the top 8, or did it fail?