[vhcook]

I spent most of the morning Saturday behind the desk in Pit Admin at KC trying to explain the rankings to people. This was not an easy task. Doing the same job with the system used my first four years in FIRST was fairly easy. The 2*Wins+1*Ties+0*Losses system for qualifying points was straightforward, and the fact that ranking score was a tiebreaker based on the loser's score led into the "encouraging close, high-scoring matches" explanation. Both were fairly easy to determine from raw match score information. Under the current system, it's hard to even determine whether the numbers are correct or updated, since penalty information isn't visible on the match results list, and there have been a lot of penalties and a lot of 0-0 ties that resulted in non-zero seeding and coopetition points.

I'm not going to judge any team negatively for their legal strategic decisions under this system as long as they are honest about them, put a robot on the field that is as good as they can manage, and don't play "single out team X and try to make them go down by any means so I can go up". Everyone would like to be in the position to choose alliance partners on Saturday, and it's possible it's going to take some weird roads to get there. It's also possible that all the exotic strategies will be found to be a bad idea in most practical situations and will fade away as the season progresses.

I trust everyone's scouts to find a way to see quality and ability. Good robots will still be what wins championships.

If things continue under this system, the audience is going to be confused during quals, and we should try to help them as much as we can. It is my intention to make sure that all of our people in the stands at our next event are prepared to explain to other people's confused grandparents, bus drivers, and random spectators why someone thought it was sensible to start scoring own-goals mid-match, or why all six teams are scoring in one direction, preferably in as neutral a way as possible, even if we decide it isn't a strategy we are willing to participate in. The most graciously professional thing I can think of to do is assume positive intent any time I can and play the best game we can with the cards we were dealt.

Given the strategic implications and the level of confusion and distress it invokes in both informed and uninformed observers, this is not the ranking system I would have chosen, and I would prefer not to use it again. On the other hand, I am not privy to the design constraints the GDC members were using when they selected it, and I respect them enough to play it out and not make final judgments after one week. On the third hand, if they decide this isn't what they wanted and make a change, I will not complain.