A plead to FIRST, anyone else agree?

[Marc P.]

Originally Posted by Seathan93

Then...there was coopertition. As if Gracious Professionalism weren't enough, FIRST brought out Coopertition (competition and cooperation). Basically everything Gracious Professionalisms embodied, but much more explicit. On top of that, the games were changed to make it such that the robots who scored the highest, did not necessarily rank the highest. I understood the concept, help other teams out, get games where the score is more even, and then everyone wins. But, in the middle of a competition, there are times where even helping another team out, will not change how they play on the field. The rules of the games have even become more strict, since coopertition has come out. I won't get into that now, that's another point, but FIRST has killed some of the innovation by restricting how you can play a game to such an extreme, and red carding anything slightly competitive.

I encourage anyone who thinks coopertition is a relatively recent thing to research the FRC game from 2000 (hint: look at the name).

Truth is, it's been around for a while, and it's here to stay. And it's not a bad thing. This year I see robots filling up both racks with all sorts of manipulators, from sophisticated roller claws, to tennis balls stuck on the end of two pieces of 80/20. I see multiple sub 2 second minibots with all sorts of deployment mechanisms. I see excitement in high scoring matches. Forgive me if I find that more competitive than drivetrains shoving each other around.

Maybe I get that from living through Stack Attack. Maybe I'm just getting old.