2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Alex Cormier]

The wildcard system is good, but needs work.

Week 1 winning teams don't qualify into the wildcard system. That's just plain stupid.

[EricLeifermann]

Originally Posted by IndySam

Prioritizing VIP suite over 25000 team members is a terrible reason to do it. I would bet everyone who was in the VIP/Hospitality area would agree.

That suit is only good for viewing during opening ceremonies and the finals and is not crowded during either.

Agree 100%.

But those are the only "cushy" seats in the house and some even have tvs in front of them so people with bad eye sight can still see the action.

Not saying it right or wrong just showing why they do it that way.

[efoote868]

The Championship event needs more matches per team. Suggestion:
Increase the size of the playing field or cut the frame perimeters of robots and have alliances of 4v4 or 2v2v2v2, and you can keep the 100 team divisions or even increase it to about 120 while still fitting 9-10 matches per robot for the same amount of time.

The matches need less turnaround time. Suggestion:
I'd recommend decreasing the amount of playing pieces on the field but have them never leave play or enter back into play after being scored. This will keep for shorter amounts of turnaround time and allow for high amounts of scoring.

The field needs mobility. This year was good.
Keep the option to have the playing field wide open. Bridges last year were fine, but the rack from 2007 was way too big. This year was fine since teams had the tradeoff of being big and unable to be blocked or small with a wide open field.

[Sam390250]

One part of Championships that has been a negative in my mind the past few years, is that on Saturday (the day most of the outside public would be able to attend) most of the booths and activities in the pits are closed. It seems that if you want to expand FIRST to more outsiders, the main attractions need to be pristine on the day most people would be available. You can't really expect people to take off of work or school to attend during all the action, especially if you are trying to attract people who have never been a part of FIRST before. I remember even as an FLL member attending our local FRC regional on Saturday mornings because that was the only time my family was available to take me.

The logistics of this are admittedly not easy. It does not seem like the FLL and FTC matches could possibly still be going on Saturday morning. However, some of the LEGO booths, scholarship booths (mainly just for students, but it still shows one of the many facets of FIRST), and other fun booths that are either shut down or picked clean by Saturday should still be open and available. Maybe this would mean not having them open as early in the week? Whatever it takes, I think expanding FIRST means putting the best foot forward, and showing everything we have to offer, on the day most newcomers will be in attendance.

[Basel A]

This is not a new problem; in fact, it's been around for as long as I've been in FRC: The rankings at the Championship were sub-optimal. I don't think anyone approves of 5-way ties for 1st place (Galileo) or 7-way ties for 2nd (Arch, New). Rankings could be improved in two obvious ways: fewer teams and more matches per team. Having fewer teams addresses both of those two ways. I would not complain about 60 team divisions, let alone 80.

Webcast quality. Frankly, it's pathetic. There's a few places where the webcast quality is great (Canada, for example), but far too many where the webcasts are unwatchable. It's time to standardize the webcasts by including webcasting equipment with the fields and assigning an official volunteer to maintaining it.

If you feel obligated to qualify XXX teams to the Championship, qualify more of them via wild card and less of them via waitlist. Eliminate the bias in the system against early-season regionals. I kinda understand why you don't want to qualify a team based on a Chairman's team's slot, but even the current solution doesn't solve that problem entirely. Winner-then-CA doesn't open a slot, but CA-then-Winner does open a slot. If the goal is bringing more competitive teams to the Championship, then this year was good. But next year, bring even more more competitive teams.

Game pieces should not overflow the goals. This did not happen often, but it did happen and it shouldn't. Make the goals much larger than you think they need to be. Shots bouncing out isn't cool either.

[CENTURION]

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

Einstein is located where it is because of the VIP/hospitality suite there isn't a good location for it on the side of the Jones Dome so they have the current field locations.

Honestly I feel like this isn't a good enough reason.

I know we want to be nice to VIPs and all, but really, the event is for the teams. They could at the very least let teams onto the first balcony instead of forcing them all the way upstairs where, as somebody else mentioned, the lighting fixtures for Einstein are perfectly in the way of the scores, and you can't see anything too well.

In Atlanta, you could fit all the teams in without having to go up to the nosebleed seats.

[JohnFogarty]

If you were to look at how clean the Atlanta floor layout looked in comparison to the St. Louis layout. One looks way more organized and professional. Guess which one.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by CENTURION

Honestly I feel like this isn't a good enough reason.

I know we want to be nice to VIPs and all, but really, the event is for the teams. They could at the very least let teams onto the first balcony instead of forcing them all the way upstairs where, as somebody else mentioned, the lighting fixtures for Einstein are perfectly in the way of the scores, and you can't see anything too well.

In Atlanta, you could fit all the teams in without having to go up to the nosebleed seats.

I am pretty sure the nose bleeds were full in Atlanta as well when I attended 2009 and 2010.

[JohnFogarty]

No way.

[OZ_341]

Originally Posted by IndySam

Prioritizing VIP suite over 25000 team members is a terrible reason to do it. I would bet everyone who was in the VIP/Hospitality area would agree.

That suit is only good for viewing during opening ceremonies and the finals and is not crowded during either.

They also block off the entire second level so that the VIPs don't have to share the same level of the stadium with the huddled masses. This eliminates many available seats. I can understand insulating your VIPs from the crowd but, I thought that is what the VIP box was for in the first place.

[Peyton Yeung]

I actually liked sitting in the nose bleeds because I got a birds eye view of the field. In 2011 we sat way lower and I had a harder time seeing the whole field.

[cgmv123]

Originally Posted by OZ_341

They also block off the entire second level so that the VIPs don't have to share the same level of the stadium with the huddled masses. This eliminates many available seats. I can understand insulating your VIPs from the crowd but, I thought that is what the VIP box was for in the first place.

To be fair, the second level ("club" level) doesn't have nearly as many seats as the lower bowl ("concourse" level) or upper deck ("terrace" level).

[Kstuck]

It would be nice to have a quick way for people who are working in the pits and not part of the drive crew to get to the stands so they could watch their team matches then get back to the pits quickly.

Being on Currie and having to walk all the way out of the pits and around to the opposite side of the stadium took quite a while.

[Patrick Flynn]

Originally Posted by OZ_341

They also block off the entire second level so that the VIPs don't have to share the same level of the stadium with the huddled masses. This eliminates many available seats. I can understand insulating your VIPs from the crowd but, I thought that is what the VIP box was for in the first place.

There are actually 4 levels to the Edward Jones dome. The First level where teams are always allowed. The second level was entirely blocked off and is basically the club level. The club level housed the media check in and has seats that are significantly nicer than the 1st and 4th levels. I'm not entirely sure why this wasn't used for teams, but I can only imagine the mess they would have to clean up if highschoolers were allowed free reign of the restaurants and bars that reside on the 2nd level. These aren't like the food shops on the first level while not staffed for FIRST events they are open and hard to sanction off. The 3 level is the boxes where VIPs where and then the 4th nose bleed section.

[Boe]

hate to help this thread get longer then the positives but here are a few things i noticed that FIRST could stand to improve on.

-Put a live display of the matches in the division pits
-better webcast quality if FIRST is going to grow this needs to improve
-smaller/more divisions, this one really bugged me its hard for ranking to be accurate if you only play a fourth of the teams in your division
-also more matches at champs per team
-less long dance sings between Einstein matches, put in guest speakers to save time during scoring