2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[CENTURION]

Originally Posted by cgmv123

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).

It would still be an improvement though.

Originally Posted by 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.

Yes, this was quite irritating. But I just figure that's how it has to be, there aren't many options there besides cutting across the floor (unlikely to happen for safety and organization issues), or some system of vehicles ferrying people back and forth (likely expensive, and hard to implement, especially with the hundreds of people constantly going back and forth)

[Mike Marandola]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

The season ended. Not cool.

Yeah I agree. FIRST really needs to fix this next year.

[Asymons]

Personally, a little more awareness around the match, in sense of if a robot hit a robot close to a pyramid that was not touching it, that robot gave the other team 20 points. Also the Einstein final matches were a little too over extended with all the songs. Otherwise this experience was great for a rookie team like mine

[Ernst]

I don't know if it's been brought up on Chief Delphi before and it is not specific to this season, but I am always frustrated by the seating at FRC tournaments.

The current free-for-all that exists at the beginning of the day is dangerous. After the mad rush and the initial kinks have been worked out and teams are seated as a general group, assuming that they had a group of students at the doors at least an hour before the venue opened, seats are lost throughout the day by encroachment. I found it especially frustrating to get to the stands from the pits only to find that there weren't any open seats by my team. Some kids end up sitting on the stairs. Mentors, parents, students, and team sponsors that arrive late often have to sit elsewhere.

I don't know how to solve this problem. I don't care if my team doesn't always end up in the most favorable seats. I don't care if the seats turn into a lottery based on how many members you have registered to attend an event. I just want some kind of order to allow teams to sit together and prevent the dangerous morning mad rush.

[Rynocorn]

Originally Posted by ZehP

I don't know if it's been brought up on Chief Delphi before and it is not specific to this season, but I am always frustrated by the seating at FRC tournaments.

The current free-for-all that exists at the beginning of the day is dangerous. After the mad rush and the initial kinks have been worked out and teams are seated as a general group, assuming that they had a group of students at the doors at least an hour before the venue opened, seats are lost throughout the day by encroachment. I found it especially frustrating to get to the stands from the pits only to find that there weren't any open seats by my team. Some kids end up sitting on the stairs. Mentors, parents, students, and team sponsors that arrive late often have to sit elsewhere.

I don't know how to solve this problem. I don't care if my team doesn't always end up in the most favorable seats. I don't care if the seats turn into a lottery based on how many members you have registered to attend an event. I just want some kind of order to allow teams to sit together and prevent the dangerous morning mad rush.

This is a huge problem! I know that at Peachtree this year, the walkways on the bleachers were completely full of sitting kids to the point that everyone had to stand in order to let one person down from the top row of seats. This mainly occurred during finals with the pits closed, but all of the seats were always full. On the other hand, Smokey Mountain had plenty of seats but somehow was the only regional I saw without a live webcast on TBA. These small issues go a long way to helping people have a better experience with FIRST.

[CENTURION]

Originally Posted by ZehP

I don't know if it's been brought up on Chief Delphi before and it is not specific to this season, but I am always frustrated by the seating at FRC tournaments.

The current free-for-all that exists at the beginning of the day is dangerous. After the mad rush and the initial kinks have been worked out and teams are seated as a general group, assuming that they had a group of students at the doors at least an hour before the venue opened, seats are lost throughout the day by encroachment. I found it especially frustrating to get to the stands from the pits only to find that there weren't any open seats by my team. Some kids end up sitting on the stairs. Mentors, parents, students, and team sponsors that arrive late often have to sit elsewhere.

I don't know how to solve this problem. I don't care if my team doesn't always end up in the most favorable seats. I don't care if the seats turn into a lottery based on how many members you have registered to attend an event. I just want some kind of order to allow teams to sit together and prevent the dangerous morning mad rush.

I agree, this is something that could really use some work. Maybe there could be some kind of advance sign-up system? Teams sign up on a first-come, first-served basis (just like it is now, except with everybody rushing to a website, not a stadium), and teams reserve blocks of seats.

[Carl C]

Originally Posted by ZehP

I don't know if it's been brought up on Chief Delphi before and it is not specific to this season, but I am always frustrated by the seating at FRC tournaments.

The current free-for-all that exists at the beginning of the day is dangerous. After the mad rush and the initial kinks have been worked out and teams are seated as a general group, assuming that they had a group of students at the doors at least an hour before the venue opened, seats are lost throughout the day by encroachment. I found it especially frustrating to get to the stands from the pits only to find that there weren't any open seats by my team. Some kids end up sitting on the stairs. Mentors, parents, students, and team sponsors that arrive late often have to sit elsewhere.

I don't know how to solve this problem. I don't care if my team doesn't always end up in the most favorable seats. I don't care if the seats turn into a lottery based on how many members you have registered to attend an event. I just want some kind of order to allow teams to sit together and prevent the dangerous morning mad rush.

We've run into this problem also. At Palmetto, there were 61 teams and hardly any seats, so there were many who acted ungraciously and darted in front of everyone, even going so far as taking other team's seats. What made this worse it the fact that no team was allowed to reserve seats for the next day (though many did it anyways), so this was a daily occurrence. We did not care so much about where we sat as ling as we all could sit together, but with a medium-sized teams with many parents, siblings, and mentors, this was nearly impossible.

At North Carolina, we had a similar issue, but thankfully Team 3196 kindly allowed us to use their empty seats before eliminations. Afterwards, however, our team was unable to sit together as we made a run to finals, which was rather frustrating.

It is probably up to the respective regional directors, but I hope this issue could be resolved at one point.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by bardd

And while we're at it I think FIRST should test their games actually playing matches. I don't know if they do or not, but I think if they did it would prevent this sort of things from happening. It'll be terrible logistically for the GDC though.

Not to derail too much, but from talking with Mr. Merrick about this at Northern Lights/ Lake Superior Regionals this year, he explained a bit about their testing process for games-- basically the have their challenge, and HQ builds some preliminary designs (he was very clear that these were not something any team would want on their robot) in order to see how "hard" a given challenge is. I was going to ask him how they tested something like a 30-point climb would be tested, but unfortunately our time ran a bit short.

So no, from talking with Mr. Merrick, they don't test actual match play, but rather individual mechanisms. I agree that some "internal" matches, or even some better analysis (for example, of the "blizzard") might be in order, especially for a game as complex and awesome as Ultimate Ascent.

[PVCpirate]

Originally Posted by sentientfungus

So no, from talking with Mr. Merrick, they don't test actual match play, but rather individual mechanisms. I agree that some "internal" matches, or even some better analysis (for example, of the "blizzard") might be in order, especially for a game as complex and awesome as Ultimate Ascent.

This was hashed out when the rule change was made, but I still don't get how the GDC didn't see the blizzard coming.

[cgmv123]

Originally Posted by ZehP

I don't know if it's been brought up on Chief Delphi before and it is not specific to this season, but I am always frustrated by the seating at FRC tournaments.

The current free-for-all that exists at the beginning of the day is dangerous. After the mad rush and the initial kinks have been worked out and teams are seated as a general group, assuming that they had a group of students at the doors at least an hour before the venue opened, seats are lost throughout the day by encroachment. I found it especially frustrating to get to the stands from the pits only to find that there weren't any open seats by my team. Some kids end up sitting on the stairs. Mentors, parents, students, and team sponsors that arrive late often have to sit elsewhere.

I don't know how to solve this problem. I don't care if my team doesn't always end up in the most favorable seats. I don't care if the seats turn into a lottery based on how many members you have registered to attend an event. I just want some kind of order to allow teams to sit together and prevent the dangerous morning mad rush.

I agree, some sort of registration system would help. They did block off the seats in front of Einstein for the division champions, but other than that, it was a free for all.

[Nemo]

Holding regionals in expensive arenas with expensive lighting and sound and charging $9000 for two events is a bad model that stunts FRC's potential to grow. Put events in high school gyms with fewer teams per event. Make it possible for every team to attend two events for their initial $5000 registration fee. Zondag says it better than I do in his FIRST in Michigan district system FAQ.

The excessive speeches on Einstein are a huge gaffe that they keep repeating every year. Find different way to honor and thank our generous sponsors that are not counterproductive. Bombarding students with speeches is quite ineffective. At least make them really short and sweet - they are not supposed to be keynote speeches, are they? Or limit the number of speeches to ONE or TWO. And as much as I respect and admire Dean Kamen and all of his contributions to society, his quiet manner of speaking is not very energizing. I couldn't even understand half of what he was saying because he speaks so quietly.

Einstein should be shorter. Give out more of the awards at a different time such as the opening ceremonies. Maybe give out a couple more awards at the division level, or heck, give all of the awards except CA and a couple others as division level awards. For the time slots that need to be filled between Einstein matches, how about some compelling videos? I think a well made 1-2 minute video can be more effective at delivering a message to high school students than a speech by the CEO of a company.

Let's get rid of the 6 week build season (also discussed in Zondag's FAQ). We built these robots in 6 weeks... except we didn't. It took my team the whole time leading up to the Championship to get our robot to where it ended up. We used the withholding allowance and installed stuff at each event. It is pointless to make us bag it and work on a practice robot - it simply consumes a bunch more resources and slows us down some. I think the attachment to the 6 week build season is mostly sentimental.

It has been a great season overall. I posted in both threads, and I listed a bunch more items in the positive thread than I did in this one. Great job on 2013. I hope FIRST continues to make some changes in places where it makes sense.

[Walter Deitzler]

One major negative thing that I am seeing is that FIRST had too many teams at champs this year, yet a major positive is the wildcard system. Yet these two have a direct correlation. How are we going to keep the wildcard system (allowing more teams/regional finalists to come) and have less teams/more competing time? I have seen proposals for more divisions, but the only way they would fit this in is if we (shudder) moved some of the divisions to the pits. Longer competing time? This means that all of the volunteers, who are already have to give up a whole lot of their time, would have to lose another day of work or school. The wildcard system was awesome, we want to keep that (but that is for another thread).
I do see the the concerns that many teams have, with the massive seeding ties and fewer matches, but I am not seeing a viable way to fix them.

[coalhot]

I have to say this year, the game was quite impressive. While it may have been slightly boring (shooting game, 5 out of the last 6 games have also been shooting games), it was an incredibly fun game to watch. This will be one of those games that they use film from in promos for years to come.

The refing from throughout the season was quite inconsistent. Trying not to bash too much here, so I'll be breif. I don't mind bad calls, but if there's going to be bad calls, call them consistently. Don't call qualifications and eliminations differently.

Then again: GDC, please make an easier game to Ref.

One more thing, someone in FIRST needs to run workshops for the cameraguys as to what part of the field they are aiming the camera during the webcasts. I saw a lot of matches yesterday where a lot of exciting play was happening on one side of the field, and the camera was aimed at the other side where nothing was happening.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by PVCpirate

This was hashed out when the rule change was made, but I still don't get how the GDC didn't see the blizzard coming.

They had too much confident in the atheltic ability of the FRC community

[coldfusion1279]

Woe is me, the game! It was essentially the same thing as 2012 with the same drawbacks. Except this year, the GDC over-compensated for last year's end game by NERFing this year's end game. Games have been unoriginal since 2009- altered versions of previous games. That's what bugs me most. Oh, and 100 teams per division. That's just silly.