Mt. Olive 2014 Footage and Match Length Issue

[Robotmmm]

I agree with everyone that MORT is not to blame. They hold a top notch event.

Clearly replaying these matches is not possible, but I would like to disagree that no harm has been done to teams that attended this event.

While checking the stats on SPIDER after week one, and again after week two I noticed that the Mount Olive District had the lowest average match scores of all events. This seemed curious to me, but now it is clear why this is so. Of course the averages would be lower because the matches were short by 20 seconds and it is possible to score a lot of points in that amount of time.

So the harm to teams.......OPR.

This number will be skewed negatively for all those teams that competed at MO. This is a lasting effect that will follow these teams until Champs. Not sure how to deal with this fact.

[jlmcmchl]

Originally Posted by Robotmmm

I agree with everyone that MORT is not to blame. They hold a top notch event.

Clearly replaying these matches is not possible, but I would like to disagree that no harm has been done to teams that attended this event.

While checking the stats on SPIDER after week one, and again after week two I noticed that the Mount Olive District had the lowest average match scores of all events. This seemed curious to me, but now it is clear why this is so. Of course the averages would be lower because the matches were short by 20 seconds and it is possible to score a lot of points in that amount of time.

So the harm to teams.......OPR.

This number will be skewed negatively for all those teams that competed at MO. This is a lasting effect that will follow these teams until Champs. Not sure how to deal with this fact.

OPR is a terrible metric in this year's game, and a low one should not be considered as a harm to the teams attended.

Back on this, major thanks Ryan for posting this, it's a very touchy subject and it takes a special type of person to speak about it. FIRST has had more technical issues this year than I've ever seen; here's to learning from our mistakes and fixing them as this season goes on.

[Robotmmm]

[quote=jlmcmchl;1357605]OPR is a terrible metric in this year's game, and a low one should not be considered as a harm to the teams attended.

I agree. But that does not mean that the metric will not be used by many teams.

[Kevin Sheridan]

Originally Posted by Robotmmm

I agree. But that does not mean that the metric will not be used by many teams.

If a team is using OPR from different events to make comparisons, then that team is not using OPR correctly.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sheridan

If a team is using OPR from different events to make comparisons, then that team is not using OPR correctly.

And they're not a team you want to be picked by.

[bduddy]

Does this really have to turn into another silly OPR argument?

This is a huge issue that (of course) has gone entirely unaddressed by FIRST before its public unveiling. Expect an apologetic blog post in the near future and no real changes.

[mlantry]

Originally Posted by bduddy

Does this really have to turn into another silly OPR argument?

This is a huge issue that (of course) has gone entirely unaddressed by FIRST before its public unveiling. Expect an apologetic blog post in the near future and no real changes.

I disagree with that FIRST will definitely correct the issue it may not fixed what happened but at least it won't happen in the future

[Cam877]

All of the puzzle pieces have fit together now. This is unbelievable. I was wondering this whole time what the supposed problem you guys were dealing with on the videos, and I too had noticed the significantly lower match scores as compared to other events, and now it all makes sense. Thank you for posting this when FIRST neglected to. I have to say though, I think that time could have changed the out come of the matches. I can recall many matches where the game could have been won by a last minute goal or truss shot but they either couldn't get it off or they missed because of being rushed. Not to mention all of the cycles that could have been. However, I do believe it was still a "fair " event, because outside of the few starting qualification matches, everybody had the same time to do everything. This is a huge issue though, and I personally am disappointed in FIRST for neglecting to address this issue. While it's pointless to get worked up about it, it still should have been addressed at the very least, or it should have never happened. It's a shame. All I can say is I hope these incidents doesn't prevent teams from coming to mount olive in the future.

[EricDrost]

Originally Posted by mlantry

I disagree with that FIRST will definitely correct the issue it may not fixed what happened but at least it won't happen in the future

It's been fixed in the FMS for week 2 and on, but that's not exactly the point. That's just common sense to fix a bug.

Ideally, FIRST puts procedures in place to catch these types of bugs more quickly in the future. I think bduddy is suggesting he does not have faith that better procedures will be put into place.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by EricDrost

I think bduddy is suggesting he does not have faith that better procedures will be put into place.

There is a reason airplane manufacturers don't put this switch on board to be accidentally toggled.

I understand FIRST is in between a bit of a rock and a hard place (do they use this option to schedule practice matches?), but it seems ridiculous that the default would be to change it instead of leave it in place. As Eric said, why isn't more of this validated beforehand? Since the burden is really on Districts now, can we run more official week Zero events to shake this all out earlier?

Perhaps this discussion is a more interesting note on what CD finds important. A thread of whether you can use tape to make your bumpers look nice blows up right away, but a thread about something that actually impacts teams in a meaningful way just simmers in the background.

[Link07]

Keep in mind that some teams might not want to come back to Mount Olive simply because it's a week 1 event. I attended HH that weekend, and it was very clear that MO and HH both had significant issues due to the nature of the game and it's understandable that some teams might want to avoid these events as a whole in the future, especially after this year where matches were stopped, replayed, or shortened constantly.

I wasn't at the Mount Olive event, but unfortunately it sounds like everything that could go wrong did go wrong this year.

[team222badbrad]

Originally Posted by Link07

Keep in mind that some teams might not want to come back to Mount Olive simply because it's a week 1 event. I attended HH that weekend, and it was very clear that MO and HH both had significant issues due to the nature of the game and it's understandable that some teams might want to avoid these events as a whole in the future, especially after this year where matches were stopped, replayed, or shortened constantly.

I wasn't at the Mount Olive event, but unfortunately it sounds like everything that could go wrong did go wrong this year.

Week one events have never been without field issues. Unfortunately there is not always a way to "opt out" of week one events. If no one attended week one events then there would be no week two events! Week one events have many advantages and disadvantages so as previously mentioned it can be a gamble with the outcome your team receives from attending one.

We typically prefer not to attend week one events, but Mt. Olive has always been a 1st class district event. Great location, parking, venue, food and people, etc.


With that said Mt. Olive will most likely remain as our "go to" event for 2015 even if it is a week one event.

[Ian H.]

I think despite FIRST's growing size, FIRST's volunteer culture means ultimately we collectively have the power to fix problems like these. It's kind of ironic to me that nobody noticed for quite sometime, and so we blame FIRST for the mishap. What about all of the people at the event?

I get what people were saying, this was certainly unfair, but it seems unfair in the same way life is unfair. This doesn't ruffle my feathers too much, it seems like I'm in the minority.

[Brandon_L]

Originally Posted by Ian H.

I think despite FIRST's growing size, FIRST's volunteer culture means ultimately we collectively have the power to fix problems like these. It's kind of ironic to me that nobody noticed for quite sometime, and so we blame FIRST for the mishap. What about all of the people at the event?

I get what people were saying, this was certainly unfair, but it seems unfair in the same way life is unfair. This doesn't ruffle my feathers too much, it seems like I'm in the minority.

The cause of the issue was a fault from FIRST, a bug in the FMS

[Ian H.]

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

The cause of the issue was a fault from FIRST, a bug in the FMS

Yeah, I get that.