Mt. Olive 2014 Footage and Match Length Issue

[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.

[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

[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.]

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

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

Yeah, I get that.

[ehochstein]

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

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

Some would call it a feature, being able to change the match time.

[Ian H.]

What I'm trying to say is I know we pay a lot of money to participate in an event every year, but I don't feel like we're paying FIRST to put the event on, I feel like we're paying as a group to make the event possible.

Yes, I know the FMS has an option to set auto time and teleop time. And it seems like maybe it auto reset to 10 seconds for auto and 120 for teleop, so whoever updated the FMS this year, possibly a volunteer, didn't fix this problem. And then Steven made a mistake not realizing the time was incorrect, I'd assume he's a volunteer. And then, what really gets me is that unlike all of the other times that people complain about 'FIRST', this time all any team had to do to fix the problem was realize there was a problem and notify the FTA like Hallry did and they would have fix the problem.

We all volunteer to do this, because another volunteer messed up we point fingers at the big entity that is FIRST as a scapegoat? You wouldn't use Steven as a scapegoat would you?

[Answer42]

I'll add my 2 cents in here. I like this game. It's simple and to the point. It encourages elegant design, allows low level teams to make a useful robot, and can still be dominated by a team that builds a sufficiently amazing robot. Seeding is definitely weird, and not fair in the slightest due to the nature of the game. But with good scouting and communication between teams the right alliances end up forming anyways. And it's refreshing to see 1 picks 43 instead of 1 picks 2, 3 picks 4, ect. G40 was awful in week one, but reasonable now. Defense is huge, but I wouldn't say it's the meta-game. Both the the finals of CVR and IE were primarily offensive matches. So really. The only aspect that's disappointing to me here is that we're hearing about this mistake from a third party source. First should have addressed this publicly, and I hope we'll see a blog post soon explaining why it wasn't addressed.

[scottandme]

Originally Posted by Wiifi

Some would call it a feature, being able to change the match time.

But most people would call it a bug, when the system defaults to the wrong match times, and requires manual override to make the event run properly.

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.

So you're essentially suggesting that FIRST volunteers should find and patch bugs in the FMS system? The issue in this thread is the illogical method used to set match timing, but you don't have to look too hard to find multiple major issues with the FMS (hot goal timing & activation, poor UI/lag on the referee tablets, pedestal light activation delays). It's clear that the FMS (and game itself to an extent) was not developed or tested to the level of rigor necessary.

FIRST is going to receive over $750,000 in registration fees from MAR teams this season, but only $110,000 will go back to MAR to fund operation of the entire district. So yes, for that amount of money - I would expect that FIRST should be able to deliver a tested and well functioning field, since MAR and the volunteers are on the hook for essentially everything except a new game every year.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

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.

I think something that would greatly benefit FRC would be to reevaluate how current Week Zero scrimmages are being run.

Our team is very lucky to have the opportunity to attend the Week Zero event with an official field & FMS hosted at Merrimack HS and formerly Nashua HS. This event seems much like a one day off season we have grown familiar with. Practice matches in the morning, three regular matches, alliance selection, and then a quick elimination bracket of four alliances and done. Teams get the time on the field and FIRST gets to see how the game is played but there is still a lot missing from it compared to a regular event. Penalties were "called" in that the refs were scoring them but never telling teams what fouls occurred and there wasn't even the guarantee that refs were looking for fouls each match. Pedestals were an issue then as well and quite possibly the hot goal problem seen by 254. Since many teams didn't have a working auto mode it didn't matter and we weren't looking for it.

A lot of the issues we have seen this year could have been "fixed" or at least recognized sooner if the scrimmages were run more like an official event. Some sort of feedback form would also benefit FIRST as teams can notify FIRST of what isn't working and what is so if one group noticed something that another didn't at least FIRST was notified.

Some issues just won't be fixed by Week Zero scrimmages being monitored more. Didn't seem like we lost 20 seconds of match time.

Lastly, FIRST needs to start taking this stuff more seriously and maybe they are just we haven't heard anything. I think its the latter part that bothers me the most because teams who attended Mt. Olive haven't heard a word from HQ and what happened there was worse than tech fouls being worth too much as they lost a lot of match play time. Frank came on board and really started to better the communication to teams but since we've seen these issues this year we haven't even heard, "We see there is a problem and we are working on it".

[Racer26]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

Lastly, FIRST needs to start taking this stuff more seriously and maybe they are just we haven't heard anything. I think its the latter part that bothers me the most because teams who attended Mt. Olive haven't heard a word from HQ ...

This is what I don't understand.

FIRST is collectively an organization of tens of thousands of the smartest people in the world.

Where is the logic in hiding the problems, sweeping them under the rug, in an effort to keep up appearances? If HQ were more transparent about problems as they happen, more eyes attached to brilliant minds get on the problem, and an optimal solution can be found much more quickly.

When problems are kept from view, they fester, until someone notices (again, because we're all smart people), and says something. When that happens, we end up with threads like this one.

I realize that in this case, there is little to be done that isn't already being done, but in many cases, there are things that can still be done, and I believe a culture of admitting problems where they exist would lead to a better program as a whole.