Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe

In my opinion that's not an issue with the seeding system, but an issue with teams not making sure they get assist points in their matches so they seed higher. Knowing that the assist points are the first tie breaker needs to be planned for in your strategy. You can win most qualification matches on your own (if uou have a good robot), but if you don't attempt to get any assist points in the process you are not going to like where you finish in the rankings.

Please don't trivialize the challenge of getting inexperienced teams with rougher robots to cooperate as part of an alliance in qualifying.

Vet teams KNOW they need assists to seed high. Sometimes, partner teams simply don't have "it", no matter how much you try to "rally the troops". Robots don't move. Their pickup devices are poor to nonexistent. Their complete lack of knowledge of the rules and game cannot be overcome with a two minute refresher course. And please don't drop any "well you should work harder to get those robots to work at the event" line. Three NEOFRA teams (48, 3193, 4601 - part of a regional support alliance) arrived in Pittsburgh who were all very capable teams precisely because we support each other ALL YEAR LONG to ensure teams arrive at the event in solid shape. Let's stop with the patchwork help in the span of three days at an event - if you want all teams to be better at a competition, then START WORKING TOGETHER AND COLLABORATING WITH OTHER TEAMS IN YOUR REGION AHEAD OF TIME. It's not that hard...when you TRY. Then maybe these "forced teamwork" scenarios FIRST seems to adore may actually have a chance at bearing some fruit out on the field.

Anyway, after a few match cycles at Pittsburgh, I could quickly sort the wheat from the chaff, and based on how much chaff was on each stronger team's alliance, I could pretty clearly tell who was going to have a more favorable time seeding higher at the event. The final rankings (and assist scores) bore that out quite well.

[IndySam]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

It's one thing to get them to understand these concepts when the challenges are borne out of a relatively pure competition experience, when the mistakes and failure are theirs to own and to live up to, to learn form. When excessive challenges are thrown in their path that are out of their control, when failure and struggle is made more likely by a flawed COMPETITION SYSTEM that should be designed such that it works so well it is invisible but instead randomly and frequently penalizes teams for no just reason, that is something I don't feel students should have to cope with at an event.

It is natural to expect some level of "built-in" unfairness at a competition, as no system is perfect, but NOTHING like the sustained assault of blar that has been levied against teams this season. It is natural for teams to expect and require corrective action from the governing body to restore the competitive system to some semblance of sanity.

^^^^^
This

I have seen refs this year that I know are some of the best in the biz and whom I have nothing but respect for struggle with this game. I love the basic structure of the game, the auton that anyone can do but still gives better teams a challenge, and the lack of an end game but the refs were totally thrown under the bus.

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by IndySam

^^^^^
This

I have seen refs this year that I know are some of the best in the biz and whom I have nothing but respect for struggle with this game. I love the basic structure of the game, the auton that anyone can do but still gives better teams a challenge, and the lack of an end game but the refs were totally thrown under the bus.

I agree with this, too many people are lumping in the technical issues and the poorly planned ref issues with the game itself. I love the game, there are issues that are effecting it, but the game itself I think is solid. I feel really bad for the refs this year, there is just way too much on their plates.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

Find me a FRC game in which two immobile robots wouldn't severely harm your qualification score.

I think, if you overlook the reffing issues, this game is fantastic.

One of the fundamental problems with this game is that fate of teams is partially sealed by the random number generator. It's simply impossible to overcome bad alliance partners, especially with the assist points having such a huge impact on the game and the foul points being weighted so heavily. Take a look at this match. I'm sure there's video of it somewhere, but Red alliance barely won, and that was because of 40 foul points. The only robot that was capable of scoring at all on red alliance was us. Even with our double ball auto and 4+ single assist cycles, we could only win due to foul points because the other alliance had a robot that could move and actually hold onto the ball. 2283 easily had the highest scoring machine at Peachtree (I have data to back this up, and they were the first pick on my list), but their schedule made them go 4-4-1. How can a robot that scores 600 points by itself over the course of 9 matches only have 4 wins in qualifications? 3 words: Random Number Generator.

Yes, great teamwork is highlighted in this game, but so is the disparity between robots, and this combined with the random scheduler makes great teams have mediocre records in quals. If there's bad scouting ,these teams may even miss elims alltogether (see the 2014 palmetto regional).

[Mastonevich]

The real challenge here is not creating a robot with YOUR team. The real challenge is to bring up the lower tier robots and have them compete on your team all the while contributing. Truly figure that one out and now you have accomplished that much more and maybe even will seed well.

I thought the season (post 85) would play out with teams working together during build more this year, but I have not really seen that play out.

In reality, there are times in life where you are paired up with someone that may not have as great of abilities as you. Do you bring them up, or try to work around them? All depends on the situation I guess.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by Mastonevich

The real challenge here is not creating a robot with YOUR team. The real challenge is to bring up the lower tier robots and have them compete on your team all the while contributing. Truly figure that one out and now you have accomplished that much more and maybe even will seed well.

I thought the season would play out with teams working together during build more this year, but I have not really seen that play out.

In reality, there are times in life where you are paired up with someone that may not have as great of abilities as you. Do you bring them up, or try to work around them? All depends on the situation I guess.

It seems like many of the FIRST elite, for the most part the same teams that you commonly see on CD, have just accepted it as a fact of life that most of FRC will continue to exist on a level far below him. Every year you see people here talk about how easy it is to score a few points in autonomous, build a simple manipulator, etc, but more than half of the teams in FRC come to competition without those things - then (some of) the "elite" teams complain when they are placed on alliances with them.

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Did I say that autonomous score was any better? Don't presume to put words in my mouth.

Perhaps if you second ranked off your opponents assists it would be better. As it stands you are taking a double hit for playing 3v1. Likely you're going to lose and you're going to have 0 for assists for that match meaning your ranking suffers relative to WLT and Assist hurting you twice. If they gave you your opponents' assists your ranking would reflect that you had a harder schedule.

Calm down, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, just stating what has been used previously. Unfortunately, unless you can get a complete round robin done in your schedule there is always going to be ranking issues. I'm just stating that I don't think this year's is any worse than previous years.

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

Please don't trivialize the challenge of getting inexperienced teams with rougher robots to cooperate as part of an alliance in qualifying.

Vet teams KNOW they need assists to seed high. Sometimes, partner teams simply don't have "it", no matter how much you try to "rally the troops". Robots don't move. Their pickup devices are poor to nonexistent. Their complete lack of knowledge of the rules and game cannot be overcome with a two minute refresher course. And please don't drop any "well you should work harder to get those robots to work at the event" line. Three NEOFRA teams (48, 3193, 4601 - part of a regional support alliance) arrived in Pittsburgh who were all very capable teams precisely because we support each other ALL YEAR LONG to ensure teams arrive at the event in solid shape. Let's stop with the patchwork help in the span of three days at an event - if you want all teams to be better at a competition, then START WORKING TOGETHER AND COLLABORATING WITH OTHER TEAMS IN YOUR REGION AHEAD OF TIME. It's not that hard...when you TRY. Then maybe these "forced teamwork" scenarios FIRST seems to adore may actually have a chance at bearing some fruit out on the field.

Anyway, after a few match cycles at Pittsburgh, I could quickly sort the wheat from the chaff, and based on how much chaff was on each stronger team's alliance, I could pretty clearly tell who was going to have a more favorable time seeding higher at the event. The final rankings (and assist scores) bore that out quite well.

I was not trying to trivialize it, if it came off that way I apologize.

I agree completely with your statements about bringing the level of the people up around you. That has been one of the big pushes the last couple of years here in VA and it only makes the competitions better when all of the teams continue to improve in quality.

[Pranit T]

If you are arguing that you are "unfairly" being paired up with teams that don't necessarily build robots keeping in mind that assists are the first tie-breaker, just remember, this is similar to when in the past teams just sat still in auto when auto points were the tie breaker.

Did you try talking to the teams in your area during build season? The least you can do is inform young teams during build season and at competitions about strategy, for example this year emphasize the importance of assists. If you are in the hopes of having a level playing field, try and make sure people know how the game works instead putting it entirely on the GDC and the refs.

Using an example here, two rookie teams were Regional Winners at two different events in Ontario this year, namely Team 5076 and Team 4914. Both teams were mentored by a couple of veteran teams throughout the season, keeping in mind how the game was designed to be played, and putting emphasis on the little details. The two rookie teams came up with entirely different solutions to the game, but both were successful at their events because they knew what it takes, to do well in a game-to-game scenario.

Everyday, posts pop up simply highlighting OP's dissatisfaction with the GDC's attempt to make "teamwork" happen. If people want to keep talking about how FIRST is about teaching kids about real life, then this year should highlight "dealing with it".

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe

I agree with, too many people are lumping in the technical issues and the poorly planned ref issues with the game itself. I love the game, there are issues that are effecting it, but the game itself I think is solid.

The challenging thing is that these issues are related to the game's design. A game could be designed to avoid these issues, and this one wasn't. The game can't be good if the rules (what the refs have to deal with) aren't.

I like the physical challenge of picking up and scoring big balls. The game itself is fundamentally flawed. You can't do one game piece for three robots and not expect defense. You can't do one game piece for three robots where assists get you points and not have strength of schedule be the determinant of seeding more than any other year. You can't fix these by adding 100 rules that referees have to juggle in addition to tracking scoring or you'll get an emotionally charged mess. There are a lot of things to like about this game, and it's been fun, but it's just not compatible with the FRC format.

I think this game was pretty bad. Would I have not competed in this season knowing the game was this bad? I probably still would have done it. So in that sense I can't say I have "buyer's remorse" for paying the FRC entry fee. But I do expect far better. At a certain point, with the amount they expect us to take every rule seriously, follow everything to the letter, etc. we should get the same back.

[Pat Fairbank]

Originally Posted by Mastonevich

The real challenge here is not creating a robot with YOUR team. The real challenge is to bring up the lower tier robots and have them compete on your team all the while contributing. Truly figure that one out and now you have accomplished that much more and maybe even will seed well.

This is certainly possible at events this year, but in many cases, that involves taking away their auto balls, pulling the circuit breakers that control their catapults/shooters, zip-tying some protruding appendages into place, zip-tying their human players' hands behind their backs, and telling them to drive to the inbound station and sit there the whole match with their intake constantly spinning in reverse.

Is that more inspiring to those teams than a game where they could simply do what their robot was designed to do without the risk of dragging down their partners?

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

It is, for the exact reasons I just explained in the quoted post. Losing a match with terrible partners who refuse help hurts you twice. A simple "opponent's assists" would mean you won despite the odds being against you but it would also help you if you lost because you played a bunch of really good alliances.

I'm sorry, but in the 6 years I've been mentoring in FIRST I could count the number of times a teammate has "refused" to help on one hand. Maybe that is just the area I'm in but I can't imagine that happening so often that it effects your rankings that badly. I can't also imagine that you are stuck with 2 immobile robots so often that you have to do everything on your own.

By getting your opponents assist points you are now encouraging teams to not get assist points so you don't drive up your opponents tie breaker. They tried getting opponents points for rankings for Breakaway and it went horribly horribly wrong.

[Jon Stratis]

Strength of schedule is always an issue, this isn't anything new... and yet so many people are on here whining and complaining about it this year. Tough. Deal with it.

Last year, my team built an awesome robot. Unfortunately, once the game started playing out it was obvious we had chosen a losing strategy. We placed 4th at Lake Superior and were the first pick for the #1 seed, followed a few weeks later (with no changes to the robot, everything worked just as well as it did in Duluth) with 50th at North Star and the second pick of the #7 seed. I challenge anyone to point to results from this year that are any worse than those.

[martin417]

For those that say inspiration is not about winning, think of the people you want to inspire as potential "fans". Winning teams have more fans than losing teams. I would be willing to bet that the University of Alabama could pull more fans to a game than the New Mexico State Aggies.

[Lil' Lavery]

For everyone saying that the ranking accuracy is worse or that elimination upsets are more frequent this year, I challenge you to provide evidence to support your assertion. Not anecdotes, not hypotheses, not thought experiments. Actual data to support your claim.

Originally Posted by martin417

For those that say inspiration is not about winning, think of the people you want to inspire as potential "fans". Winning teams have more fans than losing teams. I would be willing to bet that the University of Alabama could pull more fans to a game than the New Mexico State Aggies.

If that's your argument, isn't it a zero-sum game? Someone will always win and someone will always lose.