2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Chief Hedgehog]

Originally Posted by asid61

No endgame. The game was basically over after the first half; there wasn't really any way to bounce back because you would have to radically modify your strategy in order to start closing a point gap.

I disagree - did you watch the elimination rounds from each of the Championship fields? The finals from each of the divisions were awesome - as were the Semi and finals from Einstein. This game was designed for the elims/finals for Regionals and the Champs.

[Chief Hedgehog]

Originally Posted by Steven Donow

inb4thegame*


But in all seriousness, I didn't have much of a problem with "Make It Loud" until Champs. Some of the performances as part of the "make it loud" campaign just seemed awkward, even via webcast. I'd imagine it was more awkward in person.

"Make It Loud" also seems somewhat misguided at this point-I love it as a rally cry for spreading the word of FIRST, but what is the point of it? Get celebrities mentioning FIRST? Get 'non-traditional' companies involved in FIRST? Tweet #MakeItLoud? It's a great phrase, but to me it just needs some direction.


*for the record I like this game

I agree - 'Make it loud' is more difficult without direction.

[asid61]

Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog

I disagree - did you watch the elimination rounds from each of the Championship fields? The finals from each of the divisions were awesome - as were the Semi and finals from Einstein. This game was designed for the elims/finals for Regionals and the Champs.

That's true, but it would certainly make some of the regionals easier to watch. Champs is pretty unique, and it will always look cool anyway.

The large points-per-ball helped with building suspense though.

[s0uthw3st]

I agree, the livestream was pretty bad this year - though it did lead to some humorous "broken record" moments during the pre-Einstein speeches...

"Year after year---year after year---year after year---"

But yeah, given the combined resources of NASA and FIRST, a HD stream shouldn't be hard to do, even for 8 fields (some of which aren't even running at the same time).

Also, the district system should probably be expanded further. California seems like an apt target for a new district considering all the regionals hosted there, or maybe the Southwest US (AZ, TX, NM, OK) given that Arizona is growing to two regionals next year and Texas has several regionals already.

[Jeremy.Howe]

Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog

This game was designed for the elims/finals for Regionals and the Champs.

I don't necessarily think this is a good thing, though. Most of the general public isn't at Championships; the public usually watches matches at the regional level. A majority of the feedback from the bystanders I asked, including family and friends I dragged to competitions, was that AA was hard to understand and a bit boring. Explaining the penalties to bystanders was difficult; this is especially true earlier in the season.

Most matches in AA, on a regional level, were decided by heavy defense or tough penalties. Rather than teams racking up big numbers and showing off their potential, most games felt like more of a grind. I just don't think AA was very public-friendly or fun. While the Einstein field was exciting, I think that a game needs to be accessible AND ENTERTAINING to the public. An end game helps in this regard.

Also, to jump on the bandwagon, HQ Livestreams please! c:

[s0uthw3st]

Originally Posted by Jeremy.Howe

A majority of the feedback from the bystanders I asked, including family and friends I dragged to competitions, was that AA was hard to understand and a bit boring ... I think that a game needs to be accessible AND ENTERTAINING to the public.

I wholeheartedly agree - to get people's interest, you kinda have to turn the year's game into an elevator speech. AA does not work terribly well for that while still keeping the depth of the game (like the scoring and penalties) intact.

Now that I think about it, perhaps that's why there was no endgame - the referees were too busy monitoring scoring and penalties for another aspect to be added to the game in a manageable way.

[SharonO]

Originally Posted by AlecMataloni

Overzealous seat savers aren't going away, unfortunately. If you want good seats for your team at Einstein, you'd better have at least half of your team there. It's ridiculous how some teams send their parents over to the stands with a bunch of spirit gear and lay it out on a whole section of seats. I had more than one poor interaction with some of these people pre-closing ceremonies.

It is sad that teams have to leave their current field before the division finals are over to secure seats on Einstein. It leaves very few spectators for the end. Even though seats are reserved for the Einstein teams, the teams that get knocked out late in eliminations don't get that priviledge (especially if you are the last division to finish).

[Harman341]

Originally Posted by dcarr

In 2014, getting a quality webcast is apparently a hard thing to do.

Except it's not. Please fix this. Baseline HD stream requirements for all events. Include equipment/connectivity/staffing in budget or find a team/volunteers who can handle it.

Multi-cam setups are ideal for the big screens at the events, but for online, a single full-field view is optimal. Perhaps offer both?

A full field shot on the webcasts should be very easy to implement. It's frustrating because from what of I have seen, the videos on TBA come from the webcast, so if they go to a close up, people who weren't there may never get to see what happened on the other side of the field.

[Nick Lawrence]

FIRST as a community was not ready for this game. The floor of the competition was far too many floors down from the ceiling. It created many instances where some of the best teams in the world simply struggled to get the W entirely because of their schedule. I can't imagine how painful that must have been for the students, parents and mentors on those teams.

But, this isn't just all on FIRST. It's on us as a community. We've made great strides in raising the floor of competitiveness, via initiatives like EWCP, Robot In 3 Days, etc, but we can do better. As a community, we probably could have done better with our neighbors to help them actually contribute to matches, rather than create hard feelings because a team who lost 20 days to snow couldn't hold a ball.

Everyone can complain about how 'the refs did this' or the 'rules said that' or whatever they want to say. We've all aired our dirty laundry on that several times, and I'm quite confident FIRST is listening. They've shown (especially Frank,) a lot more transparency this year, along with frequently responding to the community. They get it, and I'm sure they'll improve upon these issues.

FIRST could definitely stand to improve the inspection process and training. I can't count the number of times this year that I had to remind fellow inspectors that they are the first line of officials that a team meets at an event, and they have a responsibility to provide good customer service. It's been 23 seasons, and we're still hearing horror stories related to inspection. Also, the lack of no formal reinspection process reared it's head this year in Florida. In hindsight, it's kind of weird that we spend so much time documenting the initial robot inspection, and then hardly do anything to keep up with teams at the events. I look forward to this changing next year, hopefully with the new tablet system pioneered in MAR.

FIRST has their work cut out for them, but I'm confident that they're up to the task.

- Nick

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by SharonO

It is sad that teams have to leave their current field before the division finals are over to secure seats on Einstein. It leaves very few spectators for the end. Even though seats are reserved for the Einstein teams, the teams that get knocked out late in eliminations don't get that priviledge (especially if you are the last division to finish).

When 27 was announced as the newest member of the Hall of Fame, they were seated way up in the nosebleed section, having been eliminated very late in a nail-biter on Archimedes. Their video provided just enough time for them to make the long trek down to the floor, to their correct seats for the rest of the show.

[Loralyn P]

Originally Posted by s0uthw3st

I wholeheartedly agree - to get people's interest, you kinda have to turn the year's game into an elevator speech. AA does not work terribly well for that while still keeping the depth of the game (like the scoring and penalties) intact.

Now that I think about it, perhaps that's why there was no endgame - the referees were too busy monitoring scoring and penalties for another aspect to be added to the game in a manageable way.

I agree about the confusion that AA can create in non-FIRST spectators, and even in students! There were a lot of rules and elements to keep track of conceptually, but when it got on the field, the game was usually slow and hard to understand if you hadn't poured over the rules for six weeks (I'm not saying all matches were boring, of course).

Also, it's kinda bad when many people agree that the Dean's List interview was shoddy. I was disappointed about how carelessly they treated this award, especially when it's treated in such high regard. It's no Chairman's, I agree, but it's important.

[Pault]

This game was, quite honestly, too hard. They made it so that if you wanted to put up a decent score, all three robots on an alliance had to be able to manipulate a 2ft diameter ball reasonably well. And one of the robots had to be able to launch it a good distance in order to make the match very interesting. Those are expectations which many teams just weren't ready for, and I don't think they will be for at least another few years.

Going a bit more generally, there was not enough forethought in the designing of this year's game and game manual. The examples of this have already been beaten to death, but we need to find a solution so that this doesn't happen again. Something needs to change about how the game is designed/evaluated. Maybe bringing some people with more experience on teams into the GDC, or maybe just bringing them in a couple of times when the game is in its final stages to point out the flaws. Some sort of simulation for how the game will go down would be great, but I'm not sure how they would implement it. I'm not sure what it would be, but something needs to happen.

[Sam390250]

I really enjoyed this game for the forced cooperation between teams, however I am sad to see how negative it made everyone towards teams who just were not top tier. It must be very frustrating for a top performing team to see their season end because of a schedule with teams who could not do much to manipulate the game piece, but it is also sad (and probably not all that inspiring) to see struggling teams receiving a lot of blame on outlets such as this.

[RonnieS]

Originally Posted by dcarr

In 2014, getting a quality webcast is apparently a hard thing to do.

Except it's not. Please fix this. Baseline HD stream requirements for all events. Include equipment/connectivity/staffing in budget or find a team/volunteers who can handle it.

Multi-cam setups are ideal for the big screens at the events, but for online, a single full-field view is optimal. Perhaps offer both?

In all reality, they could purchase go pros and the poles with a decent capture card and stream through twitch. You can have HD and with the fish eye we actually get a good view. Now add input to show scoring and it would be all set.

[jimbo493]

Originally Posted by Ronnie314

In all reality, they could purchase go pros and the poles with a decent capture card and stream through twitch. You can have HD and with the fish eye we actually get a good view. Now add input to show scoring and it would be all set.

I wouldn't stream thru Twitch though, too many ads...