2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Chris is me]

A lot did not go right this year. This was a difficult year for FIRST and definitely something we need to learn from and grow past.

The design of this game, specifically the rules / referring, was not well executed. The GDC seemed to adopt a formula where they create a concept of a game, think of all of the holes that could be punched in it, and "patch" the game with numerous penalties to try and shape the outcome the way they want it. The results were mixed at best. Some penalties left no room for subjectivity and forced referees to penalize teams harshly for inconsequential actions. Other penalties were so subjective that regionals were decided on how that particular head ref felt about that rule that day. As problems were identified, FIRST would fix some and completely ignore others. To this day, you can still damage a robot and end up with a net gain in points. You can still be penalized heavily for partially but not completely breaking. What constitutes "possession" varies wildly event to event.

To make matters worse, the way refereeing was handled was poor at best. This is not to say anything bad about the referees themselves; they did a fine job with what they had to work with in my experience. FIRST just did not think about how the jobs would actually work. In my opinion, what FIRST should have done is had one referee dedicated to tracking the ball of each alliance, recording possessions and zones. The other referees would then be able to completely focus on the other interactions in the game (ideally one interaction ref for each zone plus a head ref). In practice, you had four referees doing double duty as scorekeeper as well as rules arbiter, and consistency of possessions and penalties both suffered as a result.

One problem I do want to touch on, but may have difficulty putting into words well. This is not intended as a call out of any specific person or event, and I'm thankful to not have much if any first hand experience with this sort of thing. This year, there's been an alarming number of reports of teams and volunteers at odds with each other. Among the things I've heard: inspectors telling teams "I'm not the guy you want to p**s off" when asking simple rules questions, referees and event staff routinely making un-challengeable calls without even consulting the teams affected to get their side of the story, judges accusing teams of being "mentor built" when a specific student can't instantly answer a specific question... The list sadly goes on. I don't know how to fix this, or if I just happened to see and hear of it a lot more this year than others, but a lot of volunteers seem to be treating the teams as sneaky enemies looking for any way to game the system. This is bad - we all need to remember that we volunteers are all here to *serve* these teams, and to make the experience of everyone collectively as high quality and fair as possible.

The appeal process for calls needs to be overhauled. Some people and calls simply cannot be appealed in the current rules - for example, no one can ever override the LRI or head referee. These people are human too, and inadvertently make mistakes, and there's nothing teams can do about it other than hope the FTA is calling HQ or something. Even in that situation, twice this year alone teams have dealt with volunteers misrepresenting the problem over the phone to FIRST HQ to get the call they appear to be looking for. (This isn't new to this year, by the way - ask Wisconsin teams in 2010 about power tools...) I recognize life is not fair and that things will not always go the way they should, but some part of this system has to change.

The game design was not bad for high level eliminations; incredibly watchable. However, it was a nightmare for qualifications. Seeding was by and large influenced by strength of schedule heavily this year. In other games you could perform so well that a lack of great partners wasn't a death sentence, but in this game you'll find yourself in situations where there's just nothing you can do at all to win the match. I think this is the inherent down side to a "single game piece" game, which is a shame as single game pieces are much more watchable than a flurry of projectiles can be to the average spectator.

Finally, there is no good reason that fields do not come with webcasting equipment at this point. A GoPro, a fisheye lens, a pole, and a computer. Instant full field view for the Internet. For all the talk of "making it loud", FIRST should stress the importance of broadcasting events to the point that webcasting equipment is a part of the field as much as any other part of it. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't even cost that much.

I'm sure I have more that I'm leaving out but I'll leave it at this for now. Overall this year was not so great on FIRST's end of things.