2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

Originally Posted by Libby K

...My suggestions are, either get rid of the load-in-practice-time, or go back to a practice day on a normal schedule. Keeping students (and parents and volunteers) there til almost 11pm just to be able to practice on a full field wasn't really fair to them. And it certainly needs to be consistent across all the events...

I don't have any knowledge of how the events were being run where your team competed, but FiM districts were attempting to adhere to a pretty strict schedule/closing time. Unload was pretty solidly 4-10pm, more-or-less kicking teams out at 10, to prevent too much volunteer burnout.
And on the other side of the coin, there's nobody there forcing teams to stay until pits close. That's the teams decision and right (granted teams are obviously going to stay as late as possible to get the most practice, but common sense should come into play if everyone on the team is exhausted/falling asleep).

Originally Posted by ratdude747

Agreed. This also bugged me a bit. A 4 team alliance is a 4 team alliance. Not a 3 team plus an "unshowable" pinch hitter. It's sorta how there is a thought some have expressed in the past that "2nd picks are lucky free riders" in previous games... IMHO it shouldn't matter when you were picked; you're an alliance member just as much as your partners and should be treated as such.

The way I understood it, the 4th robot was an alliance specific backup robot. Maybe I misinterpreted this change, but I saw it as a way for alliances to pick the robot that would be the replacement bot (and also allow switch-in matches for more repair flexibility) rather than being auto-assigned one. Hockey players that are scratched from a game do not dress and therefore do not participate in the pre/post game handshake as well. I would relate these two events as similar in nature.