Future First Championship News

[Boltman]

Originally Posted by ehochstein

Where does FIRST say "World Champions"?

Today, we are proud to announce that FIRST is about to change the game again, for the better! Beginning in 2017, we are expanding the FIRST Championship by bringing our Sport for the Mind™ to two FIRST Championship host cities.

In sport, a championship is a competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion.

Two champions and championships? That's nuts.

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

Note this post is reflected on my thoughts and not my teams:
I joined 842 when we had already won the biggest award in FRC. I thought we were one of the greatest competitors in the world knowing this but come competition season, I soon realized that it wasn't the same case for our robots. Yes we work very hard to help our community and grow STEM but I guess I never really liked the fact that our robots were pretty under performing in comparison to the best in the world. Seeing awesome teams like 469 and 25 inspired me do everything I can to help make our robots more competitive. After all, 25 comes from a similar type of school as us and 469 I don't know the details of but their robot mechanisms seemed like something anyone could design and build if they really wanted to. So I started learning cad and studying the best teams from all around the world. I poured countless hours into these different designs and strategies, all for the hope that our team can finally make it to Einstein field and compete on it. It wasn't just me that seemed to have this drive either. Our entire team seemed to be more heavily geared at not just making robots that work or would hold their own, but to make robots that could score effectively. Mechanisms designed to try and be the best in the world. We are still quite a ways away but it's still the driving factor to be the best in the world. Splitting the world championships in half would be devastating to my morale at least because it makes the goal unachievable. A team is not "world" champions if they only competed with half of the teams in world. Like others have said, you might as well call every event a world championship if that's the case. I don't see why degrading what I believe is one of the best events in the world just to give every team half the championship experience is a good thing. I really hope this change is revoked because it would seriously lessen my intent to stay in FIRST. They are not the only robotics competition around that's intended to inspire kids. But I'd like them to be the best nevertheless.

[Loose Screw]

I'm very surprised they didn't follow FTC and create 4 super regionals. Usually FTC is testing grounds for FRC.

I personally don't like the way worlds is set up this year. Sure, with 600 teams there you can see the best from the entire world, but you can only compete with 1/8th of them. The alliances that move on to Einstein will be based on luck of who gets paired in the same division. Imagine if 1114 and 254 get paired in the same division, and the other power house teams get separated into the other 7 divisions. You could almost determine who will win worlds this year by which teams get paired in the same division.

If I were to change the way FRC is structured, I would create 4 super regionals, then 1 world championship with only 1 division. I would also try to change an element of the game to make it more competitive, then allow teams to keep their robots unbagged (or allow significant unbag time) so they can properly adjust to this change. Basically FIRST-run IRI.

If FIRST wants to keep the competition part of FRC, they should never remove defense completely again. I still think 2011 MSC Finals were some of the most exciting matches I've seen. The #1 alliance was defeated by the #8 alliance based on strategy alone. Einstein that year was disappointing compared to MSC.


TL;DR

Create 4 super-regionals so many teams get the "worlds" experience.

Reduce the total number of teams that compete at worlds so there's one division of the best teams of the world.

Keep defense in FRC. Strategy is more exciting than a showcase. If I wanted a showcase, I would watch reveal videos.