2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Dale]

The idea of moving thousands of people from one end of the dome to another in the middle of closing needs to be revisited. I felt bad for the winners and finalists of Einstein getting their award in front of a empty stands. Breaking up the closing activities with another 45 minutes of pounding DJ music before continuing with the program seems like a poor choice. Finally if you aren't going to provide food for everyone then there needs to be a LOT more concessions open with better options.

FIRST has struggled to recreate the finale in Atlanta in St. Louis. This year's event was another attempt but by starting so crazy late after people had been sitting for over six hours didn't work out for many. Well over half the dome emptied.

Looking back over my last 11 years of leading a FRC team things that seem to make good games are:

1) The outcome shouldn't be decided by what happens in autonomous or endgame. This year's can grabbing auto and minibots come to mind as bad game design.

2) There needs to be defense! It's not really a game without it. This year was more of a robot demonstration.

3) Games constantly decided by penalties are frustrating especially in the early weeks. That wasn't a problem this year but was last year.

4) The engineering challenge needs to be different and interesting. This year was good in that regard. Totes and Cans were hard to manipulate.

5) Auto should be worth the trouble. This year's game was fine in that regard.

In my opinion this year's game was one of the worst and the engineering challenge among the best so I guess it averages out. Hopefully we'll return to an actual game next year.