2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Jared Russell]

• The game was terrible to watch - by far the worst I have seen during my 15 years of participation in FRC. The only periods of excitement were the first few seconds (and occasionally the ensuing tug of war) and whenever a stack would topple.
• The game challenge was too difficult for the average team. The median robot in 2013 or 2014 was far more inspiring and effective than the median robot in 2015.
• The can race was way too important as a result of there not being enough cans in the game, and the resulting "arms race" absolutely burnt out a lot of teams.
• Cheesecake was taken to a ridiculous new extreme this year. I want to only have to worry about building one robot in order to be competitive.
• Litter, upside-down totes, and totes on the step were just unnecessary clutter that only ever lowered the level of play.
• Without W-L-T or any form of (non-canburglar, non-noodle throwing) defense, outgunned teams have nothing to cheer for but for their competitors to mess up. I will never forget how it felt to look up and see several thousand people and dozens of teams standing and cheering when our alliance knocked over a couple stacks en route to our quarterfinal exit. I do not blame them (and take the cheering as a gesture of respect for our robot), but it was a little hard to swallow and to explain to our students. I wish the incentives did not align this way.
• The Qualifying Average system made for a brutal eliminations bracket. Especially at events like MSC or the Championship, it is very difficult to recover from a single bad match - I like best 2 out of 3 because you can get one mulligan.
• The 607 team Championship felt very crowded and chaotic. Team registration and badging took too long. There were major traffic jams in the tunnels on Thursday morning and again before eliminations.
• I was once again left wondering why some of the robots I saw were at the Championship while other, far more effective robots remained home.
• Once again, FIRST totally dropped the ball on making sure people can follow events from home. The Championship streams were awful, and scores and rankings weren't event updating through most of the weekend. It is 2015. Why do PNW, FiM, dozens of regionals, or Chezy Champs have better streams than the FIRST Championship?