2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Jardanium

Now I move onto the biggest let-down of all, the Championship.

FIRST certainly didn't prove to me that they could handle 600 teams, let alone the 607 that ended up attending. The event was unorganized, chaotic, and half the time my team and I had no idea what was going on.

It started with the identification badges, which my team had no idea about. It wasn't well publicized that these were required, and could be picked up on Wednesday, so most didn't bother.

It sounds like your problems with the Championship start with your team not keeping up with the information made available in advance. How would you have preferred to receive the word that everyone would need badges?

[Jardanium]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

It sounds like your problems with the Championship start with your team not keeping up with the information made available in advance. How would you have preferred to receive the word that everyone would need badges?

I feel like more announcement and signage about badges on Wednesday would've cleared up the confusion. I personally wasn't at the convention center on Wednesday, but what I did hear from the reps and mentor that went over was that they didn't know or hear about everyone needing badges. (if an announcement was made, the sounds of load in and pit set-up may have drowned it out)

I just felt quite out of the loop this year when it came to events and happenings. I had no idea that Scholarship Row was moved into the same building as the Innovation Faire, nor had any certainty as to where the Einstein matches were to be located until I saw a massive congregation move toward the Archimedes-Tesla side of the Dome. I'm sure part of this is me being oblivious, (and believe me, I sure can be sometimes) but perhaps more finalized scheduling and locations information would've been great in the registration packet/folder that all teams received, so at least mentors could be in the loop.

[kgargiulo]

Originally Posted by Kevin Leonard

+1
And for Championships, get a broadcast like the one for the Michigan State Championship going on Saturday. MSC is incredible to watch, even with this year's game due to the incredible production value put into the event.

This. Although the thread name is "the negative" I want to pick up on MSC as a positive example to contrast to.

I was stunned by the high quality of the MSC broadcast. The video resolution, the angles, the field of view, the commentators... it was all incredibly professionally done and a credit to the people who arranged it and did the work. I'm in the "great engineering challenge, weak spectator sport" camp regarding this year's game, but the MSC broadcast even made a positive difference on that front.

My team was on Curie this year and for quite a while at the start of Quals there was no field audio. Period. In Q1 the robots started auto and no one off the field knew it was coming. The audio on Curie sometimes alternated between deafening and inaudible, but once it was fixed it was generally ok. I appreciate that the production team must have had to work hard to fix an unanticipated problem that somehow got past testing. Anyone who's worked on a robot understands that pressure and frustration. However a working PA system has to be table stakes when we've got people on line and in the stands who we are trying to get interested in FIRST and STEM as mentors, volunteers, sponsors, or any other angle.

Einstein audio was unintelligible (no exaggeration) in the upper decks for most of the intro speeches due to a severe echo. The echo was briefly fixed by making the volume nearly inaudible. Eventually it was sorted out, and the match calls were fine. I do not know if that early problem was limited to the dome, the area of the dome where we sat, or affected the webcasts as well. Same point as for Curie. That kind of problem with the blocking and tackling of the PA system doesn't help new people get hooked.


Disclosure: I work for PTC, a FIRST Crown Sponsor. Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

[Gdeaver]

Of all the negative posts, not one mention of the biggest change this year. A change that affected every team ---- The Roborio and the new control system.

[jnicho15]

Originally Posted by ThePaulitician

Are teams going to have to stay in the abandoned houses or are they going to have to stay 1 hour west in Livonia, Ann Arbor, etc?

Hopefully some Canadian teams will stay in Windsor, if Customs is fast enogh.

[jnicho15]

Originally Posted by James1902

Posting on mobile on the bus home so please forgive some typos.

1) Don't have the Einstien matches on one side of the stadium and closing ceremonies on the other. It messes with the flow of the event, adds more time delays go an already behind schedule (probably) evening, and moving a group of students through those crowds efficiently and safely is a nightmare. Also it left few people to cheer for this year's Champion Alliance as they got their award.

I think maybe it was intentional to prevent teams saving seats

[K-Dawg157]

Defense. Please bring Defense back. It allows the game to be more complex and fun to watch (as said previously) but it also gives new challenges to the drivers of the robots.

Without defense, all of the robots do the same basic things. You are either a canburgalar, or a stacker. Robots either stacked totes with cans already on top at the human feeder station, or they capped stacks that other robot s had already made. I personally never saw a litter sweeper robot, it was an add-on for others. And I never saw a wall like last year to try to block noodles.

Defense will make FIRST more fun to watch, more fun to participate in, and more challenging all around.

Other: Also, with the whole breaking Champs into two events, I have 2 problems with this. 1. Why would you go North and South? Sure, it's closer to Canada and Mexico for those teams, but teams on the eastern seaboard and western seaboard have to travel about the same distance... West and East would have made more sense IMO. and 2. Now this isn't going to be a true "Champs". It'll be a Northern Champion and Southern Champion. It won't be crowning true winning alliances.

[cmrnpizzo14]

Originally Posted by Rachel Lim

- The game. If it's even accurate to call it that, since Recycle Rush was way more of a challenge than a game. Specifically:
*snip*
- Mecanum. We've done it once, and I hope we never do it again. It's confirmed what I thought, and much more. I never would have expected us to get sucked into the "mecanum trap*," but we did, and it wasn't fun. I'm looking forward to the return of defense so we won't do this again. That said, it was nice to see it well implemented by many teams.
* My name for the idea that omni-directional movement is important enough that spending time on a drivetrain that we've never tried before, and will spend a significant amount of time on, will help us in the end.

Your teams design decision is not part of the game. FIRST didn't mandate the drive like in 2009, you really could have chosen anything.

[Taylor]

My family and I were there as spectators on Saturday. No team affiliation, just there to watch some robots firsthand.
Having to go get lanyards & badges was an unnecessary complication. If FIRST is going to promote this event to the local public (city bus wraps, billboards, etc), why make it difficult to attend?

There was no signage or anything else explaining the game around the EJD - or the America's Center from what I could see. Given, my family and I knew what was going on, but once again, for random families coming in, it would have been distractingly confusing.

The game was what you make of it. In many respects, it reminds me of car racing. Some people really enjoy the strategy, the engineering, the teamwork employed; others think it's boring until somebody crashes.

The entire Einstein experience was embarrassing. I was glad I hadn't brought prospective team sponsors with me. Horrible audio, ridiculously long wait between matches, poorly executed crowd engagement routines. We ended up leaving before finals because my kids were bored. Seriously. If robots can't hold the attention of a 6-year-old boy, something isn't right.
Maybe it was because turnaround time, which was about 6-7 minutes during the season, was roughly half an hour?

I wonder how many teams missed their flights, had to pay an extra day for charter bus getting home late, or got home way after curfew because the Einstein event was so poorly managed and executed.

[The_ShamWOW88]

Reading through the thread, I agree with a lot of the comments and suggestions made so I won't make this a long reiteration. However, my feelings are as follows:

Recycle Rush - I won't go as far as saying this was the "WORST GAME IN THE HISTORY OF FIRST" because maybe those who are saying that weren't around for the "game that must not be named" in 2001 (although I know this point has been made). This year was better than that, 2009, 2003 and 2008 even (which is of my own opinion and I could spend an entire thread talking about just that). However, with that said, FIRST, I understand the idea behind it and that you are always trying new things and pushing boundaries but I have to say, you pushed a little too far this time. This was a glorified FIRST Lego League game minus the 100% autonomous but if this is the direction they're headed in then count me out. I just didn't feel the "Competition" in FIRST Robotics Competition. It didn't matter the "opposing" alliance's score in the moment (during Quals) so there was not motivation factor to try and "win". Not until Elims did both scores really factor into mine or the drivers' thinking.

I also saw no reason for a team to specialize in any one this this season, I saw no reason for actually working together as an alliance and as we got further into the higher levels of play, you really only needed two teams that could MAX stack or as close to MAX stack as possible to win and the third (or fourth for Champs) only needed to stay out of the way (again, my observation, not yours).

I hope this "Average Score" and no "W-L-T" is an experiment because the experiment didn't produce good results. Considering that, as far as we know, the FIRST design committee builds games years in advance, I sincerely hope they have settled on a traditional 3v3 game which takes into account teams' abilities to specialize and work as such, a team. Please, FIRST, if you do anything, stop the "no robot contact, no head-to-head" before it gets out of hand. It didn't work in 2001, it didn't work this year.

Outside of the game - I can't comment on Champs as a whole as my team did not attend. I don't think the stream was nearly as bad as it sounds, quality wise, but the angles provided (no full-field) and the insane amount of time sitting and waiting for things to start (just watching different teams dance) was crazy.

There's other opinions on the 2-champs split, etc. but I'll save those for the actual threads discussing those topics as it's just too much information for one post.

[planetbrilliant]

Originally Posted by Taylor

We ended up leaving before finals because my kids were bored. Seriously. If robots can't hold the attention of a 6-year-old boy, something isn't right.

Part of this might've been because, especially for a kid, there's not that much excitement in the game itself. The game this year was pretty boring to watch because it's the same thing over and over. I watched a live-stream of the finals at home and my eyes kept drifting to other screens (my tumblr dash, facebook, etc) in the set up I had because watching robots stack totes isn't that interesting, even if some do it faster than others.

The Einstein matches also started horribly late. I was worried I had gotten my timezones mixed up because they started like an hour and a half later than the scheduled time.

[MrForbes]

The autonomous part of the game was all or nothing. A few really good teams could get a tote stack or container set. But requiring all three teams to do the same thing to get auto points only works if there is only one possible thing to do. Having three possibilities makes it so there will almost never be three robots in a qualification match that do the same thing. We wasted too much time on auto before figuring this out.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Gdeaver

Of all the negative posts, not one mention of the biggest change this year. A change that affected every team ---- The Roborio and the new control system.

I think that is a testament to the amount of effort that NI, WPI, CTRE, FIRST, and all of the beta teams put into testing it. There was a beta testing feedback conference/round table and it seems like the new control system is a massive improvement overall from the old. There are still some bugs to be worked out though.

Sorry, this is the negative thread... Umm, I guess we all had to learn how to use the new control system and that took time away from building...

[FrankJ]

I sped read the previous 6 pages so sorry if this is repetitive.

Fix the problem so the tracking app like spyder & blue alliance work in real time. Hard enough to track what was going on in my division let alone what was happening to friends in other divisions. Real time streaming for matches should just work. Having this stuff buggy kills the excitement we are trying to build for the competition. First is supposed to be the innovator in STEM. It is embarrassing.

Fix FMS connection issues. The wrong combination of robots on the field still breaks it. The robots are not the problem... They are the messenger.

Funny that the real autonomous battle was for the cans & not the initial points. (This is in the wrong place because I don't view as a negative.)

Time management for the First finial. The finial & closing ceremonies in general. Who thought shining bright lights into the spectators eyes was a good idea. I left after getting a headache.

[hardcopi]

The lanyards were for security. In case of an issue they wanted to have a method of telling those who belonged from those who did not. There were riots not that long ago, not that far from the center. First was understandably concerned about upping the security.

That said here is my list of gripes and whines:

Event was too large. Didn't feel as elite as last year and even that felt too big. Why not multi state championships that are like this and then a smaller championship that was less than 100 elite teams.

Moving from one end to the other caused a lot of rudeness and nastiness in the stands. We literally had our stuff tossed aside and one girl literally stood up to ask me what we should say to them and while she was standing in front of her seat someone shoved underneath her and sat down. Rather than cause an incident our team moved up 2 rows where there were plenty of seats available.

I assume it is to make the stands look more full, but that particular problem would have been alleviated a LOT by not choosing the smaller ends of the field and instead the nice long sides. Yes it would have looked less full, but it would have been a nicer event for all.

Cheesecaking has to go in its current iteration. I like helping other teams. We have done it many many times, but this year it has gotten to the point of ridiculousness. In the past it was to help a team enhance the work they had spent all season doing. (Last year for instance, Rush, Enginerds and us helped a small team whose mentor had been in a car crash. They came to the competition with the kit bot barely functioning. We managed to put a few small pieces that let them play. Then we ended up picking them for the 2nd seed alliance's 3rd pick because for a team with a non-tech mentor and a team with only 4 kids they had heart. That to me is what cheesecaking was meant to be.

Not gonna talk about the game because I have the same issues with it as everyone else.