Ball bouncing out of the high Goal

[AlexanderTheOK]

The fundamental issue here is that the real field acts differently from what teams may have prototyped with. I imagine if you look back on games with simpler and cheaper field elements you will see less of this. This game specifically is much harder to make an adequate test environment for.

The difference between the fabric and this issue however is the frequency with which it happened. Evidently teams COULD have tested more rigorously, but FIRST could have also foreseen the issue through their own testing?

When an issue like this happens with high frequency, I feel the conclusion should be that FIRST itself did not account for this, and should have either communicated to teams better regarding prototyping for the low bar, or designed it in such a way that teams don't see issues on the field that they wouldn't see while practicing (ie. damage to the low bar due to extended use.)

When it happens with lower frequency (like the rejection issue) it can be reasoned that other teams DID foresee this issue, leading me to believe that FIRST did a better job of dealing with the issue before kickoff. This obviously doesn't mean they did a perfect job, but it seems right on the line of reasonable here.

So the core question regarding balls bouncing out is: Did FIRST communicate the requirements regarding scoring and the interaction of the balls with the goal adequately.

As this is a subjective metric, (and different individuals may have different definitions of "adequately") I don't believe we can say this question has an answer unless there is near unanimous agreement among the community. (as there was with the fabric)