3 Teams Per Side Too Many?

[Goldeye]

Triple Play would be impossible with only two teams. In some cases, a game will be too simple if made for a 2v2. Triple Play was probably a pretty decent median. Their wasn't really crowding on the field, and although there was a lot of action making it hard to follow each action in the game, the fact that there's only two teams made it easy to tell the current game status in a few glances.

The best answer is variety. If they can make a game where two robots are needed to accomplish a difficult task on a very large field, even 4v4 could be reasonable (with serpentine alliance picking). I'm sure they can make a great 2v2v2 game too. Whatever they come up with, I'm sure it'll be good.

I really think 3 on 3 is a bad idea. I loved it at the beginning of the season and I really liked the element of strategy that it added, but I have since noticed a few things that is has impacted negatively. There were huge lapses in scouting at nationals. I think this had a lot to do with 3 on 3 since it is nearly impossible to keep track of a match with 6 robots in it. You need 6 people watching each match and even then it is difficult to get a perspective on the whole match. Also it is more difficult for an individual well performing team to overcome an unlucky alliance pairing. It wouldn't be so devastating to be seeded lower due to alliance partner mishaps if you could trust that the top seeded teams had watched your performance and would pick you.

[ben281]

hey guys,
i do agree that 3v3 might introduce more interesting games and strategies. This is the first forum that i have seen anyone throwing out the idea of 2v2v2. haha that could get really cool! once again, the previous problems exist with that, since every match you would have 2 wins for ever 4 losses. oh well. i also agree that scouting needs to be more thourough next year to insure that the good teams with bad luck still get picked.
till later
Ben
TEAM 281

[Carter]

Originally Posted by ben281

hey everyone!
i just wanted the opinions out there whether the increase in robots on the field increases the luck involved and if so is it worth it to help move through more matches quicker? i know there were lots of good teams that got lower seeds than expected because of this. let me hear what you guys think!
Ben
TEAM 281

i dont like the 3v3 this year because it puts to much of the game in luck. it was okay at the regionals bc there were only one or to really good good bots(not trying to bring down the other bots. but you can tell the difference in the really good and okay.) my team could over come all the other bots at the regionals. we seed #1 at both regionals we went to and won then at nationals we were 43 seed .but when you have to two bots that are on your alliance and they cant do anything and then you are play against 3 okay bots its not fair to the one bot. the teams work really hard and we do so good at regionals and then we cant over come the luck at nationals and it hard on us because we do work so hard those 6 weeks to make the bot good. my team wasnt the only team like that. others are 79,1251,179,71,61 and im sure i missed some but i hope i got the point out.

[Carter]

Originally Posted by SharkBite

I really think 3 on 3 is a bad idea. I loved it at the beginning of the season and I really liked the element of strategy that it added, but I have since noticed a few things that is has impacted negatively. There were huge lapses in scouting at nationals. I think this had a lot to do with 3 on 3 since it is nearly impossible to keep track of a match with 6 robots in it. You need 6 people watching each match and even then it is difficult to get a perspective on the whole match. Also it is more difficult for an individual well performing team to overcome an unlucky alliance pairing. It wouldn't be so devastating to be seeded lower due to alliance partner mishaps if you could trust that the top seeded teams had watched your performance and would pick you.

not to keep the neg talk going but you make another good point. that most teams dont have the people to scout that many bots and scout newton ,curie and so on. my team did it all this year but it was hard on all of us and my team has 75 people on it.

[Not2B]

3 vs 3 = good

-More rounds
-More teams
-You get field time with almost everyone
-Broken robots result in 2 vs 3, which isn't the end of the world
-Scouting is different, not harder. (You need to be more creative, and data driven - at least it worked for us.)
-More exciting, IMHO, than 2x2 (but that's not a good reason for or against)

3vs3, 2vs2vs2, or 2vs3 would all be fun.

(2 vs 3... with an uneven field... and you get equal number of matches on 2 as you get on 3. That would be wild.)

[Mike33]

3v3 was good. not as much traffic as i thought because most teams learned to stay in the home side of the field until they had to go make a 'blitz' play and take the opposing home row goal. you did need more scouters because there were more bots on the field. the unussuall two or three didnt work that well when collecting the data. compiling data was fine. and believe it or not, the human player still was valuable even if the team didnt use the manual loader. think about it, if the human wasn't there, the bot wouldnt go. if the driver wasnt there, the bot wouldnt go, and if the operator wasnt there, the bot couldnt score. so believe it or not, the role of each job was evenly split.

p.s. Thanks to all you human players for making our robots go.

[Doug G]

Originally Posted by Carter

i dont like the 3v3 this year because it puts to much of the game in luck. it was okay at the regionals bc there were only one or to really good good bots(not trying to bring down the other bots. but you can tell the difference in the really good and okay.) my team could over come all the other bots at the regionals. we seed #1 at both regionals we went to and won then at nationals we were 43 seed .but when you have to two bots that are on your alliance and they cant do anything and then you are play against 3 okay bots its not fair to the one bot. the teams work really hard and we do so good at regionals and then we cant over come the luck at nationals and it hard on us because we do work so hard those 6 weeks to make the bot good. my team wasnt the only team like that. others are 79,1251,179,71,61 and im sure i missed some but i hope i got the point out.

Point well made. But I think 3v3 works just fine, but there needs to be less teams at nationals (i don't like saying that). As Joe J stated, have more matches would alleviate your situation. 7 matches is just not quite enough, 8-10 would be better. That would also alleviate the scouting problem for some of us small teams that have only 3-5 students scouting. Less teams seems to alleviate a lot of problems, but may raise the fees unfortunately.

[Ali Ahmed]

I think the 3 on 3 in fine and a very good thing for FIRST. FIRST is becoming very huge and the 3 on 3 allows more matches per team. For example, if this years game were to have 2 on 2 then we would have had something like 4-5 matches total. I don't know about anybody else but thats kind of boring. It is also for the rookie teams that are not able to go to the Championship. It allows them to have more machetes and therefore more fun or a better chance at winning and going to the Champs. And, like other people said, it makes for more interesting strategies and scouting.

[Jim Meyer]

Originally Posted by petek

I think this question might be rephrased to "which is more important: striving toward field dominating performance, or gracious professionalism?"

I don't think that gradious professionalism and "dominating performance" are at odds with each other in FIRST. If we want FIRST robotics to be more of a sport than a science fair I think competition is a key element. If FIRST wants to gain mainstream appleal good robots should seed at the top. Poor ones should be at the bottom.

Like Dr. Joe mentioned, the randomness isn't any worse than previous years if the numper of matches played goes up appropriately. I think this was the problem at Nationals. Didn't we play 8 matches last year? I was expecting 10 or more this year.

I think this year was better than last on a whole. The Regionals did play more matches to help with the randomness issues. I loved the fact that all the robots played all the time in the finals. It worked well with this year's game but could be pure chaos with a different type of game. I might be a little biased though.

[Amanda N.]

I agree with what a lot of people have been saying in here so far.. I definitely was glad to have more matches (my team usually only gets to go to one competition, so it's nice to have as many matches as possible there). I think the games are more interesting/exciting (but harder to keep track of) with 6 robotics out there. It's nice to get to work with more teams, too.

I think it would be wierd to go back to 2 vs 2 next year.. I got used to having 2 other teams in the driver station, and maybe this is just me, but I think it would seem more simple/small/boring (well, a robotics comp. could never be boring.. I just can't think of the right word for what I'm trying to say right now though) with just 2 teams per alliance again.

[Masterfork]

Originally Posted by dmurdz

With FIRST growing so fast 3 vs 3 games are needed and they will most likely been seen for years to come, they would have to decrease the amount of matches played or add a day to competitions or make the day longer, FIRST is just growing so much.

I like the 3 vs 3 games because new methods of strategies are uncovered and there is more action on the field.

well its not too bad but there is way too much luck involved but it could be fixed by having more matches which would lower the chance of a bad team up on top who really doesn't deserve it

[Squeje250]

Yea. truthfully i think it may have been better. knowing that if one of your teamates where disabled, or just isnt doin anything you have another to help you out, and its not just all you. althought they also have more help. i think both ways are fine.

[ben281]

hey everyone,
does anyone actually know how many games were played per team at nats last year? i seem to remember 6 or 7 but someone said 5. do you think that first needs to run the matches later in the day to fit more in? Unfortunately 1 more game per team equals another 15 matches for a division of 85 teams. At least everyone seems to agree that we need more matches no matter how many teams per side there are. tell me what you think! : )
Ben
TEAM 281

[the_short1]

i think on the official standinds, each robot should have the number of tetras they personally stacked.,..

for instance, giving credit to alliance team 1,2,3 even thought team 2 didnlt cap any. .. etc.... . or if your alliance lost a match because you were the only scoring team, so scouters can more accurately see how good an individual team is.... . this year.. it was all about alliances.. if you were a GREAT robot and had 2 really crap alliances.. theirs almost no way you can win . . even against 3 low strength robots