Do you like the seeding system?

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Mike Martus

My answer is NO!

It messes with my mind...

We win 3 matches in a row we drop 15 spots....... we lose 1 match and we jump up..... hmmmmm it is better to lose then to win in many cases.

Something is just not right here..... Cooperatition leads to a boring set of qualifying matches....... some teams are starting to see.... if you are loosing the match then score for the winner you are points ahead for your team overall.

I second this.

[Michigan Specific Rant]
Compounding this if you win and go down you decrease your chance of picking (which is worth X points for qualifying for MSC) but increase your overall points by some amount smaller than X, Y. If you lose you raise your ranking increasing your chances of picking (X) but sacrificing the chance to gain Y for sure. Since when did a robotics competition come with opportunity cost?
[/Rant]

Coupling this with the massive amount of penalties being racked up just by playing the game and FIRST may as well have renamed the Qualification Matches "Demonstration Matches" and then picked 8 random Alliance Captains.*

I've read the rule book, I competed with 2 teams at a competition, and I STILL have barely a clue how this thing works. What chance does a random spectator have? This game could have been awesome but the sheer number of penalties and a wonky ranking algorithm is making it so that spectators have no idea what is going on.


*To anyone who was an Alliance Captain last weekend, you guys played the game as written and came out on top. Good job, you earned it. I am disagreeing with the rules of the game not your ability or skill.

[Lil' Lavery]

I find it appropriate that most of the people agreeing with this system have yet to play in it.

[TD912]

Has anyone here factored in the Coopertition Bonus, or that other matches in between yours may have also affected your position?

In a game that is 5-2 with one penalty on the left, the left gets 8 and the right gets 5 seeding points.

The only trouble is with "blowout" matches.

[HashemReza]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I find it appropriate that most of the people agreeing with this system have yet to play in it.

I lol'd.

It's true, once you play with it, it sucks. This is coming from someone who benefited from the system, with my team seeding 6 at San Diego this weekend. That, in case you were wondering, was our highest seed at competition. Ever.

That doesn't change the fact that the seeding system sucks, rewarding the wrong things currently.

[Ed Law]

Originally Posted by Herodotus

Which is why I selected mixed feelings. The rules should be designed more appropriately, but it also reveals a nasty tendency that many people have to try to exploit any system they are in for their own good. That's not always a problem, but it certainly can be.

I know as a former driver that if my coach had ever asked me to throw a match for qualifying points, he would have been looking for a new driver and I would have been done with FIRST.

I commend you for that. I would have done the same. I decided against doing that not because it is un-GP but it is poor sportsmanship. As coach of the team, let it be known that Team 2834 the Bionic Barons will never agree to cooperate with other teams to throw a match. Please do not even ask. If our opposing alliance try to throw a match, we will score one point, get all the balls to our near zone and I will tell my driver to guard the balls so they can not score for us.

[davidfv]

I put up a "simulation" of the seeding system for a 57 team 8 game match.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...t=83903&page=5

[vhcook]

I spent most of the morning Saturday behind the desk in Pit Admin at KC trying to explain the rankings to people. This was not an easy task. Doing the same job with the system used my first four years in FIRST was fairly easy. The 2*Wins+1*Ties+0*Losses system for qualifying points was straightforward, and the fact that ranking score was a tiebreaker based on the loser's score led into the "encouraging close, high-scoring matches" explanation. Both were fairly easy to determine from raw match score information. Under the current system, it's hard to even determine whether the numbers are correct or updated, since penalty information isn't visible on the match results list, and there have been a lot of penalties and a lot of 0-0 ties that resulted in non-zero seeding and coopetition points.

I'm not going to judge any team negatively for their legal strategic decisions under this system as long as they are honest about them, put a robot on the field that is as good as they can manage, and don't play "single out team X and try to make them go down by any means so I can go up". Everyone would like to be in the position to choose alliance partners on Saturday, and it's possible it's going to take some weird roads to get there. It's also possible that all the exotic strategies will be found to be a bad idea in most practical situations and will fade away as the season progresses.

I trust everyone's scouts to find a way to see quality and ability. Good robots will still be what wins championships.

If things continue under this system, the audience is going to be confused during quals, and we should try to help them as much as we can. It is my intention to make sure that all of our people in the stands at our next event are prepared to explain to other people's confused grandparents, bus drivers, and random spectators why someone thought it was sensible to start scoring own-goals mid-match, or why all six teams are scoring in one direction, preferably in as neutral a way as possible, even if we decide it isn't a strategy we are willing to participate in. The most graciously professional thing I can think of to do is assume positive intent any time I can and play the best game we can with the cards we were dealt.

Given the strategic implications and the level of confusion and distress it invokes in both informed and uninformed observers, this is not the ranking system I would have chosen, and I would prefer not to use it again. On the other hand, I am not privy to the design constraints the GDC members were using when they selected it, and I respect them enough to play it out and not make final judgments after one week. On the third hand, if they decide this isn't what they wanted and make a change, I will not complain.

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I find it appropriate that most of the people agreeing with this system have yet to play in it.

I concur, heh. Combined with the inevitability of penalties, this new system hurts a lot more than people would believe, especially in the early weeks when the rules are still subject to interpretation by the referees. (Did anyone else notice the refs in DC calling G41 too much even though the parts were from malfunctioning subsystems and it obviously was not intentional?)

[Taylor]

Week 1 quals, penalties were the deciding factor in matches. Period.
Unfortunately, many teams simply did not understand the ranking system until it was too late.
One problem the current system has is the following: that fancy TBA image in our signatures lists W-L-T statistics. When we go back to our schools, our faculty/staff/students ask how we did. I'm struggling to explain the concept of, "well, we lost more than we won, but our seeding scores were great!" (which they weren't but you see my point).
Jury is still out in my mind, we'll see in later weeks how things flush out. In my eyes, the #1 and 2 seeds at DC (1727 and 3123) were certainly deserving, irrespective of how they were awarded.

[Isaac501]

This is probably the worst seeding system I have ever seen. When you have the ability to have a match where everyone (and not by collusion across the field) can play a 6v0 game, there is something HORRIBLY BROKEN about it. I am pretty unimpressed with the GDC this year. Between the ridiculous penalties and the utterly broken seeding system, I'd say this was the worst set of rules I've seen in my 7 years doing FIRST. The game would be AWESOME if these rules didn't suck the bloody life out of the game.

After losing 3, tying 1, winning 3, and our bot scoring 2 whole points the entire day, we were seeded 19th at the end of Friday. We could drive. Our kicker didn't work. Our hanger didn't work. We got like 15 penalties.

After we fixed most of the problems, we won two more, lost one more and then seeded 30th overall.

Win, and you are penalized. Do NOTHING and you are rewarded handsomely.

Explain to me, please, someone, how the hell this is possible.

[Martinez]

I find it Ironic that FIRST selected a game to be as inviting to the public as possible (Soccer just prior to the World Cup), and yet the results have been more frustrating or counterproductive then ever before...

People talk about Gracious Professionalism, and I know we all have different meanings for it, but I am seriously glad that my Dad was not there on Sat to see any 6v0 matches. He's been a fan of FIRST ever since I started and is an even greater fan of Soccer. I invited him to come out this weekend. He couldn't but did make the effort for Friday, driving three hours from Rome NY where to date my former High School still doesn't have a team.

If these facts doesn't seriously say there is something wrong about this game, then nothing does.

[Steve W]

I think before we jump all over the GDC we should consider that it may have come from higher up. Patent = Coopertition

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7507169.html

http://osdir.com/patents/Games/Metho...-07507169.html

[ebarker]

These rules are offensive to a persons intrinsic sense of fair play.

We should help each other get to competition, through inspection, and get through the whole year.

But once the robots are on the field of play it should be a 'gladiatorial spectacle' !

[johnr]

Well, people patent germs and viruses that can kill the entire planet. Doesn't mean they have to use it.

[Dad1279]

Originally Posted by Steve W

I think before we jump all over the GDC we should consider that it may have come from higher up. Patent = Coopertition

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7507169.html

http://osdir.com/patents/Games/Metho...-07507169.html

I tried to keep an open mind through our first regional, however playing through it has convinced me that it is a bad idea. In fact, quite often in led to our alliances not cooperating, and changed gameplay for the worse.

When a game is designed so that if you know you are going to lose, your best strategy is 'take a dive' or worse, score for your opponent, IMHO that has destroyed the game and competition.

I hope "FIRST" does not continue with this system in the future.