Am I the only one who LOVED the seeding system this year?

[ttldomination]

I think the seeding system works well at certain events.

For example, at worlds, the seeding system was awesome. The right teams ranked in the right places, and each team had a chance to be #1.

At Peachtree on the other hand, the system didn't work. Blowout match scores were overshadowed my teams that barely scraped off a win.

So I'm not sure, but I like the system...I just don't think it's perfect.

[Shane L]

I hated this years system, they need to go back to win / lose record.

[Chris is me]

I guess I kind of made this thread partly to see where everyone lies, and partly because I don't want to lose something that did such a fantastic job of ranking teams because they want to hold on to the concepts of winning and losing being the most important things in a match. I think it makes students and adults think a lot harder when there's more than one qualification strategy on the table. Deciding to take the high risk high reward close match win, or the no risk minimum reward 6v0? Throw a match to maintain your seed, or go for more points with an epic qual you might lose? I guess I like that these choices exist, and I only dislike that people thought it was immoral or un-GP to choose one path over the other.

[Josh Fox]

Team RUSH had the pleasure of Dr. Woodie Flowers stopping by our pit to chat for a few minutes and, among other things, a discussion of the seeding system came up. I don't remember the exact wording of things, which I'll attribute to the rigorous Champs Schedule, but I was left with the impression that the whole 6v0 idea was not something that the GDC necessarily intended or wanted. It has been a few days, and I'm still exhausted, but I don't think that those strategies aimed at manipulating the seeding system were a desired, or expected, outcome based on the conversation.

That being said, we did find it strategically advantageous to play 6v0 once this season, so we did.

And all things aside, I thought that this year's system, while it could be confusing to newcomers, did a very good job of getting the "good" teams to the top while cutting back on the "fluke" top seeds.

I would love to see a similar, albeit slightly modified with more reward for the losing alliance in a close match as mentioned above, system return next year.

[waialua359]

The bottom line is seeding is based on the degree of how you win in any given match vs just winning. Winning "better" has it's merits in this year's system than the W-L-T. I can live with it but it depends too much on who you play with and against based on a random match schedule. 1 match can have a huge impact on your seeding as noted earlier.

[pacoliketaco]

I guess i may just be repeating what other people have already said, but ill throw another opinion out there. now from a somewhat outside view (i havent had much time for first this year) i cant say i agree with a system where you could make #1 seed by losing every match. it may not be the most GP way to go, but that kind of style would have worked (or so it appears to me). id much rather see teams go undefeated to the top than these seeding points. maybe its just that i didnt have much experience with this system, after 5 years of the old one, but i really hope the GDC goes back to its old ways.

[Racer26]

I think this seeding system is significantly better than WLT, /BUT/. It needs some function of the "closeness" of the match going to the loser. I rather like the formula I described above, or possibly this one:

W: W+2L+C
L: W+(2L/(W-L))
T: 3T

[Bongle]

I loved it pretty much from the beginning (6v0 and all), and loved it more when they added the 5 point winning bonus. I really hope they use it again next year.

The loser getting 2L seems like a good compromise to get rid of 6v0. Alternatively, you could make the loser get W+L so that their seeding performance is tied somewhat to the quality of their opponents. If you got blown out every single match by strong opponents, it doesn't necessarily mean your robot is bad, it might just mean that you've had a really difficult schedule. Having the winner's score affect what the loser gets is a good idea, but having it as the only determinant of the loser's seeding points probably isn't a good idea.

[Steve W]

Only one other person has disagreed with the system and I will be the second. In what world do you get/deserve awards for losing. In a game you either win or don't. The way it was last year and years before the was still ranking points for ties with win/loss records. Yet I see on this thread that maybe we should give the losers more points to show that they tried.

Be honest everyone. Did you not find that the elimination rounds were a lot more interesting and competitive than the qualifying matches? Not just because of the teams playing but because we all knew that you had to win.

I guess that I am tired of the "we need to make everyone feel good" approach to life. If we don't work hard, compete hard and strive to be the best then why should we expect to get rewarded? If I am getting rewarded for getting something I didn't work for then I don't feel right about it.

In the working world you will not be rewarded because you showed up. If you don't produce you will be pounding the streets looking for another job.

[BradMello]

Something this system offers that previous scoring systems didn't is the ability to achieve high seeding points regardless of the difficulty of your opponents. (Given that you are a fairly competitive robot with the ability to think strategically...). The seeding points system seemed balanced, especially after the conclusion of my teams final two qualification matches.

The Situation: Qualification Match 125 (Galileo)

Blue Alliance: 3164, 2467, 1466
Red Alliance: 78, 1058, 2834

Due to the strength of the teams on our alliance, we predicted a high scoring match. The outcome of the match was 21-7, which resulted in 40 seeding points. As stated by Johh Fox:

Originally Posted by Josh Fox

I don't remember the exact wording of things, which I'll attribute to the rigorous Champs Schedule, but I was left with the impression that the whole 6v0 idea was not something that the GDC necessarily intended or wanted.

The innate balance of this system makes me believe that the GDC never intended on teams scoring for one another in the first place, to make the scores as close as possible. This came to me immediately after the conclusion of our final qualification match, which consisted of the following alliances.

The Situation: Qualification Match 144 (Galileo)

Blue Alliance: 1717, 3138, 2283
Red Alliance: 78, 2036, 85

It was known that this match was going to be difficult compared to Match 125. The final score of the match was 12-11, which resulted in 39 seeding points for the winning alliance.

So now to look at the matches side by side, in regards of their overall difficulty and the resulting seeding points.

Five less balls were scored in total in match 144 than in match 125, yet there was only one less seeding point generated in that match than in match 125. This was because the difficulty of opponents was somewhat proportional to the amount of balls we scored (obviously). But the genius in this system lies in that the stakes are high even when the match scores aren't blowouts. (Like in qualification match 144.) This is why I believe that the GDC did not mean for alliances to score for their opponents at all, because in a standard "score for yourself" match, regardless of the difficulty, the resulting seeding points awarded to the winning alliance is balanced depending on the difficulty of the opponents faced.**



I am describing the balance of seeding points of the winning alliance based on the difficulty of their opponents, the seeding points awarded to the losing alliance is a whole different story. (Which I think needs a bit of revision)

[IKE]

[quote=Steve W;955850]Only one other person has disagreed with the system and I will be the second. In what world do you get/deserve awards for losing. In a game you either win or don't. /[quote]

In auto racing, the 2nd place qualifier doesn't "lose" qualifying. In the Collegiate BCS series, the rankings are based on schedule. A close loss to a highly ranked opponent is more favorable to rankings than blowouts against nobodies. Same is true of NCAA Basketball Tournament. In FSAE, the Auto-cross times are used a qualifiers for the schedule for the main endurance portion. Good Auto-cross times gives you a timeslot with other fast vehicles and at a more favorable time of day.
Qualifications are exactly that. Qualifiers. They are not the tournament, but a schedule designed to have fun, compete, and most importantly sort quality and ability for a seeding structure. A good seeding structure and algorithm matches most teams opinions of rankings. This year's seeding structure was better than most years. With a 12 matches at the FiM tournaments, it was scarily accurate.

There are two good systems proposed in this thread. Mine rewards offense and penalizes DEFENSE in the qualifying rounds. There is another using a difference metric that also rewards DEFENSE in the qualifying rounds. This really depends on what you want the qualifying to be. Both are better than the current metric.

[Enigma's puzzle]

Originally Posted by Steve W

Only one other person has disagreed with the system and I will be the second. In what world do you get/deserve awards for losing. In a game you either win or don't. The way it was last year and years before the was still ranking points for ties with win/loss records. Yet I see on this thread that maybe we should give the losers more points to show that they tried.

Be honest everyone. Did you not find that the elimination rounds were a lot more interesting and competitive than the qualifying matches? Not just because of the teams playing but because we all knew that you had to win.

I guess that I am tired of the "we need to make everyone feel good" approach to life. If we don't work hard, compete hard and strive to be the best then why should we expect to get rewarded? If I am getting rewarded for getting something I didn't work for then I don't feel right about it.

In the working world you will not be rewarded because you showed up. If you don't produce you will be pounding the streets looking for another job.

But in what world is every situation a Win or Lose situation? Doesn't everything vary to a degree with the opportunity costs that the choices and actions entail? It makes each match have a little more real worldly in my opinion.

I loved the seeding system because it left room for recovery, every team will go out and lose communication with there robot at least once this year, but if they have a chance to recover from it with each match, as to work up to overtaking the weaker teams ranked above them, then that is the way it should be. I personally believed that at the three events I attended that the Original top 8 was correct with only a single robot that didnt belong there. Although not in the right order necessarily. But the system is design to put the top 8 best offensive robots out selecting. Which it accomplished almost flawlessly.

Side comment: At The West Michigan District with the top 16 selections in the Alliance Selections, the top 16 ranked robots were picked or were captains. AND the top 5 alliances chose the robot ranked directly below them.

I believe if the Seeding System can rank like a picks list (Through the 1st round at least) then it was doing its job of finding the best.

[skimoose]

Originally Posted by Steve W

Be honest everyone. Did you not find that the elimination rounds were a lot more interesting and competitive than the qualifying matches? Not just because of the teams playing but because we all knew that you had to win.

Yes! I also don't like that the game has to be played differently for qualification and elimination rounds.

Originally Posted by Steve W

I guess that I am tired of the "we need to make everyone feel good" approach to life. If we don't work hard, compete hard and strive to be the best then why should we expect to get rewarded? If I am getting rewarded for getting something I didn't work for then I don't feel right about it.

In the working world you will not be rewarded because you showed up. If you don't produce you will be pounding the streets looking for another job.

I've also said this before. If we don't learn that the world is a big bad place and you need to try your hardest, how can we expect to compete in life? We really need to get away from this entitlement society we live in. Why should you be entitled to any success if you don't work hard for it. Isn't that the message Dean is always pushing?

Another problem with the seeding system was the huge swings that could be generated through collusion or how a match was played. We had a match at Championships where we played strong defense against a top eight team. They still won the match, but we cut their normal high scoring in half. That team plummeted down almost 40 positions in the ranking system. They never fully recovered to the top eight. We were not trying to damage their ranking position. We were playing the game to our strength which this year happened to be defense. A team should not be affected in that way by winning a match. I'd hate to think how damaging it would have been if we'd won that match.

The system needs work so that it isn't so volatile.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Steve W

In what world do you get/deserve awards for losing. In a game you either win or don't.

The problem is that you can lose to a slightly stronger alliance, while another team wins against a much weaker alliance. If you just count win/loss records, that other team looks better than you, even though you might be confident of defeating them directly. The Breakaway seeding system deals with that quite well, in my opinion.

You don't get awards for losing. You get more seeding points if you lose against strong opponents than if you lose against weak ones. It's not a perfect scheme, but it appears to have been very effective this year at ranking robots in the "right" order.

Originally Posted by Steve W

Be honest everyone. Did you not find that the elimination rounds were a lot more interesting and competitive than the qualifying matches? Not just because of the teams playing but because we all knew that you had to win.

I didn't find that to be the case at all. Maybe it's because the teams I focused on are traditionally high performers and did play to win in qualification rounds.

[Marc P.]

Originally Posted by Steve W

I guess that I am tired of the "we need to make everyone feel good" approach to life. If we don't work hard, compete hard and strive to be the best then why should we expect to get rewarded? If I am getting rewarded for getting something I didn't work for then I don't feel right about it.

In the working world you will not be rewarded because you showed up. If you don't produce you will be pounding the streets looking for another job.

I don't see the current seeding system as anything close to the "make everyone feel good" approach. On the contrary- the current system rewards actual performance over simple win/loss statistics.

Under the old W/L/T system, the first ranking metric was obviously wins/losses/ties, followed by ranking points. The problem with using a simple "win" as the primary rank decision is there's no differentiation between a 1 point to 0 win, or a 15 point to 14 point win. The differentiation is deferred to the second metric of ranking points. So lets say Team W, Team X, Team Y, and Team Z are competing at some regional. Teams W and X have awesome robots, while teams Y and Z barely have a moving drive train. The random match schedule pits Teams W and X against each other, and Teams Y and Z against each other. Team W edges out Team X, in a thrilling 15 to 14 point victory. Team Y and Z struggle to move, but Team Y manages to score one ball, winning 1-0. Under the W/L/T system, Team W would be #1 seed, Team Y would be #2 seed, Team X would be #3 seed, and Team Z #4. Team X clearly has a better robot than Team Y, but the rankings don't reflect that, because performance isn't included in the primary ranking metric.

Situations like that happened more often than not under the old ranking system, where an all but dead robot ends up in the top 8. This season, I saw much less of that (post week 1). Statistically, it will still happen if lower end robots end up paired with higher caliber robots in the random match schedule, but by making performance the main ranking metric, it's far less likely. Alliances with strong robots playing against strong robots will rise in the ranks much farther, rewarding overall quality of any given match over luck of the FMS draw.

It's not a perfect system by any means, and I'm not a fan of the potential 6v0 matches. But looking at it logically, on Curie 1114's 6v0 match that ended 29-0 netted 34 and 32 seeding points for each alliance. Team 78's last 2 matches on Galileo (matches 125 and 144), ended 21-7, and 12-11, netting them 40 and 38 seeding points, for tough and fun to watch matches. Those matches catapulted them from 15th place to 2nd, a move that would have been impossible under the old system. Galileo even had a 19-11 match, generating 46 seeding points. I'd take those matches over 6v0 any day.

Is there room for improvement in this new system? Definitely. Is it a step up from the old system? I honestly think it is, and would be sad to see FIRST revert back.