If you are a ~90th percentile team [1], your competition experience will vary so greatly depending on whether you are in the districts or regional system, and FIRST’s unwillingness to address this problem is a great detriment to this program.
Districts are qualifying 10-39% of their teams from awards (Chairman’s + EI + RAS) [2], and one team from winning DCMP as a 2nd pick.
Regionals, before wildcards, are qualifying 50% of teams from awards (Chairman’s + EI), and the first two wildcard go to 2nd picks and another award (RAS).
To qualify via their robot, teams have to guess which regionals their local powerhouses will avoid, travel to try and find a weaker event, or hope to get very lucky with wildcards. It devalues incremental progress, and makes champs more a hope than a goal for consistently good but not powerhouse teams.
FIRST: even the playing field with universal district points. Districts have been around for 15 years now, it is past time to apply the learnings from them progam-wide.
[1] The top team by district points (using first 2 regionals, points doubled if only one regional was attended) in CA to not qualify was 114 at 92nd percentile
[2] Michigan qualifies 9.6% of teams via awards, FNC qualifies 38.5%