That a good point. I could see a system on TBA that only allows you to list teams that you’ve played against, but I’m not sure how exactly. Also, it would be a ranking system that would count the number of people that has listed you. If you only had one team list you, it wouldn’t be bad, but if you had 10 teams list you, no body would agree to TNA with you.
Well, scouts could use the blacklist to see if they need to check up on a team. They could go back and watch videos from TBA or their own recordings to verify if the team did in fact violate TNA.
If the TNA rules remain unchanged, it seems like a much more robust way to protect yourself is to noodle tit for tat. I put one out, you put one out… and so on for the rest of the match. If your HP stops matching, I’m down at most one noodle, and can start littering on your zone from a distance if need be.
This comes back to what I was originally saying, you have no way to really verify the agreement was broken.
And even if one TEAM on the alliance breaks the agreement, should the other 2/3rds of the alliance be punished for it?
Edit: Saw you posted this: “Well, scouts could use the blacklist to see if they need to check up on a team. They could go back and watch videos from TBA or their own recordings to verify if the team did in fact violate TNA.”
How much time do you typically have between matches, or how many scouts do you have, that you have the time to find and watch previous recordings of a particular team, at a certain time? And the video would have to be focused on solely the human player for that one team.
I would verify it with video footage that is often on the blue alliance or with the video my team recorded. The Blacklist would just be a nice tool to see if I needed to go back and check the video.
I agree 100%.
…I will be surprised if that doesn’t change, but if it doesn’t, methinks anyone who doesn’t participate…should.
Paul,
on paper, you are absolutely right that in essence, its an 80 point coopertition max.
The drawback though, is the “poolitics” you folks mentioned on your buildblitz strategy talk. Personally, i dont like it. Its asking for possible shenanigans and hard feelings among teams, especially later during qualifications as the PNA strategy becomes more evident on how it can affect teams overall scores.
The suggestion that the “difference” of the Pool Noodles on the floor is a great suggestion and would eliminate what I think is an oversight by the GDC.
Bingo. If they want to see who actually violates it, they should do watch the video and determine if there was a violation themselves.
Word of mouth about a team is often very unreliable in scouting. Have you ever had a pit scout ask a team “How many wheels do you have?” to be responded with some fake answer like “5 mecanum wheels”. Or an unverifiable question such as “How many points do you score in auto?”, “Oh we have a tote stacking auto”.
I don’t like the noodle agreement. It opens up too much potential for hurt feelings and betrayal. If I have anything to say about it, my team won’t be participating in it.
That said, you can’t (shouldn’t) post something online discrediting another team’s honesty unless you have undeniable proof that they indeed broke a pre-established agreement.
Oh yeah, all the time. I just think it would be easier to see if they were blacklisted 10 times after a few competitions, you would know that you need to check some videos.
It’s essentially just scouting data. People make that publicly available all the time. If you want to verify it though, you’ll have to check video for evidence. I think if I would have worded the proposal as “TNA Success Rates” people would have had a more positive reaction. It’s essentially the same thing though.
If you name it TNA Success rates, then you’d just have 0% rates for names and alliances that disagree to agree. It would still make them look bad. Let individual teams scout this kind of material if they should be so worried about who to trust or not. And worst comes to worst, “Oh no!” If you didn’t score any of your noodles yes you would lose potential points. There are ways, however, to score more points than you would by following the noodle agreement. It would even force your opposing alliance to score less.
When does this end though? A team on your alliance refuses to agree to the agreement, are you going to blacklist them too?
I feel the overall negatives to this agreement seriously outweigh the benefits…like hurting a team’s reputation over something that’s “just a game”…
I really hope they kill this rule with a team update.
Agreed.
The real danger is the TNA in quarters/semis.
I’m not sure if TNA Blacklist is clear. It would list the teams that said they WOULD PUT noodles on the floor, but then did NOT PUT noodles on the floor. If a teams said in the beginning that they will not participate in TNA, that’s okay.
This is your choice to not participate in the agreement, and while your own team can have its own morals (of course), just make sure you understand the ramifications this has for every other team on the field.
Teams in this game do not operate in a vacuum. This game is different, Frank did not lie, and almost all actions on the field are highly cooperative. Whatever match score your alliance ends up with, all three teams on that alliance have to live with it. In the case of TNA, all six teams on the field have to live with it.
A key point to FRC is gracious professionalism. What goes along with this in match play is a few things, but mainly its simply that when a team is on the field, that team should put out the best effort it possibly can. For a while now the main take away of this was the immorality of throwing matches. Now however, there are no wins or losses, and all that matters is how much you score, period. So even now more then ever, not scoring as much as you know you can by not taking part in TNA, in my eyes is somewhat akin to throwing a match, since it takes zero skill to complete it, and is purely a choice.
Of course if no one wants to do it then, hey, do whatever you want. But as far as I can see, if even one team wants to, the rest have a moral obligation to do so, since there is no loser in doing it. As it stands now, even if one alliance was to try to screw the other one by, say, pushing noodles into the landfill, no one is more hurt than they would have been than they would have been by not participating in the first place, at least not directly.
Take this with a grain of salt, I do think straight up throwing a match is worse than not taking part in TNA, but what is for certain is that I certainly hoping I wont have to be on an alliance with a member that takes this stance. I want to, you know, rank highly, and don’t want to have to just ‘pass that up’ from some sort of issue with whether or not the rules intended this.
To be honest, I don’t like it either, but if its legal, there’s no way I could tell my team that we aren’t doing it.
I agree. If we could assure that it would only simply state this specific team stated that they would and then renege on their word, but I think the term blacklist is the wrong word. It carries a negative connotation.
Maybe I’m a pessimist in this situation but I would really hope that in the case where it was 5 v 1 in favor of the agreement, that it wouldn’t cause alliance in-fighting both on and off the field.
I wouldn’t want my team to be remembered for publicly going against other teams by posting about it online. If you have a problem with something a team did, first talk to their team about it and make sure they didn’t legitimately forget or misunderstand. If they really are jerks who are lying to your face, then be the mature one in the situation. There are lots of better and more mature ways to handle that situation then making a list of teams who don’t do it. Also, keep in mind an action decided upon by a stressed high school student is a quick two minute match doesn’t necessarily reflect the views of their team as a whole.
The noodle agreement, if allowed, is going to cause a lot more harm than good in this game.
I do not think a list is a good idea. At each regional/district the word will get out who does what. Then if people want they can check video of the match (give the match number ) and see the results.