If the growth is unsustainable, then you break it up to make it work. For example, the growth of the # of VRC and VEXIQ teams was such that there was a serious problem of finding an affordable venue for Worlds - the solution was to split the two events. It helped keep the size manageable but needs to have more resources to keep it going over a longer period of time. There will be more changes of time that will help manage the growth.
I find it odd that this moment of play is highlighted as unavoidable bad luck for your team. Both bots involved in the entanglement wrote autonomous routines aimed at collecting cones in an area in which it was probable another bot would be operating at the same time. Both bots had lifts in motion in that contested area, which is an obvious risk. The outcome was predictable and therefore avoidable.
I understand why you would take that risk – those field cones were valuable. But it is a risk you (and your opponent) chose to take. There are options for mitigating that risk, such as adding an ultrasonic sensor to identify the presence of another bot and respond autonomously.
I agree that moment was a really tough way to see your season end, and that BO1 will undeniably increase the number of times that future teams will have a similar experience. I just (respectfully) disagree that the moment in question here was unavoidable.
In the States the skills only events are basically the wild west. Unlimited runs, no requirement to film runs, and very little oversight.
The system as it is was was ripe for abuse. The rep at my local summit quoted California as the worst offender.
The RECF could
-
Reform the skills events in the US (Big job)
-
discontinue the temporary program
Honestly, I’d say they should just have a international (outside the US) Skills list so regions with fewer spot could utilize that path, since you are already filming and have oversight. That would likely anger the largest pool of “stake holders” (the united states) so that is why that would likely never happen.
I’d argue this would be tough to do since many of the students only compete for 4 years.
Conveniently this is also why the bo1 argument will be moot in 2-3 years.
shhhh, they will know our secret!
Every four year sounds about right
What I’m noticing is VEX is removing the incentive to behave poorly.
As we all know, teams in various ways threw matches to get onto third alliances. Bo1 allows only 2 team alliances to exist, which solves this problem.
Team also submitted fictitious skills scores, which is solved by eliminating the global skills ranking altogether.
And a less commonly discussed detail: the rules about a qualification match DQ were changed significantly. If robot blue 1 pinned robots red 1 and red 2 illegally and caused red to lose, red received a loss in ITZ, SS, NBN, etc, and blue 1 also received a loss. Only blue 2 won. However, now all of the robots except blue 1 win, and only blue 1 loses (since they are DQed.) This keeps weaker teams from breaking rules at the request of their high seeded alliance to give this alliance a win at the expense of the high seeded opposing alliances. It’s also just a more sensible system.
I think VEX is justified in all of these decisions.
However, it seems like bo3, not third alliances will be missed. Fortunately, bo3 and 2 team alliances can both be in effect at the same time. The simplest way to do this is simply to have 8 captains at local tournaments and accept that the 17th and below teams are probably not going to win the tournament. For worlds, there needs to be a better solution, but many have already been thrown around.
In terms of skills, the easiest solution to the cheating is just to record skills scores as @meng pointed out. Yes, a video can be fudged, but it’s much more difficult, much higher risk, and much less likely to happen. And the recording equipment needed is simply a phone. I don’t really see any downside to this, and I would hate to see 8059 leave vex because of something like this.
Overall, I wish the GDC and RECF would consider the competitors’ input before making these decisions. But I understand the motivation for these changes and they’re certainly not greedy or malicious. I don’t like either change, but it is what it is.
I don’t believe @Jess Abbot was saying robots couldn’t improve, she was saying that it is unlikely that the loss was solely a result of improvement in the robot.
In other words, if Robot A performed way better than Robot B in most matches, but B defeated A in a Bo1 match, the Bo1 match was likely out of the ordinary, and A would most likely win against B if the same robots faced each other again.
These are good points. If all you need to do is win by one, it can be very easy for the outcome to be reversed, especially if one of the winner’s matches in Bo3 was close.
I agree.
And from an earlier post:
I wouldn’t expect that to happen.
Bo1 is controversial, while almost no one has objected to 2-team alliances (at least on the forum). If someone made a poll about 2-team vs. 3-team alliances, I think people would interpret that correctly.
It isn’t like Bo1 vs. Bo3, where you have two likely definitions, one being “Bo1 vs. Bo3 in general” and one being “VRC’s usual Bo1 system vs. VRC’s usual Bo3 system”.
By “known to be skewed”, @callen means that the survey was not 100% clear that the question was “Bo1 in general vs. Bo3 in general”, and not “The current Bo1 system vs. the previous Bo3 system”.
Even though the first (and most literal) interpretation is the most obvious, some people reading the survey could read it the second way, or could be unsure which one was correct.
Also, just because teams prefer Bo3 and they prefer 2-team alliances, that doesn’t mean they prefer using both of them together.
I agree, although I do expect that when teams have the whole season to optimize their robots for Bo1, they may be more consistent than they were in previous years (where the occasional loss didn’t eliminate you from the tournament).
While it’s true that being consistent is no guarantee of a win under Bo1, consistency is still extremely important if you want to succeed. Being inconsistent in Bo1 won’t get you anywhere.
A few things I’d like to say and then it’s probably best if I stop commenting on this thread:
I personally conducted the study @Jess Abbot linked in the OP. Yes, the survey asked only about bo1 vs bo3 and not about 2 and 3 team alliances, but I don’t think that makes the survey skewed. It was asking about a small part of a larger system. If teams like bo3 and teams like 2 team alliances, as Jess mentioned, the most logical course for the GDC is simply to implement bo3 with 2 team alliances. The two parts of the new system need to be considered independently. Bo1 with 2 team alliances, bo1 with 3 team alliances, bo3 with 2 team alliances, and bo3 with 3 team alliances are all possible (and have all been put into effect at some point except for bo1 with 3 team alliances.)
@B-Kinney, I don’t think anyone who likes bo3 and 2 team alliances objects to bo3 with 2 team alliances If someone does, that would be an interesting conversation, I’m just not sure why those ideas would be incompatible. This isn’t an ice cream and pickles situation 
And of course robots get better all the time during competitions, but not dramatically. I became a much better driver from day 1 to day 3 of Worlds. That said, our scores only went up 10-20 points per match. So I think when a team’s score drops from their usual 130 to 60, its because of an unexpected problem, not because those teams just became worse.
No elimination system is perfect, but most competitors think bo3 is better than bo1. Many EPs and the GDC clearly disagree. Both positions have merit.
Look at a great many racing sports.
My main one was cross-country skiing. Let’s take the Stow Derby, for example, since I’ve raced it and it attracts an international crowd. How many times did I get to race it? Once. Didn’t matter that the conditions changed through the day due to weather changes and other racers having been on the course. It didn’t matter if you wiped out on a sheet of sheer ice that had been created as a result. You got one shot.
As for technical stuff, that applies too. I’ve seen multiple skiers limp across finish lines with a ski that had de-laminated due to a manufacturing error. And there are lots of issues with weather changes, shadows, and how the snow is impacted; these are important vis-a-vis the wax used on the skis.
You can look at lots of other racing sports for Bo1 as well. Just look at a ton of them in the olympics. Most of the racing sports you only get one shot in a round. You get eliminated or you advance. In track, you false start and you’re out.
Why go to magically doubling scores and why most robots? Just consider all the possibilities. Maybe a robot has a problem that was eventually caught and fixed. Or the opposite, maybe after significant competition a robot developed a problem that wasn’t discovered or couldn’t be fixed. Maybe drivers weren’t as alert due to sickness/sleep and are now more alert. Maybe the opposite, a driver isn’t as alert as before. Maybe new strategies/tactics have been developed. Maybe old strategies/tactics were maintained because they were consistent but a new opponent knows how to counter it.
I’m not saying you can’t look to past performance to figure out who was better in the past and thus who you believe is more likely to win. You certainly can. But that doesn’t mean the team was better in the past is better come the new match.
You are correct that many factors can cause one team to become better than another over the course of an event.
Here is what I believe:
Suppose Robot A outperforms Robot B over the course of the tournament, but Robot B defeats Robot A in the finals.
Ignoring the influence of their alliance partners, the wider the gap between A and B prior to this match, and the wider the gap in the elimination match was, the less likely it is that Robot B was better than Robot A at the time of the finals.
No matter how each robot performed, it is still very possible that Robot B was genuinely better at the time of the finals, and it is also very possible that Robot A was better at the time of the finals but experienced unusual circumstances.
If you saw the match, you would have a much easier time telling whether the result was normal or a fluke, but if all you have is the score, it is harder.
The main reasons for someone to prefer Bo3 and 2 team alliances, but not together, would be (1) if they didn’t want the two robots on the alliance to get tired out from the large number of matches close together (like @meng said), or (2) if they wanted more than 16 teams in the elimination rounds, but didn’t want to make the elimination rounds longer by adding a Bo1 round if 12.
(Even when they can’t win, I believe some teams would much prefer being eliminated in the first round over not being in the elimination rounds at all. I’m like this myself. Other teams feel the opposite way.)
I agree completely, although sometimes an unexpected drop may come from unexpected defense (which might still count as an unexpected problem).
I agree completely.
I also feel that there are many people (possibly including the GDC) who believe Bo3 is better than Bo1 for rewarding well-performing teams in general, but that Bo1 is better for keeping events from running too long, and that Bo1’s way of rewarding teams has its own benefits.
Yes, organizations do come and go, and a few organizations disappearing would not kill VEX, even if they are extremely influential organizations, or entire regions.
Even so, I don’t believe it’s ever a good thing for an organization to leave VEX, unless perhaps that organization has been doing more harm than good.
8059 in particular is one of the most influential and respected organizations there is. In my opinion, if 8059 were to leave, it would be a much bigger blow to VEX than it would be if almost any other organization left.
It wouldn’t be fatal to VEX, even if all the other Singapore teams did the same thing, but it would be a serious problem.
No business ever likes losing customers. However, leaving the program is a choice.
If 8059 left Vex, it might open opportunities for other Singapore teams - so I’m not sure that all Singapore teams would leave if 8059 left (as conjectured above). It seems to me that for the first time, the other teams would have an excellent shot at making it to Worlds - where that was never a possibility before. If I were in Singapore and 8059 left the program, I’d probably double down on the number of teams I had. Not to say that I think they should leave or it would be a good thing - but just making an observation.
I agree, and I think this is a great idea. I would suggest using a camera angle that clearly shows whether the driver is holding the controller, and making sure the team number is clearly visible at least once during the video.
(Maybe there could even be a card at the beginning or end with the team number, Skills type, and event name, like the clapper they use when filming a movie.)
'nuff said there - and I know of teams who are gone and are not coming back and organizations that had to reboot and organizations that have gone from FRC to VEX and organizations that have gone from VEX to FRC. I’ve had team members leave and move onto other interests…
that’s life. it goes on. don’t read more into it - it’s not all end of the world stuff…
I agree, although some teams may be forced into leaving due to financial concerns. (If 8059 left, this would be why.)
I agree that 8059 leaving would give other high school teams a chance, although it would still be a sad day for the rest of the VEX community. Also, if the World Top 35/15 was still around, those other teams could make it to Worlds based on their Skills scores if they tried hard enough. Even now, they could still make it to Worlds by outperforming 8059, or by adding more teams (or by being able to afford a Signature Event, and then winning there).
I didn’t mean that 8059 leaving would cause other Singapore teams to leave, I just meant that even in the extreme scenario of all Singapore teams leaving, it wouldn’t be the end of the world for VEX. Either way, I think the worst case scenario would be that in future years, Singapore drops to a few teams and only one Worlds spot.
My guess is that 8059 will stay for this year, and will likely even go to Worlds (with at least three teams). The middle school Singapore team who qualifies for Worlds may also attend Worlds (unless they can’t afford to go with only one team), and this will become even more likely if Singapore gains more middle school spots in January (or if VEX reinstates the World Top 35/15 in some way).
Future years are uncertain, although by that time, VEX might implement a solution for the Skills problem.
“unless they can’t afford to go with only one team”
I certainly sympathize with the cost involved for any non-US teams to travel to Worlds. But I don’t ubderstand why a team could not afford to travel with one team but it is suddenly more cost effective when they bring five times as many people and equipment. If a team can raise $X they could certainly raise $X/5. Is there some efficiency gained when travelling with five times as many people?
There are lots of countries that bring only one team. Yes, it is expensive - no matter how many teams. I’m not minimizing that.
I am also still confused here. I asked Paul for clarification when he said “the bad behavior it encouraged got to a level that the benefits were outweighed by the negatives.” That’s a pretty serious indictment of the skills qualifications which doesn’t reflect the conduct I’ve seen from teams trying to qualify from skills. If plate-swapping was the only thing being referenced here, this would be a ridiculous reason to remove the spots given that the GDC position on plate swapping changed from:
to:
between November and March last season. This possibly left some teams in California (which according to a poster in this thread is one of the “problem” regions) who had qualified multiple teams through skills using the same robot in a situation where it was legal at the time they qualified, but became illegal at a later date. It is totally unfair for anyone to blame these teams or the skills qualification system for these issues when it is directly a result of the GDC position on R1 changing part way through the season.
Ironic.
Teams in regions who played fair no longer have a skills qualification route to worlds.
Teams in regions with “bad behavior” retain skills qualification route to worlds.