The argument that this year’s skills scores showed a discrepancy between skills and the game is just false. I took the top 35 skill scores and only 7 of those teams did not at least make eliminations. Out of those 7 team I believe 3 of them would have qualified for worlds anyway. What bugs me the most about this change are two things.
Firstly, and probably most important education wise, is now the single minute programming period is basically useless for teams to spend time on. There is hardly any incentive to do more than shoot your two preloads and park for 6 now that improving your skills score will not count for much. Improving on field play will increase your team’s chances of qualifying more than fully utilizing this amazing new system that we have. Vrc had one of the top programming challenges out there now it’s a throwaway.
Secondly, the large area bias that the REC has developed since moving to the “State/Regional” model. In my former job 6 other Regional Championships were closer than my own, but I was forced to go to the 6 hour drive much more costly (in travel-$ terms) event. Now teams are not able to qualify based on their own merit of being a top skills team in the world, but a second round pick semifinalist/quarterfinalist that might not be in the top 20 skills score of their own region gets to go to Worlds because their region is bigger. Take for instance Singapore vs California cut into 3rds. Total population is 5 million to 13 million. No matter how hard you try or how involved your area is toward technology there is no way a third smaller region can support the same level of teams. But the REC is based out of two of the largest populated regions that Vrc has so they might not see it the same way.
It would be nice to know why this change was made overall and why the REC thinks this will better the community as right now it seems to be only hurting those smaller areas who have built up highly successful programs while also deemphasizing programming participation across the platform.
I feel sorry for Singapore and the other regions that were majorly impacted by this change. Personally I feel this change is a disappointment and outrageous. But another question also comes to mind, Who will actually try or have the motivation to do skills now? There is actually no point to do skills.
The skills only events and “the top 50 go to worlds” both had their share of issues and problems. It wasn’t a perfectly smooth system, but I didn’t think they were completely broken.
I want to throw a little data out there, since we engineers deal in data not feelings. I have seen multiple posts that state that the change away from awarding worlds spots to the teams with top skills scores will impact teams from small regions. I wanted to use data to verify/refute this position - so I used the ITZ top 35 high school skills list. Last year, of the high school teams that were in the top 35 they were distributed as follows:
US - 25 teams
China - 1 team
New Zealand - 1 team
Canada - 4 teams
Singapore - 4 teams
Of the teams from outside the US, the teams from China, New Zealand and three of the teams from Canada qualified through their regional tournament to worlds. I didn’t look up Singapore - but assume one qualified through their regional tournament and rest through skills (since Singapore had one slot to worlds last year).
The data from last year does not support that argument that getting rid of skills will cause suffering to small regions. It will cause suffering to Singapore - but not widespread suffering broadly. Only one non-US team (from Canada) would not have gone to Worlds if this change were made lat year - and I don’t consider Canada a “small region.” Not opinion, just fact.
Perhaps someone with more time than me can look at past years to see if last year was typical or an anomaly.
This is kinda sucky, but it isn’t nearly as disastrous as people are making it out to be. Skills is now for qualifying extra teams to fill the event, which is honestly what it always was. They’re just changing it so the event doesn’t overflow. You should still have mostly the same odds to get in through skills as you did before. The only difference is the teams who really have no shot at lasting more than a few matches at worlds that didn’t really deserve to go anyway aren’t going to qualify anymore. If you do well enough to earn it through skills, than you still go.
There are two important changes in these rules that are not being discussed.
Local events with teams that double-qualify to their regional will now advance teams based on robot skills scores at that event. This is significant, as those spots were simply lost in years prior. Events that were large enough to qualify 5 teams might only send 3 teams to regionals. Now a 5 team event will always advance 5 – based on skills scores.
Robot skills winner has precedence over tournament finalists at most spot levels. (And Design has precedence over finalist and skills at all levels.) This is also new – finalist was above both design and skills in years past.
I read these two changes and imagine more teams at regionals and worlds based on their skills score.
Yeah, I totally missed that. Big change. Skills is really important at tournaments - because frequently a tournament champion wins the excellence award and/or robot skills - so there are double quals…
As an EP I’m a big fan of these changes. It mean that teams will stop avoiding tournaments that have the “Best” teams already signed up. It might attract more teams to events with the “Best” teams already signed up because in theory there will be more opportunity through the skills rank to get to state.
If your region has 1 spot there’s never going to be double qualification so it’s 100% certain robot skills is bragging rights only. As you run down the list 3,4,6,10 spots the probability of a double qualification increases but there’s no certainty. Under those circumstances I’d anticipate teams will do a driver skills run and chose their best 15sec autonomous for programming skills. Not really the student learning outcome we’re striving for in 5 out of the 9 spot levels which don’t have dedicated Robot Skills Champion spots.
I heard rumors of each event filling out their spots with skills, but I overlooked it in the qualifying criteria.
So if “Team A” wins Excellence and is Tournament Champions, then they have double qualified and the top “not-qualified-to-move-on-from-this-event” team, perhaps “Team D”, on the skills list then moves on.
Of course that “Team D” invited based on skills might already be qualified to move on from a previous tournament, but that is irrelevant.
This does put some additional incentive out there for teams to do skills. I’m still sad for the loss of skills only events.
If an already qualified team qualifies again at a new tournament the spot is still lost. They don’t “look-back” to see what teams qualified previously. It’s only double qualifications at the same event that get filled by skills.
I’m confused why you’re saying the tournament spot is lost. The state/regional championships are still going to be filled with the top skills scores at the end of the season: “Top Robot Skills Challenge Score will be used to fill the remaining capacity of the State/Region/Province Championship event.” So when teams double qual at multiple tournaments, those left over spots are allocated to the teams with the top skills scores.
I do see a mixed bag in this as of what we know know. As stated by others, we still haven’t seen the Worlds spot allocation to know how this will truly effect some regions. I would be sad to see Singapore go. I always look forward to learning from them each season.
Over the past few seasons in South Texas we have had a rotating cast of dominant programs that have sent a large number of spots for state to the skills list. I like that design has become more important than skills. I never liked seeing teams show up without a notebook and say “Forget Excellence and Design, it’s a waste of time when you want to win tournaments.” The students aren’t learning the engineering process if they throw away the most important part.
I also don’t think people are seeing the one big flaw in this year’s game with skills. As always, the top skills teams must be able to put up a large programming score in order to be at the top. Teams without access to V5 and the advantage that comes with the vision sensor will, in my estimation, have a hard time competing. We don’t know exactly when different parts of the world will have access to V5, placing many at a large disadvantage. Many teams simply will not have the money to transition. I would be OK if the skills list was put on a one season break if that was their reasoning. I do hope that after this transition season it comes back.
Some of the most amazing teams each year come from unexpected places. Perennial contenders from small places like Singapore never cease to inspire how much talent is found in such a small sample size. The skills list was always the way to right the wrong that a place should get less representation based on population. It allowed the most talented a way to secure their spot despite what might happen on one day at one event. Crazy things happen at big tournaments.
lost to that tournament only, that’s what I meant by lost. The spots will still end up being filled. Being top in skills at any given tournament, and being top in skills for region/state at the end of the season are two different thresholds.
I am not sure what are you driving at honestly…
Not sure what’s the definition of small region. But I wouldn’t classify china as a small region. And I think NZ should be considered a quite small region. So the only truly small region that you have listed is Singapore.
I am not sure why the other small regions are not trying the skills route. Maybe they give up, or maybe they don’t even have enough interested teams to form a minimum 16-team requirements… I wouldn’t know. Will need to check with them.
But I am sure all of them will have their own set of problems or their local constraints.
I have quoted what telemascope has mentioned very nicely below.
And yes - currrently it seems like Singapore is the main beneficial. But when the global ranking first started, many other small regions have gained from it as well.
And let’s not be myopic and look further (and as telemascope has mentioned as well) - any region that has a particular strong season will benefit from it too.
Another point that I agree with the above quote is that there seem to be a shift from robot-focused to judged award-focused.
I am not sure about you guys, but one of the reasons that I moved from FLL (and other LEGO NXT competitions) to vex was because Vex (in the early years) was all about designing and building the best robots and then keep practicing the driving.
I don’t know… maybe I am just that last few old-fashioned robotics purists left in the system.