It has been about 2 months since my original post about the replacement of RR. Although we know that obviously we couldn’t see how the BO1 bracket would have worked (especially considering virtual world finals was Bo1?) But besides all of this, I think this discussion needs to be brought up again, so we can show as a community which bracket we desire.
Obviously we would like to bring back round robin, but we all know thats not happening, especially with the addition of 2 new divisions. However, @owen169 had made a double elimination bracket that I believe needs to come back into play.
The bracket above is one of the best alternatives to RR. The maximum amount of matches played is 15 (16 with a finals reset) and provides a pretty good way of things out of a teams control (like whitescreen) deciding who has the chance to be the world champion. I, and others, would like the REC to really consider this as an option for a bracket at worlds.
Say your thoughts in the comments on this, it’s a discussion after all!
Although I do like the idea of double elimination, it was off the table for this year’s Worlds, and I suspect that might have to deal with the VEX AI demonstration.
Next year’s Worlds is also going to have at VEX AI as well as all the other divisions, so I think we are going to be more hard-pressed for time than before.
while I definitely think this a far better alternative to a straight elim bracket, it probably doesn’t stand a chance of being implemented due to time.
It is nice. At least we know it is not an automatic elimination in the very 1st defeat.
Just 2 thoughts…
The format is quite confusing for casual observers or audience.
But i think this can be resolved by having better comms to the audience.
Teams that are thrown to the loser bracket will need to play 1 or 2 more games (as compared to the team that is undefeated) by the time this team reaches the Grand Final.
Think 1 more game is reasonable and insignificant.
but will the 2 additional games played result in a greater mechanical stress to the robot and thus giving the undefeated team a big advantage?
But i do think this is an option that is worth exploring and discussing.
If RECF was planning to have Worlds Finals quarterfinals played in the divisions, they may just as well allow division finalists to have a second chance as lower R16 teams. This will not take any extra time because they will play in parallel on the other half of the division fields that would otherwise be unused.
Then only lower bracket finalists could be allowed to play in the Dome. With so many division fields available it should add almost no time to the schedule.
Then you can be certain that the best two alliances are in the World finals, even if they happen to meet in the same division or were unlucky to experience a whitescreen or some other equipment failure outside of their control.
Do what RECF / VEX did. Scrape the top 20 scores for each team and play them off in a simulation where you pick a random score out of their collection of scores. Do 100 runs of the matches and give us the results.
It’s a nice picture, show us how it gets the top teams to the podium most of the time.
Maybe it’s just me, but I thought that was the most inaccurate way to simulate scores this year. Especially with TT, the Highest score doesn’t mean you were the best team, you could have won every match this year with a 35 or below
OK, so then pull the scores from teams regional or state finals matches and use them.
Point I was trying to make was to run a simulation. Run a set on the current format and see who the winners are and then run the RR or the DE or whatever. You have data, show us what it means,
Form a competitive point of view, they could even bring back bo3 if they cut a couple of matches. They can do this however they want! (I would personally prefer the double elimination bracket)
WORLDS is not just a competition… If you look over their schedule only finals matches were going to be played in the dome. I know that it’s really a loss for us to lose the RR as spectators, but RECF only scheduled finals matches in the dome. JROTC will have their finals match in the arena, and something else will have to go to make that happen.
Max capacity is 9,815, but with the staging they will put up it’s probably going to be less than that. So, even if they held a round robin there, if you were there you might still be watching it on a screen.
