You are also paying to be inspected and to be considered for a judged award, meaning that the award ceremony applies to you directly if you are doing LRS. Worlds is not just 360 seconds, and looking at it that way is painfully pessimistic. Judging by your logic, you are assuming that the field is magically set up before every run, the RECF is simply trusting you to have a legal robot, and that you already know whether or not you’ve come away with an award. That perspective doesn’t seem practical.
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This is why the in person events are cool. We had two teams in Dallas and while early parts of elims were going on (it was BO7 that year) and they commandeered a skills field. They then challenged teams walking by to join their alliances. They would play a match, teams that lost went out, new alliances rolled in. They played so many more matches and met so many cool teams.
This is why I asked yesterday in a LRT session when the new game would be ready. Its been a decade since I’ve played with a Kiwi team, my Friday night to their Saturday works for me.
And @DrewWHOOP writes - 6 1 minute matches, or 360 seconds. with a $500 registration fee, that is $1.39 per second.
Could be much worse, pay $6,000 to do FRC and build a $15,000 robot and play 6 two min matches. Perspective.
You know that nice $75K a year programming job you want? You want to rack up development, test and management time to do LRT on that salary?
You are ALL engineers, tonight’s project is to research Non-recurring Engineering costs (NRE) and how that is a huge issue, and how many big companies and startups die because of this.
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That… actually sounds pretty cool. So it was like “King of the Court”, but VEX instead, so I guess you could call it “Kings (or queens) of the Field”?
Exactly, they both started as alliance captains and grabbed a partner and played. They also went through the line a number of times. It was cool. It would be a cool feature to add to LRT to be able to go to a waiting room and do 4 teams. Presently the test lets you do 2 at a time an thats fun. Maybe next year’s game can be scored by AI vision so you dont need a scorekeeper.
Math: 24 hours a day, two fields, scorekeepers make $25 an hour, HR costs say $20 per hour for tax, ssi, health care, , server costs, some IT support (say $100,000 per year) divided by 5 matches per hour per field (yearly average, less in early part of seaon, busy when robots get built, ends up being an expensive system
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oh i forgot that I have to pay for the privelege of setting up my own field.
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That isn’t my point. My point is you’re saying that you are only spending 60 seconds per match, but to actually play the match, you have to set up the field, no? That would make the time spent much more than just 60 seconds.
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You need to have some respect. You have absolutely zero idea the amount of work that has gone in to having any sort of Worlds competition this year for teams whatsoever. VEX is designed to be an in-person sport, and rapidly modifying the game rules to fit a virtual environment and engineering the systems to support it is no easy feat. Stop acting like a petulant child and and start proposing some actual solutions, if you care so much. No one’s making you attend Worlds.
Also it’s spelled privilege, and if you’re complaining about having to do field resets, I think that’s something you might have too much of to start off with.
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if i cared i’d’ve spellchecked it.
dont charge $500 for a glorified zoom link lmao
clearly a lot of work was put in, but that doesn’t change the fact that vex has been a complete joke this whole year with that whole virus thing. also I still dont understand why teams have to choose between LRS and LRT.
oh also its still $1.39 per second of actually doing what you paid $500 to do
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- I didn’t qualify for worlds
- I qualified, but won’t be going
- I qualified and will be going
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voters
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Even if I did qualify we still wouldn’t go.
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For everyone who didn’t qualify for worlds, would you go if you had qualified?
- Yes
- No
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voters
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You have clearly communicated your point. You think the $500 is too expensive. And now you are posting surveys to show that other students feel the same way. You have already told us your team won’t attend because you think this isn’t worth it. But over 1200 teams will attend and the REC Foundation will work to give them the best experience possible.
I rarely say this but please give it a break. This is not a constructive conversation any more.
@DRow - Heads up.
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Hey Dan, welcome to the forum, it appears you are new here! This is how the forum works, lots of rants, lots of unhappy, but lots of us take the lower consensus road. We avoid the rants, and slide underneath the noise. So look at all the responses and split them out, I’m a fan of worlds as present, so happy to send teams! 
Edited to add:
Thanks for the DM’s actually I do know who @DanMantz is. But I also know that @9MotorGang is stirring. So I’m good here. I poked at @DanMantz because his passion, like my passion, often leaks out in posts. We care so much, as do lots of other mentors here, Don’t mistake anger / hostility for passion.
Do the best you can do!
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Hi @DanMantz , another big fan of worlds over here.
Even though it is not in-person (for us) and we will need to live at weird hours for 1 week, I am still glad that at least some of my kids still can attend worlds… and i will gladly take up the spot that any world-qualified teams wanna give up. Lol…
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As a member of the RECF Student Advisory Board, I can confirm that we have discussed the price. We tried to look at cost-cutting measures, but whatever we could do wouldn’t be an efficient use of time and resources.
We have also gone into depth with improving the user and spectator experience of both virtual divisions. No, Taran is not on the SAB, but he is working hard toward the same goal from a slightly different angle. And I trust that he’s doing a great job.
Yes, the price does seem unreasonable. It may be justified from a corporate point of view, but, from a student’s point of view, it can easily seem excessive.
I did not qualify, though, if I had, I would attend to support the RECF. (My school won’t pay the fee unless my team had “earned it.”) I can ask others to do the same, but my opinion isn’t necessarily universal. In my mind, we’re not only paying for the event, but we’re also paying to support the company that made any events (in many regions) this season possible. If you and your team is on the fence about Worlds, I would urge you to consider this perspective before making a decision.
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I wish we had a longer period of time to complete the two virtual tourneys required for VEX worlds. Our state comp was last saturday and the only reason my team is not goin is because we cannot complete the two tourneys before the 29th deadline
Then do LRS, the two tournaments are only a requirement for LRT
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I anticipated that this was the case. I do wonder, what is the need for flying referees out? My system works fine regardless of where in the world a Referee is located. Does it have anything to do with coordination/event support?
My team hosted a multi-state regional tournament for both IQ and VRC. For VRC, the referees were able to join us on site. For IQ, our referees were remote from another state. I can say with 100% certainty that it is better to have all necessary people in the same room. This applies to EP, Referees, Scorekeepers, and tech support.
Thanks to @DanMantz and amazing RECF team for all they did the past 18 months. It has been a challenging year and I definitely look forward to the day when we can all be in person together again! Hopefully sooner rather than later!!!
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I gotta be real, there is so much out there in the world that school just never teaches even today. As I’m pursuing education, I am finding myself incredibly interested in the stock market. As I want to eventually start a business, the stock market has opened my eyes incredibly as to how the business system operates.
Correct me if I’m wrong. I think I am right for the most part but if anyone wants to edit this go ahead:
In a public-based system there is a larger emphasis for profit as the shareholders (many of the individuals who buy stocks) are basically part-owners. If the shareholders aren’t as successful, the director of the public institution is threatened which could potentially threaten those directly under the branch of the director as well. I cannot imagine the stress for trying to make a profit in a profit-based institution. But for something like RECF, I bet the stress is less towards making profit and more towards making it more popular. Ultimately, I do not believe there is as high of an emphasis towards money (although all companies need a certain amount of net incone to ensure stability in the long-run). The emphasis for nonprofits are more towards reaching a particular goal, any particular goal that the company deems important. Bear in mind, much of the ‘income’ RECF gains goes towards other corporations that make a profit, in return to receive a product or tool to reach a desired goal. For instance, when the RECF wants to have a co-op discussion with VEX Robotics publicly, RECF would need to pay VEX to have a VEX employer walk on the stage. If the RECF wants to host VEX Worlds event, the RECF would need to pay for the location where the worlds event will be held. VEX makes the products in hopes to earn a profit (and yet they have a warranty on all of their electronics and are EVEN sometimes forgiving after a 30 day period), while the RECF does non-profit outreach to help students engage in competitive yet learning-ful environments. VEX robotics is build to make a profit out of creating utilities people can use, while RECF is that instutition who’s sole goal is to provide an educational environment and give an example of “how can engineering be applied in real life?” to ultimately inspire.
So although I may, many times, shine a negative light towards VEX, I don’t believe the RECF should be blamed with hasty generalizations. Of course, there are those random moments where some people in non-profits may hold an agenda, but the chances of these individuals getting away with doing such illegal actions are little to none, and are ultimately easy to sniff out with simple mathematics as all non-profits are required to submit their salaries to the federal government.
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This would be my only question that I have. I think a lot of the posts here have been ignorant and uncalled for, but I think this is a valid question that I personally have not seen an answer to (if it’s out there, I apologize). I am choosing to participate in worlds btw. Is it simply a time thing, where it would be too difficult for ALL teams to do BOTH skills and tournament? @Sylvie idk if you would know but you seem like you would mind a ping the least among people I might ask lol
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