…Oh hey, an argument where I actually get to bring up the charts I made for Skills scores last year! I’ll only base my argument with data from the High School division, but I’ll bring up SingVex in a moment.
Looking at the list of Signature events made on this forum (List of Signature Events), and building off of that with signature events from every country in the “Commonly Selected” tab, I note the following:
- Wait, 574C double-qualified for Worlds in January? That’s just some serious memery right there, because that would mean that they at least quadruple-qualified for Worlds.
- Double-qualification through Champions/Excellence actually happened more than once. That again stresses the necessity of skills.
However, looking at the tournaments I found, I get the following teams qualified (An asterisk notes that the team would have qualified for Worlds directly through another tournament):
Not United States- 7
China (7386P/8192A*/9698B)
Chile (11574B*)
Columbia (2322A)
Mexico (32226A*/49181D)
United States- 16, with 15 unique teams
California (6627X*/448X*/6627A**/86868R/45464Z*/7700S*/21246D (twice, resulting in 3rd place in skills at the event 49181D goes to Worlds))
Ohio (6403A, 6008A* (twice, resulting in 574C qualifying twice))
Indiana (574C** (twice, resulting in another skills slot to go to Indiana)/574D*)
Connecticut (4478V*)
Pennsylvania (169A*/169Y*)
Georgia (1320C**)
…Okay, in the United States, out of the 15 unique teams that qualified for Worlds via signature event, 15 slots for Worlds were taken up at the respective State competitions, causing only 3 American teams to qualify solely off of a Signature Event. I mean, technically out of the teams that qualified, only 68% were US, which is a decrease off of last season, but now, literally 68% of the teams that received a Worlds invite from the Signature Events didn’t need them.
Also, right off the bat, I didn’t expect six double-qualifications from my region, California, right off the bat. However, if what @Anomoly stated is true about 10 extra California robots qualified due to double-qualificaitons, that might be a bit aggressive.
I guess since SingVex doesn’t have enough interest, none of those 10 slots need to go to SingVex? I understand that Singapore is a smaller region, but the bots that came from there are insane. In addition, since Singapore had a higher percentage of the Middle School skills last year, I believe it would be beneficial to help with the skills in Singapore,
I have not been to a Signature Event. However, from what I have read, the general consensus is that the Signature Events act as a miniature Worlds, and have the atmosphere. If that is true, then I am all for that. I understand teams that wouldn’t typically be able to go to Kentucky might be thrilled with the idea that there will be a large mass of people, even potentially from different regions, who share the same passion.
If we are to keep the system, I think that there has to be a maximum number of double-qualifications a region could have. At that point, if more double-qualifications happen throughout the region, it should be given to the highest unqualified Skills outside of the region. I’m not convinced that either Signature Events or World Skills Ranking are going to stop an extreme “pay-to-win” mentality, but I think in general, Signature Events are a good thing, and should be implemented in a couple more locations.