I know that there is a lot of debate about this subject, and I would like to put my
argument out there. SP points really need to be done away with for many reasons. The first being that you can score for the other team to get yourself more points. This really takes a lot of the fun out of the competition.
The second and more important reason, is that SP always take the points from the losing alliance. For example, if you play the number one and two teams that would be the hardest match to win, therefore you should get more strength of schedule. However, when they beat you 35-0, you get 0 SP points. This means that you get no strength of schedule credit for the hardest match that you could get.
That is the biggest reason that this system should be changed. I would suggest the TRPSs that are on VexDB. They take your opponents win points and subtract you partner’s win points, and this is what is added to your strength of schedule. This system is better, because it is based off of ranking and not off of how the match goes.
I agree, if the ranking system is supposed to rank teams from best to worst, then SP does not make sense in that situation. Like you said, if good teams beat bad teams 35-0 and get 0 SP, it wont benefit them, and will therefore not reward the good teams. I believe the ranking system is flawed in this way since the best team could be punished for winning by more.
I mostly agree, I’ve seen teams literally start scoring for the other alliance in order to maximize SP. But since WP and AP can easily be easily tied, what would you recommend to replace it?
Maybe there could be “difference points” in which teams obtain the amount of point they ended with and subtract it from the opposite alliances score. Some may be negative.
Let’s say “Alliance 1 is made up of 2 good teams” and “Alliance 2” is made up of 2 decent teams.
Alliance 1 and Alliance 2 have a match in which Alliance 1 wins 24-10. Then, in this case, the teams on Alliance 1 get 14 DP and the teams on Alliance 2 get -14 DP. They are then ranked. I think this works better because teams that are good benefit and teams that aren’t don’t get benefits. However, it doesn’t make it impossible for good teams that lose to plummet as they will still have a minimal loss in DP.
This is just my idea to a solution and it may have flaws.
@293X
The problem with this is that it benefits teams who have a weak schedule, since if you win 35-0 you would get 35 points, right?
What if sp was based on the other alliances score so in a 35-0 match the winning team gets 0 and the losing team gets 35.
I don’t know if that would work very well either, just an idea.
that would just be like SP, but worse. Since your points are based on the other alliance, there’s no reason to try to score as many points as possible. Also, the lower ranked teams would have higher SP’s than the better teams.
Yes, however assuming the winning team is that much better, they will assuredly have more WP, putting them higher in the rankings and so worse team will have generally higher SPs, but it should sort teams who have won the same amount of times.
From my understanding, SP is supposed to measure the competitiveness of a match. If alliance x wins 32-0, that would mean it was not competitive and would be scored that way. But if alliance x was to win another match 15-14, it would be considered competitive. My question is why does it matter that a match was competitive? The whole system seems to have created a problematic meta of teams not giving it their all. While this system may have had good intentions, it seems to have created more problems than it solved, if any were even solved.
Think of SP as a game within the game. If you are a good team and want to control your own destiny you play the SP game also. Instead of winning 32-0, you decide to win 22-10. If you are really that good you can make SPs happen in TP.
The only real problem with the SP game is it impacts OPR, DPR and CCWM. But remember you’re good enough to control your own destiny so that won’t matter.
You may say it has created a meta of team not giving it their all, but I think that it is harder to make the outcome of a match close on purpose, since it has more risk. If a team is good enough to control the score in order to get more SPs, they show ability to quickly analyze what they need to do to win but not by too much.
I am for getting rid of sp. Sp is supposed to reward better teams that do well with a poor match schedule, yet in my experience sp has little if any correlation with the strength of a team. Ideally, sp allows a team with a tough schedule to rank higher because of the harder competition. In reality, it rewards easier match schedules because teams can farm points. I would prefer if the ranking method did not incentivise sandbagging and point farming. Vex is a competition and my team always gives our best effort on the field even if we might get less sp. While many argue that sp is good because it discourages blowouts, I personally learned the most from my worst losses. My team would be nowhere near as good as we are today if it weren’t for the teams in our region that wiped the floor with us back in starstruck. The goal of whatever third tie-breaker we use after WP and AP should be to rank teams that play well, regardless of schedule. Accordingly, It would be a much better representation of team’s strength to do TRSP or CCWM as the tie breaker.
Just use anything but points… You could use something like center parking, which is part of the points, but not all of the points, and there would be no incentive to score for the other team.
In my opinion, there are four good ways to replace SP. My first choice would be a win share system. This would be a way of measuring how much a team contributed to winning a match. Another option would be a goal-based ranking point. This isnt possible for swing games, so im not entirely sure if it will make the cut, but in certain games it would be a very good indicator of how good a team is. Another choice would be TRSP. This measures the difficulty of a teams schedule and has been discussed many times. Another would be CCWM. I dont know how close this would be to win shares as I dont know all the math that goes on behind the scenes for either, but it represents how good a team is fairly well. My only issue is that I dont think CCWM could build in a strength of schedule element that would make the results even more accurate. If this were built in to a ccwm to create a win share-ish type ranking, I think we would have the perfect replacement for SP.
The custom schedule points on vex via are much better. They combine your opponents win points, and subtracts you alliance partner’s win points. This factors in their rankings, and not the score of the match.
From the sounds of what you wrote you’re talking about TRSPs? That’s not on Vex Via but is on VexDB. Are you referring to that?
Vex Via has OPR / DPR / CCWM (so does VexDB) which is based on actual scores not win-points and is a bit more complicated than what you wrote.
I agree with TRSPs being a better option instead of SPs though - TRSPs are only influenced by your opponents and nothing of your own ability, so it’s impossible for a team on their own to game.
Yes TRSP is what I was talking about. I knew it was on VexDB, so I just asumed via had it too.
The problem with the 4 proposed replacements, and TRSP are probably the worst at this, is that they are not monotonic. I also don’t understand why anyone would want a solution that is not under the control of the drive team to influence. Finally, do you really want the possibility of rankings to completely jumble based on the last match. Most tournaments only leave 15min from last match to alliance selection. CCWM is a bit better but as noted about has issues.
I agree, that CCWM is a better stat to replace it with, but I feel that Vex wouldn’t be willing to change their ranking that much. I feel that TRSP has the most chance of any to actually replace the current SP points.
I use only the stats from vex db for my scouting, but I do agree that the current system of SP is kind of broken. As someone who has scored for the other team myself, It’s broken.
All methods will have problems and won’t be perfect, but CCWM seems to be the best of the available ideas.
Much better than SP’s.