While communicating with some local teams, it came to my attentntino that many of them are saying they are new rules to qulaify for Worlds. Is this true? If it is can you please clarify everything. I heard the new rules apply to skills challenge, tournament champion, programming challenge, and i think excellence. But i am not sure about the last. Please reply back.
By using the Search tool and searching the two words in your thread title (World Qualification) I was able to find this thread pretty quickly: https://vexforum.com/showthread.php?t=39517
The Search tool is your friend. 
~Jordan
Thanks a lot Jordan… What do you think about the new rules? I dont really like the rule about the skills challege and programming.
i think they are just trying to find the “best” teams from the “great” teams because if they had continued with the “old” system, worlds 2012 will be over filled with “qualified” teams
While I was bummed at first about the new rules concerning skills challenges, I’ve come to accept them as necessary in keeping VRC competitive. All too often I’ve seen teams qualify for extremely low skills scores relative to those I’ve seen elsewhere due to the sheer fact that many teams are very busy with the tournament and maintenance to participate in skills. When you really think about it, does a team that scores 10 points in a skills challenge deserve to go to the World Championships as much another team that scores somewhere near 50 or 60 or even over 100? (I’m not sure of max scores in Gateway. This is me going off memory from Round Up.) All in all, I think this will prove to be a quite interesting season…
Just my two cents…
When first hearing about the new qualification rules, I felt (as I’m sure many other people feel/felt) a little worried. Especially with the specific number of qualification spots given to each state/providence/country, I was worried that we may not get the chance to qualify. (As even last year it was difficult to in our area, and we didn’t start winning qualifications until later in the year.)
However, since at most tournaments the Excellence award will be a qualifying award, I’m sure it will bring all the best teams to the World Championship, and will simply have to leave out some of the better teams. The VEX Robotics Competition program has grown rapidly over the past few years, and because of this more and more tournaments are going to be held, and more and more teams are going to qualify for the VEX World Championship. You can’t always continue to allow more and more teams into an event every year, you have to limit the number and keep it at around a certain level.
Now, do I agree completely with the way VEX did things? Well, I think I like the idea about the Skills Challenges, as in certain areas a lot of teams might be really good at the Robot Skills Challenge, and in another area a whole lot of teams might be good at the Programming Skills Challenge, and if you had the old qualification method, some of those great teams might not be the best at it, and then might not get to go, because of the competition they’re up against. Also, the other way around; in areas where teams aren’t so good at the Skills Challenges, teams who score next to nothing in them could qualify for the VEX World Championship because of it, which you don’t really want. So I say that was a good idea, especially since tournaments can still give out awards to the Skills Challenge winners.
As for overall, I think VEX did what they had to do. FIRST has done something pretty similar with their programs, and some of their programs have grown very large. For instance FIRST Lego League (for ages ~9-14) has grown so large that teams must go to a State Qualifying tournament in many states, then qualify there for the State Championship, which may or may not even give out a single qualification to the FIRST World Championship for the entire state. (decided by a raffle)
So, VRC hasn’t gotten all that bad yet, and I hope that they never will. (FIRST has three programs’ World Championships all wrapped up into one event, so I think VEX could handle their single World Championship for a few more years.)
~Jordan
i think that they should not give a qualification to the “third robot” in the winning alliance
because most small competitions only have a bit more than 24 teams
and when the first round of alliance choosing is over, you get all the “leftovers” that wouldn’t really do much (not an issue at worlds)
i just dont think that the third robot that piggybacked the first two robots should deserve a qualification
I do kinda agree with you, but on some occasions teams are usually placed low in rankings becasue their robot is not functional. And by the time play offs start, the robot is working. Actually on one occasion, out “third team” helped us win the tournament because the my “second team” was getting very tensed up. So it really depends on the contestents in the tournament. I think what they did about the robot skills and programming skills was not fair. What do you think?
All true and That happened to alot of teams at worlds i saw that they didnt hav the skill to be competitive at world and they got trampled because of the good robots they went us against.
But on one occasion this happened to my school C team they are really competitive but the motors overheated and it was a big problem at the momment so the choose to skip their matches to fix the problem they won 3/6 and they didnt show up to the other 3. But this competition there were about 30 teams and they were about still 20th they got picked third and won the whole competition. They practically led their teams to victory. It was a cool final match because our C team that wasnt doing to good won my A, and B team ( we were allianced with the A and B team of our school with our third team and they beat us.
Well What if things like that happen to those teams that have problems but are good?
And think about the teams that wont get to qualify
I won’t comment on “fair,” but I can tell you that the change in the Skills Challenges was to insure that the best teams in Skills competitions qualified for the World Championship. In the past, teams could qualify with very few points at early events, but at later events it usually took a much higher score. The new system won’t qualify a team for World Championship, for example, by scoring 4 points in Programming Skills in October, when it might take 24 points to win in February.
Event partners are still free to give trophies to the Skills Challenge winners at their tournaments, it’s just that they may not qualify for World Championship unless they are among the very best.
You need a massive competition with a lot of depth for a third alliance member to be really good. It requires that the top 17 teams at least are all of comparable quality to the best few. That isn’t going to happen at 24-35 team events. If even the best robots are playing games of does-the-robot-work-this-time then sure, third alliance members will occasionally make very valuable contributions, but on average they’re just bad and that’s the point.
The third alliance member for almost all events is really just a chance for teams to play elimination matches who whouldn’t otherwise get the chance. It also introduces a sort of a spot prize qualification to a team for being quite bad but not terrible, and that isn’t neccesarily a bad thing.
Driver skills worlds qualification this year will be interesting - it’s required for New Zealand teams to qualify for the Robot World Cup and for World Cup alliance selection, so by October you should be seeing some very copy-worthy driver skills strategies :D.
How many teams are expected to be at World? Because with this system, my first impression is that there is going to be less teams at the World Championships.
@Central Valley- Yeah, That actually happened alot in many of the tournaments we attended. Hehe, mostly all of the tournaments we are in, you are too. For example, I dont know if you remember, but at the Turlock tournament, I know your team hosted it, but you saw. There was not alot of competion, and the teams who won programming skills only had a score of 7. And about the 3rd tea, it was really whoever was last on the board.
@Rick Tyler- I understand where you are coming from. And it actually makes sense. I know that some scores are very lame, in programming skills to robot skills, andd the new system allows the best at those specfics show their talent. Is there going to be some kind of online website, showing who in the country has the highest scores in programming skills/robot skills? Or is it going to be told in march/april?
@AcademyRobotics- I really dont know. But I am guessing it is going to be a complete less than the last couple of years. Atleast at world we are going to be allianced with “good” teams rather than “qualified” teams…
Oliver, do you know if those NZ scores will be used to qualify the other 30 teams who have the highest scores in the robot skills or is that just for the NZ teams? Umm. Let me reword that. It is said in the “new rules” that the top 30 teams in programming/robot skills will qualify for world. Does that mean , the scores collected by the NZ teams be added to that list? Hope you understand.
The rules about which skills scores will count for World Cup are about as lax as they could reasonably be - scores at monthly scrimmages will be accepted, as will scores that you tape in some basement with an analogue camcorder like Osama Bin Laden.
The list of 30 teams is taken from scores achieved at qualifying events, and as far as I know there are none planned in New Zealand before the World Cup. So no, the same skills scores won’t be able to count for both.
However, the teams and the robots that get those scores will still be around come worlds qualification season, so they should be able to pull it off again.
What I was more referring to was the material that will be posted online during the process. International teams don’t need to qualify for World Cup, but in order to be ranked for alliance selection (alliances will be formed before the event starts) all teams attending from New Zealand and internationally will have to post a video online of a skills run to document their score. So while New Zealand high school teams will have an advantage for worlds skills qualification in that they will have had some practice, they (and we college teams) are also being forced to show what we’ve come up with to the rest of the internet.
It’s not about being the best, imo. I see what you’re saying, but I think a certain level of diversity in skill level at Worlds is a benefit. For example, being a rookie team and having the experience of going to Worlds is pretty cool. You get to see and even compete amongst the high-level robots that you always hear about on the forums/Youtube. I guess you could say it’s inspiring? (Well, that’s what I think anyways.)
That’s not addressing the fact that sometimes “good” robots have bad quals matches and are fixed by quarter-finals time, then end up getting picked as a third alliance partner.
(Perhaps I’m a bit biased in this since 2438 qualified last year for Worlds as a third pick at Pan Pacific…) 
I like the new system, as it finally acknowledges that it is harder to win a bigger tournament than a smaller tournament.
However, I see one flaw with the new system: What happens next year? If VRC continues to grow as fast as it is, they will need to modify the qualification system most years. My first idea to combat this issue is to appoint a certain number of points for each win, based on the award and the size of the event. For example: 1 point for skills, 2 for runner up, 3 for winning, 4 for excellence, then multiply by the tournament level. So winning excellence at a level 5 tournament would be worth 20 points. Then all the gdc has to do each year to control the number of teams who qualify for worlds is change the number of points necessary to qualify (and based on my point system and the standards for this year you would need 4 points to qualify this year). In addition, they could still do the top 30 skills scores qualify as well.
I considered a system, where the 400 teams with the most points come, but I thought about how you need to know if you are going more than 2 weeks in advance. So that won’t work too well.
thoughts?
Thank you!
We believe the current qualifying system will work through 2013, but might need to be re-thought for 2013-2014. We’ll see how it goes.
The Game Design Committee consists of folks from VEX, the RECF, and some other robotics community members. They design the game. Everything else – including the qualifying criteria for the World Championship – is handled by the RECF. So, if you have issues with the tournament structure or qualifying criteria, you know who to blame, and it’s not those poor souls on the GDC!
Interesting, thanks for the correction.
the qualified teams our half the fun
@ryan what about all the teams that dont have enough money to go to 10 low level tournaments
my team for instance went to 3 20-25 team tournaments 2009-2010 and only won 1 programming skillls and that became the science division finalists only beat by green egg so think of all the competition your losing by your point system
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