While I can understand how this can be devastating for teams who planned on amazing group pickup, there are still great uses for ground-pickup bots.

-Not every frisbee is going to be scored on its first try. This is for both alliances. Discs will miss, and in a match where there is a full-court shooter on each alliance, I think every missed frisbee, on both alliance sides, will be the difference between loosing a match. I think a ground pickup bot that utilizes the frisbees missed by an opponent can easily change the tide of the match. Instead of 45 frisbees for each team, suddenly the team with the ground pickup bot gets 60 frisbees, and the other team gets 30.

-Autonomous mode is the second-highest ranking factor next to qualification scores. Teams who can get the frisbees from the ground are not only going to score a major lead for their team, but also rank higher.

All is not lost.