[Bryan Herbst]

I think the core problem here isn't necessarily that autonomous is inherently less challenging than previous years, but that the way FIRST presents autonomous doesn't present an obvious challenge to some teams.

FIRST always provides some low hanging fruit for autonomous mode. The vision targets, extra points for scoring in autonomous, and mobility points are clear examples of things you can do with your robot in autonomous.

However, there are plenty of higher hanging fruit that FIRST doesn't necessarily point out for teams. FIRST expects that teams that can go above an beyond a basic autonomous mode are also capable of defining their own stretch goals to challenge themselves.

What I take issue with in this thread is the complain that FIRST hasn't made anything challenging necessary. My first response is that FIRST doesn't make any programming strictly necessary- you don't need to program a single line of code to make a robot that can be placed on the field.

It is up to the teams to define their own requirements for their code. FIRST does none of this. Your team can (and should) define requirements that are appropriate for your programmer's skill levels.