I could get my head around leaving the penalties but two things need to happen immediately.
The first is they have to improve the real time penalty score updating. If you dont know you are fouling you cannot correct. Both match 2 and match 3 of the Arkansas regional finals did not show any penalties on the scoreboard throughout the matches. The score at the end of the match indicated blue alliance wins. Field techs started to pull down the field after match 2. Referee deliberation on the sideline happened after the game buzzer and penalties were applied against the blue team giving enough points to the red team to win. This exact thing happened in the 3rd match. This gave the appearance that penalties were being made up after the fact to force a certain alliance to win. It gives the appearance of referee bias and is not healthy for inspiration or for FIRST. This is a side effect of subjective harsh penalties and is unacceptable without some change.
Here are videos of those two matches. Notice the score change at the end of the video:
Match 2:
http://youtu.be/YA5JtkWG6QA
Match 3:
http://youtu.be/J9nOrCgKn0Q
The second thing that needs to happen is to put either a physical barrier you can see or move back the human player boxes if safety is indeed the reason for G40. Right now the nebulous yellow tape plane is entirely too subjective for a consistent experience across all the regionals. Some refs are being too strict and others too lenient. It must be made consistent.