I think qualifying points are always important, but not for any of the reasons discussed. We usually seed anywhere from around the midpoint towards the top. Our sponsors like to know how well the robot they're helping pay for is preforming. It's nice to go home and say things like, "Well our robot seeded 22nd out of 39 teams and was the second draft pick for elimination"

Or in the case of Nationals last year, "We were ranked #2 for most of the morning on the first day but then fell to 16th place out of [how ever many teams there were in our division. it was alot]." All i could say was it was quite impressive to them, who were amazed to begin with what students can do [re: building robots etc.]