[Bongle]

I'm not so sure there are that many 'bad' ones as compared to previous years. You being on team 25, you would've gone to championships, so your last memory of FIRST would have been the arbitrarily high quality at Atlanta, rather than the much more down-to-earth quality at regionals. Think to a regional last year: How many robots could shoot autonomous? How many robots couldn't shoot at all? How many teams did you see just setting ramming autonomous modes because they couldn't do any better?

So here's my theory:
I think more teams might be thought of as bad because there is only one way to score points this year within the non-endgame time, and it requires advanced manipulating. Last year, if your shooter didn't work, you could at least ram balls in the low goals. In 2005, you could push tetras under the towers. In 2004, you could, again, push balls into the low goals. In 2003, you could push bins across the playing field into your own zone. There is no way for a box-on-wheels to score this year other than to climb a ramp, and that's more of an end-game bonus that all previous years had anyway.

So the short version: There are just as many bad robots as last year, but this year's game has fewer opportunities for them to make lemonade from their lemons, unlike past games where there was always something 'simple' to do.