I believe that this year’s ref problems are mostly due to GDC flaws. For example, they probably should have adopted Dave Flowerday’s minor change to fix G22 (i.e. give “breaking the plane” the soccer definition rather than the basketball definition) after its flaws were revealed during week 1. If they had, the refs would’ve likely have been able to put much more time/effort into making more consistent and reliable touch and judgement foul calls instead of policing the lines. What I have seen is that in many matches the refs only have time to watch the lines plus the hurdlers. Lower tier robots are getting mugged (contact outside bumper zone) when the refs aren’t looking and then getting called for incidental touch fouls while passing hurdlers that are blocking traffic.
The GDC really looks like they made this game hard to ref. Perhaps they should consult more with seasoned basketball refs when they develop. Ideally they design games where the refs usually stay in the background. That certainly didn’t happen this year.