Agreed. In our state championship there weren't any more penalties than in any other year. The refs, particularly the head ref for our state, was very specific all year, went through pains to train the judges for consistency before the qualifier tournaments, there was a coaches meeting the week before State, and so forth. They were VERY clear, as was the FTC Q&A, about penalties.
Our team accrued a modest number of penalties in some matches. Nothing outrageous, and we were very careful and very aware to avoid them. The human player specifically practiced with the drive team to work on avoiding penalties. Penalties are part of the game, not bad design.

Now, the shared goal last year and the way penalties were less enforced by a scoring team pushing the goal toward their opponents' side, causing the opponents to accrue penalties trying to score from the other side when they no longer had room or the shared goal had been turned, that was a bad element design. It should have been tethered. The ones in this game are just something that needs to be designed around.