They likely don't know project intrisnics, so they can't just invent interesting idea and implement that. Also, they have trouble choosing from idea lists provided by those projects - which look like greek to newcomers.
So easy-to-understand tasks like building client application will be crowded heavily, while system in-depth tasks will be lacking attention.
Given all that, can you write down some tasks that are unpopular between SoC participants, yet wanted.
I will choose some underdog task and will dig straight into perl code, I promise!