[One Winged Angel]

Ok, a few thoughts:

FFR historically has always been a game favoring accuracy. There aren't other letter grades players are aiming for like AA which requires meeting a specific percentage threshold or other mechanics similar to that, and as such players will gravitate towards playing charts they can score relatively well on. Even with incredibly difficult charts being added now, outside of vrofl and the very newly released HQR, every chart has at least been SDG'd (and HQR will get there by round's end). By tourney's end I'm projecting around 5 charts at maximum that won't have SDGs as top scores, so the difficulty ceiling will remain quite low comparatively to what's found in Etterna and played by top tiers.

I don't have a major issue with AAA difficulty being largely represented in a chart's difficulty because I feel nerfing some charts that are extremely hard to AAA but understandable at a much lower skill level penalizes what a AAA is worth on those charts.

Take Husigi vs. Jamais Vu. JV at time of release was viewed as an entry level 13 and it likely remains as such to this day. Most players are going to experience a slingshot effect of sorts when scoring on both charts. Players approaching the D6 level might be able to score in the 20-30g range on Husigi without even being able to read Jamais Vu. Eventually they'll hit a higher reading/speed/stamina threshold that allows them to read JV, and now they're reaching that same scoring range there. Meanwhile they've only made marginal gains on Husigi because the relevant parts of the chart represented in its difficulty require technical consistency and control not demonstrated as effectively as raw speed at higher levels. Players will continue making greater gains in speed and stamina and get to a point where they're consistently near AAA'ing JV on any playthrough. It's at this point in skill where I'm willing to bet a majority of players will say a Husigi AAA is much more impressive than on a chart like JV, and certainly more impressive than anything under 100.

The entry requirement for a top 20 rank on Husigi, a chart that's been out for 8 years, is 6g. Rave 7, also viewed as an entry level 13 released in the same tournament as Husigi, requires 1-0-0-1. Miku at 102 even has a stricter top 20 entry requirement at 4g. Dropping Husigi's difficulty to the FGO range penalizes the rating value that should rightfully be gained by any player capable of perfecting a chart like that, as well as any other charts that exhibit similar scoring trends. I think it's best to identify these files and create separate equivalency decay formulas for them instead of outright nerfing the difficulties. I feel only a small minority of top players would value a Husigi AAA consistently less than the charts sitting in the 100s bracket.

The extreme high end (105+) can be adjusted to better account for physical capabilities required for playing these charts. Again, these are charts that even the top players (less two or three atm) will not be approaching AAAs on, and as such should have separate equivalency decays. Up until this point there have only been a small handful of charts that any D7+ player might not be able to keep up with, and they're all 100+ in rating already anyways (other offenders in the 90s range might be charts like Serious Shit or thinking of you but....that's basically it?). RATO was placed where it was in difficulty without having anything to compare with for a decade. I have no qualms with nerfing its difficulty on the basis that it's much easier to make it through with a semi-respectable score compared to Wanderflux or HQR (and I'm sure more charts to come throughout the tourney). Establishing a separate decay formula for charts of this difficulty needs to happen. It's fair to say 20g on Wanderflux is deserving of at least 100+ equivalency, but you'd need to shoot its rating up a few points further to hit that point with current scaling.

More thoughts later Maggles is annoyed I'm ignoring her.