So, to test the differences between a hard book and an easy book last season (S122), I set my winds book to level 2 and my percussion book to level 8. I always try to rehearse each section more or less equally, so both sections ended up at a level of around 10,000. Still, the difference in scores is negligible (Winds at 6.715, Percussion at 6.705).

So, what's the reasoning for this? Do show levels go up to 100, so the difference between 2 and 8 isn't that noticable? Is the code bugging out and not really counting difficulty all that much when scoring? Or... are the judges incapable? I'm very curious to see what you think.

Difficulty levels usually come into effect much later in the season. For instance a lower difficulty in the start of the season will yield higher gains earlier on, but lower gains later in the season. A higher difficulty allows for more consistent gains throughout the entire season, with some marginal loss towards the end of the season. The biggest way to maximize on this effect is by having a strong consistent rehearsal schedule, losing the least amount of points as possible.

I'm talking about my end of season scores for the previous season and the difference is 0.01, so your explanation (which is the explanation I can also find in the guide) doesn't track with my results.

I think your difficulty levels all have to be the same level (either high or low) to get the full effect.If you check out our groups point gains in S110 compared to S111, you’ll see the difference between an average of a level 6 book compared to a level 10 book.

If you’re also rehearsing with the intent of having all captions being balanced (which you should do because that leads to a higher point gain) then naturally all of your captions levels will be around the same at the end of the season, in your case 10,000.

Feel free to chat with myself and more people on the discord as well, there’s definitely a large wealth of experience there too.