#tldr overscored skaters will always have a cushion that allows them to just focus on skating clean instead of improving their weak areas

[illyria-and-her-pet]

The most annoying thing about Raf's strategy & attitude towards scoring & program construction is that it completely relies on exploiting narratives & politics, not anything that actually exists in the handbook. Yes narratives & politics are something that everyone has to play.  However, Raf does not put work into his skater's skating skills, transitions, or spins & relies completely on base value & consistency. BV is the only thing that is actually supposed to affect TES & scores, not consistency. Neither are supposed to affect spins, GOE, PCS, SS, or TR. 

Yet they do & we have Nathan winning EVERY category of skating when it should just be the BV & TES, which at Worlds would have been more than enough to win the FS & overall. Instead it has been made so that his levels, GOE, PCS are all maxed out, which means he is unbeatable as he has the highest BV. The only way to beat clean Nathan is to raise your BV higher than his, while still skating clean. So to beat him you're pushed to raise your BV, but Nathan isn’t pushed to improve his spins, skating skills, or transitions when he should because the judges say they're already the best. 

Eteri of course has many issues, including teaching bad jump technique + plays the narratives & politics game too. We saw how consistency + higher BV from first backloading jumps last quad or now higher BV from quads & triple axels wrongly increases every aspects of her skater's scores.  

However, her original blueprint does indeed increase scores in more areas than just the BV/TES according to the handbook, even if the judges take it too far. Tanos & Rippons were a GOE bullet last quad. One foot & multidirectional skating + transitions affects multiple aspects. Transitions into jumps are a GOE bullet + raise the transitions score in PCS. Filling a program with one foot & multidirectional skating increases both the skating skills & transitions categories of PCS. Of course knee bend, ice coverage, speed, & quality not just quantity should be reflected in the scores too. 

My biggest problem with overscoring is that it keeps skaters & their teams more complacent instead of constantly striving to be the most well rounded skater they can be. We see it in Raf's attitude about not needing to count points or improve for a long time now because Nathan has won Worlds by so many points.

Nathan's sit spins have been regressing since IDF 2019 & his programs get emptier as the season goes on every year yet he had the highest spins & transitions scores. Anna's skating skills & spins have regressed, yet she is getting the highest spin GOEs & skating skills scores. Sasha programs get emptier the more quads she adds, yet PCS is so close to or higher than Satoko, Rika, Karen, Kaori, Loena. 

Meanwhile skaters who actually have their issues called are forced to fix them even if it is at the expense of their consistency since they aren't allowed the same cushions for mistakes. 

Mao had to rework her entire jumping technique until she finally did a clean 3Lz at her very last competition (JNats 2016). Whenever Yuzuru's sit spins are too high, they get called (ACI 2019, JNats 2020) & he works on them so they're low again. V/M improved their rhumba & redid the entire 2nd half of Moulin Rouge after their GPF 2017 loss. Rika had to add 4S & her impression from Worlds is that she has to keep pushing in every aspect of her skating, despite being the most well rounded ladies skater right now. 

I'm sure every skater works hard & wants to improve, but the priority of an overscored skaters' team is always going to be to stay consistent, since that is what is going to get them the most points. Improving in weaker areas will always be a lower priority because judges say they're already the best there & working on things like relearning jump technique or adding transitions would just make it much harder to skate clean. 

#figure skating #fs #rant #lol fs scoring is so annoying cause there are so many points judges can manipulate #with goe and pcs scores can be like 10+ points too low or high in just one segment of competition #meanwhile gym you can only deduct not add points so scores will be at most like 0.5 over or underscored #tldr overscored skaters will always have a cushion that allows them to just focus on skating clean instead of improving their weak areas #and underscored skaters will always be forced to actually fix their mistakes even if it is at the expense of consistency