I see that a couple of posts ago, I pointed out the bizarre practice of giving double XP for simple exercises from long ago, instead of for recent exercises that you are still learning and likely to make mistakes on. I am happy to report that this is gone. It is now much harder to get bonus XP at all, and you don’t get it for repetitions anymore.
The option to repeat specific bubbles (topics) is entirely gone, you only get repetitions for the larger units of roughly 10 bubbles. That said, you can still repeat early units that are hilariously easy and get XP for it, just not double XP. In fact, it seems that repetitions now give half XP, 5 XP per session instead of the old 10. And it seems that when I repeat a recent unit, Duolingo really does dredge up the harder exercises from that unit, so that even I (who progress very slowly and cautiously) make the occasional mistake. Good job! Overall, it is much harder to get XP than before. I have mixed feelings about this. I certainly think it was too easy before, but I feel that right now the system is not rewarding enough. It ought to give progressively more XP for harder exercises, not just low XP across the board. But I guess it beats giving the highest XP for the easiest exercises, at least.
Overall, Duolingo is harder to navigate, harder to “play”, less fun, and less rewarding, but it was excessively easy before, so the change is not all bad. I used to be able to maintain my position in the Obsidian league with only 5-10 minutes a day, which frankly isn’t enough to make any serious progress in learning a difficult language. Especially when you’re motivated to only do super easy exercises. It should be more effective now… if we stick with it.