It’s possible you’re in Ease Hell. It has been a while since I got into the weeds with my settings but there are pretty good reasons to change the default ease settings and reset the ease on old cards, as I recall. I’m also in the camp of only using the “again” and “good” buttons, since the other ones affect ease iirc. Anyway you’ve been at it longer than I have but maybe the ease hell thing is new info for you or other anki users.
It’s possible you’re in Ease Hell. It has been a while since I got into the weeds with my settings but there are pretty good reasons to change the default ease settings and reset the ease on old cards, as I recall. I’m also in the camp of only using the “again” and “good” buttons, since the other ones affect ease iirc. Anyway you’ve been at it longer than I have but maybe the ease hell thing is new info for you or other anki users.