Ok since people apparently have been speaking on my behalf, the reason is that there is no reason.
This pool is outright like 2x harder than the group stage. People were angry that it was too easy, so we literally included harder maps to appease people.
There is a philosophy on mappools that lepi once told me when I asked him why one certain map in his pool back in the day was harder than the rest.
"There is harder maps for the good players and easier maps for the other players" something like that.
For example, Cirno and both of the nano songs are the "easy" pool. Concon, Terminal and Vajundra are the "harder" pool.
Theme of Laura and Captivate are the easy ones, Just Awake and Usatei are the hard ones.
Hidden I can't particularly comment on but Blue Rose Ruin and Rocket Kid are slightly harder than the other two.
DT is mostly easy except for Masquerade. I find DT the hardest to pick for so go figure
Free Mod is all pretty solidly difficult with mods.
Tie Breaker is a SIGNIFICANT upgrade from the other Tie Breaker, who's purpose was soley to act as an accuracy war. This one is an endurance test. Each respective tie breaker will have some sort of little twist to it.
And lastly, i'd like to mention that this is not twc 2014. This is TWC LMS. We value difficulty in different ways. Group Stage you could consider the "culling" and RO16 is where it really starts. If you want, just forget about the groups, and consider this the start. We will have a solid streamer next week, as well as hopefully being much more on the ball with the schedule and stuff like that.
I know the map pool is easy for some veteran players, but people still missed a lot in the group stage on kindergarten maps. Now I dont know if this is because it's too easy or something like that but it shows that you are not always as prepared as you think you are. Perhaps you are not so good at RE:Usatei and they pick it? Everything else in the pool was easy for you but you struggle with that one. I.e. the picks were just as good as they needed to be so everyone does not get SS every time. I'm confident that also the map quality will have a lot to do with people's enjoyment. We don't all want super hard maps in the map pool, and I can respect that, thus, why we include some easier maps to make the matches more close and even.
So yeah, sorry for the text wall, I just feel that my perspective could help you understand our reasoning for our picks.
We think difficulty is subjective so listing them is kind of difficult.
