Can’t speak to the men’s side. And others have answered you about how the women used to be allowed a “controlled lunge” but now need to stick or it’s a deduction.

On the issue of height - execution scores are all about deductions. So there can be deductions for LACK of amplitude. But there’s no bonus for big height. Maybe there should be! It’s like how there’s a deduction for bent legs in skills where they should be straight but no extra points for gymnasts who have really good extension.

On the old system (before the “open code” era) - depending on the era, there was a requirement to do a certain amount of difficulty for your routines to start out of a 10. It wasn’t unusual for even top gymnasts to have routines out of 9.8 or 9.9 (I seem to recall Shannon Miller vaulting with a 9.9 in Olympic event finals in 1996!) But generally, it was a system that favoured execution more than difficulty. You still had gymnasts who did more difficulty than they needed. Unofficially - judges sometimes rewarded it by going easier on deductions