Cloth max distance settings

Hello
Don't know how much cloth has changed since unity 5.6 but I am still using this version.
Any hoo If I just create a plane and select the vertices along one side and assign a 0 max distance the plane will fall and swing freely from those vertices upon play.However if I select all the other vertices and assign a 1 (should be fully unconstrained value) the cloth will only fall a cm or so and then stick there like its lying on a table.Changing the max value from 1 to 20 will overcome this and exhibit the same behavior as when the vertices had no assigned value as in the fist example.Why is this should the cloth not be fully unconstrained with a value of 1?why a value of 20 to get the desired effect?
Thx