This post is just my opinion and feedback for PVE events to developers from someone who plays the game moderately and has competed in all PVE events thus far but managed to only get the ending for 1st episode. The short version: the same mission completion record should get same rewards (both progression and placement). Make story missions easy enough on first play through, but make them harder the next time to increase challenge/difficulty and separate the top players.
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Single main bracket + no rubber banding. I want there to be equal opportunity for everyone regardless of when they play, which order they want to complete missions, etc. For example, if I beat missions X,Y,Z over 3 hour period and someone else beats the same missions in last 10 minutes, we should get the same cumulative points for progression rewards (no rubber banding) and also have same ranking in main bracket (single main bracket) for placement rewards since we have done essentially the same work.
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The main story (and its missions) should be accessible to majority of player base. I think you want to keep players engaged as much as possible, especially those that play the game due to their love of Marvel. That way people are more likely to stick around and spend more. Most modern games have “easy modes” or otherwise help players to get through the game. “Core missions” that are important to the story should be accessible to majority of players. Either scale the missions for players or keep the levels low (maybe 20-50). You can still have additional missions, even missions with required characters to get people to play and spend more to max points.
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Scale mission difficulty on a per mission basis. This was a good idea introduced in Thick as Thieves but badly executed. If done right, this can be good for everyone and augments my previous 2 points. Ideally, most people can play through most missions including all story missions (see point 2) and get the same points for completing them (see point 1). Once you beat a mission, its difficulty can be increased without impacting difficulty of other missions. This can follow some kind of diminishing point structure as we currently have as incentive for mid and top tier players to play and spend more (health packs, upgrade characters).
A couple more points:
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I liked the Hunt: Ares’ sub-bracket structure the best. 1.5 day cycles with overlap, so there were always 2 sub-brackets to play in. That’s a good sweet spot between Ep 1 lack of missions and Hulk’s where every mission is repeatable and 4 simultaneous sub-brackets at one point (someone did the math and it was 4 sub-brackets x 5 missions x 5 stacks = 100 missions that refresh every 8 hours).
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No “super buffed” characters. For The Hunt: Ares, my Lv 15 Hulk was buffed from 1.2K health to 7.2 K health (6-fold increase). Although I was happy to plow through most missions with him, this is not fair to people that don’t have him. I think 50-100% buff should be enough to give variety and get people spending on those characters without giving too much of advantage.