I like the low-stakes events

Nonce Equitaur 2

Some of the high-stakes events require a tremendous amount of dedication, playing at least a few hours 3 times a day for four days. I believe I'm out of those, unless some character I really, really want comes out. I'm in a high MMR, so games take 8+ minutes unless an exploit is used, such as Prof X + BWGS. Using the same exploit for hours at a time is tedious.

The low stakes games, such as the recent Heroic events, I've actually found quite enjoyable. The limited rosters leads to some crazy teams I've never tried before. Most characters are quite playable now. The 3* character I don't enjoy playing are a short list: Colossus, Doctor Octopus, Iron Man, Psylocke, Sentry, Spider-Man. Yep, I like using Beast, Squirrel Girl, Captain Marvel, Daredevil, Ragnarok, Quicksilver, and Mystique.

MMR should be lowered some globally in PvE events. I haven't seen ridiculous levels recently, but it feels about 20% too high, especially for people needing to grind in order to win.

MMR should be easier to adjust, and should be team customized:
1. Team takes near zero damage -- MMR goes up for that team.
2. New team is used, MMR goes down.
3. Team gets badly beat up but wins, MMR goes down.
4. Team beaten, MMR goes down.

There is usually a required character in front, with two flankers. Two months ago, my own flankers were almost always 4Thor and XForce. The most popular flankers could be tracked by the game.

1. For each player, track the 10 flanker teams that are used the most.
2. For each of the 10 top-used flanker teams, adjust the MMR individually.
3. For a new team, start a new MMR calculation.

This would eventually be punishing for exploit teams, but if the player switched to other teams, they'd be back to having a reasonable fight.

The low-stakes events are the places to experiment with new things like this. I'm another that likes the 2* essentials.

SnowcaTT

Right on spot, as usual Nonce.

I've also given up on PVE. I jumped into this one yesterday, it was the first I've done in three or four weeks I think. I see why everyone is complaining.

The opponents are tougher (HP changes)
The scaling remains as difficult as ever
But you now have to use a 2* against that scaling.
Oh, and you have to use a (likely undercovered, underleveled) 4* against it as well.
And you have to use the same boosted characters that you need in PVP.
== everyone is taking more damage in longer matches, and you have to try to run two events with the same characters.

And you are also right - with all of these issues and low rewards after several new characters, many didn't jump whole-heartedly into this PVE. I went in with 18 hours remaining and no Venom, and despite all these problems it looks like I'll easily T150 and hit progression. And I -still- wonder if the 5 refreshes and two grinds were worth playing for the two 3*'s I can use.

And you are also right about MMR: just as scaling in PVE really needs to be addressed, MMR really needs to be addressed. I had to give up on PVE because both scaling and MMR were bad, it was give up on one or the other - an easy choice when PVE gives fewer rewards and takes more time. This is a good MMR solution; but almost any solution would be better than what they currently have.

Unknown

If you lower the scaling people are just going to grind even more. One thing that is pretty consistent is make things easy enough for everyone to beat it and everyone will beat it. There's nothing wrong with two equally strong player (in roster strength) face 395 or 150 because the playing field is even. What doesn't work is when you're barely scraping a win against a level 300 team and someone beats a level 125 team and passes you up. From the last time I collected this data the scaling on the high end of difficulty (nodes with 500 iso reward) are closer to even than nodes on the lower end of difficulty (essentials) which is why you see less dominance by weak rosters on inherently high scaling events like Simulator Hard though there's no inherent reason why this has to be case.

Based on the data collected from R&G it'd look like you could have say 150-180 on essentials with a max roster while a transition guy gets level 80-90 on them. While you can definitely beat 150-180 range, it's not as easy as it looks if the required character is a deadweight, and at 80-90 you can safely leave all of them for the last hour while at 150-180 you can't be nearly as sure and this puts you at a severe timing disadvantage.