Computing event difficulty

Redoubler

My understanding is that MPQ takes the top <n> characters out of my roster and uses that as input to set the difficulty for a PVE event. The recurring problem I face is that because my roster has several single or two cover 5* they dominate the difficulty for the event. This is most extreme in The Gauntlet event, which I have never been able to complete (the World Domination round has been Level 300+ for me for the last few runs). My belief is that as I start to champion 4* to be in my upper echelon, then my characters will actually by powerful enough to fight those enemies. I believe treating a 1-cover 5* as a max covered 4* causes an imbalance. Most of my 3* can beat a 1-cover 5* without much of a problem. It seems that the "potential" of a character should not be solely based on level but a combination of level and number of covers.

I recommend the following simple approach. Assume each character starts at 50% of their potential when they have 1 cover. Assume a character is at their full 100% potential at their current level if they have 13 covers. Then the formula to determine potential is "Level * .5(1 + (Covers-1)/ 12)". For a 5* with one cover, this would give them a potential of 128. Which would put them on par with a near max championed 2* at Level 128 or a mid-range 3*.

This formula could be tweaked in a few simple ways to reflect the realities of MPQ. For instance, the value of covers 1-9 for a character tend to be pretty linear. However, covers 10-13 tend to raise the character's ability disproportionally. So the formula could use a different factor for covers 10-13. Also, 5* tend to be more powerful at the same level because of increased health and tile damage, so they could be given a slight modifier to increase their potential when comparing them to other characters in the roster.

If this notion of potential was used to determine difficulty, then comparing the top <n> characters in the roster would still be very effective. The difference is that "top" would be determined by computing the "potential" of characters and comparing those values.

This would help solve a motivation problem in MPQ that often people do not level up their 5* for fear they would get bumped up to a much higher difficulty. They could only so this safely once they had enough max 4* that are legitimately powerful enough to match the higher difficulty. This adjustment would permit players to enjoy their 5* characters without skewing the game play.

Dayv

The devs actually announced that a change like what you describe here was made several months back. It was meant in particular to lower the pain of having a single-covered 5* character at level 255 when the rest of the roster was much lower level, and similarly unbalanced situations.

The exact math isn't known, but theoretically something is in place.

Gauntlet scales hard. It's a deliberately difficult event, one for which many players (myself included) think the rewards are paltry when compared to the challenge.