Is this the only game where leveling up is actually bad?

Can't call myself a gamer by any stretch, more of a puzzle battle lover. My favorite old school games were "Super Puzzle Fighter II - TURBO" on Sega Saturn and "Super Mario RPG: Legend of the 7 Stars" on SNES and this game blends those together nicely with Marvel characters. I mean, what's not to love?

A few months ago, when I was nearing max 2* land, I read these forums and found that people with 3* rosters were constantly complaining about people placing very high or winning brackets with very weak rosters. That's when I learned about scaling which lead me to ask the question: what's the point of leveling up your characters if your opponents with just level up with you while the rewards stay the same? I was sitting on a ton of ISO at the time but couldn't find a valid reason to actually level my guys up.

Eventually I decided to take some of my fully covered 3*s to 141 (per polarity's guide) thinking that it would help deter attackers in PvP and thus make it a bit easier to obtain more 3* covers. This logic seemed to make sense to me at the time cause I felt like there should be SOME benefit of having 3* characters at max level, right? This seemed to work OK for a while until they changed the new bracketing system. Now it quickly just becomes 141s beating up on each other and due to the A.I.'s strategy flaws it's pretty much easy to defeat ANY 141 teams if you're running a 141 team. This effectively nullifies the benefit of deterring attackers since all of the 141 rosters are not scared of each other and now we're all lumped together.

I read a lot on these forums (more than my post count would suggest) and there seems to be quite a few pretty reasonable complaints about the risk/reward issue that scaling and sharding have created where you have to fight long, drawn out battles against 3x141s just to get 20-30 pvp points and a measly 100 ISO. People that have spent a lot of time and money on the game are quitting by the droves because the gameplay experience has fallen off dramatically and every decision that the devs make is pretty obviously catering towards converting f2p players into paying customers while subsequently quietly giving the finger to veteran players. It also appears to be pretty evident that they aren't going to communicate with us on these topics because (and this is just my guess) the truth would reveal the fact that they care more about profits than they do people, and that's just not good business.

So I am back at square one, trying to find a reason why it makes sense to level any characters up at all? I wonder if there's a "sweet spot" that exists like keeping all your 3*s at 85 or lower to actually see some benefits of leveling up or if it's pointless.

***GAMEPLAY IMPROVEMENT SUGGESTION WARNING*** (DEVS PLEASE STOP READING)
How about having restricted entry events/missions, where you need characters over level X in order to attempt to complete the mission (and ideally that that mission's rewards would be better than you would be able to get in the normal missions). That's just ONE idea I came up with off the top of my head that would make sense. Incentivize us to WANT to have higher level characters, it can only be good for you as a business, no?

It's a shame because I know so many of us absolutely love so many things about this game, but this leveling conundrum rather baffling to me. Have you guys that have played other character leveling games like WoW ever seen anything like this before? Can anyone outline some of the benefits of leveling up to me that I may be missing? Or should i just start a new account without putting any money into it and stay in 1* sandbox lalaland?

That's it for now, rant issues for another day include:

-The recent ISO inflow drought...i mean "adjustment"
-The US dollar cost to buy ISO (seriously, $350.00 to max level ONE 3* character?! Does it come with 7 amazing bl0wj0bs?)
-Server crashes at hilariously inconvenient times (when they structure the events to be time of play specific to win)
-Season competition structure as it relates to burnout and alliance guilt
-Alliance chat box functionality. "I mean it's like, COME AWN" -Jimmy Valmer