Also, I'd like to add that I used to play this game with a group of friends, but after the persistent difficulty increase, and the reduced rewards, they refuse to play. The number of times we end up in an unwinnable game because we don't have an antagonist to normalize our difficulty is just too high - add to that the fact that antagonists increase your reward modifiers, and often people just drop from the game as soon as they see how hard it is. Inevitably, after fighting for over 40 minutes to maybe win a match, the rewards are terrible.