Sentinels of the Multiverse Difficulty Score System

Sentinels of the Multiverse is a great game. But, it can be hard to get the right level of difficulty. Some combinations of heroes, villains, and environments are simply too easy, while others are extremely difficult and the default villain difficulty levels only capture a small portion of what's going on. So, here's an attempt at a more complex but more comprehensive way of tuning the difficulty of a Sentinels game. I took the data from the Sentinels Statistics Project, and built a Naive Bayes victory prediction system and converted it into a "difficulty point" based scoring system. The original data may have all sorts of biases, and there's obvious cases where there's strong cross-terms between heroes or villains that's not accounted for, but it seems to work reasonably.

To determine the difficulty of a game, simply add up the difficulty values of the number of players, each of the heroes, the villain and the environment. The last table on the right translates difficulty scores to observed loss rates.

Heroes Hero Difficulty Omnitron-U 64 ~ Best of Times Chrono Ranger ~~ Dark Watch Setback 40 Absolute Zero Elemental Wrath 31 Bunker 30 Prime Warden Captain Cosmic 30 Dark Watch Nightmist 30 Absolute Zero 29 Dark Watch Expatriette 29 Dark Watch Fixer 23 Mr. Fixer 23 Expatriette 22 Termi-Nation Bunker ~~ Bunker Engine of War 17 Termi-Nation Absolute Zero ~~ GI Bunker 14 KNYFE Rogue Agent 13 The Argent Adept 9 Captain Cosmic 7 Unity 7 Santa Guise ~~ Tempest ; Freedom 2 Ra : Horus of Two Horizons 1 Rook City Wraith 1 Setback 0 Parse -1 Fanatic -2 K.N.Y.F.E. -4 Prime Warden Argent Adept -4 Chrono Ranger -5 Tachyon -6 Guise -6 The Eternal Haka -6 Ra -6 Nightmist -7 Kvothe Six-String Argent Adept -8 Termi-Nation Unity ~~ Wraith -12 Haka -13 Wraith : Price of Freedom -14 Golem Unity -15 Prime Warden Haka -18 Sky-Scraper -19 The Visionary -19 Dark Visionary -21 The Scholar -23 The Naturalist -27 Tempest -29 Omnitron-X -29 Redeemer Fanatic -30 Prime Warden Fanatic -33 Prime Warden Tempest -36 Young Legacy -36 Legacy -45 Super Scientific Tachyon -51 Scholar of the Infinite -52 The Sentinels -59 Team Leader Tachyon -66 The Greatest Legacy -78 Adamant Sentinels -94 ~ Desperate Naturalist -136 ~ ~ Very limited data, so take this number with a grain of salt.

~~ Insufficient data for a reasonable estimate. Play more games and log them.

Villains Villain Difficulty

Basic Difficulty

Advanced Kaargra Warfang 97 * Iron Legacy 74 112 The Chairman 68 74 Cosmic Omnitron 62 103 Agent of Gloom Spite 53 * Vengeance Five 47 * The Dreamer 44 68 The Matriarch 39 45 Vengeance Style (Vengeance and Villains) 36 * La Capitan 11 18 Progeny 3 * Skinwalker Gloomweaver 0 * Infinitor 0 * Citizen Dawn -1 68 Plague Rat -12 27 Omnitron -14 11 Spite -18 -3 Grand Warlord Voss -24 76 Akash'bhuta -41 15 Apostate -49 -71 Unstable Kismet -50** * Miss Information -50 89 Mad Bomber Blade -55 25 Kismet -65 -51 Baron Blade -69 -9 Wager Master -83 * The Ennead -84 78 Deadline -119 -94** Gloomweaver -120 -103 Chokepoint -124** * Ambuscade -135 -103 Tormented Infinitor -136** * * Insufficient data in advanced mode to get reliable individual estimates, but probably ~75 points harder than basic.

** Based on relatively low data so expect additional noise in this estimate. Environments Environment Difficulty Rook City 63 Ruins of Atlantis 49 Madame Mittermeir's 46 Omnitron IV 34 Magmaria 18 Insula Primalis 4 Pike Industrial Complex 4 Tomb of Anubis 2 Silver Gulch 1883 -4 Enclave of the Endlings -6 Time Cataclysm -7 Megalopolis -9 Wagner Mars Base -13 Realm of Discord -16 Dok'Thorath -18 Celestial Tribunal -25 Freedom Tower -26 The Court of Blood -28 Temple of Zhu Long -47 Mobile Defense Platform -48 The Block -54 The Final Wasteland -58

Number of Players Players Difficulty Three 45 Four -28 Five -50 Difficulty Total Game Loss Probability 275 Extremely Hard. 85% chance of losing. 200 Very Hard. 73% chance of losing. 100 Difficult. 50% chance of losing. 65 Challenging. 41% chance of losing. 0 Typical. 27% chance of losing. -65 Easy. 16% chance of losing. -125 Very Easy. 10% chance of losing. -200 Extremely Easy. 5% chance of losing. Sentinels is a co-op game where the players usually win, apropos to the superhero theme. In my experience, games in the 0 - 150 difficulty range are the most fun. Games below -100 sometimes feel like they are simply automatic wins where what you do doesn't matter. Similarly, above 175, bad luck or good luck feel like they play a more prominent role. Specific combos may get very high difficulties and be easy and specific combos may yield very low difficulties and be difficult. Enter the results in the Sentinels Tracker and I may occasionally update the model.

This version of the model was built on Sat May 28 17:20:27 EDT 2016, and is based on 15934 games from a 5/28/2016 download of the data collected from the Sentinels Tracker Form. You can also see the aggregation of this data by Lynk Fox.