This feels like there is a limit you can progress at a given level, which is capped at the moment. Once you reach the limit your damage is reduced to 1. Not a fan of a hard cap being built in but it means the mode functions on auto reasonably well and sticks to their assurance that it will not take up too much time.
So to progress you have to level up by either paying for the level up packs or wait for the next marquee (from the datamine) as the rewards seem to increase to include higher level mats for each subsequent character released.
Before complaining about P2P, it is still unclear if paying anything is worth it as you are supposed to get the LV65 gear 12 equivalent by the end FTP so nothing gained there, we can not use the characters faster, those who would like 7 star by end of event as usual will not level up the character any faster than FTP until they surpass the 3 star cap. It would also seem to maintain an advantage to rank higher, you would need to spend at every marquee for stars and level up mats. Right now we are not capped by stars as FTP is 3 star but if we level up through out the 5 marquees then the stars may become a limit to leveling.
So the only value of paying to level up additionally is the currency for ranking high, which is used for relic 10 mats or the LST. This makes the LST very expensive and many do not have a lot of R9 and may not be positioned for using R10, they are also working out to be very expensive. So it’s not working out well for those who pay particularly well. Can not say I am excited by the reward structure but I will continue to do the dailies and see how it progresses.