I have to grumble a little and I'm sorry in advance for that. I understand the desire for more challenging objectives for the hardcore players, and I realize there is some difficulty in balancing difficulty. The frustration for me was hitting a wall about 20 levels short of getting Mogra, despite spending a crap ton on talents.
I have been playing since the very first event (filthy casual player) and for me the draw has always been getting new characters to play with. It was my assumption that the new skin was the "special" prize, hence it is at the end. So I cannot immediately understand why the recruitment mission had to be nightmare level hard. I don't care about not finishing the event, but by making the recruitment so hard you have taken away the reason I get excited for events, and by extension the main reason I even play the game. Please consider scaling back the difficulty a little just for recruitment missions, if your team hears this.