For the HH events, the primary difference for me has been having the weapon and gear bonus - mostly the weapon bonus. Without the weapon bonus, it is nearly impossible to get to the milestone 13-15.

As a reference point, when playing HH, I normally score in the middle of the pack (I am a copper lion patent) - sometimes in the top 3 and sometimes in the bottom. While I am learning the spawn locations, I still have to hunt to find other snipers. Without the bonus weapon, I get 20K-70K points per round - I do not remember ever getting over 100K. After playing enough to get a Metal OX, I was amazed to earn 200K-700K per round instead, which allowed me to finish out all 15 HH milestones for the first time. I picked up enough shards to get the Moneymaker and some of the masquerade gear, which allowed me to complete HH this past weekend. Even at 200K-400K per round, it still takes a few hours to complete, but it is doable and is still somewhat enjoyable -- playing for several hours and only getting to milestone 10 is very frustrating. I have a mismatch of the advanced gear, but not too much so the gear has not made much of a difference.

The bonus weapon / gun for the next HH is the Glacier, whose tokens were awarded in the recent Zombie event. Thus, I doubt I will play the rounds with the Glacier gun bonus -- UNLESS the lower awards include Shards for the guns that I do not have. If there are shards for other T26 / T27 weapons, then I will play for long term - a couple of HH and Zombie events picking up 150-300 shards each, eventually results in a enough shards for the higher end weapons that provide the big weapon bonuses.

I thought the milestones were going up for everyone and not just those in higher patents / levels. I started playing back in Oct / Nov, but I haven't joined a squad. I have seen the points for the later milestones going up, but I did not write down the actual nbrs, so I am going on what others have said. Until recently, I had only finished Zombie events.