The word is out : How much for Iso ?

SunCrusher

As someone who has been sitting in various points of Transition Land for 6+ months (not really PvP-strong or interested and no strong Alliance to put it into perspective), HP is undoubtedly my personal hugest source of bottlenecking as I am constantly sitting on hundreds of thousands of ISO in wait of my next 'better time' to level my characters who need leveling.

Bearing in mind that PvP is not my thing though I can occasionally score a top 100 prize and bearing in mind that by myself, I can consistently grab the top 150 and sometimes top 50 prize in PvE... the end result is A LOT of single cover or two-cover 3* characters... And nobody who needs the ISO.

But this is exactly why the, "You should farm LRs for ISO," rationale doesn't really fly with me.

At the rate my cover-collecting is going (and my money spent on HP goes 99% to my roster slots and now we see why), I need to be OUT of Transition Land before I'll see a major problem with my ISO collecting rate. The fact that I try to keep some level balance with my similarly starred and covered characters and refuse to ISO-dump poorly covered characters unless absolutely necessary means I spend even less ISO.

Unknown

Personally I'd like to see the price of ISO kept high.

As a perspective, I'm a F2P - never having spent a penny, at day 331 with 6 maxed out 3* characters and maybe another 5 that are max covered but don't warrant the ISO investment - IM40, Spiderman etc. I have a stash of 250K waiting for extra covers for Hood & Daken, but that won't be close to enough if I gain another couple of X-Force covers.

I'm already at a disadvantage against the P2W crew, with their top 10 alliances, spending plenty on shields and covering new characters within a week of release. The last thing I need is for them to be able to drop a few more $ on ISO and suddenly you're facing another level 270 opponent in PVP.

I used to think that ISO wasn't a bottleneck at all, but with hindsight, there are lots of points where you need to grind through matches, purely to get the ISO. I totally get the issues for transitioning 3* guys to get those extra covers, especially when they aren't in a top alliance, but if people can buy their way over the ISO issue, then it becomes more P2W than ever before, and you'll lose any semblance of F2P.

Unknown

I really like reading how the system should not be changed so that whales keep on financing their gameplay...

At the same time, I like reading how devilish I am to be a whale...

Dichotomy ?

Unknown

The general problem with buying ISO is that a good week of grinding can get you tens of thousands of it, which is in the neighborhood of the current Mother Lode costing $100.

The flip side is that pricing it too low takes this from a game where free to play can compete decently to an arms race where you have to buy enough ISO to max your entire roster to have a decent chance.

Unknown

Free to Play is just a marketing mirage.

When they have enough players that accept to pay, they will care less about F2P integrists.

Once again, this thread was aimed at newcomers, not veterans who can grind 200K Iso a week.

Unknown

The thing I like about the scarcity of ISO is that it forces me to decide on a strategy for my team. I have 6 3*s that need varying degrees of ISO to level up to what their covers allow, and I have to make strategic decisions that factor in the current PVP, how well they'll play with other members, and how much I actually like the character's gameplay. If I paid to max out my ISO for all my characters, it would take away one of the things that makes this game a bit more strategic, and a bit more enjoyable. If I was still in transition and needed an ISO boost to make some of my 3*s a little more competitive in PVP, then I would look at doing so. But during my transition, there was a point where I had 100K ISO and no heros to dump it in to. So I stockpiled it, and there was a sense of accomplishment in being able to jump a 3* character 10 or 15 levels immediately. Now I have to choose which of the 6 characters receiving the ISO will benefit me most.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

Free to Play is just a marketing mirage.

When they have enough players that accept to pay, they will care less about F2P integrists.

Once again, this thread was aimed at newcomers, not veterans who can grind 200K Iso a week.

The trick for the devs is to balance both aspects. I have no issue with top players grinding 100K ISO, because it forces them to put in the hours, which forces them to care about the game. Similarly, they get dangled the carrot of paying $ for HP. If you allow players to buy all achievements for an affordable $, then it allows progression without significant effort in the game, which becomes counter-productive. It produces short term $ gain for the devs, but without an engaged user-base. That P2W community get bored and move on.

Similarly, if I see that I can't get anywhere without paying $, then I no longer play either, because I get passed too quickly. I see the challenge of competing on a less than level playing field, but if I can't compete on that playing field at all, then I won't bother.

So for short term gain, by making everything too affordable, you end up killing the long term future of the game.

HailMary

Meutrich wrote:

I have chosen "Cheaper than that", because at the speed chars have been added the last month, we, the non-vet players, face several obstacles:

// a lot more unfinished chars, we can get and more probability of getting covers for chars, we so far don't want to finish, instead of the few chars we would like to finally get in shape.
Conscious of the fact that I speak as a vet, I rarely ever level anyone (at all) unless they're covermaxed. It seem you're talking about a 3* cover bottleneck, not an Iso bottleneck.

// we had several other posts with regards to Iso needed for a char the last weeks. Alone for Mystique and Lady Thor, out since today, one needs roughly 600K Iso.
For some perspective, I still haven't seriously leveled Fury, and I've been in a T100 alliance since the very beginning, i.e. it's been 6 months since his first single cover entered my roster. I could easily seriously level him (or max him, even) with my stockpiled Iso, but I haven't yet, because I don't feel the need to. One does not, in any way, "need" 600K Iso right now for Mystique and GT.

// those two new chars mean to earn roughly 1 cover a day, that you need, to stay put for the month. Top 100 alliance/or position grant 1 cover each, assuming we are all lucky and need those. That is for every 2.5 days. But we are all aware, that we are talking usually about Beasts yellow cover or Thor's red instead of Thor's green, aren't we? Then we can earn, if we can stand the pain, one additional 3* cover every 5 days on average out of PvE. That will keep us barely alive, not too much further behind the character release, but again we can't catch up.
Again, that's a cover bottleneck. I understand that the 2*-3* has a much tighter cover bottleneck, now that there are more characters, PVP placement is harder, etc. But, that's separate from the Iso issue.

arktos1971 wrote:

I have a question to HM : ...

// When you use a loaner, how high do you go without shielding?
It depends on my timing, who the featured is, etc. I can consistently hit 1K before shielding (I get annoyed at myself when I don't make it), and sometimes hit 1100+.

// Do you face 166 walls ?
Of course.

// When I see a loaner, whatever the rest of the team (once again not talking about **** characters), I will go and fight his owner's team immediately.
Sure. I expect a lot of a people do that. However, for a typical featured char, loaner + XFood is likely more dangerous than, say, L150 featured + Hulk + LT. None of those are "**** characters."

arktos1971 wrote:

Once again, this thread was aimed at newcomers, not veterans who can grind 200K Iso a week.

Uh huh, all those newcomers who covermax multiple 3*s shortly after release.

lukewin

arktos1971 wrote:

Once again, this thread was aimed at newcomers, not veterans who can grind 200K Iso a week.

arktos1971 wrote:

I'm not a model to be followed for sure, but I'm sure cheap Iso would help the 2*-->3* players who seem to have such a hard time lately.

So is the thread for newcomers or 2*-->3*? Guess it depends on your definition of newcomer. Both quotes are from this thread.

Unknown

You can get all the 2* covers in no time. So, a newcomer can have all the 2* characters pretty quickly.

Unknown

ephyzephy wrote:

arktos1971 wrote:

Free to Play is just a marketing mirage.

When they have enough players that accept to pay, they will care less about F2P integrists.

Once again, this thread was aimed at newcomers, not veterans who can grind 200K Iso a week.

The trick for the devs is to balance both aspects. I have no issue with top players grinding 100K ISO, because it forces them to put in the hours, which forces them to care about the game. Similarly, they get dangled the carrot of paying $ for HP. If you allow players to buy all achievements for an affordable $, then it allows progression without significant effort in the game, which becomes counter-productive. It produces short term $ gain for the devs, but without an engaged user-base. That P2W community get bored and move on.

Similarly, if I see that I can't get anywhere without paying $, then I no longer play either, because I get passed too quickly. I see the challenge of competing on a less than level playing field, but if I can't compete on that playing field at all, then I won't bother.

So for short term gain, by making everything too affordable, you end up killing the long term future of the game.

Someone made the calculation earlier on, even if the Iso was dirty cheap, maxing all characters with Iso (Iso cost only) would cost around $700. Who would spend $700 ? Not many, but more than the ones who would spend $10K.

Once you have a maxed roster, this is not the end of the game, you keep on enjoying the game another way, have different strategies. It's never ending.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

Someone made the calculation earlier on, even if the Iso was dirty cheap, maxing all characters with Iso (Iso cost only) would cost around $700. Who would spend $700 ? Not many, but more than the ones who would spend $10K.

Once you have a maxed roster, this is not the end of the game, you keep on enjoying the game another way, have different strategies. It's never ending.

We're not talking about maxing a whole roster out in one hit though. It's about being able to fully level up a character immediately for $10-$20, which is a drop for a player who doesn't blink at buying the covers.