Buying HP with ISO

Unknown

I think a good addition to the game that would help with the HP shortage needed for roster slots and what have you, would be to allow us to buy HP using ISO.

Make the conversion somewhere around 20 - 1, or whatever the math works out to to make it balanced.

I know alot of people would say that there is alrerady an ISO shortage, and that this will just make that worse, but I can average 5-10k ISO in a day with fresh PVE or PVP nodes to farm, along with occasional Lightning Rounds and rewards from events so I don't currently see a shortage. Personaly, I find fun in having someone I'm working on putting ISO into. The real issue for me is not getting the covers to be able to do so or the space to put new covers.

mikebdot

I was thinking maybe they should allow the sale of covers to include a "sell for hp option". This would in effect be the same thing since you could spend ISO to get covers and sell back for severely reduced number.

I was thinking 1 hp for 1*, 5 for 2*, 10 for 3*, 25 for 4*. or something to that effect. Maybe slightly higher.

simonsez

Alexraven wrote:

I know alot of people would say that there is alrerady an ISO shortage, and that this will just make that worse, but I can average 5-10k ISO in a day with fresh PVE or PVP nodes to farm, along with occasional Lightning Rounds and rewards from events so I don't currently see a shortage

You will.

If anything, I'd like the option to buy ISO with HP... but it'd have to be a really good ratio (eg 100-1 or better)

Unknown

Perhaps they could offer both options??

FaustianDeal

I want to preface the rest of my post with the following statement:
I would love to be able to convert between the currencies. Two-way is an admirable goal, but ISO-->HP is the only way I am really concerned with. I can generate ISO all day, but sources of HP are harder to come by. One resource is finite; capped at a certain level / week unless you spend actual money (HP). The other resource is nearly infinite, and is only constrained by how much time you are willing to spend (ISO). That is why it will probably never happen.

More exhaustive(exhausting?) rambling: The game is not engineered to treat these 2 currencies as fungible. There are a few things I infer to be true from past data
HP-
You used to get some HP from selling 3* and 4* cards. That stopped because too much HP was going into the system. Now there are only so many HP-based rewards available in a given week. You can look at the placement and progression awards offered in a given week and know the absolute maximum amount of HP a person could 'win' by completing all progressions and coming in 1st in every individual and alliance event. That feels like their 'not to exceed' number... and they seem to monitor that closely. It seems that there is a strong desire to constrain the amount of HP available through any means other than 'winning' and 'purchase'. If HP in the system seems low we get an event with HP awards in individual prizes and alliance awards. If HP is too high then we get something like this run of Heroic Oscorp; which felt pretty stingy for HP.

ISO-
ISO can be secured through nothing more than 'play' (less even).
* you can grind story fights for 20ISO/repeat for hours.
* you can hit the Lightning Rounds like they owe you money. (I can pull tens of thousands of ISO from those 2 days with no HP to show for it.)
* you can join a Facebook groups and to do reward sharing. If you play your cards right; you can wind up on the positive side of a few hundred imbalanced sharing arrangements; where you have 1,000 daily-playing friends - each of whom only have 100 friends of their own. You could wind up on the receiving end of thousands to tens of thousands of ISO on a daily basis from shared rewards. Point is - they seem to be okay with awarding ISO through 'playing the game' or 'gaming the game'.

The 2 currencies are not valued the same way in-game. HP is the only true currency; ISO (i believe) is not.
I can finish a 3* character almost every 2-3 weeks. If someone could convert ISO --> HP at a rate of 1,000 ISO --> 1 HP; I could generate almost 100 HP/week. A determined player could probably generate 200+ HP/week above and beyond what they are already getting from prizes.

100 extra HP/week might not seem like a large number/but if you accept that there is already a large F2P contingent, that pool of players will grow larger; because a player who (in the past) might have dropped a $5 for an 'Agency Expenses' to open a roster spot will just grind ISO for a couple weeks instead. If enough players could manufacture 100-200 extra HP a week from grinding then the 'economy' of the game grinds to a halt due to devaluation of the only real 'currency' in the game. Unless the exchange rate is so prohibitively high that it isn't worth doing... say 10,000 --> 1 ... that is an exchange rate they might actually be willing to allow and I doubt anyone is buying at that price.

As for a two-way currency exchange:
The dilemma here is that there doesn't seem to be what can be classically considered to be a 'uniform' exchange rate between the currencies...

If I ignore the "dollar value" of the potential purchases, but set each price point as a potential exchange rate, and where do you set the conversion:
Compare:
Bugle Pittance (200 HP) vs Dead Drop (1200 ISO) : 6->1 ISO/HP exchange rate
Agency Expenses (600 HP) vs Treasure Box (3200 ISO) : 5.33->1 ISO/HP exchange
Logan's Loonies (2,900 HP) vs Hidden Stash (13,200 ISO) : 4.55->1 ISO/HP exchange
Asgard Treasure (8,500 HP) vs Rich Deposit (37,500 ISO) : 4.41-> ISO/HP exchange
Stark Salary (20,000 HP) vs Mother Lode (78,000 ISO) : 3.90->1 ISO/HP exchange

The volume discount for HP is tremendous.
In US Dollars you go from buying HP a penny a piece, to 2 for a penny in high volume. a 50% reduction

The volume discount for ISO is about half as good.
In US dollars you go from buying ISO at 6 for a penny at the lowest level to 7.8 for a penny. >25%, but nowhere near 50%

You have to be able to say that the 2 currencies are equally valuable to have an exchange rate. The discrepancies above suggest they are not. You also can't set an in-game exchange at something better than the market value of the relative 'currencies'. If I was able to buy ISO with HP and do so for anything better than the exchange rates listed above.. people stop buying ISO. They instead buy HP and 'convert'. Let use 10 ISO for 1 HP as an example: instead of buying 78,000 ISO for $100 -- people instead buy 20,000 ISO for $100, and 'convert' it into 200,000 ISO. By that math the dollar-cost (in ISO) to finish a 3* character drops from ~$250 to < $100. because you have tripled the ISO value of your dollars.

FTWDex

I'd like to raise this as a suggestion. I've been playing the game for 2 years now and have reached a point of homeostasis where I have reached the limits of what my available roster can be moved up in rank. 
I have purchased in $20 increments of HP over time to be able to increase roster size and stave this off, but now I have reached a scenario where I have 200K+ ISO, and 20 HP. I do not expect equal value in an ISO to HP conversion, but even converting at a loss will allow me to grow my roster and put me back in the position of spending resources.

Quebbster

If you want to keep up with the fourstar releases, you need to earn at least 25K ISO a day. You will feel the ISO crunch eventually.
This is not meant as disparagement but as to provide perspective.

Ducky

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