ISO gain in February (long - you have been warned)

Moon Roach
Moon Roach Posts: 2,863 Chairperson of the Boards
edited March 2015 in MPQ General Discussion
February is over, at least here, and so it's time to bore everyone to tears.

I recorded everything, and these are the figures I got:
1b6me.jpg
Plotted as a chart over the month:
2ccxnw8.jpg
Moon Roach's breakdown:
214az45.jpg
Wolveroach's breakdown:
28ath7c.jpg

Daily was points from the alliance, plus any gain from whatever the reward was.
Some points:
    As can be seen, the figures went up quite a bit when Deadpool's Daily Quest was introduced. I could have done separate charts, but this is boring enough already. Oh all right then, Wolveroach averaged 7300 pre-DDQ, 10500 after, Moon Roach was 11200, then 13000. The majority of ISO was gained in PvE, though there was that dead zone between events. Of wins in PvE that resulted in ISO (i.e. not tokens, not boosts), only 40% were 20 ISO for Moon Roach, 34% for Wolveroach. Only. The move to 8 hour refreshes was a factor there. And there were a ridiculous number of unwanted covers, either won directly or gained through tokens. It's still ISO though.

Conclusions:
I got a lot more ISO than I thought I would. Moon Roach managed to max a couple more 3* during the month, yippee.
Paradoxically, as Wolveroach found, DDQ will eventually make the ISO debt worse for transitioning players.
In a hypothetical example, if I get a Squirrel Girl cover, taking her from 1/0/0 to 1/0/1 that's a change in maximum level from 40 to 43, which is only 517 ISO. With a current average of 10500 I've got nearly 10000 to put elsewhere. But if it's a change from 2/4/4 to 2/4/5 then that's a change in maximum level from 127 to 140, for which I'll need 25737 ISO. And that's nearly 3 days of play during which I'll hopefully get 3 more 3*.
There are worse problems to have.

I quite liked this exercise, using the mighty powers of Excel for charts. I don't think I'll do it again though.

Anyway, did anyone else record their gains during February?

Comments

  • GrumpySmurf1002
    GrumpySmurf1002 Posts: 3,511 Chairperson of the Boards
    Don't have it in a pretty format like yours, but to this second (so still 14 hours left in February:

    PvP: 132120
    PvE: 191430 (includes DDQ, but not taco tokens)
    LR: 12770
    Tokens and 3* covers sold: 76030
    Daily: 8580
    Total: 420930
    Average: 15033.21
    Median 15320
    Minimum: 3270
    Maximum: 33410

    I have all my cover data but I don't track it by date or by drops, just collective. I don't track boosts/20 iso.

    quick edit for sake of completeness:11 I have 24 standards and 11 heroic/events that I'm hoarding until next season too. So that's another 6k or so, on average.
  • squirrel1120
    squirrel1120 Posts: 492
    Interesting.

    Still, I don't think Dpd is going to make anything 'worse' in the transition. I'm about a month short of a year played, and I'm actually pretty happy with my roster. A large portion of that playtime was without a decent alliance, so very little iso, cover or hp rewards, and I have several 3*'s maxed, a large army of them in the 95-165 range, and noted just yesterday that my 2* army occupies pages 4 and 5 now instead of 1 and 2. Page 6 & 7 are mainly filled with the lowest covered 3*'s, most of which could still exceed lvl 94 if I wanted to put iso into characters like Rag, beast, gamora, colossus, etc. They'll eventually get their love... like right after getting their appropriate buffs. The moral of the story here being that if I started today and completed dpd consistently, the additional covers would have added to what I have, and the ~1million iso8 would certainly be spread around making those pages look even better.

    I think this new event format will nothing but help newer and transitioning players. Now a significant part of the game for the newer audience (who has access to information spaces like this one) will be setting up and maintaining the ability to clear dpd consistently.
  • DaveR4470
    DaveR4470 Posts: 931 Critical Contributor
    Good analysis.

    I'm guessing that you mean "worse" in the sense that transitioners will have more need of ISO because with more 3* covers there will be more of those high-level 25k ISO level transitions to deal with, and the increased ISO output won't come close to feeding that beast. Which is true.

    But I think I'd still rather have the cover and not be able to level the char fully than not have the cover at all.... So for me, it's not worse -- it just presents new ISO management challenges.
  • scottee
    scottee Posts: 1,610 Chairperson of the Boards
    Moon Roach wrote:
    Paradoxically, as Wolveroach found, DDQ will eventually make the ISO debt worse for transitioning players.
    In a hypothetical example, if I get a Squirrel Girl cover, taking her from 1/0/0 to 1/0/1 that's a change in maximum level from 40 to 43, which is only 517 ISO. With a current average of 10500 I've got nearly 10000 to put elsewhere. But if it's a change from 2/4/4 to 2/4/5 then that's a change in maximum level from 127 to 140, for which I'll need 25737 ISO. And that's nearly 3 days of play during which I'll hopefully get 3 more 3*.
    There are worse problems to have.

    I wish people would stop perpetuating this "iso debt" bit. It operates on the HUGE assumption that you should be able to softcap everyone you have covers for. This isn't an RPG where characters level automatically. The strategy part of the game is deciding which heroes you level and which you don't. The iso flow isn't supposed to keep up with the covers you can win. The devs specifically stated that you're intended to have to make strategic decisions about leveling.

    EDIT: Thanks for the info though. It's helpful.
  • scottee
    scottee Posts: 1,610 Chairperson of the Boards
    Question: Should a lot of the 1* and 2* covers be included under PVP? Their iso is calculated in the average the devs use when they drop as battle rewards.

    I would think the same for covers from tokens. They should be included in whichever event the tokens came from.
  • Moon Roach
    Moon Roach Posts: 2,863 Chairperson of the Boards
    scottee wrote:
    Question: Should a lot of the 1* and 2* covers be included under PVP? Their iso is calculated in the average the devs use when they drop as battle rewards.

    I would think the same for covers from tokens. They should be included in whichever event the tokens came from.

    I always opened tokens immediately and recorded the * level against PvP or PvE. Covers won from progression or as a reward also went against PvP or PvE as appropriate. The ISO from them contributed to the total in that type of event. I just totalled and presented the figures as an interesting subset of data.
  • Moon Roach
    Moon Roach Posts: 2,863 Chairperson of the Boards
    scottee wrote:
    Moon Roach wrote:
    Paradoxically, as Wolveroach found, DDQ will eventually make the ISO debt worse for transitioning players.
    In a hypothetical example, if I get a Squirrel Girl cover, taking her from 1/0/0 to 1/0/1 that's a change in maximum level from 40 to 43, which is only 517 ISO. With a current average of 10500 I've got nearly 10000 to put elsewhere. But if it's a change from 2/4/4 to 2/4/5 then that's a change in maximum level from 127 to 140, for which I'll need 25737 ISO. And that's nearly 3 days of play during which I'll hopefully get 3 more 3*.
    There are worse problems to have.

    I wish people would stop perpetuating this "iso debt" bit. It operates on the HUGE assumption that you should be able to softcap everyone you have covers for. This isn't an RPG where characters level automatically. The strategy part of the game is deciding which heroes you level and which you don't. The iso flow isn't supposed to keep up with the covers you can win. The devs specifically stated that you're intended to have to make strategic decisions about leveling.

    EDIT: Thanks for the info though. It's helpful.

    I see where you're coming from with this. To me it's like choosing between cash and accrual accounting. Both are valid but give you different outlooks on the data.

    I have a spread sheet (one of a shedload) where among other things for each character I track the soft cap, actual level, ISO expended and ISO needed to reach the soft cap. For Wolveroach I know I've spent 1,299,894 ISO, need 304,216 to soft cap everyone, and 7,064,556 to max everyone (excluding ones I have no covers at all for), once they are fully covered.

    I prioritise who I level (Patch before Daredevil, for example), and have no expectation of being able to level everyone as soon as I get a new cover. But it's the 304,216 increasing that shows how far I've got to go, how far behind the curve my guys are, as it were. I could always hide the total, I suppose.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Moon Roach wrote:
    Anyway, did anyone else record their gains during February?

    Not my ISO, no, but I do have a project I'm working on. I call it "A Season's Worth of Tokens", though I guess it'll be more like "A Season Plus an Off-season's Worth of Tokens" because I want to wait for the rotation before I open them. I'll probably have results posted Friday or Saturday...
  • ClydeFrog76
    ClydeFrog76 Posts: 1,350 Chairperson of the Boards
    I love how seriously some of you take this game. A spreadsheet to track ISO-8 gain, that is next level! icon_e_geek.gif
  • Druss
    Druss Posts: 368 Mover and Shaker
    Personally I like having a hugh iso shortage (at least 2 million) as it makes receiving, for instance, 1000 iso worthwhile.

    I remember back in the 2* days where I amassed over 500,000 iso because I had nothing to spend it on - my whole 2* Roster was maxed & had no covers for 3*'s.

    Became a vicious circle - didn't want to take on hard nodes in PvE because best reward was 500 iso which I didn't need, therefore miss out on 3* placement rewards.

    On a separate note, as Ldaken is rotating back in I stopped spending iso for the last 2 days - already amassed over 50,000 in that 2 days so I don't really consider the iso flow to be that bad (I need to get a life!) . Especially if you consider this game in terms of an RPG - I don't want to instant level everyone all at once - what's then to play for & achieve?
  • El Satanno
    El Satanno Posts: 1,005 Chairperson of the Boards
    Hello, Moon Roach! I did indeed track my rewards, which are presented for general consumption here. I posted somewhere else prior to finding this...and on my way to find your original post. As you can see, I tracked most things in a pretty granular fashion, but not my expenditures. This is pure income talking. It's a pain in the **** writing all this stuff down, as I play a lot on the train. Dunno if I'll keep up through all of March.

    The conclusion I've reached is that I earn a lot more stuff in general than I realized. I also noticed just how much more lucrative PvE is than PvP. Granted, the quality of those rewards are pretty much the other ways around. I will also lend my vote to the argument against the fallacious "Iso scarcity" claim. I don't think it's reasonable to assume you ought to be immediately maxing every character you get your hands on.

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