Is there any way that the Iso change could backfire on us?

CrookedKnight

I guess it could backfire if they were going to use the reduced costs as a reason to slash the amount of ISO given from PvE events, but that's crazy, right?

SnowcaTT

Figured this out what this cost me in the ISO spend page. Here is the results for the 3*'s based on their levels on my roster when the ISO change happened:

6x 166 (Previously needed 172764, now need 119919)
12x 140 (Previously needed 111154, now need 58309)
15 x 127 (Previously needed 85417, now need 32636)
5x other (Various up and down levels)

Hey D3: 1,742,925 ISO refund please!

That would get the 12 140's to 166, and 12 127's to 166. THAT is how much ISO this cost me, instead of 6x 166 I'd have 30x 166. And instead, since I evenly leveled, I have a whole bunch of characters at the same level as everyone else now that they can get to level 120 for pretty cheap. Horray! Thank you so much for the upcoming ISO refund D3, I look forward to running so many maxed characters!

Dauntless74

Earthcore wrote:

Gotta love this forum, complaining literally about anything.

It took 2 days to put a negative on 30% reduction of levels. This is a whole new level.

No wonder the devs stay the tinykitty away from this place.

I don't see any complaining here just a valid question that deserves a valid answer. A simple "I don't know, we'll see further down the line" would have sufficed.

GothicKratos

Dauntless74 wrote:

Earthcore wrote:

Gotta love this forum, complaining literally about anything.

It took 2 days to put a negative on 30% reduction of levels. This is a whole new level.

No wonder the devs stay the tinykitty away from this place.

I don't see any complaining here just a valid question that deserves a valid answer. A simple "I don't know, we'll see further down the line" would have sufficed.

No, just implications that the developers, rather than implement this benefit that strictly benefits the players, did not do so, but instead did so as an evil ploy to goat us out of money because scaling. It's not even an accurate accusation, as it's been pointed out time and time and time and time again that your PERFORMANCE has an infinitely larger impact on your scaling, than the miniscule impact that your top three leveled toons do, but hey, we all love tinfoil hats, right?

Unknown

Could it backfire? Maybe, but not really. With higher levels comes advantages and disadvantages that you have to weigh yourself to see if there is net gain.

Hulkbuster Lv 94:
6329 HP
Red at 4 covers do 234 damage per AP
Red at 10 AP will do 2340 damage for 37% of Hulkbuster's HP.

Hulkbuster Lv 270 (+187% Lvs):
17810 HP (+181% HP)
Red at 4 covers do 390 damage per AP (+67% damage)
Red at 10 AP will do 3900 damage for 22% of Hulkbuster's HP.

Assuming that either level-based scaling or damage received based scaling will both match you up to about the same relative difficulty for both Lv94 and Lv270 players, there are some that argue that this damage to HP disproportionate growth causes higher levels to have longer fights and makes your play time longer. The longer play time will not cause a significant disadvantage in PvE point gains, but could definitely cause PvE clear time to be longer than it needs to (potentially causing you to lose points if the time you have to grind is inflexible and limited). Similarly for PvP, if you are matched to players of similar levels, fight times could take longer. On a more minor note, lower level characters will heal to full faster because healing is point based and not percentage based.

The flip sides are in situations where in PvE lv 94 team fights lv 380 nodes, while lv 270 team fights lv 395 nodes, the 270 team will clear this much easier. Similarly in PvP eventually the lv 94 team has to fight the lv 166 teams to even hit 600, whereas a lv 166 team can fight lv 270 teams and reach 1000.

Pylgrim

CrookedKnight wrote:

I guess it could backfire if they were going to use the reduced costs as a reason to slash the amount of ISO given from PvE events, but that's crazy, right?

If Thick as Thieves is any indication, it's not happening any time soon. Most nodes have a 250 and 500 iso reward. (That actually means that wit a bit of luck, you'll be able to share 500 iso with 3 people.) The norm is 100/250.

Oh, but hey! maybe that's another underhanded tactic to somehow screw me up in the future. Must remain forever wary and vigilant. Grrrr grrrrr grrrr.

Arondite

SnowcaTT wrote:

Figured this out what this cost me in the ISO spend page. Here is the results for the 3*'s based on their levels on my roster when the ISO change happened:

6x 166 (Previously needed 172764, now need 119919)
12x 140 (Previously needed 111154, now need 58309)
15 x 127 (Previously needed 85417, now need 32636)
5x other (Various up and down levels)

Hey D3: 1,742,925 ISO refund please!

That would get the 12 140's to 166, and 12 127's to 166. THAT is how much ISO this cost me, instead of 6x 166 I'd have 30x 166. And instead, since I evenly leveled, I have a whole bunch of characters at the same level as everyone else now that they can get to level 120 for pretty cheap. Horray! Thank you so much for the upcoming ISO refund D3, I look forward to running so many maxed characters!

What reason would there be to refund you anything at all?

Unknown

scottee wrote:

Most people think, "Yay! I can level up my heroes easier!"

And then they realize, other people can too.

Yeah, in a (supposedly) competitive game, a boost to everyone is a boost to no one.

SnowcaTT

Arondite wrote:

SnowcaTT wrote:

Figured this out what this cost me in the ISO spend page. Here is the results for the 3*'s based on their levels on my roster when the ISO change happened:

6x 166 (Previously needed 172764, now need 119919)
12x 140 (Previously needed 111154, now need 58309)
15 x 127 (Previously needed 85417, now need 32636)
5x other (Various up and down levels)

Hey D3: 1,742,925 ISO refund please!

That would get the 12 140's to 166, and 12 127's to 166. THAT is how much ISO this cost me, instead of 6x 166 I'd have 30x 166. And instead, since I evenly leveled, I have a whole bunch of characters at the same level as everyone else now that they can get to level 120 for pretty cheap. Horray! Thank you so much for the upcoming ISO refund D3, I look forward to running so many maxed characters!

What reason would there be to refund you anything at all?

No reason. I mean, I'm 415 days in and the rookies can get a whole bunch of 120's pretty quickly with the ISO and catch right up with less than half of the time. But hey, it's all part of "Operation get vets to quit" or whatever they are driving at.

It would have been nice to have EVERY level be cheaper in ISO to level, so every player would have been helped out (save those who have every character at 166). As it is it scales most of those savings to the early levels, so anyone who leveled evenly like this really gets hosed.

Arondite

SnowcaTT wrote:

Arondite wrote:

SnowcaTT wrote:

Figured this out what this cost me in the ISO spend page. Here is the results for the 3*'s based on their levels on my roster when the ISO change happened:

6x 166 (Previously needed 172764, now need 119919)
12x 140 (Previously needed 111154, now need 58309)
15 x 127 (Previously needed 85417, now need 32636)
5x other (Various up and down levels)

Hey D3: 1,742,925 ISO refund please!

That would get the 12 140's to 166, and 12 127's to 166. THAT is how much ISO this cost me, instead of 6x 166 I'd have 30x 166. And instead, since I evenly leveled, I have a whole bunch of characters at the same level as everyone else now that they can get to level 120 for pretty cheap. Horray! Thank you so much for the upcoming ISO refund D3, I look forward to running so many maxed characters!

What reason would there be to refund you anything at all?

No reason. I mean, I'm 415 days in and the rookies can get a whole bunch of 120's pretty quickly with the ISO and catch right up with less than half of the time. But hey, it's all part of "Operation get vets to quit" or whatever they are driving at.

It would have been nice to have EVERY level be cheaper in ISO to level, so every player would have been helped out (save those who have every character at 166). As it is it scales most of those savings to the early levels, so anyone who leveled evenly like this really gets hosed.

Arondite wrote:

Firebat86 wrote:

So I'm at day 536, 52 roster slots, many two stars fully level'ed/covered since I played before 3* were the meta... And tons of 3* covered/leveled. Now all of a sudden we're making it easier to level up by reducing ISO costs and there will be no retroactive reimbursement for ANY of the ISO spent? How is that fair? With as big of an iso hole we're in, even if you gave us back the difference we're still gonna need more...

D3 is making it harder and harder to stick with em...

Someone please tell me they've heard otherwise...

This is like, the only change that I feel complaining about is kind of silly.

Do you gripe or get mad when the price of a physical good goes down with age, particularly if it's one that you continually purchase in the future?

Imagine that tomorrow all video games go from ~65.95 for New Releases (3 Star Heroes) to 44.95 for New Releases (3 Star Heroes). More and less expensive games drop as well, but just as new releases are the cornerstone of the videogame market, 3 Stars appear to be the cornerstone of our game so we will focus on this.

You will directly benefit from this change if you continue to purchase these games going forward (read, if you continue to play MPQ). Sure, the same games will cost newer players less, but that also doesn't account for all the benefit you've already wrought from those games (heroes). Even if you hadn't gained any benefit from it, hey, you will going forward so it's all good, and it's not like it actually takes away from what you've already done. It's not like your heroes will suddenly be unleveled because of this.

The fact is, you bought the game (leveled your heroes) at the original price, so you felt the value was right for the payout before. If it's getting even better now, you certainly don't deserve a refund for that.

Seems to me you're too focused on relative progress to notice the boon to absolute progress this provides. I mean, this is essentially like being mad that DPD gives 3 stars / iso so easily when you had to work so hard to get them in the past.

Pylgrim

SnowcaTT wrote:

It would have been nice to have EVERY level be cheaper in ISO to level, so every player would have been helped out (save those who have every character at 166). As it is it scales most of those savings to the early levels, so anyone who leveled evenly like this really gets hosed.

If they did this, then those people, with an all 166 roster would be the ones demanding refunds. Hell, they would have more of a case since the only way to fully max your whole roster is spending money in Iso, one of the worst value-for-cost transactions in the game. Anyway, my point is that no matter how you extend this kind of measures there will always be a subset of people that will feel screwed up, but the line must be drawn somewhere. I am not a game developer and I do not have access to the numbers and data they have access to, so I have to believe that those professionals made an informed decision with a holistic positive goal to make the game better in the future. You may choose to believe that they are incompetent, greedy amateurs with a secret villainous agenda if you so wish, but I believe that any business that wants to stay in business is more likely to follow the behaviours of my guess.

Unknown

SnowcaTT wrote:

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Sort of. I had everyone at 94 while I was waiting for enough Iso to finish the transition, but I only brought up about 8-10 key characters at the time. I didn't go the route you and Ben Grimm did, with the everyone gets a turn methodology.

Oh right, it was Ben Grimm, my brother from another mother - seems to play about the same way and have a very similar experience.

I look at my roster and laugh, the ISO change helped me raise SW to 114 quickly. But now I look at my three sub 127's, my sixteen 127's, my twelve 140's, and my seven higher than that...and laugh a little. Alliance-mate Wolfman raised fifteen or eighteen characters to level 120 the day the ISO change hit, and I this kind of patient/even leveling just takes the hit.

I had those 17 (I counted them just now) 3*s at level 105, so it's not like I didn't also take a massive hit in the wasted iso department; just not quite as big as your level 127 characters. I think it was around 45k to get them all to level 105, which is now lowered to 10k-ish. That's still a loss of 35k per character, for a total loss of 600k.

That's of course completely ignoring my 166 characters, which are easily another 600k iso spent too much.

CrookedKnight

Pylgrim wrote:

CrookedKnight wrote:

I guess it could backfire if they were going to use the reduced costs as a reason to slash the amount of ISO given from PvE events, but that's crazy, right?

If Thick as Thieves is any indication, it's not happening any time soon. Most nodes have a 250 and 500 iso reward. (That actually means that wit a bit of luck, you'll be able to share 500 iso with 3 people.) The norm is 100/250.

Oh, but hey! maybe that's another underhanded tactic to somehow screw me up in the future. Must remain forever wary and vigilant. Grrrr grrrrr grrrr.

I was thinking of the fact that ISO/HP progression and placement rewards have been cut in half for TaT.

Dauntless74

GothicKratos wrote:

Dauntless74 wrote:

Earthcore wrote:

Gotta love this forum, complaining literally about anything.

It took 2 days to put a negative on 30% reduction of levels. This is a whole new level.

No wonder the devs stay the tinykitty away from this place.

I don't see any complaining here just a valid question that deserves a valid answer. A simple "I don't know, we'll see further down the line" would have sufficed.

No, just implications that the developers, rather than implement this benefit that strictly benefits the players, did not do so, but instead did so as an evil ploy to goat us out of money because scaling. It's not even an accurate accusation, as it's been pointed out time and time and time and time again that your PERFORMANCE has an infinitely larger impact on your scaling, than the miniscule impact that your top three leveled toons do, but hey, we all love tinfoil hats, right?

Well, I did love my tin foil hat untill it was stolen by shape-shifting aliens working for the government. The aliens were in the form of my wife and I know it was them because she denies touching my hat.

SnowcaTT

Pylgrim wrote:

SnowcaTT wrote:

It would have been nice to have EVERY level be cheaper in ISO to level, so every player would have been helped out (save those who have every character at 166). As it is it scales most of those savings to the early levels, so anyone who leveled evenly like this really gets hosed.

If they did this, then those people, with an all 166 roster would be the ones demanding refunds. Hell, they would have more of a case since the only way to fully max your whole roster is spending money in Iso, one of the worst value-for-cost transactions in the game. Anyway, my point is that no matter how you extend this kind of measures there will always be a subset of people that will feel screwed up, but the line must be drawn somewhere. I am not a game developer and I do not have access to the numbers and data they have access to, so I have to believe that those professionals made an informed decision with a holistic positive goal to make the game better in the future. You may choose to believe that they are incompetent, greedy amateurs with a secret villainous agenda if you so wish, but I believe that any business that wants to stay in business is more likely to follow the behaviours of my guess.

Yep. However they change the leveling it will hurt someone. Which is why they should have refunded the difference in ISO to everyone.

This way the heavy 3* rosters could have started into heavy 4* transition with extra ISO. The heavy 3* transitioners would be heavy 3* "finished". The 2* starting transitions could level up their 3*'s faster. The whales would have ISO to put into the next 4*, since they are coming out so fast.

There would be no complaints, and to MarCar's point above ("a boost to everyone is a boost to no one"): at least folks that were in the next "tier" would be able to move up yet another tier or at least be able to further solidify themselves in their tier. Instead, this change allows the lower tiers to catch up to the upper ones, with no help to the Vet tiers in response. As usual.

In response to "The fact is, you bought the game (leveled your heroes) at the original price, so you felt the value was right for the payout before. If it's getting even better now, you certainly don't deserve a refund for that." -- ha ha! The fact iseveryone would be be sitting with five million ISO wondering what to do with it. Might as well put it in the 3*'s, it's not like D3 is dropping 4*'s on anyone and it's not like D3 is indicating at all they'll ever make it cheaper to level anyone. The whole point of why refunds should happen is that the value (of leveling) is "getting even better now" to anyone who didn't take that value earlier; but the earlier folks had very little else to do with their ISO. So they should be punished for that? Wow.

snlf25

I don't agree that they should refund any iso. I've made out like a bandit having spent mine the way I have. Is it a lot easier for people coming into the game now? Yes and no. They get a huge boost in the value of their iso but they didn't pick up the covers as they came out like we did so they have a huge backlog of covers to earn. They haven't been boosted to our level overnight. They also missed out on the 3 or 4 events that didn't have Mohawk Storm as a top prize over the last year and a half too. So while the climb is easier, it is also a lot taller. I dunno.

Unknown

I agree with SnowcaTT: ISO has to be refunded, because R75 is gamechanging.

Let me explain: I started playing in January 2014, most of the time daily. I try to get 300 or 400 points in PVP, finishing a season with 5000 points (placing 500-1000). In PVE I try to finish Top 150.
In September 2014 I needed 450K ISO to train the characters to their then possible maximum - last day with R74 it was 1650K. To sum up: No chance of training all the characters.
With R75 I needed 1150K ISO. This looked a little better to me. Now I wanted to know, how much ISO I would need if the R75 changes were applied right from the beginning. To my surprise I would have a little surplus of 50K.

I think the ISO changes in R75 were the right decision, but if you take a look at my numbers above, you will understand why vet players want an ISO refund.

Arondite

SnowcaTT wrote:

Yep. However they change the leveling it will hurt someone..

Except for the fact that no one is currently getting hurt. Your heroes do the same thing they did before, and future heroes will cost you less. You're fine.

ronin_san

TLCstormz wrote:

I am literally terrified to level up my 3*s with my 750,000 Iso, :+/

I was with you until this point. Dude. I've got a HEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALTHY roster, but you've got 750K iso and are worried about scaling?

I'd max out: Loki, Torch, Hood, juuuust 'cuz if I had that kind of iso. Scaling be damned. I'd just throw 3* at the problem.

GothicKratos wrote:

It's not even an accurate accusation, as it's been pointed out time and time and time and time again that your PERFORMANCE has an infinitely larger impact on your scaling, than the miniscule impact that your top three leveled toons do

My problem here is that the first 2 PVP (series) of this season opened, for me, with maxed 3* (or higher) for each of the fights, and at least two - 3 skips later. OPENED. Only this Doc Ock fight started me fighting people under lvl 100. I do NOT agree with what they "claim" is the MMR, because my experience this season directly contradicts it.

Eddiemon

BBTBob wrote:

[
Does having level 166 characters effect your scaling? No. Does playing with and winning with level 166 effect your scaling? You bet your donkey! It's a trick!!!

Sure level them up, but level them up evenly or face every enemy scaled to your "A" team. Mark my words or cry later!! LEVEL YOUR CHARACTERS EVENLY!!!!!

Winning affects your scaling. The fact that they were 166 is irrelevant.

Of course yes, you will win more battles and harder battles with 166s than you will with 94s or whatever. But that's your behaviour and choices, not your arbitrary character levels.

I have over a page of 166s now and I rely on them a lot and I have still not seen an opponent scaled over 230 because I don't grind stuff into the ground and I skip events that have nothing for me.