ISO cost? Goooood grief.

Unknown

I think ISO cost too much, period. My proof?

People shell out money for HP...but not ISO. That shows the value right there.

Here is the source of the problem though, pricing for ISO was set in the games infancy and never adjusted. That pricing would have been fine when everyone was working on 2*s...it made sense. Add in the difficulty it was to earn ISO and yeah, I could "see" the cost.

But now I get 5k a day for doing DP. Add in other various bonuses and I'm aroudn 7.5k a day easy, which cost about $15. I'm not special, I don't get more ISO than the next man, I figure I'm a 'tiny bit' over average, simply due to roster size. I don't think ANYONE would spend $15 dollars to equate to 30 minutes worth of play time. If they want to get that ISO money from folks, it needs to be adjusted for the current game trending to 4*.
- Unreall

GrimSkald

Unreallystic wrote:

I think ISO cost too much, period. My proof?

People shell out money for HP...but not ISO. That shows the value right there.

Here is the source of the problem though, pricing for ISO was set in the games infancy and never adjusted. That pricing would have been fine when everyone was working on 2*s...it made sense. Add in the difficulty it was to earn ISO and yeah, I could "see" the cost.

But now I get 5k a day for doing DP. Add in other various bonuses and I'm aroudn 7.5k a day easy, which cost about $15. I'm not special, I don't get more ISO than the next man, I figure I'm a 'tiny bit' over average, simply due to roster size. I don't think ANYONE would spend $15 dollars to equate to 30 minutes worth of play time. If they want to get that ISO money from folks, it needs to be adjusted for the current game trending to 4*.
- Unreall

Actually, we don't know that. Noone here buys Iso, but the devs have stated in the past that a lot of the players behave in different ways with their money than the forumites do. They haven't posted anything recently about who buys what, but I recall being surprised a number of times by what people spend their money on. DPDQ token packs, for instance.

They also increased the Iso you get for your dollar once, so it has been adjusted. On the other hand, I'm not saying it isn't ludicrous - it is. If they gave you 10x the Iso for the dollar I'd vaguely consider it, but at their current prices it's pretty much a no-brainer. I see the charge for Iso as a shortcut for people who don't actually want to play the game.

PeterGibbons316

I've said it before too. ISO prices are ridiculously expensive. I've actually thought recently "you know, I'd pick up a Stark Salary to max covers on [characters] but then I wouldn't have the ISO to level them.....guess I won't spend any money on this game."

Unknown

Don't worry about ISO. Eventually it'll catch up to your covers and then you'll be like me. Sitting around with 500k ISO and nothing to spend it on. Every time I get a new cover i can just max the levels on it.

simonsez

Top8Gamer wrote:

Don't worry about ISO. Eventually it'll catch up to your covers and then you'll be like me. Sitting around with 500k ISO and nothing to spend it on. Every time I get a new cover i can just max the levels on it.

You have all the 4s maxed and fully covered?

TxMoose

simonsez wrote:

Top8Gamer wrote:

Don't worry about ISO. Eventually it'll catch up to your covers and then you'll be like me. Sitting around with 500k ISO and nothing to spend it on. Every time I get a new cover i can just max the levels on it.

You have all the 4s maxed and fully covered?

only way I can see that is if you're f2p with limited roster slots, play relatively casually, and throwing away half the covers you win. then iso wouldn't be near as much of a problem. but then you wouldn't have all the ****s

Unknown

meh, that's actually not that far fetched. I got like 45-50 slots and if I participated in PvE more, I'd have a near maxed roster. I just don't chase 4s as they are usually out of reach, its 4s that make the ISO 'never enough', so if you have a stacked roster of 3s, it is very possible.
- Unreall

simonsez

Unreallystic wrote:

its 4s that make the ISO 'never enough'

Yes, hence my question. Solving the ISO problem by ignoring 4*s isn't much of a solution...

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

Unreallystic wrote:

its 4s that make the ISO 'never enough'

Yes, hence my question. Solving the ISO problem by ignoring 4*s isn't much of a solution...

No, but not having a large pool of 4s - such as myself - I have like 9 of them, but outside of XF and IW, they are sub optimal, means when I get a Kingpin cover, I through ISO his way, and then have to wait for the next cover.

I'm not saying you should hold on to the ISO or ignore 4s, just that I can understand being in that situation. Only reason I'm not in a similar situation is I lvl'd all my characters to at least 120 - that I could, so even Beast has ISO thrown his way, instead of maxxing out XF (scaling has kept me from doing it).
- Unreall

puppychow

Unreallystic wrote:

I'm not saying you should hold on to the ISO or ignore 4s, just that I can understand being in that situation. Only reason I'm not in a similar situation is I lvl'd all my characters to at least 120 - that I could, so even Beast has ISO thrown his way, instead of maxxing out XF (scaling has kept me from doing it).
- Unreall

I think you're doing the smart thing--leveling up your characters evenly to 120, and getting the most bang for your iso. This also helps in scaling for pve events. And yes, even beast is worth leveling to 120, b/c D3 made adjustments this past spring that made Beast playable now (specifically lowering cost to trigger bl as that is the basis for his other abilities).

Unknown

puppychow wrote:

Unreallystic wrote:

I'm not saying you should hold on to the ISO or ignore 4s, just that I can understand being in that situation. Only reason I'm not in a similar situation is I lvl'd all my characters to at least 120 - that I could, so even Beast has ISO thrown his way, instead of maxxing out XF (scaling has kept me from doing it).
- Unreall

I think you're doing the smart thing--leveling up your characters evenly to 120, and getting the most bang for your iso. This also helps in scaling for pve events. And yes, even beast is worth leveling to 120, b/c D3 made adjustments this past spring that made Beast playable now (specifically lowering cost to trigger bl as that is the basis for his other abilities).

With the ISO change + the multiple boosted character thing, it just made sense. The pro about it, I can almost always field a competitive team. The con is despite being covered back when he was in prime form, my XF is like 170 as my highest...so boosted 4s squash me. So I'm pretty strong up until my 'ceiling'. I ironically decided this week to start the 4* transition so we'll see how it goes...
- Unreall

loroku

So, couple things:

They recently drastically lowered ISO costs for the lower levels. Think about that one for a bit. It used to be worse.

Yes, purchasing ISO with actual money is easily the silliest thing to do with money other than setting it on fire. And at least when it's on fire it keeps you warm, so actually I changed my mind and buying ISO is worse.

The good news is that you can easily get over 4k / day from DDQ alone. Worst case, that's less than 3 weeks to max that guy. It could be worse (see point 1).

Finally:

DFiPL wrote:

my perspective is: how much time would it take you to earn that ISO...?

How do you value your time?

This is the exact backwards way to think about buying things in a FTP game, and the FTP game makers LOVE YOU every time you post something like this. A game isn't a job! Don't think about having to pay for time spent in a game or how long something would take to "earn" in a game because you shouldn't have to pay to continue to play a game! And the "earn time" was set by the developers of the game to make sure the calculation would come out pushing you to buy things! It's like the oldest trick in the book... if the book came out like 5 years ago, I guess. But seriously, that's called "how they got you" and it stars logic like that.

Turbosmooth

There has to be a way to make you put in a lot of game time. Because if the whole game progression could be bought for cheap, would you still even want to play? Manually progressing the characters is part of the motivation to keep going. I guess the other part is to get good enough to win missing covers/new characters.

My current goals are to get 4*/3* fully covered (collecting each one) and to level 166. I do not have a goal to take 4* above 166 at least at this time because that would hurt my PvE scaling. I have duplicates of a few: R&G, GSBW, Cage, Cyclops. I had more duplicates, but ended up selling. These duplicates made more sense when health packs were at 5. I'm going to be very selective of further duplicates. Fist might be the only other one I'll take on. However, none of the duplicates have been leveled up. I have 20 other characters I need to level up to 150 before I march them all to 166. That will take me many months, and will be slowed down with each new character.

TxMoose

Turbosmooth wrote:

There has to be a way to make you put in a lot of game time. Because if the whole game progression could be bought for cheap, would you still even want to play? Manually progressing the characters is part of the motivation to keep going. I guess the other part is to get good enough to win missing covers/new characters.

My current goals are to get 4*/3* fully covered (collecting each one) and to level 166. I do not have a goal to take 4* above 166 at least at this time because that would hurt my PvE scaling. I have duplicates of a few: R&G, GSBW, Cage, Cyclops. I had more duplicates, but ended up selling. These duplicates made more sense when health packs were at 5. I'm going to be very selective of further duplicates. Fist might be the only other one I'll take on. However, none of the duplicates have been leveled up. I have 20 other characters I need to level up to 150 before I march them all to 166. That will take me many months, and will be slowed down with each new character.

funny i recently started a thor dupe (2/1/1 now) and a loki dupe (-/-/1 now). if i could get hood blues I'd start him too but those are like sasquatch around here - only rumors.

Unknown

Turbosmooth wrote:

There has to be a way to make you put in a lot of game time. Because if the whole game progression could be bought for cheap, would you still even want to play? Manually progressing the characters is part of the motivation to keep going. I guess the other part is to get good enough to win missing covers/new characters.

My current goals are to get 4*/3* fully covered (collecting each one) and to level 166. I do not have a goal to take 4* above 166 at least at this time because that would hurt my PvE scaling. I have duplicates of a few: R&G, GSBW, Cage, Cyclops. I had more duplicates, but ended up selling. These duplicates made more sense when health packs were at 5. I'm going to be very selective of further duplicates. Fist might be the only other one I'll take on. However, none of the duplicates have been leveled up. I have 20 other characters I need to level up to 150 before I march them all to 166. That will take me many months, and will be slowed down with each new character.

But if that was really the case, why even offer ISO as purchasable.

Someone buying ISO until they get tired verse someone playing for a year and never spending a dime...who do they make more money off of? The goal should b3e a happy medium, I'm not saying a fire sale, 1 million ISO for $5, no, but cost should be adjusted such that it might make sense to buy ISO. Let's say you have9 covers for 3hor and decide to finally start leveling him. To do it through available ISO options, getting him to 166 (144k) would take almost exactly $200. NOPE. Not even goign to touch the 4* that take so long due to ISO, like twice as long.

the cost of ISO simply is too high for purchasing, especially in today's MPQ ISO economy.
- Unreall

Malcrof

Unreallystic wrote:

Turbosmooth wrote:

There has to be a way to make you put in a lot of game time. Because if the whole game progression could be bought for cheap, would you still even want to play? Manually progressing the characters is part of the motivation to keep going. I guess the other part is to get good enough to win missing covers/new characters.

My current goals are to get 4*/3* fully covered (collecting each one) and to level 166. I do not have a goal to take 4* above 166 at least at this time because that would hurt my PvE scaling. I have duplicates of a few: R&G, GSBW, Cage, Cyclops. I had more duplicates, but ended up selling. These duplicates made more sense when health packs were at 5. I'm going to be very selective of further duplicates. Fist might be the only other one I'll take on. However, none of the duplicates have been leveled up. I have 20 other characters I need to level up to 150 before I march them all to 166. That will take me many months, and will be slowed down with each new character.

But if that was really the case, why even offer ISO as purchasable.

Someone buying ISO until they get tired verse someone playing for a year and never spending a dime...who do they make more money off of? The goal should b3e a happy medium, I'm not saying a fire sale, 1 million ISO for $5, no, but cost should be adjusted such that it might make sense to buy ISO. Let's say you have9 covers for 3hor and decide to finally start leveling him. To do it through available ISO options, getting him to 166 (144k) would take almost exactly $200. NOPE. Not even goign to touch the 4* that take so long due to ISO, like twice as long.

the cost of ISO simply is too high for purchasing, especially in today's MPQ ISO economy.
- Unreall

Ok, say you buy 20k HP.. you snag a 40 pack or a 42 pack , even if all 2*s, you only get 10,500 ISO for a 42 pack, you are sure to get some usable 3 or 4*s, so maybe less depending on what you use, as far as apples to apples 78k iso for the price of a stark salary is fairly on par, and a whole lot more then you would get off selling covers from token packs.

That said, i would love the $99 to be at least 200k, would be the only thing that could ever incent me to buy it over HP.. token packs are just too much fun.

puppychow

Unreallystic wrote:

With the ISO change + the multiple boosted character thing, it just made sense. The pro about it, I can almost always field a competitive team. The con is despite being covered back when he was in prime form, my XF is like 170 as my highest...so boosted 4s squash me. So I'm pretty strong up until my 'ceiling'. I ironically decided this week to start the 4* transition so we'll see how it goes...
- Unreall

My highest level character is a 181 xf. That's it. After that I have a one page of 166 characters. It's less than one page of 166s, actually. But I still manage to do fairly decent in pvp. For the current marvel event, I needed to pick a different ending time than usual, and as a result I got stuck w/ a lot of xmen. It sux because half my top 10 are xmen. On the other hand, with so many xmen crawling all over my queues, I made three hits this morning for 70, 60, 60 points, all off xmen. And they were fielding max covered things, HBs, IFs, the usual defense that whales use. My secret? Boosted marvel & cmag protecting punisher until his retribution can go off.

The point I'm making is two-fold: first, you DON'T need to have max 4s to be competitive in pvp. Second, a well rounded roster, full of 120 guys is good enough to hang with the big boys.

Unknown

puppychow wrote:

Unreallystic wrote:

With the ISO change + the multiple boosted character thing, it just made sense. The pro about it, I can almost always field a competitive team. The con is despite being covered back when he was in prime form, my XF is like 170 as my highest...so boosted 4s squash me. So I'm pretty strong up until my 'ceiling'. I ironically decided this week to start the 4* transition so we'll see how it goes...
- Unreall

My highest level character is a 181 xf. That's it. After that I have a one page of 166 characters. It's less than one page of 166s, actually. But I still manage to do fairly decent in pvp. For the current marvel event, I needed to pick a different ending time than usual, and as a result I got stuck w/ a lot of xmen. It sux because half my top 10 are xmen. On the other hand, with so many xmen crawling all over my queues, I made three hits this morning for 70, 60, 60 points, all off xmen. And they were fielding max covered things, HBs, IFs, the usual defense that whales use. My secret? Boosted marvel & cmag protecting punisher until his retribution can go off.

The point I'm making is two-fold: first, you DON'T need to have max 4s to be competitive in pvp. Second, a well rounded roster, full of 120 guys is good enough to hang with the big boys.

I was wrong, I had leveled my XF a little so he was 178. Don't get me wrong, I do OK. I've got 3 4*s at 160-178, and 12 max 3s and it looks like 20 3*s between 120-140.

But like I said, I do fine in PvP, but I just get smacked around by people with the max and high lvl 4s - which is understandable - not a complaint. Perfect example, the current PvP I got to 1k *exactly haha*, got Kingpin, but I'll never be able to make 1300 for the IMHB. That's just my realistic ceiling, nothing I have is scary enough on defense to make the climb and not get dinged to hell.
- Unreall

Bowgentle

puppychow wrote:

On the other hand, with so many xmen crawling all over my queues, I made three hits this morning for 70, 60, 60 points, all off xmen. And they were fielding max covered things, HBs, IFs, the usual defense that whales use. My secret? Boosted marvel & cmag protecting punisher until his retribution can go off.

The point I'm making is two-fold: first, you DON'T need to have max 4s to be competitive in pvp. Second, a well rounded roster, full of 120 guys is good enough to hang with the big boys.

And I'm guessing you were out of Health Packs after those 3 matches, or were losing points faster than you could say "I have no defense".

It's nice that you can beat any team with any team - the point of doing it with Fistbuster or someone like Fist/Black Panther is that you need to win _fast_ and you need to win a _lot_ of matches to be able to race from 800 to a decent shielding position (at least 1k, ideally 1100+) for the final leg to 1300.

Try to make it unshielded to 1k with your Punisher team, let us know how that goes.
That's usually the place for first shields in an X-Men slice if you start with about 24 hrs to go.

Unknown

Bowgentle wrote:

puppychow wrote:

On the other hand, with so many xmen crawling all over my queues, I made three hits this morning for 70, 60, 60 points, all off xmen. And they were fielding max covered things, HBs, IFs, the usual defense that whales use. My secret? Boosted marvel & cmag protecting punisher until his retribution can go off.

The point I'm making is two-fold: first, you DON'T need to have max 4s to be competitive in pvp. Second, a well rounded roster, full of 120 guys is good enough to hang with the big boys.

And I'm guessing you were out of Health Packs after those 3 matches, or were losing points faster than you could say "I have no defense".

It's nice that you can beat any team with any team - the point of doing it with Fistbuster or someone like Fist/Black Panther is that you need to win _fast_ and you need to win a _lot_ of matches to be able to race from 800 to a decent shielding position (at least 1k, ideally 1100+) for the final leg to 1300.

Try to make it unshielded to 1k with your Punisher team, let us know how that goes.
That's usually the place for first shields in an X-Men slice if you start with about 24 hrs to go.

Not just that Fistbuster is harsh on healthpacks, but it takes a while to chew through it...the more time before a loss can happen, the more time you get to shield up. Nothing sucks more to win a big 50+ fight, only to have lost 130 during that time from a guy at 200+ and a guy at 500+. One of the big things the 4*s do bring to the table are on average higher hit points. devil dinosaur is prety my uch a joke, but chewing through his health takes time.
- Unreall