Iso8, the holy grial of the game

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

beezer37_84 wrote:

Just a general comment: if lightning rounds were always on I would earn 10000 iso daily. .

But how many hours of play is that?

10-15 minutes sessions spread throughout the day at 6:15,7,9,11am,1,3,5,7,9,11pm.

Someone will say I couldn't keep that up but if they were truly offered all of the time I wouldn't need to.

EDIT: Also because of tanking my mmr would be so low that (under the current setup) no tourney would ever be a challenge for me.

Unknown

Waggon wrote:

Spencer75 wrote:

An iso shortage makes players make tough decisions on whom to level

Not really, at least for me. Impending nerfs/changes of questionable strength, nature, time frame, or even target are what make leveling decisions tough.

If I didn't know a change was coming, I'd have maxed spidey and mags in a heartbeat! Or a few others instead, if I had an idea of how strong they'd be afterwards. Maybe I'll even want to use hawkeye if he's getting a buff, because he's already fairly strong and hard to counter as a 2*, but as for now he's sitting at lvl6 even if I have the iso to max out 4 of him, just not worth the gamble. In any case, iso should probably be cheaper and more accessible, or have crazy sales x.x

You have 300k ISO? Spidey doesn't really need high levels, neither Mags. I consider them both staples, so i highly doubt they'd ruin em like Rags. Wolvie and Thor were both treated like royalty, and i expect the same for Spidey. Really, the only one I would consider on the list of changes is Xforce since he requires a huge investment.

Unknown

beezer37_84 wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

But how many hours of play is that?

10, 10-15 minutes sessions spread throughout the day at 6:15,7,9,11am,1,3,5,7,9,11pm.

Someone will say I couldn't keep that up but if they were truly offered all of the time I wouldn't need to.

So, 1000 ISO per hour.

Realize that you are in a minority of users. Most can not play 10 hours a day in short spurts. Many are lucky if they can carve out chunks of time to get up to 3 or 4 hours a day. Not to mention if you wanted to actually play other games throughout the day (especially on mobile where new games are being dropped daily).


Using your ISO earning rate, it would take 170 hours to max level a 3 star hero. For someone that plays about 3-4 hours a day, that could mean 45-50 days straight of playing this game to max level up one three star character. In that time frame, it's conceivable that two more 3 star characters are introduced.

Currently, there are 12 3-star characters available. Not to mention the 2 4-star characters that require an even more amount of effort to level up.

I'm not against grinding and those that have the capacity to grind should be rewarded, but there seems to be a huge imbalance of ISO coming in for players playing at the highest levels.

-- // --

So, those that are afraid of players leaving because all their characters get maxed, should instead worry about players leaving because the staggering amount of grinding that is required becomes a chore. Way more players will leave because of the latter versus the former.

Nemek

Toxicadam wrote:

beezer37_84 wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

But how many hours of play is that?

10, 10-15 minutes sessions spread throughout the day at 6:15,7,9,11am,1,3,5,7,9,11pm.

Someone will say I couldn't keep that up but if they were truly offered all of the time I wouldn't need to.

So, 1000 ISO per hour.

Realize that you are in a minority of users. Most can not play 10 hours a day in short spurts. Many are lucky if they can carve out chunks of time to get up to 3 or 4 hours a day. Not to mention if you wanted to actually play other games throughout the day (especially on mobile where new games are being dropped daily).


Using your ISO earning rate, it would take 170 hours to max level a 3 star hero. For someone that plays about 3-4 hours a day, that could mean 45-50 days straight of playing this game to max level up one three star character. In that time frame, it's conceivable that two more 3 star characters are introduced.

Currently, there are 12 3-star characters available. 2 4-star characters that require an even more amount of effort to level up.

I'm not against grinding and those that have the capacity to grind should be rewarded, but there seems to be a huge imbalance of ISO coming in for players playing at the highest levels.

No, he's saying he spends between 100 and 150 minutes for 10K for the day.

Unknown

Regardless of the total hours spent (although why did he answer '10' to my question?), he's playing at all hours of the day to maximize his ISO earning. That's just not feasible for 99.8 percent of people playing this game.


I feel like some people are defending the current trickle of ISO because they have spent real money on ISO in the past and wish to defend that investment. Not pointing fingers here, just trying to understand the psychology behind it.

Nemek

You're completely right that he would need to organize his day around being able to hit all of those times every single day. It's likely only a possibility for the retired/unemployed.

Looks like he wasn't sure how to format the sentence, but the 10 refers to the number of sessions. (10 sessions, each of 10-15 minutes)

Marty17

I reckon you should get bonus iso's (or xp) for using varied characters during battle (& win), that way it encourages gamers to risk to use low levelled characters.

Eddiemon

Toxicadam wrote:

I feel like some people are defending the current trickle of ISO because they have spent real money on ISO in the past and wish to defend that investment. Not pointing fingers here, just trying to understand the psychology behind it.

Based on what? The fact that you don't think people care about the quality and longevity of the game? Look at the ost of ISO. How much money would someone have to have wasted on it to have acquired an ISO advantage worth being protective of?

If you were gifted 10 million ISO, what would there be to play for anymore? Half the progression rewards would be worthless. PvP battles would be a reward less grind. Any event that didn't reward a new cover may as well be skipped. And when a new character like daredevil that is lacklustre comes out you may as well skip the month because there is nothing for you.

It's like reaching endgame in an MMO. The game turns into a dull grind where there are only specific rare items of value and everything else is trash. Most players leave at that point. Once players start leaving a game it goes downhill. I kinda like this game and wold like o stave off that day as long as possible.

Unknown

The only characters you absolutely need to reach max level are the ones that are already candidates to be balanced.

If you're talking about a perfectly normal character like Hulk or Punisher, seeing level 141 is intimidating, but they're really not as hard as they look. Spiderman obviously can lock them down fine. Even OBW can keep them tied up pretty long (3* characters tend to require a relatively long time to get going). A max cover The Hood would do fine against most 3* at say level 60 just due to his AP steal really messes up characters with a long ramp up time, which is very common in 3*s. Would you rather a max cover The Hood at level 141? Sure, but if I'll still use him at level 60 if I had him max covered (current I do not).

Unknown

Eddiemon wrote:

If you were gifted 10 million ISO, what would there be to play for anymore? Half the progression rewards would be worthless. PvP battles would be a reward less grind. Any event that didn't reward a new cover may as well be skipped. And when a new character like daredevil that is lacklustre comes out you may as well skip the month because there is nothing for you.

Creating a straw man concept of a 10 million dollar gift is ridiculous. It's not even worth deconstructing.


I'm merely saying that prizes/loot/gold/etc need to scale somewhat larger the further you get into a game because your needs change due to the exponentiality of level scaling and the dangers you are facing (when fighting) are greater.

This is a pretty standardized concept in games that have RPG mechanics attached to them.

Giving players (that have higher starred heroes) the chance to win 25-50% more ISO than the new players is not going to fundamentally break the game or cause this imaginary 'flight of bored players'.

What it is going to do is keep more higher leveled players engaged because they are seeing slightly more progress for their hours spent playing.

Judging by the amount of high-leveled forum goers that have already quit, I would say the current ISO-constrained system isn't doing much to keep them enthralled.

Unknown

I don't get why people are viewing ISO as a goal. To me it is a qualification, the goal is the tournament placings and the associated prizes. All I see is max level characters (which I consider o be 85 or 100+).

Ultimately I am in a situation where 85% of my roster is functionally useless because I'll never get to level them. Strong game design that.

Unknown

DaveyPitch wrote:

Polares wrote:

PD: I have read in other threads that some people has reserves of iso of 30k or 100k. How can you do that ?!?!?

I currently have 21k ISO in reserve, mainly because I don't want to spend it yet without some idea what the upcoming nerfs and boosts will do to characters. I don't want to waste it on someone only to find that Modern Hawkeye suddenly gets a great boost and becomes a character worth leveling up.

Yeah same here. I have like 47k iso saved up. I don't really want to level up much because there's no real incentive because everyone is going to get nerfed. I would start using up all that iso once the game starts giving up like 500 iso per match.

Spencer75

Waggon wrote:

Spencer75 wrote:

An iso shortage makes players make tough decisions on whom to level

Not really, at least for me. Impending nerfs/changes of questionable strength, nature, time frame, or even target are what make leveling decisions tough.

If I didn't know a change was coming, I'd have maxed spidey and mags in a heartbeat! Or a few others instead, if I had an idea of how strong they'd be afterwards. Maybe I'll even want to use hawkeye if he's getting a buff, because he's already fairly strong and hard to counter as a 2*, but as for now he's sitting at lvl6 even if I have the iso to max out 4 of him, just not worth the gamble. In any case, iso should probably be cheaper and more accessible, or have crazy sales x.x

If there was no shortage of iso you wouldn't have any decisions to make, you'd just max everyone out very quickly

ChrisV82

Bugpop wrote:

Are you skipping people? A very small percentage of people have maxed characters.

Of course, soon enough he will be penalized with Iso-8 for skipping matches, so that should be fun.

Unknown

Spencer75 wrote:

Iso is just right...

I don't want to see the price go down, it would become more of a p2w game

I'd also rather not see teams made up solely of leveled characters...

An iso shortage makes players make tough decisions on whom to level

The ISO shortage actually makes my decision on who to level way too easy. There's not enough to spread around, so it all has to go to my top 3 guys.

Unknown

RockMonster wrote:

The ISO shortage actually makes my decision on who to level way too easy. There's not enough to spread around, so it all has to go to my top 3 guys.

And if that top 3 guy gets nerfed, then you are screwed because you didn't have enough ISO to level up other characters.

So, it makes people's emotional reactions to character changes even more harsh and dramatic.

Unknown

You shouldn't be investing all your Iso 8 in the same 3 guys unless those guys are so powerful that everyone knows they're about to be nerfed. In that case you're betting on having a short term gain to offset the eventual loss.

The game is moving away from the whole 'one team fits all' scheme. Certain characters now matches up very well or very poorly against certain other ones. Patch can't defend against Thor/GSBW. Daredevil defends poorly against guys who can override red tiles. Hulk is simply not very good on offense. Punisher is strictly average. Even with Spiderman being the magic glue that holds your best 2 guys together, there are times where it is still advantageous to swap guys around for matchups. For example in The Best There Is, if the opponent has a level 141 Patch, you probably want to sub in GSBW or Thor for extra protection to deal with his Berserker Rage, or maybe you even want him to use Berserker Rage so you can immediately put the game away with a Thunder Strike or Deceptive Tactics.

Unknown

Nemek wrote:

You're completely right that he would need to organize his day around being able to hit all of those times every single day. It's likely only a possibility for the retired/unemployed.

Looks like he wasn't sure how to format the sentence, but the 10 refers to the number of sessions. (10 sessions, each of 10-15 minutes)

Let's go with retired/unemployed/(college/university) teachers. The only way I would have trouble hitting a lightning round is if I taught from say 1 to 2:15.

And yeah, Nemek had my meaning down, the 10 was just the total number of sessions, one at each of the times I listed.

Wasn't so much that I didn't format the sentence correctly, I just didn't read Adam's question fully and didn't see that he specifically wanted number of hours, my bad (bad habits of my students rubbing off on me?)

Unknown

But the point I'm actually trying to make is if lightning rounds ran all the time someone like me would have to plan even less when it comes to this game because at any two hour interval I could play and get 1000 iso (in 10-15 minutes). And that is true of anyone (people with lower level teams would have to plan a bit more to make sure to hit the seed teams).

I would of course love that but I imagine that would be detrimental in the eyes of a dev/designer.

Unknown

beezer37_84 wrote:

But the point I'm actually trying to make is if lightning rounds ran all the time someone like me would have to plan even less when it comes to this game because at any two hour interval I could play and get 1000 iso (in 10-15 minutes). And that is true of anyone (people with lower level teams would have to plan a bit more to make sure to hit the seed teams).

But you only represent a small, small percentage of the player base that could even do such a thing. That's assuming you could even keep up such a pace for more than a few weeks before burning out.

It's also a fantasy scenario. I'm not saying there should be 24/7 lightning rounds with PvE events running in conjunction. Just small things like bigger PvP win rewards, placement rewards in tournaments and bigger ISO prizes at the upper tiers of progression prizes.

The last PvE reward structure was a good step in the right direction (if only event itself wasn't so ****).