ISO shortfall more painful than ever

Helen keller

Championing seems like an awesome new feature at the onset, too early to see if it will affect gameplay negatively but I can't imagine it outweighing the pros...

With that being said I'll just be sitting out on all the fun for the foreseeable future, not really a light at the end of the tunnel.

I have every 3* fully covered but a few, although only a few are even to level 130, none to 166, and most are well below 100.

I have multiple covers of every 4* but miles and venom, some almost fully covered, but only one I've been able to get to 200...obviously 5* are being ignored...

I play every day, all DDQ, hit as many lightening rounds as possible, and play every pvp, somehow finishing over 1300 with my weak lineup thanks to other alliances (I've sat some out this season because I have all the reward maxed).

I'm sure many people are in my position... I just have to continue to sell my extra covers, it is more painful than ever now, with no end in sight, it just gets worse, I've spent thousands to try and catch up unfortunately, but just fall further behind, I guess if you haven't been playing since the beginning your doomed to this fate.

Cool new feature guys, too bad a 200+ day guy that has supported game extensively has to sit on th sidelines.

Punisher5784

BlackBoltRocks wrote:

I have 1.2 million iso currently. That could champion most of my 2*, and maybe 10 3* at most (my 3* are currently softcapped at lv 120). After that...well Iso has just become more precious than HP

I remember when I had 3.5M iso saved with all 3*'s fully covered at lvl 115-130.. then I pulled SS, so I finally made the decision to lvl my top 3*'s to 166.. those millions of Iso went QUICK!

dider152

Another bad move by the devs. Releasing a promising feature like this and then restraining or by not increasing the iso rate.

Pessi

I'm currently farming all the nodes in the Prologue to scrape as much ISO as possible while not wasting healthpacks!

Fun times.

puppychow

Pessi wrote:

I'm currently farming all the nodes in the Prologue to scrape as much ISO as possible while not wasting healthpacks!

Fun times.

I might join you in playing prolog farmer. I have SW cover expiring in 20+ hours, and my SW is only 120. Need like 90k iso to max her and then cough up 7.5k iso fee to champ her.

Dragon_Nexus

Helen keller wrote:

I've spent thousands to try and catch up unfortunately, but just fall further behind, I guess if you haven't been playing since the beginning your doomed to this fate.

Cool new feature guys, too bad a 200+ day guy that has supported game extensively has to sit on th sidelines.

I'm sorry, what?
Why spend thousands to reach a point you're clearly not ready for yet? At 200 days you should still be building your 3* roster to a degree but relying a lot on 2*s still. You should be transitioning.

Either way, why not bump up your 2*s? I've got a complete roster of 3*s and everyone except Quicksilver is level 166 and I'm starting out with my 2*s primarily. I championed Luke Cage, She Hulk and Kamala simply because I had two covers for She Hulk and LC/Kamala both benefit from multiple builds.

The rest of my time is going to be focussed on championing my 2*s.
At the 200 day mark you shouldn't be worrying about not competing with 4* players, dude. You're rushing way too hard. It's a marathon, not a sprint

Punisher5784

Pessi wrote:

I'm currently farming all the nodes in the Prologue to scrape as much ISO as possible while not wasting healthpacks!

Fun times.

Reminds me when I use to play World of Warcraft and I was forced to go back to the Prologue to kill lvl 1 Pigs for 13 XP because there was some jerk player who was so strong that he would kill anyone with 1 hit. Me and a bunch of friends killed Pigs for weeks until we were strong enough to take him down as a team.. my Dad died along the way while handing me the Sword of Thousand Truths.. boy was it epic and full of Hot Pockets!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgvTgV5EoGY

Tatercat

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

Helen keller wrote:

I've spent thousands to try and catch up unfortunately, but just fall further behind, I guess if you haven't been playing since the beginning your doomed to this fate.

Cool new feature guys, too bad a 200+ day guy that has supported game extensively has to sit on th sidelines.

I'm sorry, what?
Why spend thousands to reach a point you're clearly not ready for yet? At 200 days you should still be building your 3* roster to a degree but relying a lot on 2*s still. You should be transitioning.

Either way, why not bump up your 2*s? I've got a complete roster of 3*s and everyone except Quicksilver is level 166 and I'm starting out with my 2*s primarily. I championed Luke Cage, She Hulk and Kamala simply because I had two covers for She Hulk and LC/Kamala both benefit from multiple builds.

The rest of my time is going to be focused on championing my 2*s.
At the 200 day mark you shouldn't be worrying about not competing with 4* players, dude. You're rushing way too hard. It's a marathon, not a sprint

Hey, I'm at Day 805, I STILL avoid competing with 4* players. (Only got two max covered and the highest is 209). And I rarely bank any ISO, the most I've ever had at one time was 180K I think. I liked maxing my 3*, got about 20 of them maxed. Which is great for championing right now.... if I had the ISO.

You don't have to be top 10 or even top 50 to have fun with the game. Can't remember the last time I scored above 20 rank in anything. Once I stopped worrying about what others got ahead of me, I enjoyed the game much more.

Qwertylot

I'm on day 761 as a semi-casual player, and I've championed 6 3*. I have eleven more that I could champion, and four of those that I could immediately level up with extra covers.

I can't though because I'm out of Iso, and I've already reached about the max of Iso I can get today. I finished scraping up any remaining Iso from the Prologue a year ago. I'm not sitting on a huge stockpile either, as I've been slowly max leveling up all my 3* and starting to level my 4*.

And there is no way I'm spending $100 on 78,000 Iso- that's just an insulting amount of Iso for the cost. So I'll just continue with my slow championing. With daily play, I can probably champion one or two 3* a day over the next two weeks.

But yes, the lack of Iso is even more keenly felt with this update.

Helen keller

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

Helen keller wrote:

I've spent thousands to try and catch up unfortunately, but just fall further behind, I guess if you haven't been playing since the beginning your doomed to this fate.

Cool new feature guys, too bad a 200+ day guy that has supported game extensively has to sit on th sidelines.

I'm sorry, what?
Why spend thousands to reach a point you're clearly not ready for yet? At 200 days you should still be building your 3* roster to a degree but relying a lot on 2*s still. You should be transitioning.

Either way, why not bump up your 2*s? I've got a complete roster of 3*s and everyone except Quicksilver is level 166 and I'm starting out with my 2*s primarily. I championed Luke Cage, She Hulk and Kamala simply because I had two covers for She Hulk and LC/Kamala both benefit from multiple builds.

The rest of my time is going to be focussed on championing my 2*s.
At the 200 day mark you shouldn't be worrying about not competing with 4* players, dude. You're rushing way too hard. It's a marathon, not a sprint

I understand your point, and hindsight is 20/20 as far as how I spent my HP, frankly I was trying to "skip" over leveling 3* for now so I could get 4* leveled so it is easier (less shield hopping) for me to reach 1300 every pvp...my point this thread is now of course with this awesome new feature my plan has blown up in my face, I want to champion!!! Again, great addition to the game guys, I'm just bummin as usual:/

Unknown

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

I'm sorry, what?
Why spend thousands to reach a point you're clearly not ready for yet? At 200 days you should still be building your 3* roster to a degree but relying a lot on 2*s still. You should be transitioning.

With respect, I disagree. I'm just past day 250 myself. My 3*s are almost all in the 125-130 bracket, about a half dozen with max covers. 2*s without championing are basically irrelevant to me. I think that qualifies as having completed the 2*-3* transition, and I've been a VERY casual player since the anniversary Galactus runs (when I pulled my Silver Surfer on my first ever Legendary Token and tinykitty'd my scaling). In other words, I haven't progressed much in the last 80-90 days so the transition was over before day 200.

I've no doubt that day 200 for early adopters of the game was similar to how you've described, but the game's early stages are a lot faster now since DDQ was introduced. (The early stages of the game will be even faster again now with Championing so that's something to bear in mind.)

More generally on the original topic, I feel the pain of the OP. Championing 2*s is fun and will temporarily restore some roster diversity but anyone with a 3* roster mostly between 110 and maybe 145 (basically the gap between finishing 3* transition and starting 4* transition...aka the first part of the game where ISO is more important than covers) is going to have a reduced benefit to the 2* champion rewards (which would have been unbelievable to have 3 months ago) and, unless they've a large ISO stockpile, a long wait before they can start widespread 3* championing.

djpt05

As refreshing as champions have been I think it highlights even more the ISO 20 reward we get in PVE even if there are still prizes left on the Node.

For the first time ever I was pissed that the current EoTS sub is lasting two days instead of having a one day sub. I would gladly keep playing the PVE Nodes for remaining ISO rewards but I'm not going to waste my time earning 20 ISO while real rewards still remain.

alaeth

I think the biggest issue is the VALUE of is way off... for $100 (right now... before the HP to cover change) I can FULLY cover a 4* character (with one of each cover earned). Getting only 78k ISO is a slap in the face.

In order to be equal, buying ISO needs to be bumped to at least 300k for $100.



As the previous poster pointed out, the 20 ISO reward is even more of a problem now, and looking at the rewards from Championing there needs to be a second change (someone is compiling a complete spreadsheet, viewable here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0)

Increase the rewards by four times (to a MINIMUM of 1000). Look at the 2* ones: it costs 2500 initially, and with the change to 4x you would recoup your losses (value of flat-out selling the cover, versus Championing) after 4 covers. This also gives a player much more value for those "fully covered/fully levels/ useless" covers, which I think was the main intention of this patch... add new value into "garbage covers"...

(edit) Looked at the rewards for championing levels again... the idea that a 4* championed 3 levels (grants 2500 iso) is in anyway useful at that level... someone that has a fully covered, fully leveled 4* character needs a HUGE amount of iso to be leveling their 5s... 2500? ouch.

Berserk_Al

It would be cool if they replaced the Critical boost in node rewards for a new, ISO boost. During battle, it would do nothing but take a Team-Up slot, but after that, the ISO reward of that battle would be multiplyied for 1.5, 2 or 3. Imagine scoring 40 ISO instead of 20 for three battles.

GrimSkald

Look, adding covers to Championed characters is really cool, I'll admit, but you have to take a step back and have a hard look at what it gets you:

- A nifty prize. In particular the first one gets you a token (Heroic for 2*, Legendary for 3* or 4*.)

- the character becomes incrementally more powerful

That's it. While the prizes are in fact pretty neat, after the first one it's mostly just Iso (enough to offset the Iso you're not getting by selling the covers,) and Hero Points (good, but will be less useful when they make it that you can't buy covers with them.) The power jump it pretty negligable. It will take dozens of these covers before your character starts kicking more butt in PVP and PVE.

So you need to take a good hard look at what characters you want to champion, and what characters you don't. Sure, you want to Champion them all, but that's really not feasible, nor does it really get you much. Heck, even Championing all your maxxed characters may not be feasible - if that's the case then .... don't.

Don't promote them. Sell the cover for Iso. You'll get another sooner or later. It's only one level. Focus on bringing up your characters and playing the game.

Take a good look at your tokens, too. Think about what you'll get for opening them. The answer may be "I might get more covers for my champions, but I also might get covers for characters that I can't afford to promote right now, and selling those covers will hurt." If that's the case hoard your tokens. You don't need to open them and if you wait until you rebuild your Iso reserves you may well get better use out of them.

Actually, that's what I'm doing, and I'm a 4* player. I did have a huge "token party" when the change went in, and now I'm staring at my 4 Doctor Doom covers (and a 153 Doctor Doom,) and thinking that 37.5k Iso would be better spent on bringing my Red Hulk or Cyclops up so I don't have to waste their covers if I draw them. Heck, even the 1 Patch cover (on a 166 Patch) doesn't seem quite as useful as putting that 7.5K into another character. Patch will come around again sooner or later, and I'm not even opening my Legendary Tokens right now (see above note about non-maxxed characters.)

GurlBYE

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

At the 200 day mark you shouldn't be worrying about not competing with 4* players, dude. You're rushing way too hard. It's a marathon, not a sprint

This idea worked a lot better when there weren't 25 4 stars and a looming 5 star tier that isn't even on the horizon, it's here.

with 40 3 stars, you don't need all rostered or covered to transition. Just like plenty of players are going 4-5 when the tier clearly isn't done.

It can't take 1 year of transition to reach the penultimate tier for the lifespan of this game.
Then why even be free to play? (he even mentioned paying money)

Punisher5784

Berserk Al wrote:

It would be cool if they replaced the Critical boost in node rewards for a new, ISO boost. During battle, it would do nothing but take a Team-Up slot, but after that, the ISO reward of that battle would be multiplyied for 1.5, 2 or 3. Imagine scoring 40 ISO instead of 20 for three battles.

In the original Puzzle Quest, you would earn Gold (Iso) but actually matching during battle.

Example:




You would gain Iso but no damage would be done. There was some strategy if you did not want to take damage, you could sacrifice income. It was interesting.

I doubt we would ever see this but it would be cool to see different random tiles fall down.

simonsez

GrimSkald wrote:

Take a good look at your tokens, too. Think about what you'll get for opening them. If the answer may well be "I might get more covers for my champions, but I also might get covers for characters that I can't afford to promote right now, and selling those covers will hurt." If that's the case hoard your tokens. You don't need to open them and if you wait until you rebuild your Iso reserves you may well get better use out of them.

That's a fair point, but once you've champed 25 characters or so, you might be better off opening those tokens and hope they generate ISO via the add-a-level awards. While hoarding tokens waiting for champing to go live, I was pretty much ISO neutral. It's hard to build up without covers generating ISO.

SnowcaTT

I had heard ISO would be needed, hoarded 350K, and championed all my max characters.

This had the effect of (continuing) leaving most of my 4*'s under level 200...something I don't know when (if ever) I'll fix. I have four maxed, and have been using those ones basically forever, and apparently that will continue for the long foreseeable future (since RNG has blessed me with very few 5* covers). Diversity!

It's basically impossible to max one 4* a season...and they release two 4*'s in that time period.

Arimis_Thorn

Punisher5784 wrote:

BlackBoltRocks wrote:

I have 1.2 million iso currently. That could champion most of my 2*, and maybe 10 3* at most (my 3* are currently softcapped at lv 120). After that...well Iso has just become more precious than HP

I remember when I had 3.5M iso saved with all 3*'s fully covered at lvl 115-130.. then I pulled SS, so I finally made the decision to lvl my top 3*'s to 166.. those millions of Iso went QUICK!

How on earth are people amassing that much ISO? I think the most I ever had was slightly north of 100K.

DaveR4470

Arimis Thorn wrote:

How on earth are people amassing that much ISO? I think the most I ever had was slightly north of 100K.

Once upon a time there were only 20 characters or so, and once you levelled them, there was nothing elso to do with the ISO but save it. (Doubly so if you were soft-capping.) And you can clear a good chunk of ISO from a PvP event when you consider unwanted tokens. So that's a lot of potential accumulation.....

Having said that.... yeah, I can't fathom how you'd wind up with millions of iso.