What's a reasonable Iso flow rate? [Poll]

Spencer75

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Since we're all in agreement that there isn't enough iso in the game, I thought it a good idea to figure out what people think would be a reasonable amount to be able to earn based on regular play. I think that's essential to answer some other questions (like what to do with the 20iso reward)

Some notes on the poll:

-Vote for whatever is closest to the number in your head. If it's 55k, vote 50k. If it's 65k, vote 75k.

-I've tracked my iso every day, and since the beginning of DDQ it averages just over 15k. I'm not casual, but I don't play LRs and sporadically play PvE. For 'normal' play, I think that's a decent baseline of current state. If you would vote less than that, tough.

Other points of reference (these exclude champion fees):
To max a 3* from scratch in one week requires 17132 per day
To max a 4* from scratch in one week requires 52271 per day
To max a 5* from scratch in one week requires 79133 per day

We're not all in agreement. I think they'll probably pump more iso into the game at some point soon and that is warranted but I feel we should always be operating at an iso shortage. Maxing everyone is boring. I like the current setup. We're all forced to make decisions on where to spend iso and we can't have it all.

With championing we have even more decisions to make. Do I take captain marvel from 150 to 166 so she can be championed or do I concentrate that iso on getting 4 stars to 270 or do I put iso into my fledgling 5 stars? And the best part is the answers to these questions will change over time.

I know I'm in the minority but I like the iso shortage.

Phillipes

Im OK with ISO flow just as it is right now.
Maxing character should be accomplishment, you should feel happy when you achieve that.

I dont want that everyone have all characters maxed.
It is nice to beat opponent in PVP who dont have maxed team on defence.

15.000 as minimum in this poll ?
Too much.
Id say 7000 as daily average for a week.

SnowcaTT

wymtime wrote:

The issue is this is 2 days out of the week. Thursday is a short day for most people for LR. The issue is the other 5 days a week when you get 4K from DPDQ then another 5K from PVE and PVP. That is also not counting boosts used to shield hop or difficult nodes in PVE.

For a long time I've been saying DPDQ ISO basically is offsetting your daily boosts/skip tax (and they are both taxes). I've found I basically have to full color boost every single match or I'm out of healthpacks immediately...and ISO still is way more common that HP.

Why LR's weren't a daily thing a year ago boggles the mind. Maybe D3 likes the Mondays where no one plays?

GrumpySmurf1002

Spencer75 wrote:

We're not all in agreement. I think they'll probably pump more iso into the game at some point soon and that is warranted but I feel we should always be operating at an iso shortage. Maxing everyone is boring. I like the current setup. We're all forced to make decisions on where to spend iso and we can't have it all.

I made 5.5 Million Iso last year, and I have 2 max 4* and only 12-14 3* to show for it.

I agree that some decisions are necessary, but with the current rates, you fall further behind a potentially maxed roster with every new release. That doesn't seem right either, you should at least be able to stay status quo. Ideally, you at least gain something.

Based on responses and the poll right now, double iso everywhere looks to be the most common answer. At 11M, it would still take well over 6 months to finish my roster. It may be more, I haven't done the math, nor accounted for whatever 5* come my way.

A ~9 month goal (after already playing nearly 2 years) seems way better than the current goal of "never gonna happen."

PeterGibbons316

Spencer75 wrote:

We're not all in agreement. I think they'll probably pump more iso into the game at some point soon and that is warranted but I feel we should always be operating at an iso shortage. Maxing everyone is boring. I like the current setup. We're all forced to make decisions on where to spend iso and we can't have it all.

With championing we have even more decisions to make. Do I take captain marvel from 150 to 166 so she can be championed or do I concentrate that iso on getting 4 stars to 270 or do I put iso into my fledgling 5 stars? And the best part is the answers to these questions will change over time.

I know I'm in the minority but I like the iso shortage.

I tend to agree with you, but I feel a change is necessary as the game has moved from regularly releasing new 3* characters with the occasional 4* to regularly releasing 4*s with the occasional 5*. So the ISO need has increased with no change in the rate at which it can be earned.

Of course all of this would be moot if they would simply implement some type of game mode where people can grind resources indefinitely (and in a manner that is more efficient than replaying prologue nodes for 20 ISO a pop.)

Jarvind

PeterGibbons316 wrote:

Of course all of this would be moot if they would simply implement some type of game mode where people can grind resources indefinitely (and in a manner that is more efficient than replaying prologue nodes for 20 ISO a pop.)

I'd be against that, just because you know people would figure out a way to bot it and max out all their characters in a week for free.

GrumpySmurf1002

Jarvind wrote:

PeterGibbons316 wrote:

Of course all of this would be moot if they would simply implement some type of game mode where people can grind resources indefinitely (and in a manner that is more efficient than replaying prologue nodes for 20 ISO a pop.)

I'd be against that, just because you know people would figure out a way to bot it and max out all their characters in a week for free.

Technically it exists now. There's very little to stop you from farming Shield Sim all season. Yeah, you'll lose points and be fighting 1 pt battles sometimes, but the opportunity is there.

Warbringa

Here is a detailed breakdown of my iso earning.

I consider myself an average, casual player with a developed 3* roster. It normally takes me not quite 2 weeks to level a 3* character from 110 to 166 (110 was my prior softcap). I have figured that my average iso breakdown is roughly as follows and I probably play 2 hours on average per day. I normally play PvE much more than PvP.

DDQ - 4700 (assuming 2* covers for rewards and 500 for 3* token)
Daily Team Alliance - 130 (my alliance is very casual and rarely hits 15 playing daily)
Daily Reward - 100 (varies but between standard token, 250 and 500 I think this is a good conservative estimate...I rarely get power boosts or healthpacks from daily reward)
PvE iso clears (3x daily when playing for LT) - 2950
PvE Rewards (250 for event token assumes 2*, 500 sub placement, and 250 average for event progression rewards) = 1000
PvP matches (usually seeds but sometimes a few matches to get iso and 300 lvl) - 600

That puts me at about 9,480 per day approximately although some days I learn less and some days more. This seems about right as that comes out to 11 days to max a 3* character from 110 to 166 (about 102,000 iso). I tried to be conservative on estimates but it could closer to 10,000 or 10,500 per day.

I voted for 20,000 daily as at my current rate, leveling 4* will take forever. I could live with 15,000 daily though as it is about a 50% improvement from my current iso income.

I have 5 more 3* characters I am going to max - After that I will work on my HulkBuster and start saving iso for when I someday get close to max covering a 4*.

ZootSax

I voted 25k/day, but I'd be completely satisfied if they simply started having the LR's take place 24/7 and also reinstituted the "first clear" bonus from PVE back-in-the-day (I believe it was 200 /node, but that's going off memory). That's a noticable boost for both PVP & PVE without really fundamentally changing anything. Another idea would be the ability to sell critical boosts, as currently they're less valuable than 20 rewards for many of us...

Monged4life

First clear was only in the prologue missions wasn't it? If I recall correctly its still there...

carrion_pigeons

I played seriously-ish back in the day, in a top 100 guild. Enough to get 4 Nick Fury covers when he was new, and place top 20 in a couple events per week, but never enough to get all the progression rewards or buy covers to get max characters. At the time, I really felt the pinch of not having any Iso, but I was a top 5% player for sure. Now that I've come back (after an 18 month break) and I'm probably (judging after trawling through alliances a bit) a top 50% player, I don't really feel the pinch at all. Iso certainly comes faster than covers, and if I've needed to save up for a week to level and champion Psylocke so as to not waste 2 covers I got for her, I've managed to do that without a ton of issue. If I got a 1-time bonus of ~400K Iso, I'd be caught up on all my rostered characters, which is vastly less than it was when I quit.

That said, I don't have a 4* roster to speak of. My most covered 4* is TAHulk at 6 covers (lucky me, right?). If (as I assume) 4*s are basically what 3*s used to be, they were designed to take way more Iso than you could conveniently make, presumably in order to flatten the progress of "endgame" players. I can understand the design intent: there aren't a ton of players like that and D3 uses Iso as a limiter on players to keep them a little more grouped up, progression-wise, so that people get more close matches. I don't even think it's bad design in theory, although the way they've set it up is a great source of burnout.

I think the problem is less that there isn't enough Iso (because that's a feature, not a bug), but more that the amount of Iso you can make in a day scales in a pretty punishing way if you don't spend your whole life on the game. I actually think they should *reduce* the amount of Iso available in the game by getting rid of (or artificially limiting) angles like LRs, because as they stand the game rewards you too much for going out of your way to play the game in tedious and unfun ways, for enormous amounts of (incredibly inconveniently-spaced out) time. Then they could just reduce the amount of actual Iso it takes to level a 4* and the pain would cease to be a problem.

tl:dr Asking for a higher Iso flow rate won't work how you want it to. It wouldn't make the game less tedious (because new sources of Iso would mean more work) and it wouldn't make it easier to close the gap between Iso and covers (because you're in the endgame and D3 isn't ever going to let you finish the endgame without spending a bunch of money). Ask instead for less grindiness.

Rumbles

I voted for 50k. Counting on a new release every other week players need more. Most of us don't acquire enough covers that the highest level is needed. 50k would cover a decent volume of upgrades for most players. I currently pull ~30k a day....no wonder I am falling behind more and more.

mouser

I'm at day 820, and since I started playing have invested 8.4m ISO in leveling my characters. That includes an adjustment for when R75 went live and changed the ISO costs. Without that adjustment I've invested 6.6m ISO. So I've basically earned about 10k ISO per day since I started playing.

It would take me 3.1m more ISO to softcap my current roster, and 10m ISO to max my roster if I had it fully covered. I've consistently had a softcap gap of ~3m ISO for well over a year--so I'm not closing ground. Factor in the new characters being released now are the more expensive 4* and 5*'s, compared to the cheaper 3*'s for much of MPQ's history. Since the first 5* Silver Surfer was released in September, we've seen 4x 5*'s and 9x 4*'s released. Cost to level those fully would be 5.5m ISO, or 37k ISO/day just to keep pace with the new character releases.

So about 40k/day just to keep pace. At least 50k/day to keep pace and have some left over to catch up if you don't have the older characters leveled.

UNC_Samurai

At the very least, can we all get on board with pushing for the following changes?

PvE: Increase the bottom reward from 20 to 50. Replace all the Crit Boost rewards with either 100 or 200, depending on difficulty.

PvP: Increase ISO rewards from 70 & 140, to 100 & 200.

I think those changes would result in a couple extra thousand ISO per day (maybe a little more), while preserving the sense that you need to work to get enough to level your characters.

mpqr7

Yes. Let's remove the Crit Boost. No one uses it. It's fine to give it away as a random bonus after defeating battles, like the way they sometimes give out other boosts as random bonuses. No need for it to be a specific node reward. Or sometimes mix it up and put in other boosts as node rewards besides the crit boost!

udonomefoo

UNC_Samurai wrote:

At the very least, can we all get on board with pushing for the following changes?

PvE: Increase the bottom reward from 20 to 50. Replace all the Crit Boost rewards with either 100 or 200, depending on difficulty.

PvP: Increase ISO rewards from 70 & 140, to 100 & 200.

I think those changes would result in a couple extra thousand ISO per day (maybe a little more), while preserving the sense that you need to work to get enough to level your characters.

SOLD! I'll take it.

ghostride23

I wouldn't mind seeing an iso scaling level system that regenerates with time like with time point system in pve with 20 iso being your lowest one point and not changing the rewards besides the critical boost. Of course that wouldnt work in pvp but something needs to change when facing a hard nodes in pve for 20 iso.

IFORANI

I vote 0 (which I know is not an option).

In the end it's not going to matter we don't have any power in suggestions with this. It will be to much or to little for someone. If it's not enough then the option they gave you is buy them.

I personally would like a possible different methods like for every clear on the PVE node get one level or something like this.

I hate it's like this but I get anywhere between 15 to 30k a day if I feel like puting in the work. But it's work for it.

FaustianDeal

I was keeping up with the 3* release schedule and sometimes had ISO left over to throw to a 4* that I had drawn a cover for. Then they changed to doing exclusively 4* releases and I have consistently fallen behind since then. The iso flow should track closer to the release calendar. If you are going to drop a 4* every 2 weeks then the ISO flow should be able to support that if a player is persistent.

TheDrStrange

Funny thing. I've been keeping track of my ISO earn each day since championing began. I was trying to plan out which 3 stars I was going to be able to champion and which extra covers I was going to have to sell prior to championing each character. I've been pretty consistently getting between 13-17K each day. Daily Deadpool, random alliance rewards, event rewards, selling a few covers here and there, and hitting various events are what I've been doing. I've been trying not to spend for skips as much or for color boosts, so that's helped keep the numbers up.

I don't think I play a crazy amount or anything (~2 hours or so), and I tend not to care about maxing out my points in PVE right now so I can mine out those nodes quickly (albeit inefficiently for points). I'm fine with that because I'm more interested in getting the node rewards, but I still tend to finish in the top 100 each day too which gives a nice bonus too.

I'd love to get a bit more ISO each day, but I don't think I'd need much more to feel like progression is happening at a reasonable rate for me. Heck, removing the 20 ISO reward until after you've gotten each of the rewards might be enough. At least I'd get to be more efficient with my time.