possible ISO-shortage solution: elder-game ISO multiplier

Marc_Spector

While I think Champions are the best new addition to the game & meta in a long time, the ISO shortage has been a near-unanimous issue on these forums since long before the Champion feature was added.

The astronomical jump in cost to max-level a 4* character is quite at odds with the average flow of character releases, and I can't be the only longtime player sitting on a pile of fully or mostly-covered underleveled 4*s with woefully inadequate resources to level them. I'm still thoroughly enjoying this game after 2+ years of play, although even with playing and placing well-enough in every type of PVE/PVP event on a weekly basis, I still feel that the slow rate of ISO gain (relative to my current needs) has had the opposite effect of burning out on MPQ... rather, my progress feels like it's slowed to a snail's pace, and I'm feeling less and less inclined to play as much as I'd like to when the ISO rewards are such a pittance.

IDEA:
Many others games, from mobile apps to JRPGs, have some sort of elder-game item -- either findable or available as a onetime purchase -- which permanently doubles the amount of gained XP or gold or whatever the game's own leveling currency is.

Why don't we have one of these in MPQ? For balance's sake (and to keep new players from whaling the requirements at game-start) maybe it could only available to those who've hit certain criteria, such as 1 year of playtime and a certain amount of rostered/fully-covered 3*s and/or 4*s.

What do you think?

jvasses

great idea,...maybe after 15 championed 3*s.

mpqr7

I would be up for something like this. When I was in my 2* days, I could fully cover and max one out in around a week. Even for 3*s, it only took about 1-2 weeks for me to fully level up my first few.

But the 4*s take absolutely forever to level up, and other than some of the top ones (jg, hb, iceman, cyc, etc) most of them will not scare away your opponents in pvp (looking at you iw, mr f).

Surprisingly, it's actually easier to level up a decently covered 5*. It may take a lot of ISO, but you actually make progress in terms of it being useful in pvp. ie a 5* at 315 is good, at 330 is great, at 345+ can be quite devastating. Whereas comparatively a 4* is weak whether at 120, 150 or 170. 4*s are basically useless until they are in the 230+ levels, at 11+ covers.

Lower leveled 4*s are only useful in their ddq battles, as long as they're generally at least around 130.

simonsez

Someone else already posted a good idea earlier. Make an ISO multiplier a function of the characters you're using. Eg, if you're using full-covered 3*s, ISO x 2. If you're using full-covered 4*s, ISO x 3. If you're using fully-covered 5*s, shut up, you already won.

Marc_Spector

simonsez wrote:

Someone else already posted a good idea earlier. Make an ISO multiplier a function of the characters you're using. Eg, if you're using full-covered 3*s, ISO x 2. If you're using full-covered 4*s, ISO x 3. If you're using fully-covered 5*s, shut up, you already won.

I didn't see that one -- great idea!!!

Azoic

Something has to be done. I ground iso for a week, and it isnt even enough to go from 230-270. That is absurd.

I play Dungeon Boss, too. They have varying islands you can do each day, one being a gold island, varying levels of difficulty. They have a daily tower that gives a nice gold payout and even their version of hp. Plus, you can use the pvp currency to buy 250k each day for 500 scrolls (5 matches worth)

I feel like I make progress every day I play. This game? Not so much. And guess where my money goes.

LegendReborn

Aes had a great post regarding PVE rewards and creating a scaling multiplier to the 20 iso rewards. The easy nodes could easily continue to give out 20 iso a pop but when I'm grinding the hard nodes, it really sucks getting "rewarded" with 20 iso or the wonderful crit boosts (because why would they ever want to give out other boosts?).

XandorXerxes

simonsez wrote:

Someone else already posted a good idea earlier. Make an ISO multiplier a function of the characters you're using. Eg, if you're using full-covered 3*s, ISO x 2. If you're using full-covered 4*s, ISO x 3. If you're using fully-covered 5*s, shut up, you already won.

I actually don't like that idea - defeats the point of championing, which lets the lower tier fight at a higher one. No need to penalize someone because they have a level 150 Ares, but their 3*s are still low enough that Ares comes out as a viable candidate.

Just take the average level of the first 1-2 roster pages of non-5* characters and base it on that. Or heck, the entire roster minus the top 5 and bottom 5 characters (accounts for 2*s with 5*s and 4* players with 1* characters slotted for team-ups).

The more ISO you've spent to level people up, the more ISO you get back. Theoretically someone could sell off all of their 1*, 2*, and 3* characters in order to raise that average level up, but that would mean they're always using a loaner in PvP and adding a new 4* would drive their average down quickly. Alternatively the size of the roster could be checked, and anyone below a certain size (30?) would get some extra 2-3* values (120?) mixed in. That would prevent the "minimum roster of maximum characters" and also impact the newest users, which would let them throw ISO at standard tokens until they realize that's a bad idea.

Essentially I'm saying that there are several ways to combat the "average roster level abuse" issue, if it even becomes one, which could also address the 5* scaling issue at the same time (assuming the devs even wanted to address it).

simonsez

XandorXerxes wrote:

I actually don't like that idea - defeats the point of championing, which lets the lower tier fight at a higher one. No need to penalize someone because they have a level 150 Ares, but their 3*s are still low enough that Ares comes out as a viable candidate.

Just take the average level of the first 1-2 roster pages of non-5* characters and base it on that.

But if someone has so many low 3*s so they're still using Ares, aren't the first 1-2 roster pages probably going to be mostly 2*s? If they're not, it hardly takes any ISO to get a 3* to lv120, where most are going to be better than Ares. And if someone is still working on getting 3* covers, I don't think they're short on ISO.

AnonymousMPQ

How about, for ever level you level a champion, it increases the sale price of that characters cover?

So like for a 2*, every level you champion your the sale price goes up 10 iso, so after 50 levels of championing, the sale price would have gone up from 250 to 750. After you max championing, you'll probably going to go back to selling extra covers again.

3* could go up by 20 iso per champion level so after 100 champion levels, cover sale price would go from 500 to 2500.

It incentives championing, continues the road map for transitioning to the next tier, it's a small step to increasing earnable iso from gameplay and some players might even slot characters they weren't planning to so make their future covers sell for more.