ISO Inflation

Argon Flame

Dear Devs

Just did some number crunching looking at the cost to level (and then champion) the characters in the game.
This 'global' cost relates to (but is not limited to) how long it will take to reach 'end-game'.

Currently

________Total Iso Cost___Iso per Character
1-Stars____178,860_______ 28,420
2-Stars___1,043,406_______74,529
3-Stars___5,096,760______127,419
4-Stars__11,730,276______378,396
5-Stars___2,856,480______571,296

Total: 20,905,782 Iso
My current Iso accumulation rate is a modest 18,000 Iso per day.
That is 3.2 years worth of grinding my friends.

Now, the release of 2 more 4-stars and 2 more 5-stars for civil war increases the total by:
1,899,384 or 9% of the current Iso.
or, to put it bluntly, adds another 3.5 months.

MY questions to the devs:
1. How do you see iso acquisitions affecting progress through the game?
2. Do you envisage that players should be aspiring to fully filled and levelled rosters for game play?
3. Do you think that if new players knew the extent of how much time/money investment they would have to make to level their characters (especially your new flashy 4-stars and 5-stars) they might be swayed away from the game?
4. Do you intend to increase iso rewards to match the increased requirements for levelling current and future characters?

Argon Flame

Additional thought:
When I started playing this game a year and a bit ago, I was under the assumption that HP acquisition would be the limiting factor to progression through the game. Now, while initially this was true (getting roster slots), I've come to realise that ISO is the defining factor.

Azoth658

I think the subject of this post is the key point that many of us would like some illumination on.

Now unless I am completely wrong and I don't think I am. Apart from DDQ coming in. We can earn roughly the same level of ISO (barring champion levels) as we did before 4*s became a large proportion of player's rosters.

When you also look at the huge ISO requirements to level a 4* we need something to change to aid the inflation.

Perhaps as a small suggestion without changing all the rewards in game you could allow us to add a level instead of selling unwanted tokens. If I have a 5/5/3 4* or 3* who isn't maxed allow me to add a level instead of a mere 1000/500 ISO. Now this doesn't help a huge amount but when the costs of leveling up become over a 1000/500 suddenly that (wasted) legendary/heroic token has a bit more worth.

In real life when the cost of living increases salaries go up eventually this is the nature of inflation. If 4*s were just a premium product we didn't need like before then asking for additional ISO didn't mean much but in the new world 4*s are required to progress and hit those top tier rewards so we need that additional ISO to progress our rosters at the same rate as we did in 3* land.

Polares

Yeah devs MUST say something about this ASAP, this is nuts, getting covers of chars we will never be able to use.

Iso improved a little in PvE when they created the 7-rewards structure, now it is probably 1.5 what it used to be. But that is clearly not enough. It needs to improve more, and PvP needs to improve too. Even DDQ should give more iso (with the new two battles for getting 4s they need to create i.e.).

AND 18k iso every day is a very good amount, I think my average is closer to 15k and I play both PvE and PvP (and DDQ of course), LR just sometimes (but that is just 3 days).

Pylgrim

Good analysis. I think a key point is that there are literally no additional ways for the 5* player to obtain more Iso than the 2* player for his 700% more expensive characters. The main difference is some additional rewards per PVP that hardly amount to a few hundred every 2.5 days. That, that is its own brand of ridiculous.

madsalad

Argon Flame wrote:

Dear Devs

Currently

________Total Iso Cost___Iso per Character
1-Stars____178,860_______ 28,420
2-Stars___1,043,406_______74,529
3-Stars___5,096,760______127,419
4-Stars__11,730,276______378,396
5-Stars___2,856,480______571,296

Total: 20,905,782 Iso

$26,802 give or take a few dollars. This is at 78K iso for $99.99.

That is without earning any in-game iso at all.

If you're earning 18K a day (which I think might be on the high side, but sure) That's 6,570,000 a year.

So, if you can wait a year, you'll save yourself over $8K ($18,377).

Of course, there will be about 15 more 4*s and 8 more 5*s by then...

Slarow

If they expanded on the championing idea as I posted here:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=43441

Giving you a 5x or 10x boost in the ISO applied to leveling a 13 character, sub-max-level character, it would remove the pain of selling those covers, and help the ISO flow.

Tarheelmax

I think I may be in the extreme minority here. I view ISO as probably the only aspect of this game that whales don't just skip over by paying (other than mega whales) because of how prohibitively expensive ISO is. I also think it's the only thing in the game that actually makes you employ some real strategy and allows you to differentiate yourself from other players.

It's the long game, and you don't need to max everyone. You just need to play a lot and use it wisely and you will progress.

I think there should always be a resource that is the bottleneck on progress. For a long time, it was 4* covers, now it's ISO (and 5* covers, but that's a "you better be lucky to pass through this area" type of bottleneck).

mpqr7

I don't expect to champion all my 4*s at once, but it would be great if it only took say 1 week per 4* instead of 2 weeks. Even just a tiny bit more ISO would be greatly appreciated.

Dragon_Nexus

Argon Flame wrote:

Additional thought:
When I started playing this game a year and a bit ago, I was under the assumption that HP acquisition would be the limiting factor to progression through the game. Now, while initially this was true (getting roster slots), I've come to realise that ISO is the defining factor.

The accepted model for F2P games is you have a general currency which is easilly obtained in-game which can be used for little things here and there, small purchases that help you along or help you build things or what have you.
Then you have a premium currency which *might* be given away for free in small quantities as a reward for reaching certain milestones, but generally you're expected to buy it and it's used for the stuff you really want.

This is how MPQ started out, with HP used for buying covers, buying packs, buying roster slots etc, and you used the ton of ISO you got from completing nodes and placing well to level your 1-2* characters while you slowly built up your 3* roster, maybe getting one of the two 4*s on the way.

Now, HP is barely used for anything other than roster slots and ISO has become the premium currency not by design but simply due to the supply not keeping up with demand. It's a weird case of the slowly boiling water and I really hope the devs have noticed it's too hot already, because we sure have.

Calnexin

The logical fallacy here - I don't think the game is designed to require us to max-champ every single character. The characters are there for variety. You're supposed to choose the characters you like and invest in them. While the game incentivizes a full roster via essentials, it likely was not intended that everyone owned and maxed every character. That's on us, the players. We're the ones champing at the bit with pokemon syndrome. It's a vicious cycle, because the highest tier competitors do max-champ everything, and if you have any shot at beating them you also need to max-champ whatever you can.

I've said it before - if we'd all just communally chill out a little this game would be less stressful. That's never going to happen, of course, so your choices are to run yourself ragged and/or pay out the nose to keep up, or downshift and accept that you're not going to get the new useless shiny toy for awhile.

TxMoose

I think most everyone is ok with not being able to max EVERYONE. what gets so disheartening and demoralizing is that every month 2+ characters get released making the disparity between available iso vs needed iso greater and greater, meaning I the usable portion of my roster continues to become a smaller and smaller percentage/ratio. THAT is what needs to be addressed for those covering 4*s at a reasonable pace. I now have x23 covered and nova mostly covered, those will be on my max list. venom is close too, but he won't be making my list any time soon. now, if they keep coming out with **** characters it won't matter, but quake and pun look promising, so that's more iso for my limited, selective list. if they add more TAHs that would be great. I'm not joking. more characters I can add, take up to some minimum level for ddq and be done.

carrion_pigeons

Argon Flame wrote:

MY questions to the devs:
1. How do you see iso acquisitions affecting progress through the game?
2. Do you envisage that players should be aspiring to fully filled and levelled rosters for game play?
3. Do you think that if new players knew the extent of how much time/money investment they would have to make to level their characters (especially your new flashy 4-stars and 5-stars) they might be swayed away from the game?
4. Do you intend to increase iso rewards to match the increased requirements for levelling current and future characters?

1-Iso exists to stop people from "finishing" the game.
2-Of course not.
3-Of course.
4-Of course not. They will eventually increase them by an insufficient amount, but the entire point is to make it impossible to max out a roster without doing something stupid and self-destructive.

dsds

carrion pigeons wrote:

Argon Flame wrote:

MY questions to the devs:
1. How do you see iso acquisitions affecting progress through the game?
2. Do you envisage that players should be aspiring to fully filled and levelled rosters for game play?
3. Do you think that if new players knew the extent of how much time/money investment they would have to make to level their characters (especially your new flashy 4-stars and 5-stars) they might be swayed away from the game?
4. Do you intend to increase iso rewards to match the increased requirements for levelling current and future characters?

1-Iso exists to stop people from "finishing" the game.
2-Of course not.
3-Of course.
4-Of course not. They will eventually increase them by an insufficient amount, but the entire point is to make it impossible to max out a roster without doing something stupid and self-destructive.

Totally agree. I have to add that the shortage of iso is supposed be there, but the gap has become so big due to the whales that keep buying and progressing faster than is expected. And thus they are the ones causing the bar to be raised unnecessarily. Unfortunately, they are also the ones paying for the game.

GrimSkald

I'm afraid I'm with those who don't see the ISO stream as inherently a problem. Not every new character is worth maxxing, and even if they were, the ability to max every character as it comes out should not come easily. Would I like more ISO? Of course, I would. Would I like it if it wasn't a full 2, 2.5 week commitment to max out a 4* character? Of course I would. Still, I don't see the lack of either of these things as something the Devs need to address.

They probably should increase the number of ISO streams at least a little, as the game is set up far more for 3* progression than 4*. With the 3*s I could (and in fact did,) level a lot of them to particular levels. I chose the same as certain soft-caps - 127, 139, and 153. It made it really easy to max them out - from 153 to 166 it was only 32K - I can make that on one Wednesday, two days otherwise. With 4*s... that's not really possible - once you get them past 200 you may as well max them, just because it took you so much ISO to get there.

Still, all that does is force me to decide who I should max and who I shouldn't. Right now I have 11 maxed 4*s. I'll tell you one thing - the remaining 9 4*s that I have max-covered are grouped into two categories - ones that I'll level max if I have nothing better to do, and ones that will never see level 270.

mpqr7

I'm currently championing 4*s based on which login rewards I have coming up.. I hate to see those covers go to waste!

I'm about to get 3 new SL covers over the next few months.. so he's getting it next. Yay! But I'll get to XFDP soon.. his covers are afterward!

I already have most of the good 4*s champed, so I'm fine.

GrimSkald

mpqr7 wrote:

I'm currently championing 4*s based on which login rewards I have coming up.. I hate to see those covers go to waste!

I'm about to get 3 new SL covers over the next few months.. so he's getting it next. Yay! But I'll get to XFDP soon.. his covers are afterward!

I already have most of the good 4*s champed, so I'm fine.

I think that first part is why I don't mind the ISO shortfall so much - I'm not going to tell anyone else how to play their game, but I take a much more "zen" attitude toward the extra covers. Sure, an extra Champion level would be awesome, but what will it get me in the long run?

Here's an example - looking back at my Roster, I maxxed Iceman in mid March - he was the last of what I consider the "top tier" 4*s. Since then I've drawn something like 6 Kingpin covers, for example. "Wow!" you might think. That's a lot! But let's look at what that gets you:

- +2 damage per color (so +6 per match 3) on all three colors
- an amount of extra hit points that I honestly do not know, but almost certainly less than 600
- A Legendary Token, 6 command points, 50 HP, and 2500 Iso - all of which I almost certainly will get at some point

So really, that's not that much. I'll probably get around to it eventually (and I did actually champ two other characters in that time period,) so that LT certainly isn't "lost." Heck, it may be more valuable later on.

Oh, and btw, I suspect you'll find XFDP more useful than Star Lord, if you have him cover maxxed. I use XFDP often - not as much as the top 5 4*s, but he works well with many other characters. I just can't see myself using Star Lord except when he's featured...

Mawtful

The devs already solved this problem: you can just buy ISO.

Easy, huh?!