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aesthetocyst
aesthetocyst Posts: 538 Critical Contributor
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  • DaveR4470
    DaveR4470 Posts: 931 Critical Contributor
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    Dude, you are EN FUEGO. Keep the analytics coming -- they're fascinating.
  • DaveR4470
    DaveR4470 Posts: 931 Critical Contributor
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    BTW, I'm totally Daily Player by your metrics, and I've definitely seen the sort of trend you've plotted. ISO flows much better now that it used to, and leveling is a bit steadier. (I think -- and this is just an out-of-my-butt guesstimate -- that I'm pulling more like 12-13k a day max, though, based on how long it takes to accumulate approximately 100k of ISO, which is what I need to max out my well-covered 4*s.)
  • Argon Flame
    Argon Flame Posts: 98 Match Maker
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    A very good analysis as always.

    Daily resupply iso was also increased from 200 to 2000 per day. That also increased the rate of acquisition.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Great work Aesth!

    I have a couple of followup questions:

    (1) Am i missing something? It seems like the gap between Daily Player's cumulative iso gathered and the total amount to max and champ all characters is larger than it has ever been. It seems clear that the best time for players in the game was May 2015, right after the introduction of ddq and reduction of leveling costs (ironically, everyone was pissed at the time because the second thorverine nerf had just happened, and IMHB/IF wasn't available to the vast majority of players). You graph seems to suggest that demand/supply is back close to what it was in January/February 2015, BEFORE all those player friendly changes were implemented in the spring. Can't we get some more 'sky is falling' negativity from these numbers?! icon_e_smile.gif

    (2) Can you make a guess as to how much factors like alliance strength can affect Daily Player? Playing the hulk in a top 100 alliance will produce very different iso income than playing to exactly the same individual score in a top 5000 alliance.

    Overall, this is a great dataset for us players to use when discussing ISO needs. It seems clear that the significant improvements made this fall have more or less only offset the massive demand created by switching to a 4* meta. None of the changes made recently have had anything like the pro-player effect of DDQ or reducing leveling costs. So Demi/d3 deserve a fair amount of credit for those quality of life improvements, but it's also still fair for players to discuss the imbalanced nature of the iso ecnomony.

    P.S. Since I am sure you have tons of time, what would a chart of the HP and CP supplies look like?
  • Argon Flame
    Argon Flame Posts: 98 Match Maker
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    Need to add date alliances were added, date alliance iso was cut from 50iso/player/day down to 10, and then increased back to 100iso/player/day.

    Any other significant iso sources/changes missing?
    There have been a few one-off events that have yielded improved iso boosts (Anniversary; double iso events; a couple - but not all - boss fights, in fact some boss fights have been iso drains rather than boosts).

    One thing that I have been thinking on for awhile is the length of time it takes for a player in a generic game to reach "end game".
    Does it take 3-months of dedicated play? 6-months? 1-year?
    How long do you think it takes in MPQ? How would you compare it to other games - and does it compare favourably?

    Iso is one of two key factors (the other being 5-star covers) to reach the end game and as your post notes, this is in short supply.
    I'd say more but then I'd be going well off-topic!
  • an1979
    an1979 Posts: 463 Mover and Shaker
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    SHIELD intercepts
    Yeah sure... expect it in ~1000 years on a PC. icon_lol.gif
  • Ducky
    Ducky Posts: 2,255 Community Moderator
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    Any other significant iso sources/changes missing?

    At one point we got a 200 iso bonus for completing every node for the first time every time an event was run. They nixed that a long time ago, though.
  • KGB
    KGB Posts: 3,058 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Very interesting post especially for someone who hasn't been around since the very beginning.

    A couple of questions:

    1)
    10/03/2013 . . . Base level daily iso . . . . . . . 5000iso/day
    02/20/2015 . . . DDQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . +4000iso/day
    01/06/2016 . . . Championing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0
    05/01/2016 . . . PVE revisions . . . . . . . . . . .+4000 " / "
    06/01/2016 . . . Maxchamp values increased
    08/29/2016 . . . SHIELD ranks . . . . . . . . . . +2000 " / "
    09/15/2016 . . . SHIELD clearance levels . . . +1000 " / "
    11/07/2016 . . . SHIELD intercepts . . . . . . . +5000 " / "
    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19,000iso/day currently

    Doesn't this add up to 21,000 a day? Or was this chart revised for the +2000K from a daily resupply but you forgot to update the total from 19 to 21? Or is the daily now actually 23? (21 + 2K from daily resupply) How much does that extra ISO affect the graph?

    2) Does your base daily ISO include ISO from selling covers? Mr Average (which describes me too) may be selling a lot more covers now thanks to elite tokens that yield covers for characters that aren't champed plus there is ISO from taco tokens etc. This might be another 500-1000 a day as I know I'm selling a lot more covers for ISO now with Elite tokens.

    3) Now the hard question. Your Max ISO includes all characters including 5*. Of course we know Mr Average is going to take a long time to max cover those 5* due to the RNJesus. So the question is which will happen first: Mr Average draws enough 5* covers to max cover all his 5* before he gets the ISO to level them OR he gets all the ISO needed to max every character before max covers all the 5*. 900 days is what it appears Mr Average needs so will say 1800 draws (assuming he can earn 2 LT's a day) do it?

    KGB
  • CT1888
    CT1888 Posts: 1,201 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Great work as always aesth!
    Might need to add your graphs to this icon_e_wink.gif
    https://youtu.be/VLnWf1sQkjY
  • metallion
    metallion Posts: 276 Mover and Shaker
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    I don't see LRs included anywhere, unless I'm missing something somewhere. Considering everyone on the forums seem to be promoting farming LRs as a potential way to farm ISO for that short period I would think it would add up to something substantial (I wouldn't know, most of the time I only remember LRs 30 minutes to 1 hours after it starts so I only do like 1-2 each cycle)
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
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    4. DDQ was HUGE. For Daily Player, it almost doubled his daily iso income. However, the cumulative changes from 2016 have MORE than doubled his iso income. You're being too harsh there.

    The rub is not on the supply side itself. The devs have at least doubled that every year. It's more on the demand side. 4* are being released at the same rate that 3*s were, and they are 3x as expensive to level, so doubling supply isn't enough. For players playing more than Daily, they have made massive gains this year. But I didn't want the illustration to be about them. They are the tip of the spear. Daily is also well above average, but somewhere between Common Casual and Hardcore Psychopath. On a logarithmic scale anyway, ha.

    I don't think I am being particularly harsh. DDQ and the leveling cost reduction made a more significant impact on iso needs than the late 2016 changes. between feb and may 2015, the actual needs for iso went down significantly (about 30%), and player iso supply went up by a similar amount (depending on how much you played). Your graphs show this very clearly. Spring 2015 is the only time that the "days needed to max" went down. All of the various changes in 2nd half 2016 are substantial in the aggregate, but even so, they have just slowed the rate of the growth for the "days needed to max" curves (i.e. they have just offset the higher iso needs created by a 4* meta).

    My point wasn't that 2016 has been bad (to the contrary, demi has made several significant quality of life improvements), just that I think the impact of spring 2015 relative to demand was greater. Although, one consistent thread of of the 2016 iso improvements is that they have been heavily slanted towards harder-core players. DDQ was a flat increase for everyone with a 2* roster and at least one cover for all 3*s, and leveling cost changes affect everyone equally. But Shield Rank, CLs, intercepts, etc, all give significantly more iso the more you play the game/the more advanced your roster. Not sure which is the superior strategy, just noting that demi has clearly moved to a different design philosophy (probably due to concerns over stratification in the playerbase).
  • Ducky
    Ducky Posts: 2,255 Community Moderator
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    DuckyV wrote:
    At one point we got a 200 iso bonus for completing every node for the first time every time an event was run. They nixed that a long time ago, though.

    Not recalling that one ... lost in the mists of time. Sounds like a nice gesture, a thanks for playing a new event ... particularly seeing how new events tend to play out around here icon_lol.gif ... but also spit in the grand scheme ocean now!

    Not just new events, but every time an event ran. So an extra ~2k per sub. Florida would be a bounty! icon_lol.gif
  • KGB
    KGB Posts: 3,058 Chairperson of the Boards
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    1. Thanks, and hey! I started the first week this game was on Steam. I realize Steam players don't count (we are reminded of it daily, many times per day, every day that we play), but I couldn't have been aware of it any earlier without resorting to playing mobile games. Yuck.

    I was actually aware of the game the day it was released on mobile. But at the time the phone I had couldn't install it. By the time I got a new phone the game was 10 months old. At that time I installed it and played through the Prologue then put it away. A few months later my son found it on my phone and since he loves super heroes he would play when he was allowed to use my phone. Imagine my shock when one day he asked me about a L70 character he got in the daily resupply (4* Xforce Wolvie) and I looked and was like 'there are 4* characters now???'. I started playing again then for fun and of course got hooked. That was right around the 2 year anniversary of the game.
    4. The caveat about the "days to max" everyone plot is that it shows at each point in time how many days it will take Daily to max everyone if there were no more releases from that point on and he continued playing and his iso income remained steady. I assume your question makes the same assumption, because if releases continue, Daily will never cover all his 5*s.

    Yes, my question was assuming no more releases.
    And ... you think a player like Daily is currently getting 2 LTs / day? How? When playing and spending at the highest level I care to, I can manage more than 2.5/day. 1.5/day playing "normally", which is still pretty nuts. A good chunk of the difference relies on spending, and Daily would not be a spender.

    So if Daily is only averaging 1 LT per day then that's say 900 LT's. At 15% for a 5* that's 135 5* covers or roughly 16 covers per 5*. That would suggest his ISO rate should just about match his rate of covering of his 5* so that they'd finish about the same time. But as 5* get added to the LT's it's going to skew things towards waiting on covers more than waiting on ISO.
    But, hey, back to reality. Your question assumes an end-game. There is no end-game! This is a never-ending process of more, more more! At current release rates, in 900 days, the total iso needed to max and champ everything will more than double, from 29M to 60M. At current rates of iso, Daily's lifetime iso earned will grow from 10M to 30M. More, more, more ... behind.

    The key phrase is 'there is no end game'. Not as in no more character releases but as in no special content for end game players/rosters. Only so much repetitive stuff players want to do before they move on to something else. I imagine the 'middle' of this game (L80-180 range) is going to be gutted of players soon as the vets all move beyond 180 and only a few dedicated new players progress through the L80-180 area.

    KGB
  • ClydeFrog76
    ClydeFrog76 Posts: 1,350 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Lucky it's so cheap to buy in the store!
    latest?cb=20120826123355
  • TimGunn
    TimGunn Posts: 257 Mover and Shaker
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    i keep a chart on release dates. Some of the historic stuff may be more of an estimate/guess, but the stuff beginning at least a year ago is accurate. in case that helps!
    four stars
    Wolverine (x-force) 10/24/2013
    Invisible Woman classic 12/2/2013
    Nick Fury (shield) 4/23/2014
    Thor (goddess) 11/26/2014
    Electra (unkillable) 12/15/2014
    Star-Lord (outlaw) 1/30/2015
    Professor X (charles x) 3/12/2015
    Kingpin (wilson fisk) 4/4/2015
    Iron Man (hulkbuster) 4/29/2015
    Carnage (cletus kasady) 6/4/2015
    The Thing (classic) 6/25/2015
    Ant-Man (scott lang) 7/10/2015
    Jean Grey (all new) 7/23/2015
    Deadpool (x-force) 8/10/2015
    Sam Wilson (c america) 8/20/2015
    Mr. Fantastic (reed r) 9/3/2015
    Iceman (all new x-men) 9/17/2015
    Cyclops (classic) 10/8/2015
    Red Hulk (thunderbolt r) 10/15/2015
    X-23 (all new wolverine) 10/29/2015
    Ghost Rider (j blaze) 11/26/2015
    The Hulk (totally ave) 12/3/2015
    Miles Morales (spiderm) 12/17/2015
    Venom (eddie brock) 12/24/2015
    Nova (sam alexander) 1/28/2016
    Spider-Gwen (g stacy) 2/11/2016
    Quake (daisy johnson) 3/10/2016
    The Punisher (max) 3/24/2016
    Howard The Duck (had) 4/7/2016
    Drax (the destroyer) 4/21/2016
    Winter Soldier (bbarnes) 4/28/2016
    War Machine (j rhodes) 5/19/2016
    Kate Bishop (hawkeye) 6/2/2016
    Moon Knight (m spec) 6/16/2016
    Peggy Carter (cap am) 6/26/2016
    Wasp (janet van dyne) 7/28/2016
    Spider-Woman (j drew) 8/25/2016
    Luke Cage (power man) 9/22/2016
    Gwenpool (gwen poole) 10/6/2016
    Blade (modern) 10/20/2016
    Venom (agent venom) 11/17/2016
    Medusa (inh queen) 12/1/2016

    five stars
    Silver Surfer (sky rider) 9/10/2015
    Wolverine (oml) 10/5/2015
    Jean Grey (phoenix) 11/12/2015
    Spider-Man (black) 1/14/2016
    Green Goblin (n osborn) 2/25/2016
    Iron Man (mark xlv) 5/5/2016
    Steve Rogers (1st av) 5/5/2016
    The Hulk (bruce banner) 7/14/2016
    Black Bolt (inhuman k) 8/11/2016
    Black Widow (nat rom) 9/1/2016
    Doctor Strange (sorc) 11/3/2016
  • Lemminkäinen
    Lemminkäinen Posts: 378 Mover and Shaker
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    Thank you once again, aes, for the great work you're doing.

    I'm just wondering about the 5000 ISO from intercepts per day. I play way too much and make about 20k ISO per day so I'm guessing I'm quite close to Mr. Daily. But I get nowhere near 5k from Intercepts! I was getting maybe 2000 on average and these last few days more like 1000 (they seem to have gotten more sparse for me, for some reason). 5k seems like a crazy huge number. Unless there are regional differences or something to the frequency of Intercepts.

    As for the data and what it indicates - yeah, I don't think that we're supposed to max champ all our characters. As there is nothing else to the game except developing the characters (and sometimes team events) that end goal would end the game. And that wouldn't be good for the devs, obviously.

    So I think that a better way of looking at this would be for example how long it takes Mr. Daily to get his first few champed four-stars. These are of course gated by the covers but IME you will be champing most of your 3-star roster before you have a chance to champ four-stars. And once you get that first one, the rest come rolling in relatively fast due to you getting covers somewhat "evenly for everyone".
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited December 2016
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    Thank you once again, aes, for the great work you're doing.

    I'm just wondering about the 5000 ISO from intercepts per day. I play way too much and make about 20k ISO per day so I'm guessing I'm quite close to Mr. Daily. But I get nowhere near 5k from Intercepts! I was getting maybe 2000 on average and these last few days more like 1000 (they seem to have gotten more sparse for me, for some reason). 5k seems like a crazy huge number. Unless there are regional differences or something to the frequency of Intercepts.

    As for the data and what it indicates - yeah, I don't think that we're supposed to max champ all our characters. As there is nothing else to the game except developing the characters (and sometimes team events) that end goal would end the game. And that wouldn't be good for the devs, obviously.

    So I think that a better way of looking at this would be for example how long it takes Mr. Daily to get his first few champed four-stars. These are of course gated by the covers but IME you will be champing most of your 3-star roster before you have a chance to champ four-stars. And once you get that first one, the rest come rolling in relatively fast due to you getting covers somewhat "evenly for everyone".

    i started a thread a while back about the average value of intercepts https://d3go.com/forums/viewtopic.php?style=1&f=7&t=55444&hilit=+intercepts. Was it grimskald who had actually collected some numbers? I think the conclusion was that if you play enough PVE to get to 10-15 intercepts a day, you are clearing about 5k in ISO. Yes its a lot of 250 iso prizes, but with heroic tokens, HP, CP, and 1k/2k prizes, the total value adds up faster than you might think.

    Personally, I think this is part of the problem with intercepts. Yes, they are optional. But when they offer as much (in terms of resources) as playing DDQ every day, and in a game that is as resource starved as this one, "optional" can feel pretty mandatory.
  • Chipster22
    Chipster22 Posts: 298 Mover and Shaker
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    TimGunn wrote:
    i keep a chart on release dates. Some of the historic stuff may be more of an estimate/guess, but the stuff beginning at least a year ago is accurate. in case that helps!
    four stars
    Wolverine (x-force) 10/24/2013
    Invisible Woman classic 12/2/2013
    Nick Fury (shield) 4/23/2014
    Thor (goddess) 11/26/2014
    Electra (unkillable) 12/15/2014
    Star-Lord (outlaw) 1/30/2015
    Professor X (charles x) 3/12/2015
    Kingpin (wilson fisk) 4/4/2015
    Iron Man (hulkbuster) 4/29/2015
    Carnage (cletus kasady) 6/4/2015
    The Thing (classic) 6/25/2015
    Ant-Man (scott lang) 7/10/2015
    Jean Grey (all new) 7/23/2015
    Deadpool (x-force) 8/10/2015
    Sam Wilson (c america) 8/20/2015
    Mr. Fantastic (reed r) 9/3/2015
    Iceman (all new x-men) 9/17/2015
    Cyclops (classic) 10/8/2015
    Red Hulk (thunderbolt r) 10/15/2015
    X-23 (all new wolverine) 10/29/2015
    Ghost Rider (j blaze) 11/26/2015
    The Hulk (totally ave) 12/3/2015
    Miles Morales (spiderm) 12/17/2015
    Venom (eddie brock) 12/24/2015
    Nova (sam alexander) 1/28/2016
    Spider-Gwen (g stacy) 2/11/2016
    Quake (daisy johnson) 3/10/2016
    The Punisher (max) 3/24/2016
    Howard The Duck (had) 4/7/2016
    Drax (the destroyer) 4/21/2016
    Winter Soldier (bbarnes) 4/28/2016
    War Machine (j rhodes) 5/19/2016
    Kate Bishop (hawkeye) 6/2/2016
    Moon Knight (m spec) 6/16/2016
    Peggy Carter (cap am) 6/26/2016
    Wasp (janet van dyne) 7/28/2016
    Spider-Woman (j drew) 8/25/2016
    Luke Cage (power man) 9/22/2016
    Gwenpool (gwen poole) 10/6/2016
    Blade (modern) 10/20/2016
    Venom (agent venom) 11/17/2016
    Medusa (inh queen) 12/1/2016

    five stars
    Silver Surfer (sky rider) 9/10/2015
    Wolverine (oml) 10/5/2015
    Jean Grey (phoenix) 11/12/2015
    Spider-Man (black) 1/14/2016
    Green Goblin (n osborn) 2/25/2016
    Iron Man (mark xlv) 5/5/2016
    Steve Rogers (1st av) 5/5/2016
    The Hulk (bruce banner) 7/14/2016
    Black Bolt (inhuman k) 8/11/2016
    Black Widow (nat rom) 9/1/2016
    Doctor Strange (sorc) 11/3/2016

    Is Devil Dinosaur in there?
  • Lemminkäinen
    Lemminkäinen Posts: 378 Mover and Shaker
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    Vhailorx wrote:
    Thank you once again, aes, for the great work you're doing.

    I'm just wondering about the 5000 ISO from intercepts per day. I play way too much and make about 20k ISO per day so I'm guessing I'm quite close to Mr. Daily. But I get nowhere near 5k from Intercepts! I was getting maybe 2000 on average and these last few days more like 1000 (they seem to have gotten more sparse for me, for some reason). 5k seems like a crazy huge number. Unless there are regional differences or something to the frequency of Intercepts.

    As for the data and what it indicates - yeah, I don't think that we're supposed to max champ all our characters. As there is nothing else to the game except developing the characters (and sometimes team events) that end goal would end the game. And that wouldn't be good for the devs, obviously.

    So I think that a better way of looking at this would be for example how long it takes Mr. Daily to get his first few champed four-stars. These are of course gated by the covers but IME you will be champing most of your 3-star roster before you have a chance to champ four-stars. And once you get that first one, the rest come rolling in relatively fast due to you getting covers somewhat "evenly for everyone".

    i started a thread a while back about the average value of intercepts https://d3go.com/forums/viewtopic.php?style=1&f=7&t=55444&hilit=+intercepts. Was it grimskald who had actually collected some numbers? I think the conclusion was that if you play enough PVE to get to 10-15 intercepts a day, you are clearing about 5k in ISO. Yes its a lot of 250 iso prizes, but with heroic tokens, HP, CP, and 1k/2k prizes, the total value adds up faster than you might think.

    Personally, I think this is part of the problem with intercepts. Yes, they are optional. But when they offer as much (in terms of resources) as playing DDQ every day, and in a game that is as resource starved as this one, "optional" can feel pretty mandatory.
    When going for T100 in a release event (so between four and six clears of every node) in PvE I get between four and eight intercepts per day. I don't understand how you can get to fifteen. I wonder if there are indeed regional differences or something. Or maybe Grimskald is T5 and grinds all nodes to zero, which would explain the discrepancy a bit, I guess? Oh, and I didn't count the HP or CP as ISO though I suppose you could.
  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards
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    When going for T100 in a release event (so between four and six clears of every node) in PvE I get between four and eight intercepts per day. I don't understand how you can get to fifteen. I wonder if there are indeed regional differences or something. Or maybe Grimskald is T5 and grinds all nodes to zero, which would explain the discrepancy a bit, I guess? Oh, and I didn't count the HP or CP as ISO though I suppose you could.
    Intercepts only happen as long as there are rewards left, so there are no intercepts after clear 6.