4* vaulting has exacerbated the ISO shortage.

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  • revskip
    revskip Posts: 1,005 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2017
    Dragon_Nexus said:
    HaywireII said:
     I feel bad for the players on Steam, the intercepts go a long way towards making things better for me.
    Out of curiosity, how much ISO would you say you get on average daily from the intercepts?
    It definitely fluctuates quite a bit.  Some days I get lucky with a few 2k drops and I can hit 7500-10K.  Other days I get mostly 500 drops and I average around 3-4K.  With a few CP and 100 or so HP thrown in with a couple of tokens.  

    As to the OP I definitely had to adapt a bit in the way I was champing and had more lost covers than at any other point that I had played combined but most of that occurred because I decided to bust open my hoard of CP and legendary tokens to maximize my champ levels on Peggy before she left tokens.  

    I started out with just Peggy champed out of the 12 that were in tokens and waited until Moon Knight and Kate dropped out before opening.  Spiderwoman was already at 12 covers so she got finished first, then Medusa and then I sold off my 2* farm to champ Blade.  Everyone in the packs except for Capt. Marvel (1/2/5) and Coulson (5/5/2) ended up at max covers and I had to sell about 25 covers for 1K each.  Still, doing it all at once that way meant that I could start hoarding again as soon as Peggy left tokens and now will wait until the next season before opening anything by which point I should have enough ISO to champ at least two more (Mordo got done in the interim).  

    Since I rarely end up with more than 3 covers for a new character (1 from top 100, 1 from alliance top 100 and 1 from progression in the subsequent event) I will be going into next season with pretty good odds of getting either champ levels for the 4 that are still in the tokens plus the two I can champ and the 2 who won't be well covered (4Fist and Cloak and Dagger).  

    I definitely have ended up having a handful of other characters who I'd like to champ who I have skipped for now especially my Iceman and Hulkbuster but I'd rather get ahead on the champing.  In a couple of months I should be ahead enough that I can occasionally sprinkle in one of the older guys.  

    The vaulting definitely makes hoarding even more attractive than it was although I was already hoarding to minimize waste.  I'm hoarding everything but standard and elite tokens at this point to keep from wasting the occasional heroic 4* drop. 
  • Borstock
    Borstock Posts: 2,699 Chairperson of the Boards
    The iso issue hasn't changed. It has just made hoarding more important. 
  • HaywireII
    HaywireII Posts: 568 Critical Contributor
    Dragon_Nexus said:
    HaywireII said:
     I feel bad for the players on Steam, the intercepts go a long way towards making things better for me.
    Out of curiosity, how much ISO would you say you get on average daily from the intercepts?
    Pretty much what's already been said; I'd say average is 4k to 6k a day on intercepts.  
  • killerkoala
    killerkoala Posts: 1,185 Chairperson of the Boards
    the simple answer is not to open tokens/cp till u have iso to burn.   i just championed 9 of the latest and cost me 3.5 million.  but i was the "crazy guy" who grinded prologue for 20 iso at a time till i had +500 iso every time i played the game in the when i started.  peeps say why do i do that, i say it was OCD and i knew iso was never worth buying.
  • Starfury
    Starfury Posts: 719 Critical Contributor
    edited April 2017
    Exactly the same issue here:

    I used to save up CP until i had ~350k ISO and then pulled until I got cover #14 for someone. Of course, this means all my (~15) champs are older characters who are now vaulted away and the only new character I champed (Wasp) is going to move out by the end of the month.

    Since I got quite a few 14th covers from 3* champs in the last two months I already was building a "backlog" of cp, but since vaulting hit, I already doubled my stash up to 1500cp with no perspective of spending any of them before the end of summer.
    I did pull LTs in a hope to get Peggy #13 -> now I hope for 10 more bonus 3* Carols to get me her yellow, now I'm hoarding those as well
  • OneLastGambit
    OneLastGambit Posts: 1,963 Chairperson of the Boards
    Dragon_Nexus said:
    HaywireII said:
     I feel bad for the players on Steam, the intercepts go a long way towards making things better for me.
    Out of curiosity, how much ISO would you say you get on average daily from the intercepts?

    10k min. My average is around 11.5k iso per day from intercepts. Steam players have every right to be mad. Everyone else has a big advantage over them. They should at least introduce an option to migrate your account to a mobile device.
  • Dragon_Nexus
    Dragon_Nexus Posts: 3,701 Chairperson of the Boards
    OneLastGambit said:
    Dragon_Nexus said:
    HaywireII said:
     I feel bad for the players on Steam, the intercepts go a long way towards making things better for me.
    Out of curiosity, how much ISO would you say you get on average daily from the intercepts?

    10k min. My average is around 11.5k iso per day from intercepts. Steam players have every right to be mad. Everyone else has a big advantage over them. They should at least introduce an option to migrate your account to a mobile device.
    Compared to others, that sounds more on the high side.
    But even in the 5k range, that's around a quarter of what I earn through DDQ, PvE clears and PvP. Not including event rewards and such.

    So yeah, I didn't realise we were being slowed down so heavily on Steam.
  • Starfury
    Starfury Posts: 719 Critical Contributor
    edited April 2017
    Yeah, I too would say 10k is a very good day and definitely not average.

    I'd say an average haul when doing 6 clears + DDQ is 1-2 * 2000, 1-2 * 1000, 2-4 * 500 and a few heroic and elite tokens worth another 1000-1500 iso on average.

    But still, those 6-8k iso per day is easily as much as all the PVE node rewards combined or an extra 20-25% overall iso income.

    (and that's after they diluted the reward pool by adding 500 iso and elite tokens)
  • OneLastGambit
    OneLastGambit Posts: 1,963 Chairperson of the Boards
    Guess I'm lucky in that regard. My most common reward dropped is 2k iso. I rarely see 500iso. Usually its 2/1k iso or 10hp for me. the rest rarely drop save for the occasional elite token
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2017
    Assume you play enough to tget 15-20 intercepts each day. you will likely get 10-12 iso rewards and a smattering of everything else.  Even if you mostly get 500 iso prizes, that will still be 6-7k iso.  Plus some HP, CP, and tokens. and if you get a lucky run of 1k/2k iso prizes, 10k is hardly out of reach. 

    If you play PVE regularly, then intercepts has become a massive source of iso, about on par with ddq.  I really don't understand why the two most iso-rewarding activities in MPQ (PVE and intercepts) are tied together leaving PVP out in the cold.  I get that there are technical reasons why intercepts aren't easy to set up on PC, but steam players really should get something from demi.  It's a massive competitive advantage for us mobile players.
  • LordXberk
    LordXberk Posts: 252 Mover and Shaker
    While on this sub-topic, I agree that the Shield Intercepts have helped massively.  I feel bad for the Steam players and I shudder to think of the ISO deficit w/o the SI ISO drops.

    Back to the original point about vaulting and ISO, it really has gotten worse.  As said above, I was hopeful that I'd 'catch up' to the cycle of the 12 most recent covers eventually, but it's just not happening.  On top of the ~370k ISO you'd need to invest every 2 weeks into new releases, we also have 5* that cost a whopping ~570k of ISO.  I've had BP and DrS 5* fully covered for well over a month now, but BP is still sitting at 255 and DrS is now only at 330.  I'd like to open some of my LTs for a chance at HE5 or Thanos, but I fear that I'll get another BP and then be forced to drop ISO into him immediately or waste a cover, so it's hoarding time.

    Additionally, this brings me to a point where I suspect many are having the same question, but I'm now getting many of my 3*s to the 266 level (and will likely accelerate this for the 3*s still in tokens).  I've decided to start dupes (at least for ones that have a 2* farm), but already sitting at a few fully-covered 3*s sitting at Level 40.  No way I can spend the ~150k ISO champing them at this point if I want to champ my other 5*s and 4*s.  I guess it's back to selling dupe 3*s?  

    Just lots of moving pieces right now, but the one common thread is a severe lack of ISO given the release schedule, the high cost of leveling characters, and the faster drops of a more limited 3* and 4*.  CL9 and CL10 could help this (and heck, CL8 should have, but they botched that one).


  • Fightmastermpq
    Fightmastermpq Posts: 995 Critical Contributor
    JHawkInc said:
     The ISO just isn't enough to keep up, even pulling in 50k a day, on average
    Your math is off here.  50k/day gives you enough to champ TWO 4*s for every one that is released.  With only 12 in the pool you will be caught up within 3 seasons.  Compared to pre-vaulting where you'd need to champ 3x as many which would take nearly a year.

    Vaulting has not created an ISO shortage that wasn't already there.
  • pheregas
    pheregas Posts: 1,721 Chairperson of the Boards
    Please keep in mind that we are basically treading water with iso income versus 4* character release.  I'm in the situation now that I have to choose to hoard tokens/CP since I now have 2 max covered 5*s.  The side effect of this is that I am no longer keeping pace with the new character release schedule.  You can do one, or the other, but not both.

    By the time I'm ready to champ one of the 5s, probably 2 new characters will be in tokens.  Ideally, I should have enough iso in the bank to champ two of the unchamped prior to redeeming anything.  However, nothing about the iso shortage is ideal so...  I'm probably going to have to eat a fair number of covers that are dupes when I do finally pull.
  • Fightmastermpq
    Fightmastermpq Posts: 995 Critical Contributor
    pheregas said:
    Please keep in mind that we are basically treading water with iso income versus 4* character release.  I'm in the situation now that I have to choose to hoard tokens/CP since I now have 2 max covered 5*s.  The side effect of this is that I am no longer keeping pace with the new character release schedule.  You can do one, or the other, but not both.

    By the time I'm ready to champ one of the 5s, probably 2 new characters will be in tokens.  Ideally, I should have enough iso in the bank to champ two of the unchamped prior to redeeming anything.  However, nothing about the iso shortage is ideal so...  I'm probably going to have to eat a fair number of covers that are dupes when I do finally pull.
    The only difference is that now there are only 12 characters that you can pull from that would potentially waste covers, whereas previously there were 43.  So the number of characters needed to champ to avoid waste has been reduced to less than 1/3 what it was.
  • OneLastGambit
    OneLastGambit Posts: 1,963 Chairperson of the Boards
    I actually am surprised by how quickly one can catch up even with large amounts of dupe pulls (my blade and his 12 red covers can attest to that). As vaulting was introduced I had only 1 champ in the current pool. I now have 6 out of 12 and am only a few days away from number 7. That's a surprisingly quick turnaround and many of the ones which I have champed (Carol, Gwen and Cage) started their champ climb with only 3 covers each. This means that 60% of my pulls will be champ levels. Some of mine are now almost higher than my vaulted ones. It's not an ideal system but it has its benefits
  • pheregas
    pheregas Posts: 1,721 Chairperson of the Boards
    Fightmastermpq said:

    The only difference is that now there are only 12 characters that you can pull from that would potentially waste covers, whereas previously there were 43.  So the number of characters needed to champ to avoid waste has been reduced to less than 1/3 what it was.
    Maybe I'm in the minority, but I had almost all of the vaulted characters champed at the time of roll-out.  I went from 75% of my pulls usable to 50%.  I've slowly worked my way back towards the 75% mark, but every season it jumps back down.  Hoarding is the new norm.
  • grunth13
    grunth13 Posts: 608 Critical Contributor
    Well, the vaulting system caused me to have a different problem.  Covers I can't use.  I had hoarded for some time when the decided to vault everyone but the last 12...IN 3 HOURS!!!  Now granted, I had every 4 championed for when I was going to pull my hoard (it was significant) so that no covers would get wasted, but instead, now I have 195 covers sitting in my que because I max champed 11 of 12 latest 4s (only IF left and he is at 335) and still have plenty of vaulted 4s who are in the 270-280 range. 
  • Fightmastermpq
    Fightmastermpq Posts: 995 Critical Contributor
    pheregas said:
    Fightmastermpq said:

    The only difference is that now there are only 12 characters that you can pull from that would potentially waste covers, whereas previously there were 43.  So the number of characters needed to champ to avoid waste has been reduced to less than 1/3 what it was.
    Maybe I'm in the minority, but I had almost all of the vaulted characters champed at the time of roll-out.  I went from 75% of my pulls usable to 50%.  I've slowly worked my way back towards the 75% mark, but every season it jumps back down.  Hoarding is the new norm.
    You are in the minority, and this change hits guys like you the hardest, but honestly it's not much different.  Your percentage of usable covers has ALWAYS gone down with new releases, this is no different.  Previously you still needed the same amount of ISO to champ all the new characters that you need now.  And if you were able to champ all the 4*s it means you have been making ISO at a sustainable rate and were likely champing the newer 4*s every 2 weeks anyway.  So you might need to play catchup a little bit, but you should be close to caught up by now and getting close to the point where nearly 100% of covers are usable (except for the typical 5/5/x RNG problems that have always plagued us).

    Personally I had I think 26/43 4*s champed and 7/12 newest 4*s champed when BH went live.  By the end of the day today I'll have 10/12 champed with AV parked in "never champ" status, and IF at 13 covers (none on the vine yet).  My 2* and 3* farms are both short a single character that needs champed, so I'm almost completely caught up.  I need 550k ISO for Black Panther who is sitting at 13 covers right now which will be a setback, but I'm already WAY better off than I was under the old system from an ISO need standpoint.  I tried to make a point to NOT hoard during this transition just to prove to myself that I could manage it, and so far I've been able to do it by really only sacrificing covers for 2 of the newest 4*s.  Up until this point I would constantly be selling off covers for the 17/43 covered 4*s that I was short ISO to champ.  I have had to stop opening all Latest tokens since I pulled my 13th BP cover though, but as soon as I have him champed I'm going to blow through all those because by then I think I'll be at a spot where I can open every token I earn and champ everything I pull before it expires because there won't be any older characters demanding ISO.
  • DyingLegend
    DyingLegend Posts: 1,203 Chairperson of the Boards
    I always seem to run into a lull with cover pulls and it's a good week or two of not pulling any covers I need or want. Then I see my iso stock go up. Eventually I pull a cover I'm working on and it dips but over all I stay above 200k 90% of the time. 

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