4* vaulting has exacerbated the ISO shortage.

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Comments

  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    Fightmaster, you are also in the minority re vaulting.
  • Fightmastermpq
    Fightmastermpq Posts: 995 Critical Contributor
    Vhailorx said:
    Fightmaster, you are also in the minority re vaulting.
    Certainly.  Having 7/12 champed on day gave me a huge headstart, but my earn/spend rate isn't anything spectacular by forum standards and everyone else here pulling in 30k+ ISO/day should be caught up within the next couple of seasons barring 5* champs slowing things down.
  • Starfury
    Starfury Posts: 719 Critical Contributor
    Vhailorx said:
    Fightmaster, you are also in the minority re vaulting.
    Certainly.  Having 7/12 champed on day gave me a huge headstart, but my earn/spend rate isn't anything spectacular by forum standards and everyone else here pulling in 30k+ ISO/day should be caught up within the next couple of seasons barring 5* champs slowing things down.
    Yeah, when you already start with over half a dozen of the new champs (and most likely an even larger share of vaulted champs), it's not much of a roadblock.

    However, when like me you start with 0/12 new champs, and around a dozen old characters more at 11+, it means you're not pulling 4* for several months, and you won't catch up before the end of the year.

    The old system meant an ever increasing chance of pulling champ levels, the new system means there's no reason to pull because I'm already hard pressed to absorb 4* covers from heroics, champ and progression rewards, even in the knowledge that these old champs have become less valuable.
  • OneLastGambit
    OneLastGambit Posts: 1,963 Chairperson of the Boards
    Starfury said:
    Vhailorx said:
    Fightmaster, you are also in the minority re vaulting.
    Certainly.  Having 7/12 champed on day gave me a huge headstart, but my earn/spend rate isn't anything spectacular by forum standards and everyone else here pulling in 30k+ ISO/day should be caught up within the next couple of seasons barring 5* champs slowing things down.
    Yeah, when you already start with over half a dozen of the new champs (and most likely an even larger share of vaulted champs), it's not much of a roadblock.

    However, when like me you start with 0/12 new champs, and around a dozen old characters more at 11+, it means you're not pulling 4* for several months, and you won't catch up before the end of the year.

    The old system meant an ever increasing chance of pulling champ levels, the new system means there's no reason to pull because I'm already hard pressed to absorb 4* covers from heroics, champ and progression rewards, even in the knowledge that these old champs have become less valuable.
    You're looking at it from the wrong perpective. If you quickly pull them all and champ them then you will have 6-8months of pulling champ levels for 12 characters and they will far surpass yourbvaukted chracters and they would far surpass any chracter in the pre vaulting system too. 

    If champ levels is your focus then this way is far far quicker 
  • smkspy
    smkspy Posts: 2,024 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2017
     :* 

    too short
  • Fightmastermpq
    Fightmastermpq Posts: 995 Critical Contributor
    Starfury said:
    Vhailorx said:
    Fightmaster, you are also in the minority re vaulting.
    Certainly.  Having 7/12 champed on day gave me a huge headstart, but my earn/spend rate isn't anything spectacular by forum standards and everyone else here pulling in 30k+ ISO/day should be caught up within the next couple of seasons barring 5* champs slowing things down.
    Yeah, when you already start with over half a dozen of the new champs (and most likely an even larger share of vaulted champs), it's not much of a roadblock.

    However, when like me you start with 0/12 new champs, and around a dozen old characters more at 11+, it means you're not pulling 4* for several months, and you won't catch up before the end of the year.

    The old system meant an ever increasing chance of pulling champ levels, the new system means there's no reason to pull because I'm already hard pressed to absorb 4* covers from heroics, champ and progression rewards, even in the knowledge that these old champs have become less valuable.

    You need to let go of your old roster plans.  Why on Earth would you stop pulling 4s?  If you have the newer 4s covered you should champ them and continue pulling champ levels for them until you have covers on the vine for a newer 4 without the ISO to champ them.  You pause until you can champ them and continue pulling once they are champed.  Halting all your 4* pulls to try and champ older 4*s is a fools errand.
  • Starfury
    Starfury Posts: 719 Critical Contributor
    So your suggestion is to just forget 75% of 4* even exist and act like vaulting did me a favor.
    Sorry, not going to happen.
  • bbigler
    bbigler Posts: 2,111 Chairperson of the Boards
    I have a better idea: just set your favorite to a vaulted 4* and continue to build the current 4*s.  Eventually, you'll get there, but current 4*s are going to get more champ levels than vaulted 4*s.  But building 4*s is not the end game anyway.  So, you still need to hoard something for 5*s.
  • Starfury
    Starfury Posts: 719 Critical Contributor

    If champ levels is your focus then this way is far far quicker 
    My focus isn't champ levels, it's pulling stuff i don't have to throw away.
    Right now, the tokens offer
    1/12: champ level for wasp
    1/6: 14th cover
    5/27: 6th cover in a color
    22/27: cover i can add right now

    If I start pulling now, I'll just create more fully covered characters. I've got enough of them already. I don't need an increased chance of adding the newest characters to the iso backlog.

    Look, I know I make enough iso per day to eventually catch up with 4* characters, and vaulting doesn't change that for better or worse.
    What it did do is throw a wrench in the works by making it less desirable to pull 4* because those pulls now lead to a faster aquisition of even more 13 covr characters. Until that existing backlog is cleared, pulling even more covers is counterprodictive.
  • veny
    veny Posts: 834 Critical Contributor
    Vaulting is actually making ISO shortage worse and here is the reason:
    - Usually, players get their new 4*s very fast - propably fast enough to promote them. Problem is that once 4* is gone from LTs, you are losing main source of this specific 4*, that means you are also losing ISO from promoting (few thousands, yes, but pretty valuable).
    Naturally, new 4* comes and you are being confronted with decision: Promote new one, waste ISO and do what i wrote above? Or upgrade 4* without promoting it, saving ISO but loosing potential rewards prom promoting?
  • TetsujinOni
    TetsujinOni Posts: 181 Tile Toppler
    The catching-up plan that worked for me. (Started from Peggy and Medusa champed out of the latest. Because they're as strong as any of the 'more exciting' characters, and better than most. But the fact that the current crop of Latest-12 is astoundingly good, and going to get BETTER when C&D rotate Wasp out makes me question the people complaining about the Vaulted availability....)

    Set a point in the Latest12 that is your "doesn't matter if I burn 100 covers for this one, I'm going to create a 100% champed window with all the releases after this one". Stick to it.

    I'm currently feeding ISO to my 2* farm and my dupe IM40, having rechamped a bunch. I do have a 5trange to feed ISO to but a 4th 5* champ is less valuable than a year's worth of every Latest 12 draws being champ levels.

    Roster growth is a long game.
  • Fightmastermpq
    Fightmastermpq Posts: 995 Critical Contributor
    Starfury said:
    What it did do is throw a wrench in the works by making it less desirable to pull 4* because those pulls now lead to a faster aquisition of even more 13 covr characters.
    And there you have it.  Vaulting is bad because it gets characters fully covered sooner.
  • smkspy
    smkspy Posts: 2,024 Chairperson of the Boards
    Is that suppose to be your gotcha moment, lol.
  • GrumpySmurf1002
    GrumpySmurf1002 Posts: 3,511 Chairperson of the Boards
    I disagree with the premise here.  Yes, at launch there was a big gap in Iso needed but all the vaulting really did was move the goalposts.  As long as you are typically ahead of pace (>365k every 2 weeks), then vaulting will eventually create an Iso surplus.  I fully expect in 2-3 months to be at the point where I'm fully caught up on new characters and can refocus on the 4s that died.

    For now, yeah I'm burning Agent Venom and Riri covers, but that's the equivalent of burning any other 4* cover I used to not have the Iso for.  Hardly a loss.

    There's definitely a multitude of problems with vaulting, but with proper planning, iso really isn't one.
  • Ayasugi-san
    Ayasugi-san Posts: 116 Tile Toppler
    bbigler said:
    I have a better idea: just set your favorite to a vaulted 4* and continue to build the current 4*s.  Eventually, you'll get there, but current 4*s are going to get more champ levels than vaulted 4*s.  But building 4*s is not the end game anyway.  So, you still need to hoard something for 5*s.
    Except I can't build the current 4*s without pulling a lot of wasted covers. They get covered far faster than I can earn ISO to champ them.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2017
    Short term iso will be a prpblem for anyone who didnt have most of the current 12 champed when vaulting arrived.  But in the long run vaulting doesnt really affect the math of release rate v. Iso income.  

    Right now the game is balanced so that extremely hardcore play offers about 2x as much iso as the 4* release rate (but likely not enough to match the 4* + 5* release rate).  Middling hardcore play (4/6 in pve and 575-900 in pvp) will keep a player above water and slowly progressing at the 4* level, but 5* progress will be glacial.

    Casual players will never catch up.

    What vaulting does change is the opportunity cost of skipping a new 4* character.  Under the old system it was pretty low risk to skip on champing a weak new 4*.  Covers would come very infrequently, so the covering a character by pure RNG took a long time and the risk of selling a lot of covers was low.  Now choosing not to champ a new 4* means either hoarding for 6-8 months or selling as many as several dozen covers for that character.  Vaulting doesnt change the need for iso, but it does increase the incentive to stay on the new release treadmill (or hoard for very long periods of time).
  • Dragon_Nexus
    Dragon_Nexus Posts: 3,701 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
    This would be ideal, but I find myself in a quandry. I'm at the stage where most of the covers would be useful apart from the odd one or two. However, as I pull more covers my ISO requirement goes up, naturally, so I have to slow down opening tokens.

    But...that means I don't get overs for new characters, like Iron Fist for example, in case I pull a character I haven't champed yet. But if I don't open the tokens, I never will get him. So I'm in a race to champ as many maxed out characters as I can from the current vault before I open tokens.

    But by doing that I can end up with covers I have to throw away...or perhaps even wait so long a character I champed ages ago leaves the vault at only level 273 or something.

    I really don't know how to handle things now. I've got a legendary token and nearly 200CP and I don't know whether to use it and get some useful covers, or save them so I don't pull a 14th Gwenpool cover and force myself to start saving everything for *for certain* while I champ her.
  • killerkoala
    killerkoala Posts: 1,185 Chairperson of the Boards
    i did say this earlier, just don't open tokens and CP till u have enough iso.  Problem solved. 
  • TetsujinOni
    TetsujinOni Posts: 181 Tile Toppler
    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
    This would be ideal, but I find myself in a quandry. I'm at the stage where most of the covers would be useful apart from the odd one or two. However, as I pull more covers my ISO requirement goes up, naturally, so I have to slow down opening tokens.

    But...that means I don't get overs for new characters, like Iron Fist for example, in case I pull a character I haven't champed yet. But if I don't open the tokens, I never will get him. So I'm in a race to champ as many maxed out characters as I can from the current vault before I open tokens.

    But by doing that I can end up with covers I have to throw away...or perhaps even wait so long a character I champed ages ago leaves the vault at only level 273 or something.

    I really don't know how to handle things now. I've got a legendary token and nearly 200CP and I don't know whether to use it and get some useful covers, or save them so I don't pull a 14th Gwenpool cover and force myself to start saving everything for *for certain* while I champ her.

    Figure out your average income (ISTR you're a Steam player, so it'll be a little lower than the hardcore line even if you're playing at the hardcore rate...). Champ the newest 4* you have fully covered and work backwards. Figure out what season it will be that you'll be fully covered by time forward and ISO production backward from the newest will cross. Draw your hoard, and everything before that line pair and sell at 83. 

    Be ruthless about it.

    It'll get you to 100% coverage as soon as possible and then the reward stream looks like a tier-1 rate of play (6/6 and 1200 every PvP) will flood in about 40-60 champ levels while they're in the vault. 

    That's enough to start getting the "good-great" rewards out of the champ levels, so seems worth it, and exceptionally useful 4*s can be favorited to push up into the boosted-competes-with-champ-5*s levels.


  • jgomes32
    jgomes32 Posts: 381 Mover and Shaker
    A double iso event/week would be very welcome to put things in order. When was the last time?? Feels like almost a year.