4* vaulting has exacerbated the ISO shortage.

MpqTron · April 2017

I'm feeling the iso drought. Had one champed 4 Hulkbuster when vaulting was introduced. Two 4's at 11 covers and lots at all sorts of levels.

I now have 4 champed 4's and quite a few at 12 or 13 covers. I have never been a token hoarder but I can't pull anymore cp at the moment, due to having no iso to champ anyone and covers dying on the vine.
I'm sure I'll catch up at some point but the iso drought hurts.

Starfury · April 2017

Fightmastermpq said:

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.

You know, that's kind of the point of this thread. Good that you finally caught on to it.

If you already don't have enough iso to champ all your ready 4*, vaulting made sure that you'd get even more 4* to that point rather quickly.

OneLastGambit · April 2017

Starfury said:

OneLastGambit said:

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.

Isnt the reason your in this position though because you decided to do the same with the old characters and hoard tokens? If you hoard tokens, you will actually never catch up. You'll hoard until you have the iso to cover one but guess what - you might not pull that character until they rotate out and will repeat the process again.

I started my current 12 with only 1 champed (Peggy) now I have almost 7 (not including those which were rotated out). that's a very short time to champ 7 characters so because I decided to be proactive and champ whoever I pulled as quick as possible 60% of the time I can use the cover. Yes you will get some dead ends (my blade has pulled 14 red and only 3 of the other colours) but if I hoarded instead..I would now have zero champs in the current pool.

7 Champs or zero, seems like an easy choice to me. I don't particularly want to champ all of them (mordo in particular) but I'm a pragmatist, champing them is far more beneficial than not champing them even if it means pulling some dupes because that short term sacrifice is a long term gain.

OneLastGambit · April 2017

Dragon_Nexus said:

OneLastGambit said:

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.

Even as a steam player its roughly 4 weeks to champ a 4* from scratch. That means after they are champed you will have another 7 months were you can apply champ levels. Even if you max covered 3 or 4 of them at the same time it would take approx. 12 weeks to champ them all giving you 5 months of champ levels. Waiting greatly decreases the time you can apply champ levels.

Also champing them now quickly as possible means that champing the next one is exponentially easier as you will be getting rewards from the champ levels of the previous one which will ease your resource pain.

It sounds counter intuitive to say keep pulling and champing but it is the best use of resources in the current system. It wasn't in the old one but it is in this one.

Ayasugi-san · April 2017

OneLastGambit said:
Isnt the reason your in this position though because you decided to do the same with the old characters and hoard tokens? If you hoard tokens, you will actually never catch up.

So you're saying we should've spent our LTs and CP as soon as we got them, even if our rosters weren't ready for 4* land or a 5* character and we didn't have enough HP to roster everyone we'd pull? Because that's where my 4* hoard came from, just holding on to LTs and CP while working my way up. I didn't even exhaust it before I hit the ISO wall.

Starfury · April 2017

OneLastGambit said:

Isnt the reason your in this position though because you decided to do the same with the old characters and hoard tokens? If you hoard tokens, you will actually never catch up. You'll hoard until you have the iso to cover one but guess what - you might not pull that character until they rotate out and will repeat the process again.
I started my current 12 with only 1 champed (Peggy) now I have almost 7 (not including those which were rotated out). that's a very short time to champ 7 characters so because I decided to be proactive and champ whoever I pulled as quick as possible 60% of the time I can use the cover. Yes you will get some dead ends (my blade has pulled 14 red and only 3 of the other colours) but if I hoarded instead..I would now have zero champs in the current pool.
7 Champs or zero, seems like an easy choice to me. I don't particularly want to champ all of them (mordo in particular) but I'm a pragmatist, champing them is far more beneficial than not champing them even if it means pulling some dupes because that short term sacrifice is a long term gain.

I'm not (and haven't been in a long time) limited by the rate of cover aquisition, i'm purely iso restricted, and vaulting hasn't changed any of that. (Right now I've got a 14th Nick Fury cover I got as a champ reward, so he's probably next in line. Also, I've got a 3* Luke Cage cover waiting which will give me a 14th 4* Cage so he'll come after that.)

What it has done is bring my current iso-shortage even more to the forefront by channeling all 4* pulls I get from heroics and 4* tokens into 12 characters that wouldn't be at that point otherwise instead of distributing it across all my 4* (yeah, I didn't mind dilution at all)

Before vaulting a 4* pull lead to the following options:

33% chance of being a champ level -> good use for the cover
8% chance of being an unusable 6th of a cover -> unless something lucky happens, cover is wasted
8% chance of being a 14th cover -> need to champ or cover is wasted
50% chance of being a cover I can still add -> good use for the cover but this pool can only absorb around 120-150 covers

After vaulting it turned into:
8% champ level
17% 14th cover
14% 6th cover
61% addable cover -> this pool can now only absorb around 30 more covers

In short (ha!): Since most of my cover sinks were eliminated, I can only pull so many covers before nearly every cover I'd pull afterwards would be wasted. That's why I'm not pulling right now.

And yes, I realize that I could throw away all 14th covers for vaulted characters and within 4 months I'd have all all latest 12 champed. And then I could start collecting all those covers I had thrown away during the last 4 months. But that would kind of defeat the purpose of the whole exercise (not wasting covers). Also, even if I could turn all my CP into champ rewards, it would only amount to 3 days of regular iso income.

2nd part of the reasoning why I'm hoarding is that the devs still haven't given us a way of continuing the development of 3/4 of our 4* that isn't completely laughable.
By keeping my CP, I'm keeping my options open for whatever non-joke solution they come up with.

OneLastGambit · April 2017

Honestly I can see your issue @Starfury but whether we like it or not the old system has gone and we can either adapt to the new one or continue to hold on to the old one and try champing vaulted guys for miniscule rewards. It's just sunk cost fallacy in action. Because you have invested so much time in the old guys you're reticent to stop work on them even though it is now detrimental to your progress.

You're correct that iso (lack thereof) is funnelling your progress but the problem is compounded when that iso is then spent on things which don't represent a good return of investment. Champing one of new guys will then help you champ the next one, those two will help you champ the next one etc. Champing a vaulted one will have only a very marginal effect on your overall resource acquisition.

OneLastGambit · April 2017

Ayasugi-san said:

OneLastGambit said:
Isnt the reason your in this position though because you decided to do the same with the old characters and hoard tokens? If you hoard tokens, you will actually never catch up.

So you're saying we should've spent our LTs and CP as soon as we got them, even if our rosters weren't ready for 4* land or a 5* character and we didn't have enough HP to roster everyone we'd pull? Because that's where my 4* hoard came from, just holding on to LTs and CP while working my way up. I didn't even exhaust it before I hit the ISO wall.

Perhaps I didn't give the entire correct reasoning. The problem with hoarding only happened when the switch occurred. As I stated in the old system hoarding was beneficial, when the change happened it made all that hoarding a big burden. All I meant was that if you hadn't hoarded then when the change occurred you may be in an easier position.

You don't need to roster everyone though. There's many in the 3, 4 and now 5* tier that I will never bother rostering. Their covers aren't wasted for me, they are x amount of iso. Yes that can be viewed as slightly counter productive but in my position (most of the way through 4* with an eye on 5*) going back and champing those ealier characters slows down the work I'm doing right now.

pheregas · April 2017

OneLastGambit said:

Honestly I can see your issue @Starfury but whether we like it or not the old system has gone and we can either adapt to the new one or continue to hold on to the old one and try champing vaulted guys for miniscule rewards. It's just sunk cost fallacy in action. Because you have invested so much time in the old guys you're reticent to stop work on them even though it is now detrimental to your progress.

You're correct that iso (lack thereof) is funnelling your progress but the problem is compounded when that iso is then spent on things which don't represent a good return of investment. Champing one of new guys will then help you champ the next one, those two will help you champ the next one etc. Champing a vaulted one will have only a very marginal effect on your overall resource acquisition.

Agreed. The only flaw is that those older champed guys gave out way better rewards than the newer ones. First prizes for newly champed are in the 2500 iso, 2cp, 50 HP range. My level 320+ guys are in the 3500 iso, 5cp, 100hp range. So yes, you can continue to gain rewards with the new system, but they may not ever reach the level of rewards as the older ones as the newer ones will be out of recent 12 before ever getting that high.

Fightmastermpq · April 2017

pheregas said:

OneLastGambit said:

Honestly I can see your issue @Starfury but whether we like it or not the old system has gone and we can either adapt to the new one or continue to hold on to the old one and try champing vaulted guys for miniscule rewards. It's just sunk cost fallacy in action. Because you have invested so much time in the old guys you're reticent to stop work on them even though it is now detrimental to your progress.

You're correct that iso (lack thereof) is funnelling your progress but the problem is compounded when that iso is then spent on things which don't represent a good return of investment. Champing one of new guys will then help you champ the next one, those two will help you champ the next one etc. Champing a vaulted one will have only a very marginal effect on your overall resource acquisition.

Agreed. The only flaw is that those older champed guys gave out way better rewards than the newer ones. First prizes for newly champed are in the 2500 iso, 2cp, 50 HP range. My level 320+ guys are in the 3500 iso, 5cp, 100hp range. So yes, you can continue to gain rewards with the new system, but they may not ever reach the level of rewards as the older ones as the newer ones will be out of recent 12 before ever getting that high.

Also agree. Or to put it more bluntly - champing Fury at this point would be stupid. First of all - he's terrible, but more importantly he adds little to no value to your roster. A 271 Fury will never see any play - even when boosted, and the LT you earn from champing won't even be opened because you will be hoarding until you have more ISO anyway.

Again, you need to let go of your old roster plans. They don't make sense under the new system. All your focus should be on the newer 4s. If you are making better than 25k/day then you can catch up and eventually get to a point where all the newer 4s are either covered and champed or needing covers (or 5/5/x, but that's no different from the old system). THEN you go back and start champing your vaulted characters. If you earn a reward for a vaulted character you THROW IT AWAY. It's a tradeoff because ISO is always in short supply. If you champ that vaulted character it means you get a level 271 champ reward, if you instead champ a newer character it means you get levels 271-274 because the covers are coming in 4x as fast. There are exceptions to this rule when it comes to top tier vaulted characters vs. garbage tier newer characters, but if we are talking about 2 characters and neither of them are really likely to see much play anyway always opt for the newer one.

pheregas · April 2017

Fightmastermpq said:

Also agree. Or to put it more bluntly - champing Fury at this point would be stupid. First of all - he's terrible, but more importantly he adds little to no value to your roster. A 271 Fury will never see any play - even when boosted, and the LT you earn from champing won't even be opened because you will be hoarding until you have more ISO anyway.

Again, you need to let go of your old roster plans. They don't make sense under the new system. All your focus should be on the newer 4s. If you are making better than 25k/day then you can catch up and eventually get to a point where all the newer 4s are either covered and champed or needing covers (or 5/5/x, but that's no different from the old system). THEN you go back and start champing your vaulted characters. If you earn a reward for a vaulted character you THROW IT AWAY. It's a tradeoff because ISO is always in short supply. If you champ that vaulted character it means you get a level 271 champ reward, if you instead champ a newer character it means you get levels 271-274 because the covers are coming in 4x as fast. There are exceptions to this rule when it comes to top tier vaulted characters vs. garbage tier newer characters, but if we are talking about 2 characters and neither of them are really likely to see much play anyway always opt for the newer one.

Yup. Already let go. Its just still a little hard to reconcile as under the old system, I could ignore the newer released characters and bring up the next 4* I happened to pull. Under the new system, I almost have to have the iso prior to pulling instead of after a pull since there are more unchamped options. Like you said, it's just a shift in play style. The problem then becomes drawing a 5* character.

As I mentioned a few pages back, you can easily keep up with the new system by champing only 4's. The monkey wrench in the system is if you happen to pull a 5* for a max covered character that's still in Latest LT. As there's no way to save 570k iso in the two week expiration time, you need to have at least 300k in reserve before pulling anything or risk that cover being wasted. No 5* is worth the sell price ever. But while you're saving iso for that 5*, you're falling behind the release schedule. Adding new 3*s to the mix (while interesting thus far) doesn't help the iso problem.

bbigler · April 2017

Ayasugi-san said:

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.

Then don't pull Legendary tokens if you don't have the ISO. It's so simple, I don't know why everyone doesn't understand that. If you have an ISO shortage, then stop pulling tokens until you catch up. Once caught up, only pull what you are able to use before they expire.

bbigler · April 2017

jgomes32 said:

A double iso event/week would be very welcome to put things in order. When was the last time?? Feels like almost a year.

Ummm.. Christmas time had double ISO.

Fightmastermpq · April 2017

pheregas said:

Fightmastermpq said:

Also agree. Or to put it more bluntly - champing Fury at this point would be stupid. First of all - he's terrible, but more importantly he adds little to no value to your roster. A 271 Fury will never see any play - even when boosted, and the LT you earn from champing won't even be opened because you will be hoarding until you have more ISO anyway.

Again, you need to let go of your old roster plans. They don't make sense under the new system. All your focus should be on the newer 4s. If you are making better than 25k/day then you can catch up and eventually get to a point where all the newer 4s are either covered and champed or needing covers (or 5/5/x, but that's no different from the old system). THEN you go back and start champing your vaulted characters. If you earn a reward for a vaulted character you THROW IT AWAY. It's a tradeoff because ISO is always in short supply. If you champ that vaulted character it means you get a level 271 champ reward, if you instead champ a newer character it means you get levels 271-274 because the covers are coming in 4x as fast. There are exceptions to this rule when it comes to top tier vaulted characters vs. garbage tier newer characters, but if we are talking about 2 characters and neither of them are really likely to see much play anyway always opt for the newer one.

Yup. Already let go. Its just still a little hard to reconcile as under the old system, I could ignore the newer released characters and bring up the next 4* I happened to pull. Under the new system, I almost have to have the iso prior to pulling instead of after a pull since there are more unchamped options. Like you said, it's just a shift in play style. The problem then becomes drawing a 5* character.

As I mentioned a few pages back, you can easily keep up with the new system by champing only 4's. The monkey wrench in the system is if you happen to pull a 5* for a max covered character that's still in Latest LT. As there's no way to save 570k iso in the two week expiration time, you need to have at least 300k in reserve before pulling anything or risk that cover being wasted. No 5* is worth the sell price ever. But while you're saving iso for that 5*, you're falling behind the release schedule. Adding new 3*s to the mix (while interesting thus far) doesn't help the iso problem.

This is where I am right now. Just champed Bl4de this morning, and now have 10/12 newer 4s champed with Black Panther at 13 covers and level 255 still. So I need probably 2 weeks of no opening to gather enough ISO to champ him and then I'll have to catch up on IF who is at 13 covers as well. By the start of next season I'll just have Cloak & Dagger and whatever 4* comes next to champ and them I'm completely caught up. I can then go back and start champing vaulted 4s, actually champ Agent Venom, or just save up for Hawkeye.

bbigler · April 2017

I pointed this out in another thread, but I'll summarize it here: if most of your latest 4*s are not champed but beyond 7 covers, then you'll feel an ISO shortage. BUT, once you've champed most of the latest 4*s, then you will feel an ISO surplus, with most of your covers going to champ levels and not adding to your ISO "debt".

At that point, you can either continue pulling to gain champ levels, or stop and hoard for a couple months until a new batch of 4*s enter the pool.

Starfury · April 2017

OneLastGambit said:

Honestly I can see your issue @Starfury but whether we like it or not the old system has gone and we can either adapt to the new one or continue to hold on to the old one and try champing vaulted guys for miniscule rewards. It's just sunk cost fallacy in action. Because you have invested so much time in the old guys you're reticent to stop work on them even though it is now detrimental to your progress.

I see things a bit differently.

First of all, the champ rewards for 4* are and have been way less than 10% of my total iso income. It would take ~250 champ levels from 4* tokens before I'm even 1 champ ahead by going for the latest 12 exclusively instead of whoever comes up next. In the end, by the time I'll cash in my even bigger stash, I'll earn even more champ levels for whoever is in the latest 12 at the time, earning even more valuable rewards than if I can cash in by mid-summer.

Second, if the devs decide that their solution to further development of our vaulted 4* is "Forget about them, there's new characters which we'll only lock away three months from", I'm quite likely to resolve the sunk cost fallacy in another way entirely.

Maybe we just have different perspectives. You seem to want to get "through" the 4* tier, right now I don't plan to go for 5*. For you, it makes sense to abandon some older 4*, I think I'll enjoy a fully fleshed out 4* tier more than the 5* tier. Let's hope the devs find a way to make both paths worthwhile.

LordXberk · April 2017

Fightmastermpq said:

pheregas said:

Yup. Already let go. Its just still a little hard to reconcile as under the old system, I could ignore the newer released characters and bring up the next 4* I happened to pull. Under the new system, I almost have to have the iso prior to pulling instead of after a pull since there are more unchamped options. Like you said, it's just a shift in play style. The problem then becomes drawing a 5* character.

As I mentioned a few pages back, you can easily keep up with the new system by champing only 4's. The monkey wrench in the system is if you happen to pull a 5* for a max covered character that's still in Latest LT. As there's no way to save 570k iso in the two week expiration time, you need to have at least 300k in reserve before pulling anything or risk that cover being wasted. No 5* is worth the sell price ever. But while you're saving iso for that 5*, you're falling behind the release schedule. Adding new 3*s to the mix (while interesting thus far) doesn't help the iso problem.

This is where I am right now. Just champed Bl4de this morning, and now have 10/12 newer 4s champed with Black Panther at 13 covers and level 255 still. So I need probably 2 weeks of no opening to gather enough ISO to champ him and then I'll have to catch up on IF who is at 13 covers as well. By the start of next season I'll just have Cloak & Dagger and whatever 4* comes next to champ and them I'm completely caught up. I can then go back and start champing vaulted 4s, actually champ Agent Venom, or just save up for Hawkeye.

As posted earlier in this thread, I'm close to this spot, too (w/ 9 of the 12 4*s champed, BP at 13 covers at 255, and Strange at 13 covers at 335). If I keep working on Strange (which I want for PVE), it'll take me another 1.5 weeks to get that ISO, which puts behind on saving up for Coulson, IF, and C&D (have decided to skip Mordo). In the 50 days it'll take me to save that ISO for Strange, BP, Coulson, IF, and C&D (2m / 40k per day), we'll get another 3 4*s and another 5* and likely another 3*, which will put me at least 1.2m ISO behind (ignoring the 5*). And, this ignores building 3* dupe champs now that several of my 3*s are reaching 266, which creates another ISO hole.

Overall, I agree that if you're just champing 4*s, then the current rate of ISO and release schedule is fine, but if you want to do anything else with your roster, it still isn't enough.

OneLastGambit · April 2017

Starfury said:

OneLastGambit said:

Honestly I can see your issue @Starfury but whether we like it or not the old system has gone and we can either adapt to the new one or continue to hold on to the old one and try champing vaulted guys for miniscule rewards. It's just sunk cost fallacy in action. Because you have invested so much time in the old guys you're reticent to stop work on them even though it is now detrimental to your progress.

I see things a bit differently.

First of all, the champ rewards for 4* are and have been way less than 10% of my total iso income. It would take ~250 champ levels from 4* tokens before I'm even 1 champ ahead by going for the latest 12 exclusively instead of whoever comes up next. In the end, by the time I'll cash in my even bigger stash, I'll earn even more champ levels for whoever is in the latest 12 at the time, earning even more valuable rewards than if I can cash in by mid-summer.

Second, if the devs decide that their solution to further development of our vaulted 4* is "Forget about them, there's new characters which we'll only lock away three months from", I'm quite likely to resolve the sunk cost fallacy in another way entirely.

Maybe we just have different perspectives. You seem to want to get "through" the 4* tier, right now I don't plan to go for 5*. For you, it makes sense to abandon some older 4*, I think I'll enjoy a fully fleshed out 4* tier more than the 5* tier. Let's hope the devs find a way to make both paths worthwhile.

I have very little interest in getting through the 4* tier, I have usable 5s and there's been times I've been tempted to level them but generally speaking the lack of variety in the tier has kept me in the most diverse tier (4*). I have always been a pragmatic, cut my losses type on this game and have been willing to throw away covers for characters I had no intention of levelling (Looking at you Eddie). So for me not champing those few I had left in the vaulted list was something I took in my stride.

I actually had the majority of the vaulted list champed (fairly recently too) so the sudden change was very annoying for someone in my position because the rewards were taken away before they even got good. Now I just take the approach of how best to utilise the current system. If there is no issue of trying to 'get through' the tier (something we both assumed of each other) there is really no issue with vaulted characters. You will eventually cover them all and there is no rush and therefore no iso shortage. There is only a shortage if there is a timeframe in which you expect to progress.

Felessa · April 2017

I would like to be in this position of "ISO shortage", than my actual one, "COVERS shortage". I have more than 2kk ISO and no where to spend... not a single one of the "latests" champed... only C4ge is almost there... still waiting for his final black one, thanks to Cag3. As a casual player, this system isn't better than the old one (and I think I'm not the only one), because it seems I will never be able to get all the covers I need, before a latest falls into the vault, on the contrary of the old one, where I could progress my roster at my pace, without having to worry with expiration dates.

smkspy · April 2017

bbigler said:

I pointed this out in another thread, but I'll summarize it here: if most of your latest 4*s are not champed but beyond 7 covers, then you'll feel an ISO shortage. BUT, once you've champed most of the latest 4*s, then you will feel an ISO surplus, with most of your covers going to champ levels and not adding to your ISO "debt".

At that point, you can either continue pulling to gain champ levels, or stop and hoard for a couple months until a new batch of 4*s enter the pool.

This where I'm at. Back down to one of the 12 being champed (wasp) and only one at less than 8 covers (IF at 3). So the iso shortage is painful right now since once I champ gwenpool and possibly SW then cage, medusa, AV, and Carol will all likely be finished.

I just don't see myself catching up anytime soon. Doesn't help that heroic and elite tokens feel pretty barren of 3/4s and 3s recently.

4* vaulting has exacerbated the ISO shortage.

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