New Iso-8 Multiplier & Iso-8-Canister items

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Comments

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,273 Chairperson of the Boards

    These bottlenecks exist by design and have been very carefully considered for maximum effect. Iso shortages, lack of hero points and cover scarcity all serve different purposes to keep us gaming or try to entice us into spending. Even the points values when you play PvE are nothing but a big tease - watch how many times they get near to but not quite at the next reward so you have to play again to get the reward.

    Thank god we have saved covers these days because that little bit of Dev psychology was pure torture.

    As for this whilst I am also probably afflicted by the long term MPQ mentality that you never buy iso it seems a hell of a lot more reasonable cost wise than the store ever was but then I guess with Ascension now being the end game they can afford to loosen the taps.

  • KGB
    KGB Posts: 3,235 Chairperson of the Boards

    @ThisisClemFandango said:

    @Domitronas said:

    @entrailbucket said:
    Which way would you rather have it? You can't pick "none."

    I really have no idea how you people come up with these comparisons.

    What do you mean "you people"

    If you get the reference you are one of the cool ones.

    Didn't think there were that many Canadian players :smile:

    KGB

  • MgoBlue51
    MgoBlue51 Posts: 111 Tile Toppler

    @ThisisClemFandango said:

    @Domitronas said:

    @entrailbucket said:
    Which way would you rather have it? You can't pick "none."

    I really have no idea how you people come up with these comparisons.

    What do you mean "you people"

    If you get the reference you are one of the cool ones.

    What do YOU mean you people?!

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,820 Chairperson of the Boards

    @DAZ0273 said:
    These bottlenecks exist by design and have been very carefully considered for maximum effect. Iso shortages, lack of hero points and cover scarcity all serve different purposes to keep us gaming or try to entice us into spending. Even the points values when you play PvE are nothing but a big tease - watch how many times they get near to but not quite at the next reward so you have to play again to get the reward.

    Thank god we have saved covers these days because that little bit of Dev psychology was pure torture.

    As for this whilst I am also probably afflicted by the long term MPQ mentality that you never buy iso it seems a hell of a lot more reasonable cost wise than the store ever was but then I guess with Ascension now being the end game they can afford to loosen the taps.

    I didn't even think about some of the other points you brought up, like PvE point values or cover expiry.

    It's really weird that occasionally people wake up and suddenly realize that this game (and ALL mobile games of this type) is an exploitative money-extracting machine with a superhero match-3 game attached to it.

    It's been that since day 1. It's never been anything but that.
    Every single system in this game is carefully, painstakingly crafted to get you to spend money. If you're just figuring that out now, that is a YOU problem, not a game problem.

    The rest of us knew what we were getting into with this, or learned about it a long time ago, and accept it. A lot of other games of this type are much, much worse! But if you don't want to play an exploitative microtransaction game, don't. There are tons of great AAA games out there!

  • KGB
    KGB Posts: 3,235 Chairperson of the Boards

    @Domitronas said:

    @entrailbucket said:
    Which way would you rather have it? You can't pick "none."

    I really have no idea how you people come up with these comparisons. I'm pretty sure "back in the day" there were no vaults with 5* covers or roster slots, but hey times change.
    No one has ever said you should be able to champ everyone in the first month, but talking about YEARS of gameplay for a mobile game? I myself am playing for over 4 years, I've spent more $ on the game that I would ever like to admit, and I am STILL down millions of iso, I have tens of 5* characters just sitting there waiting to be leveled and champed while I'm on a constant threadmill of championing latests additions to the game.

    People don't want "free" stuff, we want real solutions to a real problem, not just another way to nickle and dime the players.

    Here's a question for you.

    At what rate do you expect to catch up to players who have been playing for 9-10 years given you've only played for 4. After you ask that question, what about a new player who starts today, where should they be after 4 years (should they be caught up to a player who's played 13-14 years?) in terms of catching up.

    Since you have 10s of 5 stars waiting ISO, you are clearly an end game player now (CL10) and probably finishing all the Puzzle Ops stuff for supports, winning all the clashes in DDQ, finishing Shield Training and so on. In other words you've already reached where all the other players who've played for 9-10 years have in terms of game play (nothing is gated outside your reach).

    The only difference is they have oodles more character sitting on their bench all champed. That leads to the next question.

    What do you want to do once all your characters are champed (say that happened tomorrow)? Are you looking to just run meta teams and use all those champed characters as reward factories (ie just sit on your bench) or are you an experimenter like EB who runs tons of teams and likes to try lots of character combos or do you want to say you 'finished the game' and retire?

    KGB

  • ThisisClemFandango
    ThisisClemFandango Posts: 836 Critical Contributor

    @MgoBlue51 said:

    @ThisisClemFandango said:

    @Domitronas said:

    @entrailbucket said:
    Which way would you rather have it? You can't pick "none."

    I really have no idea how you people come up with these comparisons.

    What do you mean "you people"

    If you get the reference you are one of the cool ones.

    What do YOU mean you people?!

    I know who I am. I'm the dude playin' the dude, disguised as another dude!

  • Borstock
    Borstock Posts: 2,733 Chairperson of the Boards

    @ThisisClemFandango said:

    @MgoBlue51 said:

    @ThisisClemFandango said:

    @Domitronas said:

    @entrailbucket said:
    Which way would you rather have it? You can't pick "none."

    I really have no idea how you people come up with these comparisons.

    What do you mean "you people"

    If you get the reference you are one of the cool ones.

    What do YOU mean you people?!

    I know who I am. I'm the dude playin' the dude, disguised as another dude!

    Reminds me of John Mahoney playing Frasier's Dad while doing an impersonation of Austin Powers.

    That's a British man doing an impression of an American man doing an impression of a Canadian man doing an impression of a British man.

  • MgoBlue51
    MgoBlue51 Posts: 111 Tile Toppler

    @ThisisClemFandango said:

    @MgoBlue51 said:

    @ThisisClemFandango said:

    @Domitronas said:

    @entrailbucket said:
    Which way would you rather have it? You can't pick "none."

    I really have no idea how you people come up with these comparisons.

    What do you mean "you people"

    If you get the reference you are one of the cool ones.

    What do YOU mean you people?!

    I know who I am. I'm the dude playin' the dude, disguised as another dude!

    I'm a rooster illusion

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,820 Chairperson of the Boards

    I mean, if you know the answer from the business side, then you already know the only answer there is. This game exists to make money continuously -- it's not a console or PC game where you buy it once and then play it.

    If that's not your thing or you find those business practices immoral, that's totally fine! But why did you choose, and why are you continuing to choose, to play a f2p mobile game? This game has been 100% open from day 1 about exactly what it is.

  • WhiteBomber
    WhiteBomber Posts: 352 Mover and Shaker
    edited 14 May 2024, 00:12

    @entrailbucket said:
    I mean, if you know the answer from the business side, then you already know the only answer there is. This game exists to make money continuously -- it's not a console or PC game where you buy it once and then play it.

    I've been playing PQ since the original on PSP, I like to think it's not that simple, rather; the game exists because the devs initially created a concept that was very fun and moved it to a medium and franchise that was more globally recognized/followed, and to do that, you need to find ways to keep that business going.

    As someone who works in the games industry I find that 99 percent of the developers do it because they want to be a part of something people love playing, not just because they want your money. Once your baby gets too big and or you are produced by a larger non-development company, money becomes even more important (and is all production companies care about).

    All that jus to say, I don't think this game exists solely to make money, their are surely at least a few crazy passionate developers on the inside doing everything they can to make your experience better, and unfortunately those developers don't always make the decisions regarding cost AND, sometimes things are so expensive / inefficient to keep going that they must charge more (I don't think that's the case here though).

    It sounds to me like Domitronas just really doesn't like their approach to the money for ISO problem and would probably like a little more balance. Without any info on how profitable they actually are, you can't even really make a fair assessment of value. The only other free to play game I really got in to was League of Legends on PC, and I can tell you in my experience, you get way more for your money in that game. My assessment being content cost (like a character) and how much time / value I would get out of it (this is totally subjective, I know). I think it's a fair complaint personally as I think the ISO cost even with these improvements are kind of silly, but I get the business side also; Disney has got some very large executive payrolls to fill.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,820 Chairperson of the Boards

    Of course there are developers or coders or producers or engineers there that just want to make a fun game!

    That doesn't change anything about this game's business model, which is free-to-play, microtransaction-based. If MPQ stops making a profit, it will cease to exist.

    I have no idea what their financials look like, but League of Legends has far, far more players, and it also doesn't have to pay anyone else to license all their characters. The Marvel license is tremendously expensive for MPQ -- I think it's their biggest expense overall.

  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,816 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited 13 May 2024, 22:37

    I really want to know if the game creates a new canister immediately after you pay for and fill one, even if you don't get the iso until the timer runs out, or if its only one at at time.

    My issue with iso has always been: When you play the game, iso is the most common reward; hence it is mostly a measure of playing (more playing, more iso, etc). It is like the consolation prize you get while chasing the stuff you really want, which makes paying for it feel incredibly dumb to me, at the levels it is often offered at. While it goes up at higher SCLs (like the cover rewards and HP do) the fact is the game has vastly increased the need with the expansion of the highest tiers. Hence the amount of time required to play to catch up on iso seems to be growing while the game offers covers at a higher rate than ever before, and you could probably cover all the characters (if you wish) years and years before earning enough iso to champ them. But I don't know that for sure.

    When I was playing before, I started about 2 years into the game, and probably was post iso after 4 years of play....I retired after 5 years with over 11 million iso...came back after 3 years, down to basically none now 6 months later. Need iso for 31 covered 4s, 2 covered 5s, (a whole mess of partially covered 4s and 5s eventually). Just for these covered characters I need approx 11 million iso, if I make 75K (probably a bit much to expect but maybe an average for me) a day and used it nowhere else that would be 146 days of play. If you wanted to cover 5x that (you were new) that would be 730 days (ignoring all the new characters etc....finishing the 4 tier and a chunk of the 5 tier, but most people would probably focus on getting more 5s done...lots of priority shifting needed).

    Also, we add close to a million iso in need a month with just new characters, and ascension (if you do it) locks iso away instead of recycling a bunch of it.

    The game evolves, it changes. Maybe it's completely possible to champ everyone in 4 years, or maybe it's not important (it's probably not given the sheer volume of characters).

    I am not begrudging this.....set of offers to offset iso need but I wish there was some way to lock offers to, or scale the amount of iso to, SCL level. Or something. If they offered more iso in these offers I might buy one or two (like 500K or a million for $5 due to my need which feels much higher than someone focused on the 2-3 tiers).

    The levels they are offering feel silly to me.

  • Pantera236
    Pantera236 Posts: 521 Critical Contributor

    @Domitronas said:

    By this logic they should never have introduced shards, saved covers, they should never have decreased roster slot costs from 2k to 1,2k, increased DDQ rewards, reduced SCL10 clear amount from 6 to 4 and many many more. The game is constantly evolving and the resource economy should evolve accordingly. And it did in many ways, but the worst part still remains the iso-8 drought, which has been a thing for years.

    All the things you mentioned were to confront different issues, and for the most part worked. Does this iso stuff work as well? Probably not. But I don't think this is the only thing they're going to do either.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,273 Chairperson of the Boards

    One of the best ways they could address this would be to look at the disproportionate level of iso cost for champing 4*. As we are still getting regular 4* releases this impacts monthly iso needs - even if they only applied this to a limited time frame during release a reduced champing cost would greatly help try and stay on top of everything and further promote chasing the new 4* release. I suppose this could have an impact on players being able to ascend new 4* quicker but quite honestly the players who are able quickly do that already are not likely to be suffering a lack of iso. Given that we can now cover new 4's in a pretty speedy timeframe with just regular play it is really only the champing cost that puts them on something of a backburner, at least for me.

  • KGB
    KGB Posts: 3,235 Chairperson of the Boards

    @DAZ0273 said:
    One of the best ways they could address this would be to look at the disproportionate level of iso cost for champing 4*. As we are still getting regular 4* releases this impacts monthly iso needs - even if they only applied this to a limited time frame during release a reduced champing cost would greatly help try and stay on top of everything and further promote chasing the new 4* release. I suppose this could have an impact on players being able to ascend new 4* quicker but quite honestly the players who are able quickly do that already are not likely to be suffering a lack of iso. Given that we can now cover new 4's in a pretty speedy timeframe with just regular play it is really only the champing cost that puts them on something of a backburner, at least for me.

    Given Domitronas problem is finding ISO to level up older characters, wouldn't it make more sense to lower costs on older characters and leave newer ones at full cost (the ones everyone is chasing)? Maybe any character older than 1 year old has a 10% reduced ISO cost, any older than 2 years a 30% reduced ISO cost and any 3+ years older a 50% reduced ISO cost. This would also address power creep since older characters aren't as good (in general) as newer ones so cheaper ISO costs would reflect that.

    KGB

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,273 Chairperson of the Boards

    @KGB said:

    @DAZ0273 said:
    One of the best ways they could address this would be to look at the disproportionate level of iso cost for champing 4*. As we are still getting regular 4* releases this impacts monthly iso needs - even if they only applied this to a limited time frame during release a reduced champing cost would greatly help try and stay on top of everything and further promote chasing the new 4* release. I suppose this could have an impact on players being able to ascend new 4* quicker but quite honestly the players who are able quickly do that already are not likely to be suffering a lack of iso. Given that we can now cover new 4's in a pretty speedy timeframe with just regular play it is really only the champing cost that puts them on something of a backburner, at least for me.

    Given Domitronas problem is finding ISO to level up older characters, wouldn't it make more sense to lower costs on older characters and leave newer ones at full cost (the ones everyone is chasing)? Maybe any character older than 1 year old has a 10% reduced ISO cost, any older than 2 years a 30% reduced ISO cost and any 3+ years older a 50% reduced ISO cost. This would also address power creep since older characters aren't as good (in general) as newer ones so cheaper ISO costs would reflect that.

    KGB

    I was trying to find a resolution that would appeal to all sides as opposed to just the players. Otherwise just drop iso costs across the board but that doesn't seem to be part of the plan as the Devs have been ramping up resource pressure (apart from the roster slot issue which they were very generous with for some reason). I think one of the reasons they don't want to necessarily drop iso costs on older 4's is that they need that roadblock in place to try and slow down ascension which is their expansion on MPQ's lifespan. Having it for newer 4s and a limited time only stops the acquisition of dupe older 4s where you may already have a character at or near max level.

  • WhiteBomber
    WhiteBomber Posts: 352 Mover and Shaker

    @KGB said:

    @DAZ0273 said:
    One of the best ways they could address this would be to look at the disproportionate level of iso cost for champing 4*. As we are still getting regular 4* releases this impacts monthly iso needs - even if they only applied this to a limited time frame during release a reduced champing cost would greatly help try and stay on top of everything and further promote chasing the new 4* release. I suppose this could have an impact on players being able to ascend new 4* quicker but quite honestly the players who are able quickly do that already are not likely to be suffering a lack of iso. Given that we can now cover new 4's in a pretty speedy timeframe with just regular play it is really only the champing cost that puts them on something of a backburner, at least for me.

    Given Domitronas problem is finding ISO to level up older characters, wouldn't it make more sense to lower costs on older characters and leave newer ones at full cost (the ones everyone is chasing)? Maybe any character older than 1 year old has a 10% reduced ISO cost, any older than 2 years a 30% reduced ISO cost and any 3+ years older a 50% reduced ISO cost. This would also address power creep since older characters aren't as good (in general) as newer ones so cheaper ISO costs would reflect that.

    KGB

    I like this approach, make it happen please.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,820 Chairperson of the Boards

    @WhiteBomber said:

    @KGB said:

    @DAZ0273 said:
    One of the best ways they could address this would be to look at the disproportionate level of iso cost for champing 4*. As we are still getting regular 4* releases this impacts monthly iso needs - even if they only applied this to a limited time frame during release a reduced champing cost would greatly help try and stay on top of everything and further promote chasing the new 4* release. I suppose this could have an impact on players being able to ascend new 4* quicker but quite honestly the players who are able quickly do that already are not likely to be suffering a lack of iso. Given that we can now cover new 4's in a pretty speedy timeframe with just regular play it is really only the champing cost that puts them on something of a backburner, at least for me.

    Given Domitronas problem is finding ISO to level up older characters, wouldn't it make more sense to lower costs on older characters and leave newer ones at full cost (the ones everyone is chasing)? Maybe any character older than 1 year old has a 10% reduced ISO cost, any older than 2 years a 30% reduced ISO cost and any 3+ years older a 50% reduced ISO cost. This would also address power creep since older characters aren't as good (in general) as newer ones so cheaper ISO costs would reflect that.

    KGB

    I like this approach, make it happen please.

    I'd be fine with this if they made power creep a thing more explicitly. Right now many of the best characters are relatively old, and plenty of brand new characters are mediocre.

    Also, everyone who's not Latest is available in tokens and in rewards at the same rates, and is essential at the same rates. Boost rotations include older characters as often as newer ones.

    From the game's perspective, every 5* is equivalent in power level. If they change this, they'd need to fix stuff like rewards. 250 shards of, say, Black Widow, in progression, are not equivalent to 250 shards of m'Thor. We should get 500 shards of Black Widow, since she's like half as good (or less) as m'Thor is.

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