hitting the ISO8 wall

MadScientist · December 2021

Back when I was tracking my Iso-8 gains (start to mid 2018), I made around 50k per day. I was farming 2-Stars and 3-Stars, had most of the 4-Stars champed (there were around 60 back then) and had no Iso-8 invested in any 5-Star. I played all PVE events to progression, PVPs to 40 wins and all Lightning Rounds that were easily availaible.

Alfje17 · December 2021

TheRiddler said:

A question I had for you guys who might keep up with it is how much ISO do you earn a day/week/month on average?

Difficult to keep track of ISO as I keep buying Boosts (need 80K for my next Milsestone), but just doing PVE + DDQ today netted me 26K ISO. Add some PvP rewards, daily PvE placement, covers, etc... and I must make between 30K and 40K a day (it's double ISO season, so probably a bit less during a normal period).

stef_focus · December 2021

TheRiddler said:

A question I had for you guys who might keep up with it is how much ISO do you earn a day/week/month on average?

On average I get 1.5 Million iso per month. This was the average in the last 18 months, before that it was about 1.2 Million. Can't remember what happened at the time to cause the increase.
I play PVE and PVP, but usually don't have the time to do the lightning rounds.

stef_focus · December 2021

Heartstone said:

Thanks everyone, for the support and the hints 😁
I'll prioritise my 2 and 3 * farms and most recent 4*, which are needed for events.
I'm trying to champ Colo55us (currently 9 covers). Shang Chi will be next, but that's something for mid next year.

A timeline example from a FTP player, who started playing mid 2016:

My method for dealing with the iso shortage, was only levelling 4* and not putting any iso in 5* to keep my PvP experience manageable.
I started hitting the iso wall about 1.5 years (end 2017) in, and hit peak iso wall for my 4* at about 2.5 years (end 2018), where I needed about 4 million more iso than I had. At 3.5 years (end 2019) I no longer had an iso shortage for my 4*, and I could keep up with new releases.

The game was a bit different end 2017, iso was a bit harder to earn, and nowadays you get a lot more. However there are also a lot more 4* now (118 vs 70), so you will need that increased iso gain.

At that 3.5 years I did have the highest iso shortage in total (for my 5*) of about 11 million iso, But because I didn't have to spend any iso on 4* that where underlevelled and I had completed my 2* en 3* farms, this started to shrink, and at 5 years (mid 2021) I was iso-positive. Now 6 months later, I am at +3 million.

Someone already mentioned softcapping 4* at 209, I remember doing that too, to make the characters useable, without having to spend a lot of iso. Levelling a 4* to lvl 209 costs about 150k iso, To lvl 270 costs about 380k iso, So instead of champing 2 4*, you can make 5 4* playable. This helped me to enjoy the game more.

TL;DR: Softcap at 209, to get many useable 4*, forget about levelling 5* for a few years and enjoy the 4* experience

As is often said: This game is a marathon, not a sprint / Don't spend money on iso / Don't spend gold on anything other than roster slots (until you have everything rostered and more than 10k in your bank).

hothie · December 2021

TheRiddler said:

A question I had for you guys who might keep up with it is how much ISO do you earn a day/week/month on average?

I don't keep track, but I will give you some numbers:

I'm day 380, so I'm at a year and 2 weeks. I don't spend actual money on iso, unless it is included in a package deal with covers/hp/tokens, etc. And even then, iso isn't the factor that seals the deal for me.

According to my milestone, I've spent almost 29.9M levelling up my heroes. And back when I had more iso than heroes to spend it on, I bought boosts often.

Granted, I play a lot. pve, pvp, lightning rounds, etc, but roughly 30M iso spent in just over 12 months (call it 54 weeks) should give you a rough estimate of how much iso I get on the weekly or daily on average.

I have champed 102 2*s, which means I've sold 93 of them. I have 3 maxed 3*s that I haven't sold (I have sold 4), so there's another possible 300K waiting if/when I choose to. (although 2 of them are Magneto and Ragnarok, which are required for lightning rounds, so doubt I will sell them.)

Hope that helps.

Rhipf · December 2021

As a counter example to all the ones I've seen so far, I can't remember ever actually hitting the ISO wall. I may have back when I first started but that was long enough in the past that I can't recall exactly.

The reason I haven't had any major issues with ISO is that I have been taking my time progressing. I made sure that I had all 2*s max leveled before I champed my 3*s. Then I maxed leveled all my 3's before I champed my 4's. Now that I am in 4* land I am not champing any of my 5*s until I have max champed at least the majority of my 4's and I may even wait until I have all the 4's max champed (but with the way things are diluting I probably won't wait that long). I have leveled the few 5's that I have max covered to 300 but that is just so I can keep track of which ones are max covered and still make sure that they don't affect my PvP MMR.

So I guess what I am saying is the if you take your time leveling your roster ISO really shouldn't be too much of a problem.

P.S. Just for extra data I am at day 1933 and have all 2*s and 3* max champed and all 4*s (except Echo) champed plus an ISO supply of almost 20 million. I am also farming 2*s and 3*s so that is probably helping me some too.

entrailbucket · December 2021

I've been reading this thread as well as the other, similar one, and thinking about them, and the question I keep coming back to is:

What's the rush?

Someone's going to say, "5 years isn't a *rush*" and of course it's not, but the point I keep trying to make in these is that there's not really a reason to speedrun this game. It's not like a typical RPG with a final boss and an ending -- it's just the same stuff, on and on forever.

That can be good (if you like that stuff) or bad (if you get bored of it) but it's not going to change, and moving from the 3* to 4* and 4* to 5* tiers doesn't unlock additional content. It's just the same stuff, with higher enemy levels and scaled up rewards. It's like an RPG with enemy scaling, but one that goes on forever.

So why are some people in a hurry to get to the higher tiers? Is it competitiveness? A desire to get to the top of the leaderboard? Is it chasing the feeling of making progress? Once you do get to the top tier, progress is impossible anyway, so you'll hit that feeling at some point.

These aren't rhetoricals, I'd really like to know what's motivating people!

bbigler · December 2021

entrailbucket said:

I've been reading this thread as well as the other, similar one, and thinking about them, and the question I keep coming back to is:

What's the rush?

Someone's going to say, "5 years isn't a *rush*" and of course it's not, but the point I keep trying to make in these is that there's not really a reason to speedrun this game. It's not like a typical RPG with a final boss and an ending -- it's just the same stuff, on and on forever.

That can be good (if you like that stuff) or bad (if you get bored of it) but it's not going to change, and moving from the 3* to 4* and 4* to 5* tiers doesn't unlock additional content. It's just the same stuff, with higher enemy levels and scaled up rewards. It's like an RPG with enemy scaling, but one that goes on forever.

So why are some people in a hurry to get to the higher tiers? Is it competitiveness? A desire to get to the top of the leaderboard? Is it chasing the feeling of making progress? Once you do get to the top tier, progress is impossible anyway, so you'll hit that feeling at some point.

These aren't rhetoricals, I'd really like to know what's motivating people!

Good point and good question. I’ve thought to myself before: the reason for playing hard is to get rewards, the reason for rewards is to strengthen your roster, the reason for strengthening your roster is to fight harder and get more rewards. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle with no actual end or goal. You play the game with the purpose to play more of the game. Seems silly, even insane.

What’s motivating my current speed run? I enjoy the progression up the tiers. I enjoy trying out new teams. If I played the same team for 6 months straight, I would quit. I think a lot of people are holding onto a future dream of getting something, so they put up with the daily grind, hoping and expecting it to get better.

EDIT: technically, progressing upwards does unlock additional content in the form of new characters to use.

entrailbucket · December 2021

bbigler said:

entrailbucket said:

I've been reading this thread as well as the other, similar one, and thinking about them, and the question I keep coming back to is:

What's the rush?

Someone's going to say, "5 years isn't a *rush*" and of course it's not, but the point I keep trying to make in these is that there's not really a reason to speedrun this game. It's not like a typical RPG with a final boss and an ending -- it's just the same stuff, on and on forever.

That can be good (if you like that stuff) or bad (if you get bored of it) but it's not going to change, and moving from the 3* to 4* and 4* to 5* tiers doesn't unlock additional content. It's just the same stuff, with higher enemy levels and scaled up rewards. It's like an RPG with enemy scaling, but one that goes on forever.

So why are some people in a hurry to get to the higher tiers? Is it competitiveness? A desire to get to the top of the leaderboard? Is it chasing the feeling of making progress? Once you do get to the top tier, progress is impossible anyway, so you'll hit that feeling at some point.

These aren't rhetoricals, I'd really like to know what's motivating people!

Good point and good question. I’ve thought to myself before: the reason for playing hard is to get rewards, the reason for rewards is to strengthen your roster, the reason for strengthening your roster is to fight harder and get more rewards. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle with no actual end or goal. You play the game with the purpose to play more of the game. Seems silly, even insane.

What’s motivating my current speed run? I enjoy the progression up the tiers. I enjoy trying out new teams. If I played the same team for 6 months straight, I would quit. I think a lot of people are holding onto a future dream of getting something, so they put up with the daily grind, hoping and expecting it to get better.
EDIT: technically, progressing upwards does unlock additional content in the form of new characters to use.

I think that cycle is why a lot of people get dissatisfied with the game -- it's because they're playing it like it's a traditional AAA game with a narrative and an ending instead of taking it for what it actually is. It's an expectations mismatch.

What the game actually is, is more like an endless procedurally-generated dungeon crawler, where the first few levels introduce new elements quickly, but by the time you've descended to level 200 you're seeing the same mechanics over and over to infinity. If you don't enjoy that grind and you're expecting an ending, it's going to get stale.

Also: progressing upward does technically unlock new characters to use, but at the same time it also locks out other characters.

I haven't heard of anyone purposely staying at the 2* or 3* tier because they enjoy that gameplay (if you're out there, speak up!), but plenty of players on this forum choose to stay at the 4* tier because they like that gameplay better, and if they did move up, those 4* characters would generally become unusable.

dianetics · December 2021

The rush is getting to the high level rewards so you do not fall behind. If you wait too long then heroes fall into the classics ether.

you want to get to cl10 quickly so you do not lose out on possible champ rewards.

Even if you stay in 4* tier you can pocket the rewards and use them later.

entrailbucket · December 2021

dianetics said:

The rush is getting to the high level rewards so you do not fall behind. If you wait too long then heroes fall into the classics ether.

you want to get to cl10 quickly so you do not lose out on possible champ rewards.

Even if you stay in 4* tier you can pocket the rewards and use them later.

That's exactly it though!

You have to rush to get to CL10 so you can get better rewards, so you can continue to compete in CL10, so you can continue to get rewards, so you can compete in CL10...on and on forever.

MPQ's endgame isn't even a treadmill, it's an infinite marathon run by thousands of players, and if you slow down you'll get passed and never catch up to where you were.

If you don't *really, really* enjoy running for its own sake, what do you get out of an infinite marathon?

bbigler · December 2021

Well, new players can catch up because there are max champ levels that no one can surpass. It doesn’t take long to start champing 4*s. But a mid-level 5* is just as strong as a max champed 4*. Adding champ levels to 5*s is where it’s hard to catch up, but still technically possible.

dianetics · December 2021

entrailbucket said:

That's exactly it though!

You have to rush to get to CL10 so you can get better rewards, so you can continue to compete in CL10, so you can continue to get rewards, so you can compete in CL10...on and on forever.

MPQ's endgame isn't even a treadmill, it's an infinite marathon run by thousands of players, and if you slow down you'll get passed and never catch up to where you were.

If you don't *really, really* enjoy running for its own sake, what do you get out of an infinite marathon?

I enjoy it. There are certain types of games where the game just begins once you hit max level.
Stuff like Diablo, Grim Dawn, Destiny, Borderlands 2, WoW back in the day, and so on.

It scratches an itch for me. The games that are not about winning, but slowly getting yourself stronger over time. For me the enjoyment is the grind, but I know it is not for everyone.

entrailbucket · December 2021

dianetics said:

entrailbucket said:

That's exactly it though!

You have to rush to get to CL10 so you can get better rewards, so you can continue to compete in CL10, so you can continue to get rewards, so you can compete in CL10...on and on forever.

MPQ's endgame isn't even a treadmill, it's an infinite marathon run by thousands of players, and if you slow down you'll get passed and never catch up to where you were.

If you don't *really, really* enjoy running for its own sake, what do you get out of an infinite marathon?

I enjoy it. There are certain types of games where the game just begins once you hit max level.
Stuff like Diablo, Grim Dawn, Destiny, Borderlands 2, WoW back in the day, and so on.

It scratches an itch for me. The games that are not about winning, but slowly getting yourself stronger over time. For me the enjoyment is the grind, but I know it is not for everyone.

I still like playing the game part of the game, after 8 years. I do still make some roster progression (closing in on my 4th 550!), but meaningful progression stalled out so long ago that I'd have been gone for years if I cared about that.

Boosted 5* in PvP has been the most significant change fun-wise in...ever, (Shang-Chi is a close 2nd) but I'd probably still be playing, and enjoying the game, even without that.

Sekilicious · December 2021

dianetics said:

entrailbucket said:

That's exactly it though!

You have to rush to get to CL10 so you can get better rewards, so you can continue to compete in CL10, so you can continue to get rewards, so you can compete in CL10...on and on forever.

MPQ's endgame isn't even a treadmill, it's an infinite marathon run by thousands of players, and if you slow down you'll get passed and never catch up to where you were.

If you don't *really, really* enjoy running for its own sake, what do you get out of an infinite marathon?

I enjoy it. There are certain types of games where the game just begins once you hit max level.
Stuff like Diablo, Grim Dawn, Destiny, Borderlands 2, WoW back in the day, and so on.

It scratches an itch for me. The games that are not about winning, but slowly getting yourself stronger over time. For me the enjoyment is the grind, but I know it is not for everyone.

Progression on the roster is satisfying. I made SCL10 PvE because of Polaris, completed it on a regular basis because of Kitty and BRB (underdeveloped) and can semi-compete because of Shang-Chi. Apocalypse and BRB are a lvl 300 Beast and Throg away from being fully covered. There are always goals to help advance the roster to keep the treadmill interesting. Or at least there will be until I start getting to entrailbucket’s spot, but that is apparently 6 years away.

entrailbucket · December 2021

Sekilicious said:

dianetics said:

entrailbucket said:

That's exactly it though!

You have to rush to get to CL10 so you can get better rewards, so you can continue to compete in CL10, so you can continue to get rewards, so you can compete in CL10...on and on forever.

MPQ's endgame isn't even a treadmill, it's an infinite marathon run by thousands of players, and if you slow down you'll get passed and never catch up to where you were.

If you don't *really, really* enjoy running for its own sake, what do you get out of an infinite marathon?

I enjoy it. There are certain types of games where the game just begins once you hit max level.
Stuff like Diablo, Grim Dawn, Destiny, Borderlands 2, WoW back in the day, and so on.

It scratches an itch for me. The games that are not about winning, but slowly getting yourself stronger over time. For me the enjoyment is the grind, but I know it is not for everyone.

Progression on the roster is satisfying. I made SCL10 PvE because of Polaris, completed it on a regular basis because of Kitty and BRB (underdeveloped) and can semi-compete because of Shang-Chi. Apocalypse and BRB are a lvl 300 Beast and Throg away from being fully covered. There are always goals to help advance the roster to keep the treadmill interesting. Or at least there will be until I start getting to entrailbucket’s spot, but that is apparently 6 years away.

I think that's really the point. There is no reason to rush to get to the endgame. Enjoy the journey to get there, even if it's a little slow sometimes. It's slow on purpose, because they don't want you to get there too quickly.

Daredevil217 · December 2021

Some random thoughts…

The one thing that is unique about the iso-8 wall is once you scale it, there’s no going back. You can always spend your hero points, drain your CP on a fan favorites store, etc. but once you’ve “caught up” on Iso-8, it’s pretty much impossible to land in that purgatory again (unless you stop playing). The game is designed for you you earn more than you need to keep up with releases. This might be why it’s so expensive. Once you have enough to level anything you roster, it has no value. It goes from the most valuable resource to worthless. No other resource in the game is like this (except red Iso… but that’s also Iso. Supports too, but they made them almost impossible to obtain higher levels of, so the tokens/“chase” still holds value).

At its heart, this is a roster management game to a lot of people (myself included), and I think the developers know and cater to the population that views it this way. The roster sorting and saved teams came way later in the game’s lifespan than I’d have thought. The developers really should want to incentivize having a large roster as much as possible, make it easier to manage, and minimize it being a hindrance. So that update was a huge boon towards that goal.

My last completely random thought is that covers are easier to come by than they ever have been in the game’s lifecycle. While this seems very generous of the developers, what this does is increase the pressure on two of the game’s biggest choke points. The first is roster slots. Since you are earning new covers at a faster pace, you need HP to save them. And while you can bank shards, you can’t bank a new cover for someone you’ve yet to roster. So, people often have more covers on the vine than they have HP to roster them. And the second choke point is of course Iso. You are covering all these shiny toys at a rapid fire pace, but can only really use them if you dump levels into them. So most are sitting on fully covered but unleveled 4s and 5s. The first choke point incentives spending and the second incentivizes playing.

The thing is, if you are “post” and can afford both to roster and level anything you earn/open, the increase in covers is all a net positive for the player. Just more good crops for the reward farms. This is an area that benefits vets way more than new players. A lot of vets are “post-spending”, as a dollar spent gives much lower returns than for a newer player still chasing. Funny enough I only really started spending after I became “post” (I have a surplus of iso, HP, and CP and have been able to meet my baby champ goals). I spend more as a thank you to the developers for the hours of entertainment than because I need the resources.

hitting the ISO8 wall

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