ideas on how to fix perceived iso 'shortage'

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

this isnt about how much iso ought to cost, cause if you’re F2P then it is what it is. also, apologies if there’s already a thread out there on this. i’d like to present an idea that just came to me.

it reaaaaally feels like iso progression awards are worthless, especially in pvp. what i mean is, whatever iso you ‘win’ is eventually going to spent on skip tax (and i think this applies to players all across the board regardless of roster, you’re either skipping cause the opponent is too hard or the match point total is too low). i think A LOT can be fixed in terms of the ‘perceived iso shortage’ if the devs just gave players an option to choose how to ‘sort your nodes’. so for example you’d be able to sort your nodes by level of difficulty or by amount of points. similar to search options on amazon or something where you can sort your search by order of price, or whatever. just imagine if everytime your node refreshed it was the next highest available point target…then you’d actually get to KEEP whatever iso you’ve won up to that point as opposed to immediately spending it on skip tax trying to find the next target. i’m sure this idea has its flaws but what the hey, just putting it out there…thoughts?

2

Here’s an interesting question. For any given PvP, do you skip more than 3 times per match on average to find a worthy opponent? The victory bonus you see at the end of the match didn’t originally exist, so you’re getting an extra 30 iso for every match you play minus the skip tax. If you aren’t skipping that much, then there isn’t really a shortage since you’re getting more iso than you would be getting otherwise.

3

i just crossed 1000 points in pvp, so won 1000 iso. that 1000 iso was gone less than a minute later.

when i shield hop i try not to fight any battle thats less than 40 points cause if i get hit during my hop it’ll likely be for around that many points if not more so at least i’m not losing ground if i do get hit. of course, i could just do the 20+ point matches (although one could argue that 20 points matches can be quite generous of the AI relative to all the single digit point matches i’ve been seeing), but then i’m not spending my hp efficiently then am i and that’d be whole 'nother can of worms.

4

Whoa, what? I also skip to hit only 40+ targets on such shieldhops, but man, 1000 Iso in a minute is… too much.

5

I would carefully track how many skips you do per tournament. Personally, I rarely skip below 800, and once i get to 800+, it’s maybe 4ish skips on average, which averages out to positive iso gained from the victory bonus.

6

yea i could start tracking iso spent on skipping, thanks for the suggestion. to clarify, i’m not saying that i dont net any iso during pvps, for sure i do. its just a real bummer that once i get into shield hopping territory i see all that iso i’ve won being lost, i’d say easily more than 50% of what i’ve won. but again, this is something i can start tracking.

so you dont have to skip more than 4ish times before you find a juicy target? are you targeting for a certain amount of points?

7

Once I’m in the say 1k range, it’s probably 7-10 skips to find a 40 point match, but before that I tend to play games consecutively up to 800, which brings the overall average down.

8

ah ok, so thats not all too different from me then. same here, i dont really start spending on skip tax until past 800. though i probably skip a tad more than you do. but back to my suggestion, wouldn’t having an option to sort the way your nodes are ordered help with all this in the first place?

9

I don’t really understand why people skip low level fights so much. I’m not being rude, or making a smart @ss comment here. I really don’t get it.

Now, if it’s close to the end of the event, and you are trying to get up to the next reward level, I can see that. Or if you are sitting on over 1k points, I can see not wanting to waste time with something that’s not worth it so you have less chance of getting attacked yourself. But I hear about people skipping every single match under 10 or 15 points all the time just because they don’t want to bother with them. But why? icon_e_confused.gif

Say I’m using Patch, Steve Rogers, and the featured character, I’ll use Colossus for the example here. All of my team are above level 145 or 150. I see a match for say 8 points. I look at the roster and see that there is no way this person could have a successful retaliation against me because they don’t have any character above level 50 or 60 on their entire roster. Now, I have two choices. I can pay 10 iso to skip, (or drop the rewards from +30 down to +20 iso) because I’m looking for something better. Or, I can take a minute to beat the other team, get the 8 points, and the full +30 iso afterward.

. I know most people don’t think 8 points is much, but here’s a little totally unrelated story for you:
When I first started playing MPQ, the first PvE I played was a The Hunt. At the time, I had just started , so I knew nothing about rubberbanding, or scaling, or even that my health packs regenerated. But I saw that green 4 star.png

  • Xforce prize that was rewarded to 1st and 2nd place rank, and I just had to have it. He would have been my very first 4 star.png
    character. Since I didn’t even have a 3 star.png
    yet, I wanted it. Plus, it was Wolverine. The baddest of the bad, coolest of the cool, toughest of the tough, meanest of the mean. The Best There Is ! (Keep in mind that I had just started playing. All I saw was a Wolverine with 4 star.png
    s ) So I played as much as I could, and even stayed in the T5 the whole time. Then, at the 5 minutes left mark, I had one last match, and when it was over, I was in 2nd place. “Oh joy” I thought, “that cool Xforce is mine !” But, there was still 1 minute left. (can anyone gues what happened next?) That’s right boys and girls. Less than 1 minute to go, and the person in 3rd place jumps ahead and takes my Xforce, beating me by 8 tiny, little points.

Now, add to that the fact that each victory gets me an additional +30 iso to go with a reward of 70, 140, 250, or a random cover that is worth 100 to 250 iso. I just don’t understand why players skip so much.

Of course, that could also be one of the reasons I have never gotten over 1100 points. (1,020 something being my top record). I only skip a match if I see there is no possible way to win. But even if the opponent is sitting on over 1k points. I still hit them knowing full well they might retaliate. But if they do, that just lets me hit them again.

I do this mainly to get the +30 iso. With sooo many characters in need of it, I can’t really afford to pass any up. And I know most other players need it as well. So, what I really don’t get, is why pay iso to skip a match that will guarantee you an extra +30 iso. It might not be worth many points. Might only be worth 2 or even 3 points, (I’ve had quite a few of those). But why not do it for the iso?

10
  1. Healthpacks: when you’re making a sustained climb, you want to maximize average points per health pack. Your characters need to soak up the damage from 5 8-point wins to equal the point gain of 1 40-point win, and that’s assuming none of your 8-point opponents snipes you back.
  2. Retaliations: a team worth 8 points to you will sap ~40 points from you on retal. Hitting them back means even more lost points on the subsequent retal. IN this context, I don’t understand this bit: “But even if the opponent is sitting on over 1k points. I still hit them knowing full well they might retaliate. But if they do, that just lets me hit them again.” You clearly don’t want to enter a retal war with someone worth less than yourself, and you often do want to get into a retal war with someone worth more than yourself.

In PVP events, you generally fight for progression rewards and placement, not primarily for Iso farming. The latter is what LRs are for, where you can beat up tiny seed teams for the same Iso rewards that you get from beating up a triple-max team in a PVP event.

11

Ahhh. I never really looked at it like that. About the health packs I mean. When one of my characters get hurt, I just switch them out. I know there are a few that are better than the rest, but I tend to get bored using the same ones all the time. Sometimes I’ll use 2 strong and 1 weak character together just for a little variety. I know, I’m weird.

As to the retal war, yes, I meant if the other person had more points. Or an amount of points close enough to mine that it wouldn’t matter.

I tend to over think things so much sometimes that I miss the obvious icon_lol.gif
.

12

Yeah, retals are the big one. But generally, by the time that you care about the 15 pointers that keep appearing, it isn’t some team that won’t retaliate, it’s the same x-force/sentry hood teams that will be able to beat anything regardless

13

catching up with the convo here…

yea, like i stated above, and others reiterated and explicated better than i did (thanks hailmary!), the reason for skipping lower point matches is pretty much about efficiency. but i wont repeat what’s already been said.

and yes, unfortunately its not uncommon for me to skip 1000+ iso before i see a 40 point match. its utterly infuriating seeing the same opponents again and again before i see a new one. i cant tell you how many times i skip a node just to see the next node with the same exact opponent as the one i just skipped. SMH…

but returning, again, to the main topic…at least for players like myself, i can easily see how having an option to choose how our nodes are filtered would greatly help our iso flow. and this wouldnt mean that mpq would be losing out on their ‘iso sales’ either since the skip tax would still be there. for example if i chose to have my nodes filtered in order of highest match point value, and if i felt like i couldnt defeat the first three 50 point matches that showed up, then i’d still have to skip until i found one i could win. but at least i’d know what was available to me at higher point values than simply aimlessly skipping away hoping that the AI would eventually arbitrarily throw me a bone. i think this would be a win/win situation

14

You skipped 100 opponents in less than a minute? Please

15

Because hitting someone for 10 who’s going to hit you back for 40, isn’t a winning strategy.

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sorry i didnt communicate the sarcasm or exaggeration clearly enough. maybe it was TWO minutes later..

17

I think it’s time to entirely reexamine the cover and iso system altogether.

The system is set up so that if join now, you will never, ever be able to max all your characters, regardless how much or well you play.

Furthermore, with 4*'s being the equivalent of 3 3*'s, a lot of older players will now fall further and further behind leveling characters.

The iso and 2* cover drops were the last change about 6 months ago.

My question is twofold: how long is the transition period intended to take? Do the developers believe the current cover distribution and iso systems permit players to transition within this period?

Personally, I think iso is overly scarce, and the transition period takes too long, so we lose players to discouragement.

18

The real problem is that using an ELO system really didn’t make sense in the first place, and bolting shields onto it just broke it even more.

19

What’s wrong with a little bit of ELO? Mister Blue Skyyyyyyy

20

I mentioned during anniversary event that I hoped they kept double ISO, and it’s easily justified.

They have about double the amount of characters (or more?) since kick-off.
Therefore, it costs twice as much to get your roster leveled.
Therefore, it takes twice as long to get your roster leveled.

Why not cut that time back to normal, and double iso going forward.