SHIELD CLs & Intercepts' Impact on ISO Income (Upd. 1/16/17)

[MPQ_Daywalker]

Lately I’ve been feeling like I’ve been earning ISO-8 way faster than I ever had before. I decided to take an analytical look at how much ISO I’ve earned over the past year, since championing was introduced. Think of it like a real-life example of what aesthetocyst wrote up last month on the game’s History of ISO Supply & Demand.

I started with the hypothesis that SHIELD Ranks and Clearance Levels significantly increased my ISO income. To test this hypothesis, I utilized the revision history on my MPQ roster in Google Sheets and put together a new spreadsheet that includes weekly summarized data.

I keep my roster spreadsheet updated religiously, and my play style is such that I am continually ranking up my characters, spending ISO as I get it. For that reason, the “ISO Spent” portion of my spreadsheet is pretty much the ISO I have earned in the game to date. I say pretty much because I would had also had ISO on hand, and I have spent more ISO over the years (including making the classic n00b mistake of buying standards for 500 ISO a pop when I first started out). I have a fully functioning 2* champion farm, and have cycled characters numerous times since the 2* sellback rate was increased, and you lose about 8000 ISO each time you do that (in exchange for the champion rewards), so my ISO Spent is really the minimum amount of ISO I’ve earned in the game.

Since SHIELD Ranks debuted on August 29, I’ve also been tracking the amount of ISO I have on hand, so my ISO earned for the time following that is more accurate.

My Play Style
The amount of ISO you earn each day is inherently tied to how you play MPQ, so I thought I should cover how I’m playing, to show where my numbers are coming from. I’ve put it behind a spoiler tag, so if you’re interested you can click on Hidden to check it out, if not feel free to skip on to the next section.

[spoiler]I’ve played pretty consistently the same way throughout all of the past year. I am a hybrid player – I play both PVE and PVP. For PVE, I hit final progression, for PVP, I usually aim for the 4* cover (1000 progression at the start of the year, now 900) but if I’m pressed for time I focus more on PVE than PVP and will only go up to the 575 mark. I play in Lightning Rounds pretty regularly. I try to grab seed teams when I can and play to 250, when I don’t get get seeds I will only play one or two matches. The only exception this year was when I was on vacation for a week and a half at the end of June – during that time I had spotty Internet access and only played DDQ.

I open tokens as I get them (except for a month of hoarding CP and LTs this past November). And I always have a target for who I’m levelling up next. It may be to take someone up to champion or just to get them within easy reach (e.g. 229 or 250 for a 4*). I follow the buffed character schedule closely and aim to have multiple buffed characters each week in whatever tier I’m currently in (3* at the beginning of the year, 4* now) – who’s buffed next strongly influences who I target to level up.

I am the commander in a very casual alliance – I am the only member who plays the amount that I do. For that reason, I don’t get major alliance rewards from either PVE or PVP. My alliance has made it to Round 6 in boss events, but other than that, the rewards/ISO I have earned to date is pretty much just generated by my play.

Once SHIELD Clearance Levels arrived, I have almost always chosen the highest CL available to me for PVE and PVP events (once I dropped down to CL7 to try for better placement as an experiment). However, the last couple seasons I have selected CL6 for the season rewards, as I’ve been getting much better placement rewards that way.

SHIELD Ranks have definitely been contributing to my ISO income – I was grandfathered in at Rank 61 and I have leveled up roughly once a week since then; I’m currently at Rank 78, soon to be 79.

I’m a mobile player, so I also receive ISO via Facebook friend sharing and SHIELD Signal Intercepts, once they started.

I’m not taking much advantage of Facebook – I know there are people who get way more ISO from it than I do, by having hundreds of friends linked. I get a small amount of ISO from it, very occasionally and I don’t rely on it.

Once SHIELD Intercepts began I instantly loved them… but didn’t love the time it took to wait for the ads to finish. I signed up for VIP in November purely to get rid of the ads and don’t regret it; so over the last two months I’ve also received the little bit of ISO that comes from the VIP rewards.[/spoiler]In short summary, I play a lot in both PVE and PVP, but I don’t get major alliance rewards as I’m a member of a very casual alliance.

Findings
Here’s what I found… before SHIELD Clearance Levels were released I averaged 19,174 ISO/day, excluding the grandfathered ISO I received at the start of SHIELD Ranks (it’s 22,957 ISO/day with that grandfathered amount).

After SCLs were introduced, and before SHIELD Signal Intercepts arrived, I was averaging 39,534 ISO/day. That’s more than double the pre-SCL average.

Since the launch of SHIELD Signal Intercepts, I’ve been earning 47,318 ISO a day – an additional 7,785 ISO each day.

Below is my ISO earned year to date put into chart form. I’ve added in a logarithmic trendline that lines up with growth, but if you look at the July to August timeframe you can see that the path – before SHIELD Ranks were introduced – was on a much lower incline than it ended up being. When SHIELD Ranks debuted, you can see the vertical increase of the grandfathered ISO, but after that you can see the ISO income on a sharper incline than it was previously.

One thing that I think is interesting to note is that the big double ISO events of the past few months – anniversary and the holiday events – are just blips in the overall chart.

Edit 1/3/17: aesthetocyst pointed out that I did not give SHIELD Ranks their proper credit for increasing my ISO income. I have definitely seen an increase in ISO purely from SHIELD Ranks, that’s only getting better with time. I was grandfathered into Rank 61 and have ranked up to Rank 78 through the time period covered by my spreadsheet. For Ranks 61 - 78, I earned 530,000 ISO over 125 days, at an average of 4,240 ISO/day. That’s about 4,000 ISO/Day just from SHIELD Ranks in the first few weeks, and 5,000 ISO/Day in the last four weeks:

If anyone is curious to dig more into the details, here’s a link to my spreadsheet.

Update 1/16/17:
It’s been two weeks since I posted this, so I have a couple more weeks of data, and I’ve found that my average ISO income has decreased in the post-Intercept time, which I believe indicates how significant of a bump that double ISO was during the holidays (since it also applied to Intercepts).

My average ISO/day since Intercepts debuted has now balanced down to 44,010 ISO/day. That’s still 4,476 ISO above my average prior to Intercepts, but significantly less than the 7,785 average ISO increase I was seeing before.

I am now getting more ISO from SHIELD Ranks over time (I’m up to SR 80 right now). If I take the ISO I get from SHIELD Ranks completely out of the equation, prior to Intercepts debuting (and after SCLs debuted) I was averaging 35,809 ISO/day. After Intercepts, with the SR ISO deducted, I’m averaging 39,581 ISO/day – an increase of 3,772 ISO/day. I believe that this ~4,000 ISO number is a better indicator of how much I’ve been receiving from Intercepts on average.

Here’s an updated chart showing my average ISO/day (with SHIELD Rank ISO included):

And here’s a chart that I like to look at personally, just because it’s a nice graphical representation of my progress in the game since championing debuted. The red line is my number of 3* champions (the little bump at the end is me finally champing Strang3), the blue line is my number of 4* champs, and the yellow line is my SHIELD Rank.

Conclusions
SHIELD Ranks, SHIELD Clearance Levels and SHIELD Signal Intercepts have all significantly increased my ISO income.

That’s not great news for MPQ players on Steam, who don’t receive SHIELD Signal Intercepts. I’ve said this before in other posts, but I really wish Demiurge would add in code to give the SHIELD Intercept prizes to Steam users as long as they’re VIPs – even if Demi does not want to or can’t implement ads on Steam, there is nothing stopping them from giving those prizes to VIPs.

Update 1/16/17: With the baffling announcement that Amazon devices don’t support SHIELD Intercepts, even though many Amazon device users have stated that they were getting Intercepts up until the announcement, the impact of missing ISO from not getting Intercepts now extends to both Steam and Amazon App Store players.

[kidicarus]

As a steam user, i’d like to thank you for your hard work in preparing your graphs. Really highlights how badly we’re getting screwed competitively.

[nigelregal]

Damn over 7k from intercepts. Glad I stopped VIP as i’m on steam. I was with VIP since day 1 and once intercepts came out I stopped.

[SnowcaTT]

Just like aesthetocyst, I won’t ever buy VIP again because there is no value in it - and because they don’t have intercepts on Steam, that value (zero) has remained.

I have an idea! Why don’t we have a 2nd DDQ daily, where many players can’t even play it! Do it for Steam only!

Can you imagine the outcry?!? Except then Steam would be -back- to almost even (also can’t get FB) ISO!

STOP MAKING PROGRESSION MORE DIFFICULT FOR DIFFERENT PLATFORMS.

I’d change my banner below if only Steam could get that sweet intercept ISO - which was doubly bitter to lose out on on double-iso days.

[MPQ_Daywalker]

@aesthetocyst

@_Daywalker_

Once SHIELD Intercepts began I instantly loved them… Since the launch of SHIELD Signal Intercepts, I’ve been earning 47,318 ISO a day – an additional 7,785 ISO each day.

7,785 iso /day??? Wow … are you sure you’ve accounted for everything? I used 5,000iso/day based on anecdotes from others and that figure met with much derision. But human nature is to be pessimistic. Again, I have a mobile account, and on the rare days when I do play it, those intercepts roll in, and the iso piles up on an account that has no use for it

Well, digging into it, I find I have an anomaly in my numbers the week before the holiday event and during it… I apparently was lackadaisical in my roster spreadsheet updates the week before, because it’s showing that I only gained 75,249 ISO the week ending 12/19 and then gained 753,673 ISO the holiday week ending 12/26. That’s not true – I must just not have have updated my on-hand ISO count the week before Christmas, so that number got rolled up into the following week (after I spent it leveling up characters). I didn’t champ anyone during the week ending 12/19 so I know I was holding on to ISO at that time.

So because of my anomaly I can’t just take out the double ISO holiday week to see what impact that has on the average ISO/Day in the post-Intercepts time period. I do think the double ISO had a significant impact on that average, but I can’t prove it. The SHIELD Signal Intercepts getting double ISO had to make a difference, so I feel I can’t really exclude that number if we’re talking about the impact Intercepts have on overall ISO income. 2000 ISO became 4000 ISO, 1000 ISO became 2000 ISO, 250 ISO became 500 ISO… and I got all of those numerous times over the course of the holiday event week.

I will keep watching the numbers over time to see how everything averages out. Perhaps my average ISO/day will drop significantly if we don’t have any more double Intercept ISO events in the near future.

@aesthetocyst

@_Daywalker_

Aside from the grandfathered ISO infusion, the release of SHIELD Ranks did not significantly affect my ISO income…

This is the only conclusion of your that seems odd, but of course this will depend on the rate of your xp acquisition. How many ranks have you gained? I started at 65, just hit 87, after 4 months, call it 122 days. Ranks 65–87 are worth 765,000iso, that’s 6,270iso/day. Nothing to sneeze at. But if you started at a lower rank and have ranked slower, yeah that daily amount would be much less.

I do have SHIELD Ranks in my spreadsheet as well… I both started lower (Rank 61) and have ranked up slower than you (was at Rank 78 at the time I updated the spreadsheet yesterday, just eked into 79 this morning). I think you’re right, I am discounting a considerable amount of ISO income there. For Ranks 61 - 78, I earned 530,000 ISO over 125 days, at an average of 4,240 ISO/day. That’s about 4,000 ISO/Day just from SHIELD Ranks in the first few weeks, and 5,000 ISO/Day in the last four weeks:

So my ISO income is definitely getting an increase from SHIELD Ranks, and that increase is getting even better over time. I’ll have to edit the OP to reflect this.

Note that in the spreadsheet clip above, my SHIELD rank income was getting steady increases the weeks following SHIELD Intercepts going live, so that will be affecting my average ISO/day during that time period as well. That 7,700+ ISO/day average increase goes down to about a 6,600 ISO/day increase if you take the SHIELD Rank ISO out of the equation. I think a chunk of that 6,600 increase is due to the double ISO for Intercepts but I can’t say for sure.

[Hendross]

@kidicarus

As a steam user, i’d like to thank you for your hard work in preparing your graphs. Really highlights how badly we’re getting screwed competitively.

Revised for STEAM users to reflect SHIELD Intercepts

I don’t play on STEAM but can can empathize

[MPQ_Daywalker]

The OP has now been updated with a couple more weeks of ISO stats, which is showing my post-Intercept ISO/day average to be more around 4,000 ISO/day than 7000 ISO/day – I think this is mainly due to the giant increase I received during the double ISO over the holidays, which was inflating the average.

One other factor that I didn’t go into but has been in the back of my mind is my 2* champion farm and its impact on my ISO numbers. I restarted at least four 2* champs in the last week, and I know I’m losing about 8,000 ISO when I do that, but my spreadsheet is not taking that into account. So I’ve really earned more ISO than my numbers show, but I’ve lost some of it due to the 2* cycling. I figure I make some of that back with the 3* covers, heroic tokens and command points (which often turn into 4* champ levels), but I don’t have a good way of determining how much I’m making back.

Regardless, the numbers clearly show that SHIELD Clearance Levels made a huge difference (doubling my average ISO/day), SHIELD Ranks give an ever-increasing average, and as of right now I’m seeing an increase of about 4,000 ISO/day from Intercepts.

[Xzasxz]

So how is it, that some people average over 4000 ISO/day from Intercepts, while many are close to nothing, while playing similar number of games? An I’m not a Steam or Amazon player. Does it anything to do with my localization, that the game is checking since one of the updates?

[whycantwesyncpc]

Are intercepts still in the game? I haven’t gotten one in at least a week

[MPQ_Daywalker]

@Xzasxz

So how is it, that some people average over 4000 ISO/day from Intercepts, while many are close to nothing, while playing similar number of games? An I’m not a Steam or Amazon player. Does it anything to do with my localization, that the game is checking since one of the updates?

I’m not sure but I can provide where I’m coming from… I’m an iOS user and went VIP in November (have been charged twice so far) to avoid watching ads. Have gotten Intercepts multiple times every day, in both DDQ and story events.

[Xzasxz]

Does it depend on the countyr one is from? Does it matter, that I’m form Poland, not from USA? Or someting else matters?
I had a VIP accout when intercepts started and did not renew when it expired. Since the very beginning I have never seen more than 3 intercepts in one day, and this happened maybe 3-4 times. the average number is ca 1 per day. Like yesterday i made all the nodes green checked, so it makes ca 60 games. I got intercept once … And do not tell me about RNG and one bad day. That’s how it is from the very beginning of this. Intercepts’ impact on my ISO income is negligible.

[Borstock]

No charts from me, but I can safely confirm that I make a ton of ISO from Shield Intercepts. Steam users have every right to feel like they’re getting an inferior gaming experience to users on other platforms.

[Xzasxz]

I AM NOT A STEAM USER. I am android user. And i’m getting maybe 5 intercepts A WEEK. And I’m hitting all the progression rewards almost every single event. Due to some unclear mechanism some players get a lot of ISO, while some others only a little.

[mega_ghost]

Look, I understand the Steam players’ frustration, but this wasn’t a decision a group of evil developers made to persecute a tiny subset of the game’s player base. Whenever you release something across multiple platforms, there will be discrepancies due to the unique natures of and rules/requirements inherent to each platform. On top of that, platforms change their rules/requirements as time goes on, whether the developers like it or not. We just saw this with the change for Amazon devices; Amazon players had access to intercepts, Amazon made some change, and now Amazon players no longer have access to intercepts. There are also certain platforms that experience ISO sales while others do not. As long as this game exist on different platforms, it will never be perfectly equal.

That said, if Steam has rules / roadblocks preventing the developers to allow Steam users to sync their game with mobile platforms, the developers absolutely should allow Steam players the option of a one-time account transfer to the mobile platforms. That’s what everyone should be pressing for, not demanding that the developers provide them with a feature they simply contractually cannot.

[mega_ghost]

You know what hurts me more, competitively, than a difference of 2K - 6K ISO a day? Having responsibilities and obligations. I don’t have the same free time to dedicate to the game as many of you do, so top placement is an impossibility for me because of real-world constraints. Is it an equal playing field for people with an hour of free time a day to be placed in the same competitive pool as someone with four or more hours of free time daily? Having better internet access makes a big difference too! I used to have to squeeze in my matches on the toilet at work, but the Wi-Fi was spotty in there. Is it unfair that some people work in offices with better Wi-Fi reception in the bathroom? Do people with IBS that take more at-work bathroom trips have an unfair advantage? What about people that don’t have full-time jobs vs. people who work 60+ hours a week? And poor people vs. rich people, with more disposable income for HP and ISO? And the app crashes on Android phones more than Apple phones… that costs health, points, and time, so Android users are at a disadvantage. If someone has Carpal Tunnel and has to take breaks from the game for days at a time to protect their hands, how is it fair that they must compete with someone with no hand injuries? Are the developers ableist?

Etc.

[TLCstormz]

Okay, but YOU have to stop pretending that this is JUST an “intercepts” issue.

It is ALSO a “Facebook Rewards” issue…

[mega_ghost]

@TLCstormz

Okay, but YOU have to stop pretending that this is JUST an “intercepts” issue.

It is ALSO a “Facebook Rewards” issue…

I can see how this could be a boon for some, but even on mobile I’ve at best earned 500 ISO a week through Facebook rewards, if I’m lucky. I have about three friends on Facebook that play this game, and none play it regularly enough to make it of any benefit to me.

This isn’t to say it’s not a discrepancy between platforms, because it is, but it’s not a guaranteed or clear competitive advantage, and it’s certainly less of an advantage than countless other variables.

If the developers could include it in the Steam build, they would. The complaints should really be directed to Steam, not D3 / Demiurge / Marvel. But even still, if a Steam user wants to switch their account to a mobile platform, customer service should let them make the one-time switch and be understanding. Besides that, I’m not sure what anyone expects them to do. You can’t code around a platform’s restrictions.