the scale of the iso problem

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

As has been discussed at nauseum, iso is at a premium for 4* and 5* players.

I really don’t think demiurge has an appreciation of the scale of that problem (at least their actions strongly imply that they do not). And to a lesser extent, neither do 2* and 3* players, for whom iso rates might seem reasonable.

Case in point:

My most recent LT pull was a carnage red. My carnage was 3/4/5 @145 (more than enough for his 4*ddq), so this is great news, right? Now he 13/13 and ready to champ.

That’s all true. But I only have 260k iso stockpiled. At 12/13 covers, carnage needed 251,790 iso to hit his softcap of 250. At 13/13, he needs 330,727 to hit 270. Plus champ’ing fees. So that 1 cover increased my iso needs by almost 100k.

Well, that’s a classy problem you say? Just save up that extra 100k and you are good to go in a week or two. And you would be right, except that carnage isn’t my only 13/13 4* at or below level 200. He’s my 5th. And I have another 6 4s at 10 or more covers (and another handful at 7-9). So no matter who I prioritize, a good 1/3 of the current 4 roster is going to languish for months. And thanks to scaling/mmr, I can’t get too much use out of underleveled 4*s.

On top of that, any future carnage cover I pull is useless until I can champ him. So my odds of a good LT pull just went down.

I could drop $1,000 US on iso right now and not even cover 1/3 of my current iso needs. Yet the game still tells me to treat a 1k iso reward like a gold-tier prize. And a 2.5k iso reward is marked like a 4* prize. And I have a weaker 4* roster for a veteran.

Iso distribution rates may be ok for the 3* tier and below, but they are comically pathetic at the 4* and 5* tiers. Nibbling-at-the-edges changes like increasing the alliance daily iso, or adding tens of thousands of iso to the taco vault are cute, but they don’t really do anything to solve the problem when 1 4* cover can add 100k to a player’s iso needs and make LTs less appealing to boot.

Something significant needs to be done.

This is not asking for a hand out or complaining that vets like me are entitled to “free” iso. Anyone with even 1 4* champ knows that it takes a ton of play time and/or a lot of money to get that far. This about the fact that the current resource economy in the game is broken. Covers and HP are distributed at a rate that is wildly different from the rate of iso distribution. Real money pricing for iso is simiarly out of line with pricing for HP. Without even considering questions of what the idea distribution rate should be, it’s obvious that the current rates do not work in concert with each other.

2

Agreed. Ideally I’d like to see more ISO added via new modes of play. Challenges where you have to use certain characters each day or different team make ups each day (two 1* characters and a 4* for instance). The game is fun but could use more than just the two play modes currently available.

3

“Need” is a pretty strong term. You should probably replace all instances of that word with “desire”. Outside your own preference, there is no need to collect and champ every character. That mentality is what leads many to burn out. I’m nowhere near the top, but from what I understand (and see on the lower level) 4* presence is still relegated to a few elites. Maxing the others is nice but generally doesn’t help.

My conjecture is that the Iso shortage is purposeful. It’s floodgate in place to prevent players from maxing out their rosters. If there were enough Iso to fully max all of your 4* and 5* characters you would quickly surpass their ability to provide incentive for further play (in the form of new characters, boss events, etc). A bunch of players with max-champed rosters slugging it out for position 1 in PvP - how long do you think that scenario would last? If you had the iso to fully level everything you needed to, your only reason to play is for covers that matter to you. For vets such as yourself, that’s maybe 50-75% abstinence from the game. That’s bad for business.

The game design as it stands is to keep people playing, which requires restricting rewards such that you have to pick and choose whom you want to advance. The game is not designed for you to max-champ every character. It’s designed for you to find characters you like, and entice you to spend money on them so you can build them into a competitive entity.

4

Have you looked at the leaderboards in PvP? It already is max champed rosters slugging it out for 1st place, and has been as long as I have been playing the game (well, only champed since january, but always maxed). The new character release rate is as high as it is so that vets remain engaged to chase the new shiny toys.

And even if I conceded that having enough iso to level my roster right now would kill my interest in the game, there still seems to me to be a vast gulf between ‘enough iso to level everyone’ and ‘$1000 of iso right now is barely 30% or current requirements.’ the point is that iso needs grow faster than the iso distribution rate as your roster gets better. Playing the game longer makes your iso shortage greater. None of the other resources in the game work this way. It’s completely out of balance.

(also, given that mmr and scaling force players to use their strongest characters in both pvp and pve, it’s relatively hard to identify the strongest characters before spending resources on them. So I don’t put a ton of stock into ‘you’re not supposed to level everyone’ arguments)

As for ‘need’ v. ‘desire,’ I don’t want to get into a semantic argument. I don’t need anything about this game in the sense that it is only for entertainment purposes. By my roster ‘needs’ iso into the sense that it can make use of X amount of iso. More than X is superfluous atm, and less than X requires prioritization.

And as a final note: despite our respective positions in this argument, you argubly have a better roster than me given your 6 cover OML. Rng is fun!

Edited to fix my terrible spelling!

5

It all stems from the design decision to ‘bolt on’ the 4* and 5* tiers to the existing game structure without ever doing anything significant to address the game’s prize distribution. The in-game ISO amounts were all ‘calibrated’, if you will, to a game intended to run in the 2*/3* space with only a couple of ‘trophy’ 4* characters. Now that the game has firmly left that space behind, the ISO amounts really, really should be re-calibrated.

Of course, so long as there are whales out there who will simply buy the ISO to insta-max anyone they desire, Demiurge sees no need to make any change in this respect. In fact they’d probably regard turning up the ISO distribution rate as detrimental to their bottom line. Hence the ‘nibbling at the edges’, as you put it. Tiny changes only meant to engender a little ‘feel good’ instead of seriously address it; and even then of course there’s the ‘give with one hand, take with the other,’ where they felt the need to take health packs and many 1500 ISO prizes out of the taco vault rather than the plethora of 2* covers.

Meh. It is what it is. I quit spending $$ a long time ago and am getting seriously close to retirement anyway (only 4x 3* left to champ now). I suddenly realized this week that I’ve been enjoying Future Fight more than MPQ for some time, and it’s playtime ‘requirements’ for advancement are much gentler than MPQ’s. I can play a mere 20, 30 minutes a day of FF and not feel that I’m missing out. If you’re running anything more than DDQ, you probably need at least double that every day in MPQ to feel like you’re making any kind of progress (and DDQ itself takes 10-15 minutes).

By the time summer’s over I’m probably going to be done. My wife notices when I get too focused on MPQ, saying I ‘get lost in my phone’. And that’s a bad thing for your wife to say to you on any semi-regular basis. I gotta cut back and MPQ is the prime candidate to go.

6

Let’s see. Characters I already have with 13 covers I want to max

High priority
PH, Punisher, Quake, Peggy (450k+400k+400k+350k=1.6M)
I will need at least two or most probably three months to level those

Medium
SS, Antman, Miles, KP, Carnage (500k+350k+400k+350k+350k=1.75M)
I will probably never EVER level those (maybe SS depending if I get other 5 covers or not)

This is of course not counting that in this time I will probably max Kate and MoonK which are also worth champing

In a game where the only new content we get is new chars and we play to get them, not being able to max those chars is really killing the game. We don’t need them? Then why the fuck we play! I already have the ‘top5’ champed, and my OML is almost maxed. Do I stop playing? It looks like devs want me to!

Devs are adding some iso for everyone, but it is already very easy to max 2s and 3s, we need a new way of getting iso to the people that needs it the most. It is not about flooding everybody with iso, but the cost of levelling 4s and 5s is crazy high.

SOMETHING BIG NEEDS TO BE DONE ASAP. We need a bigger flow of iso for 4 and 5 players. NOW!

When I think in all the iso I need and the speed I get it and I really want to just stop playing and uninstall the game…

7

a lot of this has to do with whales spending money or cupcaking for advancement in PVP to get the higher tier of rewards.

so fine, people abuse the system; why then, should the developers kowtow to any demands when players are choosing to set themselves up in this manner?

one thing is for sure, with the addition of 4* and 5* characters, there is an expanding gulf for ISO, i won’t disagree. but the top tier players drove that, and dev didn’t really have an answer except “lol 5* characters”. what really needs to happen is rebuild DDQ and PVP to take advantage of a tiered system to help out in 4* and 5* land.

8

The worst thing about leveling a 4* is that after a specific level, you get way less benefits from leveling them if you look at the actual gains you do get (damage, match damage, HP) vs the ISO required which goes way up towards the end.

From 200 to 270, its roughly 241,000 ISO. And you don’t get much “power” out of those levels… icon_e_confused.gif

9

Not really sure what whaling has to do with the iso shortage. Whales will always whale, seemingly no matter what price demiurge puts on their goods.

The iso shortage is a separate issue resulting from the fact that iso rewards are calibrated for a 3* endgame, but 4is and 5*s cost 3-5x as much to level.

It’s not as if finishing 1st in every single event would match the iso needs of a 4* roster. 1st in PvP = 5k iso. 1st in pve = 3k + sub rewards, best case scenario over 2 weeks is 40-50k iso (from placement rewards. Covers sold will provide lots more iso of course, but everyone gets those, regardless of whaling); each new 4* over the same two weeks is more than 350k.

Playing the game alone is comically insufficient, let alone keeping pace with the release rate. And iso prices are ridiculous. Whaling has nothing to do with the problem.

10

I play other games where there are special levels where you gain lots of experience to level up your characters at specific times. I wish there was something like that for this game as well.

The playing of the game is the fun part. The endless grinding is repetitive and boring, and lately I’m just not bothering.

11

I have 13 fully covered 4*s at an average level of 172, a 3.9M ISO deficit.

But today I got 1000 + 500 from the revised DDP vault, so problem solved, right?

12

The semantic argument is my sticking point and relates to the “you’re not supposed to level everyone” topic. “Can use” is not the same as “need”. Claiming an Iso shortage implies that you are incapable of competing without it. My argument is that’s clearly not the case. You can still compete without maximizing the use of every cover you get. Selling a 4* cover is a kick in the gut, for sure, but if it’s for Carnage? Like you said - he’s where he needs to be for DDQ. How many more times would you use him outside of a boost? Maybe as a deterrent to end a PvP session in which you don’t plan to shield?

Since I don’t climb high in PvP I may be totally off base, but it seems to me that most 4* characters fall in that category - generally not used to climb, but mostly used for deterrent, baking, specific counters, or other niche uses. Having them maxed out can save you a shield, health packs, maybe some time in a match or a node. But outside the top tier they don’t make a significant difference to your competitiveness. The feature gives you an edge, but I see that as part of the game. If you’ve chosen to invest in that character you reap a little benefit, but nothing that a good supporting cast can’t achieve even with a single cover or loaner.

I’m as shocked as anyone that I have a 6-cover OML. I’m reticent to level him any further because I fear it will punt my scaling and require I use him in every single match, and the rest of my roster can’t support that yet. The true heal and match damage are nice, but I almost never transform him and he doesn’t have an AoE or Nuke to pull his butt out of the fire if he hurts himself too badly.

13

Potential easy addition. Add a progression reward to Deadpool daily for reaching 29999 that would be 100k iso. Only those with good enough 4* rosters to win the 4* fight would be able to get it, and an extra 100k every 5 days would be like getting an extra 20k a day, which wouldn’t help us catch up much, but would drastically reduce the rate that we fall behind.

14

Ooh, you said require in a game of fun choices… and if you never transform him, that’s why he doesn’t have an AoE.

15

This has very little to do with that. Whales have always gotten the higher tier of rewards. They rushed to Sentry bomb, to ThorForce, and every other combo the game has produced. When this was a 3* game, the next tiers of rewards, in combination with other gameplay, were still sufficient to progress.

Even ignoring the 5* element, the game has moved to a 4* game with rewards still set at a 3* level, yet 4* costs are triple that of a 3*. This is where the sizable gap comes from.

The argument that “you’re not supposed to level everything” is a cop out. No one is asking for iso levels to be set such that you can level one character a day and be swimming. But it shouldn’t take 3 weeks (or more) to level a character that releases every 2 weeks.

This was brought up as a concern well back when 4* numbered in the single digits, so it’s not really a new concept. But it’s become more relevant by the day.

16

Just a guess here since I didn’t write the initial post. But I assume what was meant is that 4* covers are flowing too easily for some portion of the player base. Specifically those who whale and those belonging to top alliances who help each other achieve the top rewards (4*/Lt/25 CP) in PvP (progression & placement).

As an example Polares above seems to indicate he already has Peggy covered and ready to champ. She’s barely been released 2 weeks. 99.9% of the players probably have 0-2 covers of her and will require months (likely years) before they have her covered.

There has to be some limiting factor in the game. D3 has chosen ISO rather than cover scarcity at 4* and below and RNGesus at 5*.

KGB

17

No, that’s the mentality that games like this are targeting in the first place. If not for tapping into people’s obsessive compulsive tendencies, games like this wouldn’t even exist. There’s nothing inherently “fun” about sliding tiles around.

18

Sorry, but that’s a load of giantkitty. The devs let us know they have no interest in a limiting factor as soon as they let people whale 5*s.

19

No one’s asking for enough ISO to champion all our characters in one day.

But right now, at 20,000 ISO per day, it will take me over 160 days just to champion all my max-covered 4* characters (not counting Prof X, who I’ll leave at lv 106).

It would be great if we got enough ISO so that that number would be less than 160. Even 100, perhaps?

And of course in 160 days, I’ll have many more characters who need leveling to champion.

And I haven’t even counted any of my 5* characters or 4* characters with less than 13 covers.

20

Carnage is an example. It could be hulkbuster, jean grey, you name it. The specific character doesn’t matter in this argument. Yes, it is not required. And also you do not need to compete competitively. But why can’t I have the choice to get a character I like maxed. Why should it cost 300 dollars to max a favorite character or to have an small edge? Is this normal with most video games?

I would assume most video games would ask for maybe 50 bucks to max your character but in this game, it would be 6 times the amount? Does that make any business sense?

It’s poor thought out game concepts that have made every part of this game broken from the iso problem to the problems in pvp and pve. They can fix these things, yet they do not due to one reason and that is greed. They do not want to anger the whales. Whales want an enormous gap between them and the average players so it justifies their spending. If people all of sudden caught up to them without spending hundreds and maybe even thousands of dollars, they would be pretty angry because that’s how much they spent on their rosters.