What is going on with PvP MMR and 94/166 opponent selection?

[system]

Disclaimer
I understand it’s a weekend, so even if a dev were to comment on this thread (which I think is unlikely to begin with), it would probably not happen until Monday.

Preface:
A bunch of us have been chatting about this and it seems as though something was stealthily changed yet again in the last patch in regard to how MMR works and how your opponents are being chosen.

After some perceived weirdness in
's Heavy Metal Jamboree I decided to experiment a little in
's Fatal Attraction to see if I could do a little spading on what’s going on here. So starting off at 0, I made basically the entire trek up from 0 to 600+, alternating each win with a loss.

What I experienced:
Opponent strengths went down until I crossed 400 points when they suddenly all became maxed

characters. They stayed like that up until I crossed 600 points, at which point it was almost exclusively maxed


characters.

Up to 3-400 points: Opponents leveled 40-60
Over 400 points: 2x level 94
Over 600 points: maxed 166s

The node I won to cross 600 (

94 team) was replaced with maxed


.

I left that node alone and won another

node. That node was replaced with maxed
270 XF

After losing another match, the next node to pop up was loaner
maxed



.

There was no real transition at any point or any real mixed strength teams. The kind which might feature a maxed

and maybe a level 120


. It was either 94s, or 166s.

What I suspect:
I’m thinking opponent selection is now based on roster as well as MMR.

MMR plays a role up until 400 points.
400-600 MMR plays a part but gives you maxed

opponents if your roster has them.
600+ MMR is mostly ignored and you are given opponents with similar rosters. This allows 2-3
transitioning players to achieve decent scores.
800+ MMR and roster are ignored.

Any thoughts on this? Have you been experiencing something different?

[system]

Faced level 94*s and all loaner Dakens up to 600. As soon as I crossed 600 it was replaced by 249/166/166.

BASTARDS.

[system]

The MPQ ninja does not reveal his/her ninja secrets. Let’s just say between boosts, the fight screen, MMR, bracketing, etc. the ninja has been working overtime.

[Zen808]

OP, an important part of your narrative that you left out is the quality of team that you used to fight your opponent. I believe that a person who uses level 60-70 characters to fight level 60-70 opponents will have a different MMR adjustment from one who uses level 94 characters to fight the same level 60-70 opponents. And those that use maxed 3* characters to rofl-stomp those same 60-70 opponents will have an entirely different level of MMR adjustment.

[system]

@808SpicyToro

OP, an important part of your narrative that you left out is the quality of team that you used to fight your opponent. I believe that a person who uses level 60-70 characters to fight level 60-70 opponents will have a different MMR adjustment from one who uses level 94 characters to fight the same level 60-70 opponents. And those that use maxed 3* characters to rofl-stomp those same 60-70 opponents will have an entirely different level of MMR adjustment.

That is why I mentioned the max level of your roster. We’ve been explicitly told that PVE scaling takes into account your roster levels, whether or not you can actually use those characters. In PvE this can be devastating. If you were a person with a

roster, but spent a lot of resources to buy up covers and max out a



, you may have PvE nodes with a difficulty level based on your 270
even if you’re fighting an enemy
and are thus locked out of your own, and only have level 94

characters to use.

It would not surprise me if there was something similar going on with PvP. You’re given opponents with similar rosters which then necessitates you use your 166s to compete, and must eschew roster diversity and playing with your other characters if you want to be able to win. Since PvP has the lovely feature where it’s not “optimal” to play with anything other than your best team (as it opens you up to too many attacks), I honestly haven’t seen what happens if I used some

characters to win fights early.

[reckless442]

I would like to know why, after reaching 700, 95% of the teams I’m facing have a max-level X-Force. While I can understand that X-Force covers are plentiful enough for players to have the character fully covered, I don’t buy that so many players have managed to raise their X-Forces to level 270 legitimately. They would either have had to buy multiple Mother Lodes or have spent virtually all their in-game earned ISO on X-Force, to the exclusion of other characters, and the rosters just don’t reflect those kind of sacrifices.

[system]

@reckless442

I would like to know why, after reaching 700, 95% of the teams I’m facing have a max-level X-Force. While I can understand that X-Force covers are plentiful enough for players to have the character fully covered, I don’t buy that so many players have managed to raise their X-Forces to level 270 legitimately. They would either have had to buy multiple Mother Lodes or have spent virtually all their in-game earned ISO on X-Force, to the exclusion of other characters, and the rosters just don’t reflect those kind of sacrifices.

I’ve been sitting on a lot of iso since there’s no need to have more than about 5 3s maxed unless they release another Sentry and we haven’t had one of those must have since, well, Sentry. I think it’s like 500K to get him so that’s about 4 3s and didn’t have problem getting that even though I very rarely touch PvP now and I think PvP is still likely better iso 8 if you play it a lot and not boost because PvE has an awful a lot of ‘20 iso’ prizes.

I’ve been seeing high level X Forces even in the 0-300 range. I don’t know if they try to give you harder opponents for playing at the end but I saw plenty of those when I played with more than a day to go, and I play PvP very little. For some reason I always see Colog and his various experimental teams too. From what I can tell the game always give me near max level opponents but once in a while it’ll throw some 2s in the 400-600 range. I remember one time I started with 1s at the low range and I pretty much play the same way. I stopped using boosts in most PvP events to save iso and I’m pretty sure I’ve a higher loss rate than people who do play PvP competitively for those high scores so it’s kind of surprising to hear people complain about high level opponents, because the game sure thinks I need to match up with some pretty tough opponents so I thought everyone else who has much better score must have it at least as hard.

[system]

@reckless442

I would like to know why, after reaching 700, 95% of the teams I’m facing have a max-level X-Force. While I can understand that X-Force covers are plentiful enough for players to have the character fully covered, I don’t buy that so many players have managed to raise their X-Forces to level 270 legitimately. They would either have had to buy multiple Mother Lodes or have spent virtually all their in-game earned ISO on X-Force, to the exclusion of other characters, and the rosters just don’t reflect those kind of sacrifices.

I’m wondering if some of it is a) he’s fun to play and people may have recently maxed him and are testing him out, b) he does play nicely with
and c) it’s still more than 24 hours until the end, so there could also just be less players that high yet.

As for everyone having XF maxed, I’ve never bought ISO (bought a total of 6 covers) and have maxed 9


characters, and yesterday took XF up to 166. I stopped there since I know higher than that can now affect PVE scaling, but I do currently have the ISO to max him.

I’m guessing I play more than many (well, outside of us forum folk), but I don’t think it’s that unreasonable for people to have skipped maxing 3


characters and dumped it all into seXForce.

I’ve been dumping 10-20 levels into a bunch of characters lately since there hasn’t been a new character I’ve felt was worth maxing in a while. So up until yesterday, my ISO was mostly going up while still dumping 30-40k every week into someone new.

Of course, since we’ve been talking in chat about the guy with two maxed XFs, and 2 maxed
, there could just be people who are ok with spending mad loot to max characters.

[reckless442]

@j12601

@reckless442

I would like to know why, after reaching 700, 95% of the teams I’m facing have a max-level X-Force. While I can understand that X-Force covers are plentiful enough for players to have the character fully covered, I don’t buy that so many players have managed to raise their X-Forces to level 270 legitimately. They would either have had to buy multiple Mother Lodes or have spent virtually all their in-game earned ISO on X-Force, to the exclusion of other characters, and the rosters just don’t reflect those kind of sacrifices.

I’m wondering if some of it is a) he’s fun to play and people may have recently maxed him and are testing him out, b) he does play nicely with
and c) it’s still more than 24 hours until the end, so there could also just be less players that high yet.

As for everyone having XF maxed, I’ve never bought ISO (bought a total of 6 covers) and have maxed 9


characters, and yesterday took XF up to 166. I stopped there since I know higher than that can now affect PVE scaling, but I do currently have the ISO to max him.

I’m guessing I play more than many (well, outside of us forum folk), but I don’t think it’s that unreasonable for people to have skipped maxing 3


characters and dumped it all into seXForce.

I’ve been dumping 10-20 levels into a bunch of characters lately since there hasn’t been a new character I’ve felt was worth maxing in a while. So up until yesterday, my ISO was mostly going up while still dumping 30-40k every week into someone new.

Of course, since we’ve been talking in chat about the guy with two maxed XFs, and 2 maxed
, there could just be people who are ok with spending mad loot to max characters.

If I were seeing a max-level X-Force plus only 6 or 7 max-level 3-stars, I could see what you are saying. But I’m routinely seeing max-level X-Force plus 12+ max-level 3-stars (including Colossus and Beast), usually with at least one other 4-star that is max-level or close to it. And, no, I’m not talking about the obvious people with the duplicate max-X-Forces and Furys.

I’ve been playing for nearly a year, have farmed ISO like crazy, and have spent far more on the game that I would publicly admit, yet I am still more than 100k ISO away from maxing X-Force (and even further away from maxing Fury), and I have not even begun to level Colossus or Beast (plus have several other 3-stars who are not maxed). It’s hard not to think something is fishy when my roster is suddenly barely competitive with virtually every team I’m facing.

[system]

i lvled my xwolv to 201 instead of lvling other 3
.. why? Xwolv is now of the best char atm ingame for pvp.. He is a beast and more even when paired with Ldaken.. I wont lvl more 3
until i get xwolv till lvl221.. The 3
i have maxed are more than enough for pvp.
Btw i always see 3
from the start, havent played against 2
since season 3.

[mjh]

@unbemator

i lvled my xwolv to 201 instead of lvling other 3
.. why? Xwolv is now of the best char atm ingame for pvp.. He is a beast and more even when paired with Ldaken.. I wont lvl more 3
until i get xwolv till lvl221.. The 3
i have maxed are more than enough for pvp.
Btw i always see 3
from the start, havent played against 2
since season 3.

You’re probably not tanking then, we can pick this up in our alliance chat

[system]

@HawkeyeSucks

@unbemator

i lvled my xwolv to 201 instead of lvling other 3
.. why? Xwolv is now of the best char atm ingame for pvp.. He is a beast and more even when paired with Ldaken.. I wont lvl more 3
until i get xwolv till lvl221.. The 3
i have maxed are more than enough for pvp.
Btw i always see 3
from the start, havent played against 2
since season 3.

You’re probably not tanking then, we can pick this up in our alliance chat

And i probably wont tank anymore.. I hate losing time doing that.. And for now i still can fight with ease

[system]

PvP’s matchmaking has been based on roster for a while. One day I used to fight mostly ** opponents, then I grabbed 2-3 Punisher covers thanks to some good heroic token luck. I maxed him out, and within about 5 matches every team I faced had at least one L166 character. It basically ruined my PvP since I’m locked into using Punisher now that the game is scaled around him. (I like Punisher, but I’d love to play with my lvl ~90 characters too)

[system]

@reckless442

If I were seeing a max-level X-Force plus only 6 or 7 max-level 3-stars, I could see what you are saying. But I’m routinely seeing max-level X-Force plus 12+ max-level 3-stars (including Colossus and Beast), usually with at least one other 4-star that is max-level or close to it. And, no, I’m not talking about the obvious people with the duplicate max-X-Forces and Furys.

I’ve been playing for nearly a year, have farmed ISO like crazy, and have spent far more on the game that I would publicly admit, yet I am still more than 100k ISO away from maxing X-Force (and even further away from maxing Fury), and I have not even begun to level Colossus or Beast (plus have several other 3-stars who are not maxed). It’s hard not to think something is fishy when my roster is suddenly barely competitive with virtually every team I’m facing.

If you’re PvPing in the Sentry bomb range then you can easily end up with negative iso 8 per fight. The expected iso 8 gain is 105 and each boost is 40 iso per one. If you use HP boosts at all it’d naturally make sense to use 6 of the iso 8 boosts as well because there’s no reason to be cheap when you’re already using the big HP boosts, and even if you’re not using AP all boosts I can’t imagine playing too many games in the 1000+ range without iso 8 boosts unless you want to suddenly lose a huge chunk of your rating, so that’s 105 - (40*6) = negative 135 iso per PvP game when you use 2XAP+3 boosts. I know on the PvE event where they changed the reward structure I ended up needing to boost every fight to catch up (was shooting for a top 25 finish and didn’t realize until one day to go that would get you only one cover) and I’m pretty sure from that point I ended up at least negative 10K iso from that point to the end of event.

[system]

@j12601

A whole lot of snip

What I suspect:
I’m thinking opponent selection is now based on roster as well as MMR.

MMR plays a role up until 400 points.
400-600 MMR plays a part but gives you maxed

opponents if your roster has them.
600+ MMR is mostly ignored and you are given opponents with similar rosters. This allows 2-3
transitioning players to achieve decent scores.
800+ MMR and roster are ignored.

Any thoughts on this? Have you been experiencing something different?

This is the exact topic that got me in trouble with community last time, where I was asked never to talk about this again in public.

Well, someone else brought up the topic first, so I think its fair game to discuss this topic openly, so here we go…

For the sake of time, I’m not going to dig up the developer posts on this topic. Someone can if they really want to do this.

What you are observing is called “MMR buckets” by the devs. This system was implemented quite awhile ago to curb the benefits of tanking one’s MMR and to prevent people from running to 800+ points while containing MMRs so low that they are invisible to everyone else. How this works is that at certain point thresholds, a floor in placed under the player in terms of matchmaking. No matter how low the player’s MMR is, they cannot see any players below the “floor” because they moved to the next bucket of difficulty (although there may be some momentary remnants in the player’s MMR queue until these are exhausted via playing or skipping). By forcing players into harder fights, their MMRs are quickly adjusted back to appropriate levels where they can be targeted by everyone.

Until the last event, these point totals have been aligned with the hero point awards in Versus events (400/600/800 points), representing full 2**, 3*** transition, full 3***/4****.

In the last event, the bucket thresholds appear to have been significantly lowered. There appear to be only two thresholds now, 300 and 600 points for full 2**s and 3/4****s respectively.

This makes achieving the HP at 800, and the covers at 1100/1300 considerably more difficult, as now a player has to run 200 points against 166s/270s for the 50 HP, 500 points for the 1100 cover, and 700 points for the 1300 cover. That’s at least 2-3 additional shield hops for the needed for the covers (assuming 2 fights per hop).

My guess is that the devs felt that too many players were achieving 1100/1300, which is simple with Sentry. So, the apparently solution here is to simply require more shield hops to reach the two covers to either make the covers scarcer or at least more expensive to obtain.

And yes, as mentioned in this thread, roster-based PvE scaling is in full effect in the DA PvE. The devs gave everyone 4 days of practice time on the Gauntlet, before implementing the system into standard PvEs. Look out for the train wreck incoming on the those final main map nodes in the last 12 hours. Everyone did take extra practice on the Gauntlet Finale nodes from that extra day in that dry run… right? Also: One could argue that this is the response to the cries from the Gauntlet event that the prizes weren’t worth it. Is the rights and benefits in obtaining a new character motivation enough to run the Gauntlet Finale all over again?

[reckless442]

@Phantron

@reckless442

If I were seeing a max-level X-Force plus only 6 or 7 max-level 3-stars, I could see what you are saying. But I’m routinely seeing max-level X-Force plus 12+ max-level 3-stars (including Colossus and Beast), usually with at least one other 4-star that is max-level or close to it. And, no, I’m not talking about the obvious people with the duplicate max-X-Forces and Furys.

I’ve been playing for nearly a year, have farmed ISO like crazy, and have spent far more on the game that I would publicly admit, yet I am still more than 100k ISO away from maxing X-Force (and even further away from maxing Fury), and I have not even begun to level Colossus or Beast (plus have several other 3-stars who are not maxed). It’s hard not to think something is fishy when my roster is suddenly barely competitive with virtually every team I’m facing.

If you’re PvPing in the Sentry bomb range then you can easily end up with negative iso 8 per fight. The expected iso 8 gain is 105 and each boost is 40 iso per one. If you use HP boosts at all it’d naturally make sense to use 6 of the iso 8 boosts as well because there’s no reason to be cheap when you’re already using the big HP boosts, and even if you’re not using AP all boosts I can’t imagine playing too many games in the 1000+ range without iso 8 boosts unless you want to suddenly lose a huge chunk of your rating, so that’s 105 - (40*6) = negative 135 iso per PvP game when you use 2XAP+3 boosts. I know on the PvE event where they changed the reward structure I ended up needing to boost every fight to catch up (was shooting for a top 25 finish and didn’t realize until one day to go that would get you only one cover) and I’m pretty sure from that point I ended up at least negative 10K iso from that point to the end of event.

I’m not sure how you are calculating the average ISO-8 gain at 105, when the prizes are 70, 100 (for 1* cover), 140, 250, and 250 (2* cover). So even if you’re using the equivalent of 240 ISO per match once you begin fighting higher-level opponents, the deficit isn’t that significant – especially if you farm ISO on the way up to that level. Also, even if I’m spending more ISO per match – and I doubt I’m spending that much more than the players who are in the same range – I typically get 5000 ISO for top-5 finishes plus 5000 ISO for top-5 alliance finish and four covers, and with only limited exceptions, sell most 3* or 4* covers for ISO. (I also often win my bracket so I get an additional 1000 ISO for the 4* cover.) In other words, I don’t think there are a lot of people who are generating significantly more ISO than me through gameplay in the PVPs.

[system]

A very eye opening thread. Can’t believe this is their solution…

[john1620b]

@reckless442

But I’m routinely seeing max-level X-Force plus 12+ max-level 3-stars (including Colossus and Beast)

I agree, there’s something fishy going on with rosters like that. Anyone that has a maxed Beast is either a cheater, or Colognoisseur. Just sayin’.

[system]

@reckless442

@Phantron

@reckless442

If I were seeing a max-level X-Force plus only 6 or 7 max-level 3-stars, I could see what you are saying. But I’m routinely seeing max-level X-Force plus 12+ max-level 3-stars (including Colossus and Beast), usually with at least one other 4-star that is max-level or close to it. And, no, I’m not talking about the obvious people with the duplicate max-X-Forces and Furys.

I’ve been playing for nearly a year, have farmed ISO like crazy, and have spent far more on the game that I would publicly admit, yet I am still more than 100k ISO away from maxing X-Force (and even further away from maxing Fury), and I have not even begun to level Colossus or Beast (plus have several other 3-stars who are not maxed). It’s hard not to think something is fishy when my roster is suddenly barely competitive with virtually every team I’m facing.

If you’re PvPing in the Sentry bomb range then you can easily end up with negative iso 8 per fight. The expected iso 8 gain is 105 and each boost is 40 iso per one. If you use HP boosts at all it’d naturally make sense to use 6 of the iso 8 boosts as well because there’s no reason to be cheap when you’re already using the big HP boosts, and even if you’re not using AP all boosts I can’t imagine playing too many games in the 1000+ range without iso 8 boosts unless you want to suddenly lose a huge chunk of your rating, so that’s 105 - (40*6) = negative 135 iso per PvP game when you use 2XAP+3 boosts. I know on the PvE event where they changed the reward structure I ended up needing to boost every fight to catch up (was shooting for a top 25 finish and didn’t realize until one day to go that would get you only one cover) and I’m pretty sure from that point I ended up at least negative 10K iso from that point to the end of event.

I’m not sure how you are calculating the average ISO-8 gain at 105, when the prizes are 70, 100 (for 1* cover), 140, 250, and 250 (2* cover). So even if you’re using the equivalent of 240 ISO per match once you begin fighting higher-level opponents, the deficit isn’t that significant – especially if you farm ISO on the way up to that level. Also, even if I’m spending more ISO per match – and I doubt I’m spending that much more than the players who are in the same range – I typically get 5000 ISO for top-5 finishes plus 5000 ISO for top-5 alliance finish and four covers, and with only limited exceptions, sell most 3* or 4* covers for ISO. (I also often win my bracket so I get an additional 1000 ISO for the 4* cover.) In other words, I don’t think there are a lot of people who are generating significantly more ISO than me through gameplay in the PVPs.

The iso 8 used to be 50% 70 and 50% 140 and that averages out to 105. When they added the other stuff they said they kept the overall iso gain the same so it can be assumed that they lower the chances of the higher iso 8 drops to keep the average around 105 still. The alliance reward can’t be considered as your personal gain and while this doesn’t mean you’re supposed to let other people do the work, most of the time an alliance is either comfortably above or nowhere close to the relevent thresholds which means you’re still wasting your iso for trying to get a better alliance score since it’d have only mattered if your alliance is exactly on the edge of award tiers. The personal reward for 5000 iso is 3000 more than the 2000 which can be achieved quite easily, so at -135 per game played with boosts you will come out behind if you played 22 matches with boosts.

This also doesn’t count the cost of skipping opponents which is likely to add up to a very significant number once your score is high.

[reckless442]

@Phantron

@reckless442

@Phantron

@reckless442

If I were seeing a max-level X-Force plus only 6 or 7 max-level 3-stars, I could see what you are saying. But I’m routinely seeing max-level X-Force plus 12+ max-level 3-stars (including Colossus and Beast), usually with at least one other 4-star that is max-level or close to it. And, no, I’m not talking about the obvious people with the duplicate max-X-Forces and Furys.

I’ve been playing for nearly a year, have farmed ISO like crazy, and have spent far more on the game that I would publicly admit, yet I am still more than 100k ISO away from maxing X-Force (and even further away from maxing Fury), and I have not even begun to level Colossus or Beast (plus have several other 3-stars who are not maxed). It’s hard not to think something is fishy when my roster is suddenly barely competitive with virtually every team I’m facing.

If you’re PvPing in the Sentry bomb range then you can easily end up with negative iso 8 per fight. The expected iso 8 gain is 105 and each boost is 40 iso per one. If you use HP boosts at all it’d naturally make sense to use 6 of the iso 8 boosts as well because there’s no reason to be cheap when you’re already using the big HP boosts, and even if you’re not using AP all boosts I can’t imagine playing too many games in the 1000+ range without iso 8 boosts unless you want to suddenly lose a huge chunk of your rating, so that’s 105 - (40*6) = negative 135 iso per PvP game when you use 2XAP+3 boosts. I know on the PvE event where they changed the reward structure I ended up needing to boost every fight to catch up (was shooting for a top 25 finish and didn’t realize until one day to go that would get you only one cover) and I’m pretty sure from that point I ended up at least negative 10K iso from that point to the end of event.

I’m not sure how you are calculating the average ISO-8 gain at 105, when the prizes are 70, 100 (for 1* cover), 140, 250, and 250 (2* cover). So even if you’re using the equivalent of 240 ISO per match once you begin fighting higher-level opponents, the deficit isn’t that significant – especially if you farm ISO on the way up to that level. Also, even if I’m spending more ISO per match – and I doubt I’m spending that much more than the players who are in the same range – I typically get 5000 ISO for top-5 finishes plus 5000 ISO for top-5 alliance finish and four covers, and with only limited exceptions, sell most 3* or 4* covers for ISO. (I also often win my bracket so I get an additional 1000 ISO for the 4* cover.) In other words, I don’t think there are a lot of people who are generating significantly more ISO than me through gameplay in the PVPs.

The iso 8 used to be 50% 70 and 50% 140 and that averages out to 105. When they added the other stuff they said they kept the overall iso gain the same so it can be assumed that they lower the chances of the higher iso 8 drops to keep the average around 105 still. The alliance reward can’t be considered as your personal gain and while this doesn’t mean you’re supposed to let other people do the work, most of the time an alliance is either comfortably above or nowhere close to the relevent thresholds which means you’re still wasting your iso for trying to get a better alliance score since it’d have only mattered if your alliance is exactly on the edge of award tiers. The personal reward for 5000 iso is 3000 more than the 2000 which can be achieved quite easily, so at -135 per game played with boosts you will come out behind if you played 22 matches with boosts.

This also doesn’t count the cost of skipping opponents which is likely to add up to a very significant number once your score is high.

You’re talking hypotheticals and I’m talking from actual experience, so you can’t just discount the alliance reward like you are. Also, have you been playing the game recently? 2000 ISO requires finishing in the top-10. In many brackets, that’s not so easy to achieve, and requires plenty of boosting and skipping. In the last event, one of my alliance mates had a score of 942 – and finished 22nd in her bracket.

But let’s say you’re right and top-10 can be achieved at 1000 without boosting and skipping. Let’s also assume that I waste 2000 ISO per event on skips. Now, you say I waste 135 per match for 22 matches, which would be about 550 points. I don’t always go that high, but assuming I begin boosting around 950, it would take me to 1500 on average, so fair enough for an estimate. However, those additional points mean that I get the 1100, 1200 and 1300 rewards, which I would not get if I settled for a score of 1000. So I’m getting 500 ISO for the 3* cover, 1000 ISO for 1200 ,and 1000 ISO for the 4* cover, which more than covers the cost of skipping. And the 5000 I get instead of 2000 is equivalent to your 22 matches at -135 ISO. (I also should add that I suspect the -135 ISO figure is too high a figure, as it seems like we generally pull 2* covers more than 1* covers at higher levels, so I suspect that there is something in the game’s reward structure that increases the odds of getting a 2* cover based on your opposition.) And that doesn’t include the 5000 ISO for the alliance reward, which my higher score has helped the alliance achieve. All in all, I am netting ISO in PVPs at a pretty good rate. Using those figures, it would be 5000 after boosts, plus all the ISO farmed up for match rewards/covers received up to 1000, plus progression rewards to 1000 – 2600 ISO in various progression rewards and sold covers (not including ISO from standard and event token pulls, which I almost certainly sell since my roster is virtually fully covered). On top of that, in most PVPs, I’ll get 2000-3000 ISO from the 4-5 covers I win for my placements. So that’s a net, after spending ISO, of 9600-10600 ISO per PVP.

Compare that to a player who is settling for top-10 and the next tier alliance rank. He gets 2000 ISO and three 3* covers. 3500 ISO. The alliance reward is 3000. At 1000, ISO from progression rewards is 2600. So that’s 9100 ISO. That doesn’t include what he farms and gets for token pulls up to 1000, but we are both on equal footing there. So that’s slightly less than what I am netting.

In any event, this is really not the point. What you are describing are negligible differences because 1000 or 2000 ISO is only a fraction of an X-Force or Fury level past 200. My X-Force is currently at 225 – after I have dumped close to 100k ISO into him in the past few days. (Yes, I blew some iTunes gift cards on ISO.) It is telling me that it will take take 100k just to get him to level 256. So let’s say all those players are being more ISO conscious than me and saving say 2000 ISO more per PVP than me. It would take 50 PVPs for that ISO savings to make a difference of 30 X-Force levels.

Are there people who may be doing better than me at farming ISO? Sure. I don’t dispute that. Franckynight rocks LRs like a champ for ISO, while I only can do a few per week. But I also don’t believe there are so many people raking in ISO at such greater amounts than me to explain the sudden explosion of max-level X-Forces out there, especially considering that I do spend on the game. Unless the number of whales in this game is far bigger and the amount they are spending is far larger than any of us really imagines, something is terribly off.