First world problems... (my ISO shortage)

I have been a bit bored so I asked myself this question: "How much ISO do I actually need before I will ever need a new champ or catalyst?" Here are my calculations, based on a chart by mcoc blogspot:
B=basic
C=class

5* 2-3: 6x
B: 1 769 382
C: 1 179 492

5* 3-4: 3x
B: 1 333 848
C: 880 341

5* 4-5: 3x
B: 2 143 710
C: 1 414 848

6* 0-1: 5x
B: 2 978 585
C: 1 965 865

6* 1-2: 3x
B: 2 675 538
C: 1 972 932

TOTAL:
B: 10 901 063
C: 7 413 478

How much class ISO is that you ask? Well, I decided to count that if using the propper class you get from duppes, because that is the major source of ISO I believe.

7 413 478 Class ISO = 989 chunks = 41 dupped 4-6* champions.

This number is IMHO pretty high. It counts with using ONLY propper class ISO and no overflow while levelling. I am a f2p, early TB. In this estimate I counted only with resources I have in rankup gems + catalysts, and atm I have 0 t5b bcs I took Doom to r3 recently, so it isn't that I am drowning in catalysts.

I don't know about you, but this doesn't feel right to me. I am aware that there has to be some limiting resource, there always is. But the level of limitation with ISO does seem unbalanced to me. I don't open that many 6* dupps, I think I realistically open 3 5* and 5 4* crystals a month. If EVERY SINGLE ONE was a dupp (which it isn't, I have maybe 120 5*s outta 200, so the odds are about 60%), it'd take me over 5 months to just level champs I can level rn. Only then will I need to open new champ or acquire any catalyst. And my numbers don't count with around 12 6*s I have sitting at level 1 and who aren't worth my ISO (BPCW, Blueclops, Spidey classic etc.).

So in conclusion, I think some increase in amounts of ISO should happen. I am fully aware that I neglected any other sources of ISO, such as objective crystals and Cav EQ, but if you look at the listed values, you'll notice that the basic values are about 150% of the class ones, so the basic ISO earnt doesn't make a big difference I believe (but it is subject to discussion).

I certainly have to appreciate, that Kabam put some ISO to this month SQ, there are some pretty nice chunks to collect, but I think in next months we could use some more. I remember having this problem with gold in the past years, so Kabam increased the amounts and it is no longer a big issue. Why couldn't the same happen with ISO? There is 40k gold on each non-easy path in Cav EQ, which is 23x40 000 gold monthly, 920 000. I think adding some ISO on the paths as well could help in solving this "issue", if you allow me to call it that way.

Let me finish with saying this: this isn't a complaint post. I don't wanna hate on Kabam for no reason. But the forums are (among other things) a place for constructive player feedback, which I tried to provide here.

Please, let me know in the comments what do you think about this? Do you also deal with such problems, or is this my problem only? And would you agree on increasing the amounts of ISO available, or are you strictly against? Any reasoning behind your opinion is also appreciated. Thank you.

Comments

Total_Domin01

If the commonness of iso were to go too much up, really everyone would level up everyone. By making it "uncommon" you have to decide who you actually care about. The drought is indeed annoying and it would be nice if we could get somewhat more, but I don't want too much more

Kerneas

If the commonness of iso were to go too much up, really everyone would level up everyone. By making it "uncommon" you have to decide who you actually care about. The drought is indeed annoying and it would be nice if we could get somewhat more, but I don't want too much more

Absolutely! Just like all resources it has to be balanced. But I feel like the amounts given now are too low. The increase doesn't have to be insane.

ChaosMax1012

ISO is a sin now

Monk1

I don’t follow all the numbers, all I know is I have nearly 4K of iso in my inventory.. and 1000 crystals unopened (phc, 3/4/5* ones).

I just don’t see where this, or the gold
Issue comes from if play the game

Total_Domin01

Question for you, how often do you get new champs you want to level up? And, how often per day do you play the game?

SkyLord7000

If the commonness of iso were to go too much up, really everyone would level up everyone. By making it "uncommon" you have to decide who you actually care about. The drought is indeed annoying and it would be nice if we could get somewhat more, but I don't want too much more

Shouldn’t the rarity be in the hard earned catalysts, not the simple iso obtainable even at act 1.

I wish iso wasn’t (as much) of a barrier for upgrading champs as catalysts. Kabam has made some effort in adding iso to the contest tho so that’s a good start!!

DNA3000

If the commonness of iso were to go too much up, really everyone would level up everyone. By making it "uncommon" you have to decide who you actually care about. The drought is indeed annoying and it would be nice if we could get somewhat more, but I don't want too much more
Shouldn’t the rarity be in the hard earned catalysts, not the simple iso obtainable even at act 1.

ISO isn’t rare. ISO is extremely plentiful and it is also one of the resources that players can grind in an almost unlimited fashion. Bottlenecks aren’t about rarity, they are about proportions. If you earn catalysts faster than you earn ISO on a relative basis, ISO will be your bottleneck. If you earn catalysts slower than you earn ISO on a relative basis, cats will be your bottleneck. For me, T4B is a more frequent bottleneck than T5B even though T5B is far more scarce. On the other hand, gold and ISO essentially don’t exists as bottlenecks in practice. That’s a function of how I play the game, not the scarcity of those resources.

Also, a lot of people say “I would rather the bottlenecks be in the higher tier stuff.” No they don’t. If they did, we could solve the ISO bottleneck for everyone experiencing it by reducing their catalyst drops. The entire history of the game is a non-stop series of complaints about how the hard to earn stuff is hard to earn. I remember when it was T4C, when it was T2A, when it was T5B, when it was 5* shards, when it was 6* shards. I don’t remember anyone saying “keep this rare so I don’t run out of the lower stuff.” Players constantly ask for more of the rare stuff, then complain that Kabam forgot to give them tons more of everything else.

As an aside, five months to earn enough ISO to level up everything a player wants to level up when they aren’t grinding the game significantly (three 5s and five 4s in a month is a very low resource acquisition rate) is not bad.

Reference

Players with ISO issue should feel proud as this is a signal of how good you are in getting new champs and rank up catalysts. Relatively speaking the source of ISO/gold are more diverse. Yet it is just like money, if you keep buying luxury items and cash outflow faster than inflow, so you’ll face cash flow shortage quickly.

Kerneas

I see the points you have made (especially @DNA3000 ) and I mostly agree with you. I do not play too much. I play daily, but I think there is something that I am doing wrong.

Firstly, how is it possible that my catalysts and ISO scale so differently? If I played more, I can see myself getting more ISO, but more catalysts and new champions as well. So can I conclude that with higher in-game activity, the amounts of ISO recieved grow faster than amounts of catalysts recieved?

Secondly, it seems that I am "playing it wrong" . When I turn on the game, I've realised I always need ISO, but dunno where to get it. I do monthly EQ for shards (clear UC, do Cav) that give me a chance for ISO, but I don't think that's your "nearly unlimited resource". Where can I get meaningful amounts of ISO? I do realise that when I need like 10M basic ISO, every chunk I get is a grain of sand in a desert, but you know what I mean: not the t1 75 iso, at least t3-5 basic, so that the time spent acquiring it is at least somewhat meaningful.

LeNoirFaineant

I ran out of class tech ISO taking Guardian from not even leveled up to R3. Popped some 4*s and had really bad luck but eventually got the tech ISO I needed. I sell ISO constantly. I guess I don't rank champs as often? Always get the units from rank up though and I'm a casual arena player.

DNA3000

I see the points you have made (especially @DNA3000 ) and I mostly agree with you. I do not play too much. I play daily, but I think there is something that I am doing wrong.

Firstly, how is it possible that my catalysts and ISO scale so differently? If I played more, I can see myself getting more ISO, but more catalysts and new champions as well. So can I conclude that with higher in-game activity, the amounts of ISO recieved grow faster than amounts of catalysts recieved?

Secondly, it seems that I am "playing it wrong" . When I turn on the game, I've realised I always need ISO, but dunno where to get it. I do monthly EQ for shards (clear UC, do Cav) that give me a chance for ISO, but I don't think that's your "nearly unlimited resource". Where can I get meaningful amounts of ISO? I do realise that when I need like 10M basic ISO, every chunk I get is a grain of sand in a desert, but you know what I mean: not the t1 75 iso, at least t3-5 basic, so that the time spent acquiring it is at least somewhat meaningful.

Champion duplication is the best source of ISO. The two most grindable ways to get champion dups as F2P are the arena and incursions.

The important thing about champion acquisition is that new champions and ISO do not scale evenly. When you have very few champions most champions you pull are new, and almost none are dups. So you get new champs faster than you get ISO. But as you continue to acquire champion drops, a higher percentage are dups and a lower percentage are new. So someone who gets champion shards and crystals twice as fast as you doesn’t get new champions and ISO twice as fast. Instead, they move down the curve faster than you, shifting from new to dup faster than you.

To put it another way, at this point, virtually all 4* and almost all 5* drops of mine are dups. So even if I were to play the game exactly the same way as you, doing exactly the same things, I would still be getting very few new champions (aka new rank up opportunities) and tons more ISO (because every pull would be generating ISO). Activity alone doesn’t determine your resource rewards: your current roster progress also affects this.

There are a lot of ways in which this game rewards progress, and one of them is that widening your roster shifts your resources from new champs to rank up to more resources to rank them up. Another way is that the larger and stronger your roster is, the easier it is to farm resources from the two places that you can farm champion shards and champion rewards: the arena and incursions.

If you’re willing to spend hours a day in the arena, you can literally earn more ISO than you can use. But everyone can’t spend that kind of time. There’s a myth that if you can’t spend hours a day you can’t get any meaningful rewards from the arena. But that’s not true. You could spend a few minutes a week in the arenas and get significant rewards. It generally takes three rounds to get to the second milestone in the Summoner Trials, and two rounds to get to milestone one in the featured and basic. Let’s say you do just that every arena cycle, which is seven arena rounds twice a week, or fourteen rounds a week. That’s an average of two rounds per day (although you wouldn’t be doing this on Sunday) which is a trivial amount of time. Let’s see what this gets you. In Summoner Trials, this gets you 26 units, 2000 PHC shards (i.e. one PHC), 1500 BC, and 13k gold. Do this twice a week, four weeks a month, to get 208 units, 8 PHCs, 12k BC and 104k gold per month. In the Featured, this gets 5 units, 1500 BC, 5k gold, and 500 GMC shards per cycle, and in the Basic this gets 5 units, 1000 BC, 4250 gold, and 250 GMC shards per cycle. In four weeks (approximately a month) this would get you 80 units, 20k BC, 74k gold, and 6k GMC shards per month.

This makes the monthly haul about 288 units, 178k gold, 32k BC, 8 PHCs, and 3 GMCs. Statistically, this would add 0.78 champs 4* or higher champs and 4.06 3* champs per month. Very roughly, that’s like another 4* or higher pull. If you’re opening eight per month, this increases that by 12.5%, for maybe five minutes a day.

More effort generates more results of course, but this is the floor. Two or three rounds a day, Sunday off, eleven more champion crystals opened, 13% more 4*+ drops. And 2700 more units and 2.3 million more gold to spend per year, and 416,000 BC to do whatever you want with (statistically about 830 more units and a 800k more gold from arena crystals). This adds up.

unknown

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I_tell_no_tales_1

Well just don't use iso on anyone for 10 days
Once you get above 200 bricks it's easy to maintain