Increase starting vault size

The starting vault size of 24 slots was one of those "features" that you often find in F2P games. Game publishers create a "pain point" by using forced scarcity in the hope that players will spend money expand their storage space. This is also why they scaled the expansion price to make the biggest expansion the most cost effective one, Microsoft was hoping that lots of players would spent the money for 1000 EP so they could buy the 48 slot expansion rather then buying the less cost effective expansions.

Since this is no longer a commercial title, there's no longer a compelling reason to limit the starting vault size to 24 slots. The small vault size causes a lot of churn, having to log in & out too frequently in order to swap things around between the various civs.

This isn't an issue later in the game, when a player with multiple Lvl 40 civs can earn EP's quickly. But for a new player, and especially for a player with previous experience at the game, who is much more likely to level up multiple civilizations simultaneously and therefore do a lot of transferring of materials and gear, 24 slots is just a pain in the neck.

My suggestion is to start the game with 48 slots, which would remove the need for players to constantly juggle space in the vault and would significantly reduce the amount of civ swapping that takes place when you're leveling up multiple civ's.

 

I'll give you 2 scenarios, both of which have happened in the last 3 days, and then a 3rd scenario that descibes people who play the game differently from me.

Scenario 1: Each time the civs level up

The specific scenario yesterday, that lead to making this suggestion, was when my civs (all 6 of them) hit level 21 and so I was crafting new gear for all of them.

Lvl 21 Superior Water Bags - Craftsman x10
Lvl 21 Majestic Holy Staff - Religion x8
+ 2 other items, Lvl 21, 1 each

Right there on the spot that took up 20 slots, which meant that I had to unload the materials that I usually keep in the vault so I could use the vault to move the gear to my civs, and then go back and pick up the materials after I was done.

Obviously some of the civ-switching is going to happen no matter what, and is not related to vault size. First I had to go to my Egyptians (my Religion crafter) to make a sample Majestic Holy Staff, then to my Celts (my Craftsman crafter) to make a sample Superior WaterBag, then I had to check all 6 civs to see how many of each item I wanted to make for each civs. Now that part of the work would be necessary no matter what, that was 7 total civ switches to gather information before any crafting is done, then 2 more civ switches to go back to the crafting civs and make up all of the items.

But the extra civ switching that was needed in order to empty my vault so that I could move the 20 items around, and then go back and recover the materials that I like to keep in the vault, could have been removed if the vault started with a default size of 48 slots.

This scenario happens every time the civs hit a new level starting at about Lvl 15, when I started paying attention to gear. For levels 15-20 this only required swapping between the three starter civs, Celt, Greek & Egyptian, but with Lvl 21 it involved all 6 civs, which means it's going to happen 19 more times on the road to hitting Lvl 40.

Scenario 2: During the leveling process

This one happens a big more often, as it's fairly normal to start accumulating items that other civs can use.

As I said, I keep all of my civs in sync. So I'll start by playing the Celts, as I play scenarios to get them up a level some items start to accumulate in the vault for other civs.

Then when they hit the next level I move on to the Greeks. I may or may not get to pull items from the vault for the Greeks, but then items begin to accumulate in the vault for the other civs.

Rinse and repeat for all the civs, and before you know it you have a full vault and you have to start swapping to other civs just to clear out vault space.

Scenario 3: People who play 1 civ at a time all the way to Lvl 40.

When I first played the game, back in the Microsoft days, this was the plan I thought I was going to follow and, I suspect, it's a pretty good description of most people who have never played the game before and have only discovered the new incarnation from word-of-mouth.

The problem is that you very rapidly built up inventory for other civs, and when you're playing just one civ at a time you can rapidly fill the vault and then still overwhelm your own ability to have enough storehouses to hold all of those items before you play the other civs.

Back in the day, when this was a Microsoft game and I was new, I was basically forced to spend some time leveling the Celts and Egyptians for the sole purpose of getting some storehouses for those civs, just to hold all of the extra gear for them. I also used them to store gear from Lvl 21-40 for the Persians, Norse & Babylonians until I unlocked those premium civs.

While it's obvious that 48 slots is not going to completely fix this issue for a single-civ player, it's still a significant improvement over the default 24, a number that was deliberately kept low by Microsoft because they were trying to use Vault space one of the components of their revenue model.



tl;dr

Having said the above, it's clear that none of these scenarios are earth shattering, no one is going to quite the game because of vault inventory, players will make adjustments based on the available spaces, this is ultimately a "quality of life" suggestion. Since this is not a for-profit game, and there's no desire/intent to generate revenue by artificially limiting vault space, I think it makes sense that the base vault size would benefit from being substantially larger.

I'm basically working from the same logic as the decision to have all 6 civs unlocked right from the beginning. In this new Celeste incarnation of the game there's no such thing as Premium Content, and I think that a larger default vault size matches the spirit of unlocking all 6 civs by default.

 

[ Edit: Something went wrong when I posted this and a lot of content got cut off. However, the conversation has moved forward in subsequent posts so there's no reason to try to fix or rehash this post. ]

Would it really, does the math add up on that?

I'm not asking to be sarcastic, that's a genuine question. It's been so long since I played the game during the Microsoft games that I don't remember how easy/hard it is to earn EP at Lvl 40.

I'm not sure what the forum policies are on

 

Hey, my previous post got screwed up somehow and I didn't didn't check it after posting to make sure that it went through ok. Not a big deal, just a small apology for the half-completed post.

Speaking to your current point, I agree with your thoughts. The reason for my suggestion was that I wanted to be sure it provided a needed benefit to new players without adding something to the game that would have negative complications further down the road. For example, we wouldn't want to see a repeatable, low level quest that gives an excessive amount of EP because high level players would then farm that mission a lot for extra EP, which could have negative implications for the EP economy.

There are multiple ways to solve the problem I'm trying to solve:

1) Repeatable low level quest for faster EP - we agree this is probably not a good idea, too easy to abuse and cause issues with how the game is supposed to be played at higher levels.

2) A "starting bonus" of 550 EP, which new players/new accounts can use to expand their vault when they begin playing the game. I don't like that approach because it would be too easy for a truly new player, someone who never played the Microsoft version of the game, to spend those EP on warehouses or vanity gear, which would defeat the whole purpose. My goal is to make the game more friendly and positive for brand new players, and just giving them 500 EP would be accidentally setting up a trap for them to be unhappy about later.

3) Changing the rewards for the storyline quests for each civilization, maybe adding 50 EP to each of the first 5 quests for each civ. This would give 250 EP per civ played, or 1200 total EP if someone plays the first 5 story quests for all 6 civs. I don't like this idea because it's not quite enough EP for a person who only wants to play 1 civ, and it's too much if someone plays all 6 civs and gets the full 1200 EP. It also basically forces people to play all 6 civs right from the very start, which defeats the purpose of letting a brand new player focus on just 1 civ for as long as they want to.

4) Give all new accounts 24 additional slots, which is the one I suggested here.

Now there may be an issue with this solution that I'm not able to see. For example, the way the game code is written in such a way that it may not be possible to grant additional starting slots without causing some sort of unforseen problem with the costs for further upgrades to the vault. I mean, in a perfect world it would be great if the number of starting slots is just coded into a file somewhere and that number can be easily edited to instantly affect all new accounts.

But... computer code is almost never that kind. People write programs with a certain set of expectations in mind, and a lot of times things that seem simple are actually quite complicated. If that turns out to be the case with this specific suggestion then it may be that one of the other solutions would have to be used instead.

I'm hoping that this "worst case scenario" isn't true, and that it's possible to simply grant new players an additional 24 slots, but even if my solution isn't possible I'm hoping the Celeste team will be able to make some sort of change that benefits new players.

What these guys have done is amazing, so I wouldn't want anyone to think that this is a "complaint" thread, rather I hope it will be seen as a suggestion that both appreciates all of their hard work and offers an idea that would make the game more welcoming and enjoyable for new players.

 

While I appreciate that you're trying to be helpful you are, unfortunately, trying to solve the wrong problem.

I know that there are lots of players who, when they play games, like to rush to the top level and then fill in the game from there. That could be power-leveling characters in an RPG like Rift, it could be rushing up the tech tree in World of Tanks to get a Tier X tank before they really start to learn how to play the game, or it could be getting to Lvl 40 in AOE as fast as possible.

You advice is very helpful to that kind of player, but it doesn't do anything for people who like to play games differently.

The kind of player that I'm trying to help is, to put it simply, more like me than like you. There are lots of players who like to work their way though a game methodically, seeing all of the content along the way. People who read all of the quest text, people who want to see and feel the story lines, people who want to be able to upgrade their troops as they progress (even though upgrades aren't super important until Lvl 40) because that's part of what they enjoy about the progression.

One of the benefits of a free-to-play game, and especially a F2P game that is truly free like this one, is that players can play the game on their own terms, at their own speed, using whatever approach to the game they want to use, and ideally the game supports players who enjoy their particular playstyle.

So obviously there's nothing wrong with getting to Lvl 40 as fast as you can and then farming a bunch of EP, but there's also nothing wrong with wanting to be able to progress through the game more slowly and leisurely, while still having enough storage space that they can hold on to the stuff they collect along the way.

 

Yes, depending on which items you're trying to transfer.

1) If you have equipped an item it cannot be transferred to another civ after that, you have to sell it to vendors to get rid of it.

2) The starting gear for the Persians, Norse and Babylonians can't be transferred or sold, once you move past that starting gear your only option is to destroy it.

3) Some items that you pick up are non-transferable and non-sellable, if you mouse over the item it will tell you in the description if it's non-transferable or non-sellable.