SOLVED Imperial store

The problem of ep farmer could be resolve by making untratable the gear buy at the empire store. I’am an active player but i can’t buy the most expensive item. Supposed we take an average of 15k for complete a leg quest maybe in half and hour for good player. For farm 600k(the average price of a master assassin gauntlets) of money, u need 20 hour of play. medium player play 1-2h every day, so in 10 days u can buy a gauntles (buy, because for find it in a chest ist impossibile). So for buy 52 (the Numbers of units in game that can wear this gear without count romans)master assassins ganultets u need to play 520 days (one year and half easy no?) and if want wall of architect or athenian training book? Maybe u have to play for 4-5 year every day.
Sorry but for me its too much time. U dont help pro active player( all of they have complete Their civ using the empire store, this is the true) sorry but you have penalized the medium player Who yes maybe they play 1-2 Hours a day, but also they have a life a work, a family and they cant play every day all the day. This is my opinion, and i understand your, but the problem could be solved making untratable the items.

 

Kyogo, I think you may be underestimating the profitability of questing. Not only do you get 15,000 coins in those quests, but you also get about 10 different chests. Those chests have a chance not just of dropping the item you are looking for, but any number of other valuable items that you can then sell for more coins. You also earn Empire Points, which can be used to buy Legendary Chests every weekend, which give you another chance of getting a valuable legendary item. Those items can be sold for coins, too. So the value of doing a single quest is much more than 15,000 coins.

If we simply made the legendary items from the Empire Store untradable, that would certainly prevent players from stocking up and selling them. However, it would also dampen the demand for those items on the open market and dampen demand for the other things you can buy with EP.

I suspect one problem that players are having with finding certain items is that not all legendary items are randomly generated in every legendary quest.

In fact, most new items that we created in Project Celeste are available only in our new quests. So Master Assassins Gauntlets rarely appear in Cyprus quests, Argos quests, Crete, Alliance quests, etc. But other powerful and valuable legendary items do.

 

While I don’t agree with every point made, I can see the logic behind your decision. I think that ultimately this harms newer players trying to establish themselves more than it harms the inactive EP farmers, but I’d love to be wrong.

I have, however, underlined something you mentioned that is very problematic in my mind. Where I need to go to obtain specific gear needs to be communicated more clearly and in game. If I want to farm for the Assassin’s Guantlets, or Arrows of Darkness, or whatever, I shouldn’t need to hop onto the forums to find out which quests can drop them.

If, for example, I want to obtain a specific sword in WoW, I can readily find the information as to where I should hunt for that sword in game, with a few exceptions. The onus is still on me to put in the work and earn it, but I have a clear path to do that. This is not the case in AoE. You mention that if I want Celeste gear I should farm Celeste quests, and if I want classic gear I should farm those, but that statement leaves a lot of gray area. Can Classic stuff drop in Celeste quests at all, or vice versa? Can Realms of the Worlds gear drop in the new Nile Legendaries?

This is my biggest frustration with the whole thing. The EP legendaries made it possible to target specific gear slots, provided you were patient enough to wait weekend to weekend, in a way that the current game makes very obtuse.

As always, I love the game, and intend no hostility in my post. Thanks for reading it.

 

I agree with you. The loot boxes are confounding, and we inherited a pretty murky system where chests are not labeled well. I have some access to the tables, and even I’m not super sure what each chest is.

In fact, another dev told me to edit my last post where I said Master Assasins Gauntlets never appear in Cyprus, etc. apparently they can but do only rarely. I’m honestly not sure what that means, but I was told it’s true.

 

sup mates,

1. find a leg. item.
2. find the right leg. item.
3. find the right stats.

pf2k; you have to press the button for max. legs. otherwise I'll be here for years

As an active player I bought and used about 75% of my gears with coin/ep. "loot is not that gorgeous", at least for me. Of course I recognize the concept, of course you can not change the concept so that the people are fully equiped within a short time. But if I look at this 75% and also certain phases in the game, where I almost only those 1k legs. get, that makes me a little questionable.

There is always room for legitimate criticism, that's how I see it.

..anyway...​

Of course, when you say something, you should keep in mind that this is a fan project.
There are people who voluntarily sacrifice their precious time to create something here. So show respect and be grateful.

greetz / gl & hf all

 

I get what you guys are saying, but most of the legendary quests are impossible to do without good gear. How do you get good gear? By doing the legendary quests. It is a catch 22 that was partially solved by the EP store where I bought some gear in order to do some of the legendary quests.

It was a stepping stone for new players to get some good gear before doing the in some cases difficult quests.

 

I agree 100% with this.
It is a catch 22 situation which will only result in loss of players from the game. They will find it too expensive to buy decent gear, too difficult to do leg quests because of a lack of decent gear and sooner or later will leave the game through sheer frustration. We surely don't want this?

The other issue I think that frustrates players including me, is the appalling drop rates which I mostly attribute to the enormous number of totally useless items in the game that seem to turn up in 95% of chests.
i.e
Uncommon gear
Common / Uncommon consumable recipes
Common / Uncommon consumables,
Common / Uncommon adviser cards
Uncommon / Rare gear recipes
Worthless rare / epic gear: Slings, Scepters, War Horns, Masterwork oars etc
Worthless leg gear: Battle Scrolls of Gilgamesh / Tools of Weyland etc
Uncommon deco items: Sphinx, Tomb etc
Common 8 slot warehouses, Uncommon 12 slot warehouses, Rare 16 slot warehouses

If there wasn't so many useless items in chests (or in the game) than maybe we'd be in with a chance of occasionally finding something 1/2 decent.

As it is now we can grind away, keep the vendor busy and hope for better times

 

I agree with that to a large extent. Generally, Alliance Quests and Elite Quests are supposed to bridge some of the gap until you can start cooping Leg quests with people before you can start soloing them.

However, there's a lot of room for improvement in (1) signalling to players what chests drop what things, (2) providing fun, profitable bridge quests that do not just end up being a grind, and (3) giving players a sense of satisfaction.

I can definitely see how being weened on the empire store sales makes it pretty jarring to have them abruptly taken away.

 

That would be great. A lost art.

 

Thanks for that great explanation. It's always encouraging to see the depth and breadth of knowledge the Celeste team has regarding the game as a whole. The fact that you guys have a handle on the macro economy brings a smile to my gamer's heart.

 

I disagree with that claim. If it wasn't for external sites like WoWHead, WoW would be practically unplayable as an end-game raider. WoW gives you no information about which gear is best-in-slot and too often little information about where to go to have the best chance of getting each of those pieces.

Having said that, I still support your suggestion.

It's always better when the game gives you more intuitive information. It would be a nice addition if the team could add dialogs to vendors or quest givers, or even just add new NPC's who are guides or advisors of some sort, who will tell you were to get the type of gear you're looking for.

Maybe add an "Oracle" NPC so people can "Consult the Oracle at Delphi" (or some other NPC that fits in with this concept) who will tell them where to quest for the category of gear they want.

I'm just spitballing here... I'm thinking maybe the Oracle has a simple dialog:

Hello great adventurer/hero/general, what are you seeking on your path to greatness?
1) Classic Legendary gear
2) Celeste exclusive legendaries
3) Other category
4) Other category

Player inputs a response, gets an appropriate answer.

This way people don't have to take notes or refer back to a forum post to remember which quests drop which types of gear, and this question won't come back up on the forums (or if it does then the answer is "Go talk to the Oracle at Delphi").

 

The Oracle is a great idea. Of course, the real Oracle never gave a straight answer, though.

 

It my opinion, the real issue with those specific gear being super expensive isn't any of the stated reason, but the fact that you require so many copies of it. If each civ can use at most 1 copy for each specific legendary, the price would massively tank. It would also encourage gear diversity.

 

Legendary quests can drop leg. items and even non-leg quests can.
nothing is 100%

edit:
@Aaron of what super expensive item are you talking about? And why do you need so many examplaries of it? Are there no alternatives? greetz.

 

I guess "need" is a strong word, since it isn't absolutely required, but to optimally gear your civ, you would want many Assassin's, Architects, and Athens' Training Manual. Given that other people also think so as well, that drives the price up.

As for alternatives, I am using them right now, at least Ramses and Ares.

 

That's funny, I had the same thought even as I was typing the previous post.

"If you attempt this legendary quest, a victor will emerge."

So... maybe instead of the notoriously capricious Oracle it would be better for players to visit the Library of Alexandria with it's rich repository of the ancient worlds' knowledge, I'm sure the Chief Librarian would give dependable answers.

 

Aaron, maybe I am misunderstanding your suggestion, but if we allowed a civ to equip multiple units with just one leg item (so for instance the Greeks need only one copy of a Master Assassin’s Gauntlet in order for every single unit that has that gear slot to equip it at once), that would totally change the entire gear system, as well as dramatically reduce the playing time necessary to max out a civ). I don’t think we’d ever want to make that kind of dramatic change to the game.