By PF2K on Jun 29, 2022 at 9:11 PM
  1. PF2K

    PF2K Lead Developer
    Staff Member Administrator

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    Greetings Celeste players! It's been a while, but we are back with another Developer Blog. This time, we will be showcasing our current and future plans for the game, as well as giving you an update on the Indian Civilization.

    Project Celeste Development Roadmap
    ===================================
    [​IMG]
    Aiding Socrates Quest Pack
    • This quest pack will be launching soon, hopefully before the Summer Event.
    • It will feature Legendary-only quests at first, but we will add non-Legendary variants of the quests later on.
    Champion Mode Experimental Patch
    • This patch will be bringing drastic changes to Champion Mode, aimed at freshening up the gameplay in PvP as well as opening up new strategies.
    • It will be deployed soon, and will be coupled with boosted rewards for Sparta PvP for its duration.
    2022 Summer Event
    • The Event is currently scheduled to launch on July 26th, but we are trying to launch it earlier.
    • It will feature all-new Legendary items, as well as previously released items.

    Visiting Other Players' Capital Cities

    As a highly requested feature, we are finally making the last steps required to bring this feature back, so you can visit other players' cities. We will also be hosting Capital City Decoration contests once this feature is deployed. Stay tuned for more info!

    Starting Civilizations at Level 40

    One of the biggest points of feedback that we received during our most recent survey was that leveling up can be tiresome for some players, particularly if they are doing it for the 5th+ time. As such, we are introducing another option for players - starting their civilization at level 40. We still haven't finalized every detail of this feature at the moment, but some of the things we can share are that:
    • Players will be able to start their civilizations directly at level 40, with the ability to equip Legendary items from the get go.
    • They will have level 40 items equipped on all of their units and buildings already, but they are just enough to fill the gap until they can optimize their gear.
    • They will not have to play through the non-repeatable versions of quest lines in order to access their Legendary variants.
    • Since every campaign quest will be complete already, some items will not be available for players who use this feature. This is so that players who spend the time to level up and play through the quests are rewarded for their time and effort.
    Skirmish Hall Rework

    As the biggest project currently underway in Project Celeste other than the Indian Civilization, the Skirmish Hall rework will drastically improve the Skirmish experience in Age of Empires Online, bringing it on par with other Age of Empires games' skirmish modes. We are around 2,000 lines of code into re-implementing the skirmish hall UI (and other related mechanics) and we are still a long ways away from being finished with it!
    • The rework will be coupled with a much better reward system so that it is on par with other PvE content that takes similar time and effort.
    • There will be a few Skirmish Hall Exclusive Legendary items releasing at the same time.
    • It will feature multiplayer Champion Mode Skirmish.
    • We are currently investigating the possibility of having human and AI players on both teams, but do not yet know if this is within our technical limits or not.
    • The Skirmish Hall user interface will be receiving a major overhaul, including an improved AI selection menu.
    Stay tuned for further updates regarding the Skirmish Hall rework!

    Optimized Loot Tables and Individual Item Droprates

    We are adding the ability to limit the drop rates of items per item type and also per single item.
    • For example, we want to make it so that Scepters drop less often than Bows.
    • Also, we want to make it so that items that are supposed to be more elusive than other items of the same type will drop less often, making them more valuable. (yay, Tools of Weyland and Battle Scrolls of Gilgamesh!)
    Advisor Reworks

    We have already done several Advisor reworks in the past, and we plan on doing at least one more. Stay tuned!

    Reworked Capital City Report

    Another feature that is work-in-progress is the reworked Capital City report. This will mean that players will be able to manage their workshops much easier and keep track of their production as well as a general overview of their empire all from one menu. We will be sharing more news on this soon, when we have more to share.

    Campaign Quest Tracker

    You might have noticed that there are a few buttons in the Player Progression interface that are currently disabled. One of them is for this feature, the campaign quest tracker.

    Aimed for those completionists out there, this interface will help you keep track of all of your non-repeatable questline quests. While the visual style of this interface is still work-in-progress, this is one concept that belongs to the Twelve Kingdoms questline from Cyprus:
    [​IMG]
    Network Relays

    As another step towards improving Age of Empires Online's networking and connection system, we are looking into reworking the entire connection system for the game, so that players will connect to a network relay instead of each other (think of it like a dedicated server of some sorts, instead of P2P connections.). Our server engineer and lead technical developer are hard at work with this and will keep you updated as more progress is made on it.

    Quest Cooldown Tracker

    Yet another feature that is highly requested by players is a way to keep track of which quests are on cooldown and when they will be available again. We have this on our to-do list and will provide you with further updates when we have more to share.

    Quest Rotation System

    As part of our plans to make less popular quests played more often, we plan on adding a quest rotation system. This system will select several different quests and increase their rewards significantly for a set amount of time.
    • This system is meant for players of all skill levels. So it will feature all types of repeatable quests, including regular Repeatable and Elite quests.
    • The same quests will be featured for everyone, so it is not unique for each player. This is intended to encourage co-op gameplay.
    • If a quest is on cooldown for a player once the rotation happens, the cooldown for that quest will be reset for the player.
    Here's a UI concept of this feature:

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    We are really excited about this feature and will keep you updated on it!

    Endless Mode

    An entirely new game mode, Endless Mode will have players defending a Roman Wonder from its invaders for as long as they possibly can. Hold on to that Wonder the longest and secure the #1 spot on the leaderboards!

    You will be able to fight for either Caesar, Pompey, or Crassus, that will each come with their own passive bonuses during gameplay, as well as unique technologies, and more.

    It will feature its own leaderboards, and have its own ranked seasons and seasonal rewards.

    More details to follow later.

    Update on the Indian Civilization
    ==============================
    As you might have read on our latest Indian Dev Blog, we are currently short on 3D Animators in our team, and it is slowing down the progress of development significantly.

    If you or someone you know can spare a few hours a week (or something around that) who has previous experience with animating (preferably in Blender), please send me (PF2K) or Max v.R. or Eamon (Chaos) a message on Discord with a few examples of your previous work so we can bring you in on the team. Thanks in advance for your help!
    (PF2K's Personal Note: This is how Eamon got in the team as well!)

    [​IMG]
    However, progress is still being made and we will be publishing a new Indian Dev Blog later this week, and showcasing the first Military Elephant unit of the civilization in it!

    While there will be more quality of life changes and updates coming to Project Celeste along the way, this blog should give you a good overview of what to expect in the future. But due to the volunteer-only nature of the project, we cannot guarantee everything and everything in this blog is subject to change, delay or adjustment. Thanks for understanding!

    Thanks for reading, and we look forward to reading your thoughts and questions below!

    All current and future content will stay 100% free and accessible to everyone.

    ========
    Project Celeste Development Team

    What do you think about this week's blog? What would you like to see next? Let us know in the comments below!

    ========
    The Romans are here! Watch the Overview Trailer.

    Project Celeste is completely free and always will be. However, we gladly accept donations for our overhead costs, which are larger than we have budgeted. If you want to support us, you can do so HERE.

    Read every Romans related blog HERE.
    Read every Indians related blog HERE.

    Tell your friends! Join our Discord HERE.
    ========
     
    #1 PF2K, Jun 29, 2022 at 9:11 PM
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2022
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Comments

Discussion in 'News' started by PF2K, Jun 29, 2022.

    1. Maavax

      Maavax Long Swordsman

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      Wow so much amazing new features! That will be great.
      I particularly like the new quests, the endless mode and the featured quests.
      Thanks for the work guys.
       
      bbgambini and Andy P XIII like this.
    2. ByFstugan

      ByFstugan Immortal

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      Wow. So much news after a long time of silence. I've been very eager for the next Indians-dev-blog. Looking forward to it ^^

      About this one. Some comments.

      1) About visiting other capital cities

      - Can you please make buildings that we can make (like Moe's), but instead work as a shop that we can label ourself (this part is crucial for my suggestion). For example if I wan't to be both a industrialist/producer and a businesman I can do a shop for only Armor platings, or even only Runic's or whatever I choose, if I can label them myself I do the choice. But then I can produce them and have my own store and people can know that my Greek civ got Runics to sell - maybe even at a better price than on GM atm.

      - Also this idea make it possible to give away freebies to newer players so I can put all gear I get that I know is valuable to new lev 40 players in one or more shops and just charge 1 coins each or vendor price for them. This would for sure be useful for new players as well as making us older one help new players get started with the first builds of their gear until they get better stuff.

      The point of having a capital city that others can visit should have some purpose also beside looking at different layouts. This way it can really serve a purpose, or more.

      2) Starting at lev 40

      - Sounds very intresting. Will cost alot of EP or what's the idea?

      - The items missed is it like the "Athena long Spear" and other items won on NON-LEG quests-line-rewards? But not like "The Forgotten Bow" that demands you doing LEG-quests to attain?

      3) Quest Rotation system

      - The only thing I think about is that the Repeatable regular quests with a 50% increase on almost no reward at all in EP/Coins should more likelly be like 1000% increas instead of 50%. Even 100% only give you 15EP/500 coin extra - and for most that's really nothing at all. Perhaps you could add a guaranteed Legendary chest as a standard bonus also (maybe not on all, but all non-legendary at least to make the reward noticable), so it's like +250% EP / +250% coin / +1 Leg chest; which make extra much difference for new players doing the regular repeatable. I can't think I'd ever do one of them (non-LEG's) anyhow, but at least make them much more intresting than this. This is like Sparta Happy hour that from what I understand also give just about nothing.

      - It's a great idea otherwise <3

      4) Endless Mode

      - Just a great idea. Looking forward to see it.
       
      #3 ByFstugan, Jun 29, 2022 at 10:57 PM
      Last edited: Jun 30, 2022
      apolippo likes this.
    3. Slyrevick

      Slyrevick Hippikon

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      Wow :)

      Does the new Network Relays system will help people do co-op without the need of port forward ?
       
    4. Aryzel

      Aryzel Immortal

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      I said it on discord and want to repeat it here. I'm a little concerned with the state of AOEO, its seems they have hired a world class 50 man dev team behind the scenes!!

      So much content, varied, thoughtful, experimental, player wishes, this is so so cool, you guys are awesome!
       
      ByFstugan, PF2K and bbgambini like this.
    5. Wossop

      Wossop Villager

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      These are all wonderful additions. Thank you

      I especially like the idea of not having to level the Indians to 40 potentially!
       
    6. PF2K

      PF2K Lead Developer
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      That's the plan!
       
      Andy P XIII, bbgambini and Slyrevick like this.
    7. SHIFENG

      SHIFENG Long Swordsman

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      really hope Skirmish Hall could have a mode that have innumerable resources,have no Rework is ok,just for fun,with no stress.:p
       
      Andy P XIII and PF2K like this.
    8. bbgambini

      bbgambini Hippikon

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      Really looking forward to all the great additions, especially the Quest rotation system, which is going to be a really neat feature, can't wait. Also, the quest cooldown tracker will make life easier. The quest tracker feature will make the world quest map more interactive, nice.

      Hopefully we can get some more volunteers to come on board and lend a hand. Is there any other way the rest of us can help???
       
    9. elassi

      elassi Long Swordsman

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      Cool to see the plans, will the skirmish rework also include a change for the loading UI, to be similar the PvP one?
       
    10. Aaron

      Aaron Berserker

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      Just a suggestion: It would be nice to be able to keep track of which repeatable has been completed for solo/co-op as well.
       
    11. TzarKosta

      TzarKosta Long Swordsman

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      Endless Mode for Crete or other Quest? we need that for crete too..
       
    12. Cuicui13600

      Cuicui13600 Villager

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      Thanks to all the dev team for this amazing work !
      I played this game at the beginning. It's so fun to see it back.


      Here's some feedback, i hope it will be useful (sorry for my poor english skills) :

      Aiding Socrates : really love the non legendary variant of the quest. Useful for a new player like to discover these quests in an easier form.

      Champion mode : as a beginner Pvp always freightens me a bit. But surely the best way to become a skilled player.

      Visiting other players capital cities : so a really cool feature that make decorations items more senseful ! Attracting player, players quests, shops... can't wait to see these features. Hope to see more content in the future !

      Starting civilizations at level 40 : personnally, i love discover a civilization feature step by step. Hope we'll be able to keep it. Maybe leveling with an EP cost could be an idea.

      Skirmish Hall Rework : sound an amazing project. Can wait to see the result of this hard work !

      Optimized Loot tables ans individual Item Droprates : Good ideas here

      Advisor Reworks : some balance to make some advisors more useful would be nice.

      Campaign Quest Tracker : i love to see this user friendly feature !

      Quest Rotation System : one of the best idea here ! I love this kind of feature that make all the game content useful ! That sould be a game design goal ! Very nice catch here !

      Endless mode : Sounds like Defense of the crete kind of work. Really love this idea ! Sure this mode will have a lot of popularity


      Some feedback on the civilizations : at the time of this post, i leveled greek and roman civilization up to level 40. Really feel lot of fun with the game mechanics of he roman civilization. A more complex gameplay but rewardful. Officers reminds me a bit of the heroes from age of mythology game mechanics.

      It would be nice to see more of this kind of content : some epic units (general, or some advisors...) with unique bonuses (eco or military) on the battleground. I don't know if it can be possible to bring this kind of stuff in the game !

      So thank you for all you amazing work, your passion in this game !


      I don't really some negative to say about the game. Just a few things maybe. I hope this will be useful for the design team

      Lot of items have no use at all : for example, most of the level 40 rare and uncommon stuff is no use. Epic content is so cheap at the market. It could be useful to rework some of the secondary stuff to make it useful in some cases. I know that it's a leveling stuff, but the civilization level 40 direction, a lot a the item content will be no use. I'm just giving an idea here, but why not make stuff that could deteriorate. So you can bring cheaper stuff for secondary battle. And you keep better stuff for epic or legendary battles. This would make uncommun or rare stuff more useful and bring more item rotation. The idea that once your got your best legendary stuff for always drain of the game interest.

      Lot of items are redundant. Stats are not that much diversified. All the items seems more cosmetic than it add gameplay diversity. More exotic stats would be fun.
      For example shields stats are so poor : i don't understand why shields can't block missile. Some legendary shield add +10% health + 4% damages. Surely it adds some pierce armor sometimes. But stats lack some coherence. Fighting with or without a shield should bring much more gameplay contrast. Most of the choice are poor. You have maybe one or two good choice on an item most of the time. It's an failure from the base game design for sure.
      I don't know if it can be fixed, if we can add some more coherent RPG game mechanics (melee defense, melee attack, missile blocking...) to bring more interest, more deepness...
      Quest diversity is a good thing, but that would not replace gameplay deepness. Quest diversity is a additional design feature. But game mechanic diversity is a multiplier design feature.

      But anyway the game is still super fun ! So thank to all the team to bring back this game and keeping adding fun content !
       
      PF2K likes this.
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