Loot Drop Rates

I think buffing the legendary drop chance, or removing white/possibly green/possibly blue from legendary quest and some other specific chests, could work at making it easier for solo and new players to gear up without having to get into trading. The extent of which this can be taken and with what combination is always a big unknown though, and personally I can't really weigh in yet as I don't play legendary quests and never tried selling any legendary item that wasn't subpar. There is a bit of a drawback with taking the removed items too far as then it can start to get too hard to come across useful stuff to sell to players who have their first 40 civ and don't know about maximising production or what's a good way to farm gold and gear, or other experienced players into PvP or on alt-civs. These groups both want something cheap that gives most of the benefit, rather than BiS drops most of the time. It'd put more pressure on players to grind the specific quests to get the chests too, as now all the 40 chests that don't get the benefit are subpar to acquire. If you bring it in on all 40 chests, then the droprate wouldn't need to change by anywhere near as much as players can do any 40 quest or repeatable and get much more consistent loot. However, if you take things that far you might as well drop all green and blue 40 gear down to level 37-39 otherwise it'd never be used.

The new legendary craftables are also worth a look at https://forums.projectceleste.com/threads/legendary-craftables.3970/ . You can have up to 12 advanced and 48 basic workshops cranking out resources, so you can sell all the basic materials to buy whatever mats you can't craft and make your own legendaries, or sell all the materials to buy legendaries or bargain epics you might need.

Realistically the depth of gearing up at endgame original AOEO had was a joke (BiS level <40 blues anyone?). People that are looking to get into the game for the gearing up aspect should probably push for powercreep in both legendary items and legendary quests as they are released in the content patches. That'll give people easier access to epic and legendary items and a sense of being able to continue gearing up once they have the more obtainable legendaries.

 

I think I generally agree with you, @SAAD that the legendary loot drop rates from the original run of the game were pretty small and that now that we players are in charge, we should increase the ability for players to get legendary items.

However, since a lot of players chase loot as a motivation for playing, there is naturally a fair amount of resistance to making it too easy for us -- the sooner players get top gear, the quicker they grow bored and leave.

I am not sure whether we have increased the legendary loot drop rates in Celeste, but we actually may have improved them slightly. However, our approach has been less about increasing how frequently leg items show up in chests and more about opening alternative pathways for players to get leg items.

First, every weekend, the Empire Store sells two different leg items. So long as players have enough Empire Points, they can buy as many of those items as they want.

Second, we released the Global Market, which makes buying and selling legendary items far easier than having to monitor the trade chat.

Third, we have released brand new legendary items that are available for limited periods during the seasonal events. On the whole, these have been pretty easy for players to acquire.

Fourth, we have released legendary recipes, which allow players to craft certain legendary items.

Fifth, we have released PvP seasons, which award players with legendary items (and other things).

Sixth, we have released the Spartan Reforge, which allows players to improve the statistics of legendary items. This does not increase the number of a player's legendary items, but it does improve the quality of them, which helps to reduce that player's demand for finding better ones.

Seventh, we have released lots of new quests. While this obviously doesn't affect drop rates, it hopefully gives players a lot more options for chasing legendary items so the old Paphos-Soloi-Marion grind is drastically reduced.

[EDIT: Eighth, we have released Crete Seasons that reward players with, among other things, Legendary Items. Thanks, @rtsgamer!]

On the whole, even though we haven't really tinkered with the drop rates, I think these combine to a system that you may find drastically easier and more enjoyable to gear up your civs than the old system that we inherited.

We are always looking for more ideas, too, so please speak up!

 

dont u forgot crete season ? @Andy P XIII

basically i am okay with legendary drops, the only "problem" in my opinion is:

since i have started to play, i never droped like:

lens menes 79.2
defender wall 59.4
athenian manual 10.6

When i am not wrong, i never got any maxed item from quest chests. lol

and i play really a lot but never getting maxed stats greetz

 

@rtsgamer : Max Stats have 0,39% chance to drop. That means that only 1 of 255 Lens of Menes will have max stats. Near max are a lot more easy to get tho (4,7%). So it's not only you or bad luck. It's the same for all players really.

 

I have many leg items dropped from "Elite" quests and Crete as rtsgamer reminds me. In fact I got my 1st leg drop from Elite Rogues, so I vote for this from Andy P and leave drop rates as they are :

Although, I am not one who got bored I have a few in my friends list who definitely left, may be only temporary .. ?? but they aren't around much anymore.

 

I quit for a bit after getting Babylonian to 40 and finding that the game was do legendary quests for "better gear" despite said gear being marginally better, or PvP and help out others. I don't think the problem lies in legendary droprates. I think it lies more in the fact that green and blue 40 gear is often only slightly better than, equal to, or worse than counterparts obtainable from late 20s to 39, and encountering the gearing system in it's current state while levelling just sets players up for disappointment when they hit max on a civ for the first time. "Endgame gearing" pretty much means getting blues and the cheap 40 epics off the global marketplace, then swapping piece by piece to a legendary or the best rolled of the most effective epic. There's no item levels (other than req'd level) or any way of differentiating "better" or "worse" gear within a given tier beyond knowing what's a dumpstat and what isn't. Again, I think that in order to ramp up the amount of perceived content progression at endgame, we actually have to have content progression.
It certainly isnt the project celeste team's fault, and with the questpacks and legendary craftables they have already taken some steps to fix the issues with PvE progress from the original game, but grinding toward legendary quests that give a chance at the same legendaries you have a chance at in other level 40 chests, just with more chests and better gold and EP rewards to go along with it, isn't really much progression. Player turnover in PvE has a lot to do with people reaching the finish line microsoft more or less built into the game. Tiering of the legendary quests and creation of some new ones/releasing legendary versions of more quests, along with adjusting rewards accordingly, and adding in some better 40 greens, blues, and epics (some legendaries too, but the team has addressed that with the craftables and event legendaries already) seems like the approach that makes the most sense to me. The only issue I can see stemming from this would be "gearcheck" design in the harder legendary quests keeping less geared players out til they have enough gear to pull off the winning strategies comfortably.

 

I quite agree, when Im farming I just open the shop as it opens my inv and those chests ?? well I know I will sell everything mostly and Im not a big user of consumables .. (I just forget they are in my inventory)

and this

My feeling, as orig game and Celeste game plyr is that the steps are not smooth. What I mean is that PVE until you get 40 is easy, then you can do elite quests not too hard , then Leg ... but to get good at leg you need, i think to to co op a while. Co op partners are tricky, they can rage quit if you are not so good, they can be hard to find.
I can do the same quest over and over, that's what I love, each time it's different until your skill is so good you ace it ... so then you go from elite to leg .. wow .. loose, loose, loose, ... quit .... I think we need elite - harder - leg or elite - silver leg - gold leg - impossible ...

so https://forums.projectceleste.com/threads/difficulty-slider.3951/

But anyway im just happy we have what we have so thanks celeste

 

I know the feeling. I do like the original consumables, but I think getting some new ones that are a bit more of an investment through crafting, and possibly a batch from vendors (EP, gold, or either, maybe even CP or SP), than the current epics would be cool, maybe a legendary tier of current ones or both even?

To be honest, I was someone that burned out on PvE as they got to legendary quests. I pretty much play PvP and skirmish other than low level repeatables when I feel like grinding them, or occasionally playing a low level quest. Everything PvE other than elite+legendary quests and crete now that I think about it. lol. They're a real struggle to solo at first, and as much as gear won't make the difference with experienced players it really helps with mindset and actually having a strategy around some unit comp other than booming til they get raided. Then turtle on a replay and die to a deathball and seige. Then use LFG for a coop and find a grumpy foreigner that bitches because you mess up once. (general's always the way to go )That's a really nice idea of approaching tiered or scaling loot mate. I think it'd be nice if yeah, for a notch up in difficulty you get a bit more gold, more exp if you're levelling, and more EP and a chest at every few notches up, and vice versa with having an "easymode" difficulty to get people used to playing the right styles for the different legendaries, where they get lower rewards than current amounts, for a reduced difficulty version. If it's too much easier make it give only gold and a tiny amount of EP. It'd make it fit in with scaled rewards and difficulty in skirmish and crete, and to an extent PvP.