Updating gear for lvl 1-39

[Aryzel]

Hey,
There was a discussion on discord led by Achan, who suggested that the store prices of gear for levels 1-39 could be reviewed with intention of making it affordable for players who are levelling up. This is particularly relevant now as we can expect a lot of people new to Celeste to try out the game when Romans come out and if they find the levelling up experience messy in parts it will put them off, maybe not a huge amount but goal here is to smooth rough edges with only a small bit of effort to keep their first 5-10hrs of gameplay fun and enjoyable. There are many problems with gearing, and for the most part we should be very slow to adjust it as it affects endgame balance. However for lvl 1-39 changes could be more readily made as it just affects initial experience and not the long term game.

Starting first with just store gear, the prices of many pieces does not reflect the gold a player earns while levelling up, this is particularly evident in gear that is roughly lvl 20-39, though it is present below that too. At the moment you can often get 100-200 coin a quest while leveling, but gear pieces cost 1000-3000c. This was a previous design intention because, while you didn't need to buy gear to level, if you did want to take part in the gearing system while you levelled these prices pushed you into buying gold for real world money. It can be good to have less gold available to users than they want to spend, to give them a bit of challenge and desire to reach further, not just give them everything they want with no effort. But the balance is off at the moment because intention was users would use real world money to bridge the large gap, not play a bit more to bridge a smaller/good game design/ gap.

There are other issues too, such as access to the blue print stores, all crafting recipes, the crafting material costs etc, and in this thread (over a few weeks) I hope to make suggestions for all those points. To start off the process I've gather list of all the stores that see stuff for coins in the game, with notes on lvl ranges of gear and costs. As you can see we have a lot of stores now (44 and a number of duplicates and near duplicate), I definitely found it confusing when I levelled up recently in Celeste and I spent time make notes, looking at website, etc. Some consolidation of the stores themselves could be nice in future too.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11uekPOZMnHpblVLTOHz9WPMD7mDL0eIaWxFYxGL0oDk/

 

[Aaron]

Document is private.

 

[Aryzel]

sorry, try now, was giving Taz write access, i think i made it private by mistake at same time

 

[Jeinx]

Hey Aryzel,
Thanks for your post. There are currently some things working to bring more mid level gear at affordable prices for both players leveling, and players not yet in a good financial position to buy the top tier gear, but need a good mid range piece. Lots of grinding gears, you should start seeing some nice additions in quality of life things soon.

 

[Aryzel]

cool, thats awesome Jeinx. I'll probably not go too in depth then, but will still post some suggestions of making the currently 1-39 landscape cleaner so new players can build up a mental image of the that part of the game easily when they join. I think that 'I get how it works' helps people connect with games and don't think its really there with the gear side of AOEO yet.

 

[Jeinx]

For the love of God. Hold on to those epic pieces that we have legendary versions of now. These are like gold to new players. Sell them. Wall of titans, apocalypse breastplate, Vorpal blade, Nectar filled water barrel, Zeus's belly bow, hero's bow of Apollo, Pharoah's arrows, hull of Leviathan, craft Athena Arrows, Arduinnas hunting bows, mead of eternal life, runic bronze, Hyena Wrapped Gaff stick, Druantia's True Oak staffs, epona's scout Armor. And sell them to new players.
This is what I miss. Seeing the need for goods an services in the community, and jumping on it, making sales
^For everyone looking, not directed at anyone^

 

[Aaron]

With the number of marketplace slots and the amount of gold a new player can pay for these items, sadly this is often not worth the time. Like, I would give them away freely if I don't have to spend my attention span to do it, but at least now it involves spamming the trade channel.

 

[t31os]

Fully support this, store prices for items have always been a bit silly.

However, it was never intended design for players to buy gold for real world money, the only means for ever doing that was through third party gold sellers(the bane and annoyance of many a MMO), at least as far and best that i can remember (and i remember those chat flooding gold sellers).

 

[Jeinx]

With the number of marketplace slots and the amount of gold a new player can pay for these items, sadly this is often not worth the time. Like, I would give them away freely if I don't have to spend my attention span to do it, but at least now it involves spamming the trade channel.

We are looking at several changes that you may like. Nothing happens overnight sadly
1k a piece is better than double vendor price, helps someone out, and is affordable.

 

[Aaron]

Fundamentally, new players cannot really afford anything worth more than 1k gold. From my point of view (and that of many experienced players). It's not worth my time selling things for less than 1k gold. This fundamental fact won't change. If you make items desirable enough that they are worth more than 1k, it locks out new players. If they aren't worth more than 1k, I will just vendor them. Any solutions to this problem will need address this fact. This is why I suggested in game store as a fix.

 

[Jeinx]

Fully support this, store prices for items have always been a bit silly.

However, it was never intended design for players to buy gold for real world money, the only means for ever doing that was through third party gold sellers(the bane and annoyance of many a MMO), at least as far and best that i can remember (and i remember those chat flooding gold sellers).

Oh boy oh boy, the old Gold sellers. Lol shoot me now haha

 

[Jeinx]

Fundamentally, new players cannot really afford anything worth more than 1k gold. From my point of view (and that of many experienced players). It's not worth my time selling things for less than 1k gold. This fundamental fact won't change. If you make items desirable enough that they are worth more than 1k, it locks out new players. If they aren't worth more than 1k, I will just vendor them. Any solutions to this problem will need address this fact. This is why I suggested in game store as a fix.

You should be able to easily sell them for 1k each minimum. If a player just started and does not have 1k, they are probably just not at a stage in their game where they are ready for them. The person willing to list in trade can take advantage of that lol. I know its tedious. Thanks for the suggestion, we can look at some of the useful gears in stores and see if lowering the price can be helpful.

 

[Jeinx]

Meanwhile, if you have any gears in mind that are in stores that you think are extremely useful, post the name, store, and cost here, I'll be glad to take a looksie

 

[Aryzel]

Fro the level 40 epics there is decent supply, easy to get on trade channel for 1k or less, and on marketplace it varies but 1-3k is easy. Supply is mostly bigger than demand, aside from the occasional few days where it mismatches, that why sometimes you just vendor them.

Its the stuff below lvl 40 that is the biggest issue, but sounds like some things are on the way to help.

 

[Aaron]

Having a closer look at the different stores, it seems like that a lot of the expensive stuff were in fact added by Celeste, as most items from MS are uncommon/rare and hence has significantly worse stats. Even their epics and useful rares are generally cheaper, with a few exceptions. While I still argue that even the MS are still too expensive when taking into account of the speedier leveling, the biggest outlier right now is probably Well of Urd. The level 35 axe is sold for 3k, while an Amun's Axe of Ferocity is often listed at the GM for 1~2k. The blue arrows as well when compared to Pharaoh's Blessed Arrows's GM prices. The armor is mildly better than Chiton of Jackal in HP, but without the damage (I am not going to bother with the 1.1% move speed since it's so small that it is insignificant), and I see the Chiton being sold at 1k on GM often enough.

I can see that the Athenian and Well of Urd stores are meant to shore up some of the lackings in pre-40 offerings, but the prices are not pre-40 prices. Even if we don't want to go crazy in slashing prices on all shops, dropping the Well of Urd price by 1/2 and Athens by maybe 1/3 would keep it much more in line with MS. Moving the shop out of Well of Urd would also help once the prices are readjusted.

Ironically, searching through the shops, the cheapest level 35 epics I could find were in fact the two in Argos from MS, for 900 coins each. That should probably be the starting point to see whether things are too expensive or not.

I am going to refrain from discussing non-legendary level 40 store gears in this discussion so I don't conflate the conversation too much, but I have similar thoughts on prices on many of them as well.

 

[t31os]

Might be about time to consider reverting the old nerf to the cost reduction gauntlets to, even at 10% cost reduction it just doesn't offer enough to justify using them over ramses or similar items(cost goes up, but that doesn't matter when you're getting dmg and health out of it). Back in the old days, at 18.6% reduction whilst ramses was still the better item, they at least made for a cheap, more significant and decent craftable alternative. I honestly would like to see them at 25% reduction(or say 20-22% for epic and 23-25% for the leg craftable), i'd still choose ramses/masters 90+% of the time personally, but it would make them a major consideration before you've got the bank to kit out any civ with the droppables(ramses / master assassins, etc) and create a desire for people to craft and use them.