legendary quests are too difficult

Maybe try doing them Co-op? There's some really good players out there who have strategies and item setups to make all the legendaries much easier to get through, and playing alongside them will really improve your ability to get through most of the legendaries.

What sort of gear do you have?

Keep in mind there is more content coming, and not all of it will be legendary. There will be more quests for casual PVE for sure in future questpacks.

 

it is tiring. And you'll eventually just leave the game. Like when MS had it.

That's what happens when you overtune quests for no reason other than creating an arbitrary spike in difficulty and ceiling to prevent players from progressing. Or, slowing their progression by making PvE rewards meager in comparison to the PvP content, and the time and effort Legendaries take with no guarantee for your time invested.

All in all, this game wasn't designed to respect players or their time, or their effort.

Go learn a craft on LinkedIn Learning, something useful, you'll be much happier, you can get a marketable result. Don't allow games to ask you to sacrifice the precious hours of your life.

 

The only thing that prevents you from progressing is your unwillingness to learn the game. With a mindset that something is out of your reach, it will always stay out of your reach. If there are players out there soloing quests with no effort and you are not able to even co-op them, isn't that a motivation for you to improve? If you love the game that is. Surely they are not super-humans. I haven't played any other games, no rts background or anything and I'm telling you pve in this game is very easy; you just need to invest the effort in figuring it out. And it should stay like that, skill needs to matter in an rts. Plenty of vids to guide you and players to give you a hand. Let's say the only quest you can complete is rogues or something and we nerf everything down to rogues difficulty so you can complete it. What fun would that be, either for you, the top players who already find everything too easy or the players in the middle that are finding their way through quests and are gradually improving? And think about how much fun it would be when you are finally able to complete a quest that you previously couldn't.

 

I see that you have looked at my guide. I hope it's helpful to you. Failing that, you can both practice and improve your gear by trying out the alliance quests in Carthage, Delos, Farafra, as well as Elite quests by clicking the Elite button on non-legendary repeatable quests. You can also practice on doing non-legendary Well of Urd quests (starts at Northern Hold, added by Celeste team), which are easier than legendaries, but significantly harder than quests in Argos, Babylon, and Cyprus. I recommend staying away from Athens since I find the Incursion quests about just as hard as some of the legendaries.

 

Hey Stephhen!

I personally love the legendary difficulty. I admit it's a big slap into your face when you are a newbie fresh level 40 player and you are trying to make it solo.
You either shall learn the map script, tricks and practice your micromanagement.
Some veterans with excellent micro skill can solo some legendary quests in low gear. They are rare unicorns with high APM (action per minute).
I am not one of them. My playing style is low APM, i prefer to build a few or just the necessary amount of buildings to make the quest in time or in the most optimal time/effort. I don't enjoy spamming the map with 300 barracks and having and APM like 500.

But i learned some tricks from the veterans of this awesome game.

In many legendary quests (for example in Marion, Dahshur, Mileto, when you start in Age 3), you can use Special Ability: Hidden Spy (Argos General Store) revealing a part of the map, useful using it upon a computer 'sTown Center (you should know the location on the blind black map) then when the area is revealed, you have to drop a Bandit Fortress (consumable you can craft it or buy it from other players). It will kill all the civilians, preventing creating any units from that TC or side of this map.

Other useful trick is to wall some parts of the map in the very first minutes, preventing to fight on all sides or just slowing the enemy units until you build up towers and train units to kill them and give time to yourself to tech up and have a stable economy to spam units.

On maps like More Mad Medians in Mesopotamia (meso) you got bonus objective to do not build walls and towers. Just build some forts in the middle, send there some units while you tech up and make an economy.

You shall start sending caravans as fast as possible have like 30 of them and train civs at least 60-80 (some guys even train 120 civs to early boost up eco) depends on what resources you will need to train units (food, wood, gold).

For caravans you shall know by experience how far build the market from the TC, you got more gold the further they are, but there is a maximum per trade amount depends on the distance.
Also you should buy and use Age 2 advisor Chieftain Dumnorix at epic version he give a 50% discount on each caravan and make them trade 10%faster pretty huge boost.


Or you shall search for a coop partner.
In Coop is so easy you can finish weekly legendary maps in 25-30 minutes.

If you got knowledge of the weekly legendary quests you can complete them with a veteran. There are many guys willing to play with newbies to.

My in game name is Thorin if you want to play coop, if you want to learn some legendary map tricks what i know, i willing to share it with you, add me friend in the new launcher and if i will be free i would help out any new players to the game.

We will create a party i will make a fast briefing then fight in the game and reap the treasure chests.

Anyway i agree the top level gear grinding is very tedious, you need years of farming, it take a zillion amount of time, only for the really dedicated fans.

Have fun, good luck!

 

Lol, no. Full reply in spoilers, don't read it, don't waste your time, you have so little playing AoE:Online anyway, you're not even going to try to consider it. I don't even believe Celeste wants new players anyways at this point. You guys want very, very, specific dedicated players, and damn the rest, to which I say, Good luck.

You've all had to realize by now with AOE:Online barely having population of about 100K potentially at it's height around 2012 and declining till shutdown, that the chances of Celeste ever coming close to even a quarter of that are miniscule even if they made the game more casual. They'd most likely lose their elite community out of anger towards the changes. You'll never change. It's fine.

TL : DR - Difficulty is a natural upwards incline, not a roadblock.

OP @Stephhen , just wait for AOEIV. Don't get suckered into people using words like "giving up", it's just a way to try wedge a positive vibe into doing something you just don't want to really do. Like sit down and spend half an hour watching AOE:Online tutorials... You could learn Maya or Zbrush instead. It'd get you a job down the road. Or you know.. Play another game.

Spoiler

I'm not the first to mention this to you or your cohort. You're catering to your elite.

You want people to leave the confine of the game, to research it, on YouTube. Do you know how rare it is for players to want to do that?

Maybe I'm not informed, but what e-sports do you guys have? What monetary reward are you people offering? What incentive are you creating for me to spend my time on this game, that Microsoft themselves considered a failure? That I can complete legendary quests... For.. What? Accomplishment? Love of the game?

Maybe you'll say I just don't like the game? Maybe, but I don't think so because I happen to love Age of Empires. But this isn't Age of Empires, not once you start seeing whats behind the curtains of this game. It's overarching meta, it's counter-play, it's reliance on red flashing enemy types, it's overtuned, it's unfair AI. The more you play, the more you realize how far apart it is from it's other titles.

No. The way the game is now, I don't even believe it's an AOE game. It's a mobile Clash of Clans port for the PC. Built with time barriers designed for micro-transactions with the micro-transactions removed, but the time barriers still embedded deep within.

You didn't recreate/rebuild/reform AoE:Online, you built a private WoW Server where you and your friends decide how the game is played.

This game is dying for players. Trying to rope people in and then MAKE them learn the game (i.e forcing their heads down and saying either the game will remain hard or you learn it), is impossible. People play something and they are either hooked or they are not, the same way comic books, novels, movies, and professionally made video games all start their experience with a bang and endeavor to keep people hooked in.

If you make players hit a curve or wall, they will leave, and only the few will remain. Exactly as has happened.

Here's an example.

Movie Battles II is a mod for Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. It has a small elitist community.

And I would never expect it to change, because it's perfect. For what it offers.
The one and only, melee combat lightsaber system in any game to this date that is so impressive, it'll make you want to become better and learn it because of how special it is. It's also, EXCLUSIVELY, multiplayer, making it a contest of player skill, not besting some dimwitted AI, or even gear stats.

Just like I did, with that game, with Street Fighter IV, with SWTOR, with WoW, with SQUAD, with Starcraft II. But sorry, not AOE:Online.

It has zero draw.

What do you offer? What is special about AOE:Online that I can't get in Starcraft II, or Age of Empires II Definitive, or the Total War series which offers me mods and custom content from the community? Hell, even I modded it too, with PFM for the .xml's or Battletech's .json editing?

AOE:Online is a barebones RTS, that has way too much restrictive tape around it. It's only defining feature being the gear system and the capital. Both of which are offered in other RTS games like Total War, Sins of a Solar Empire, the Civ series, etc.

If your community is trying to bring new players in, well, you've lost me. Maybe that's okay, maybe you're bringing in hundreds and hundreds of new blood everyday, I don't know that stat, you do, don't tell me about it, you make sure you're doing right by you. Because even at the height of AOE:Online this game didn't have draw, and Celeste hasn't tried to rectify that. It's why I eventually left, and why I'm leaving again. I'm not grinding my civs again.

If you don't care about new blood and lets face it, the people who brought this game back are literally the only people on the planet who wanted to even play it in the first place, then just say so and be done with it.

And just to clarify, if you think this is just me saying the game should be "easier" you're not getting it.
Difficulty is a natural upwards incline, not a roadblock.

 

It sounds like you hold a lot of resentment against the people who are designing quests.

We are aiming to create quests that challenge players of all skill levels. Nerfing the most difficult quests in the game would remove the quests that challenge the most skilled players. Instead, we plan to continue adding more quests that challenge lower skilled players. We’d love to have more players involved in quest design, so we encourage anyone with strong opinions about this to help.

We are just AoEO players trying to do our best. I hope that’s coming through.

 

There is a lot of anger in this post, and I finished the post still uncertain as to why. I love this game, always have. It’s unique and takes risks and makes choices that fundamentally undermine the foundations of RTS’s, for good or bad. It’s not for everyone, that’s why MS shuttered it, and I get that. I’m thankful people brought it back, even if there are things they've chosen for this game I disagree with. Heck, I agree with a lot of the things you said, especially about the design choices geared to push a player into PvP (that post about Celtic walls in PvP, I’m looking at you). What I’m really confused about is what you think should be changed? Is it the way difficulty is arbitrarily jacked up via Elite units and stat increases? I’d argue that’s par for the course on all PvE RTS games (Hybrid spam in SC2, for example).

@OP: My IGN is Fraxure22. Add me, and we can set up a time to play a match or two. I’ll get you through a couple Legendaries, or we can at least fail together.

 

For the record, every single one of us disagree with certain changes we’ve made to the game. We Devs are not a monolith. We are a collection of personalities, have never been in the same room with each other, and our decisions are the results of lots of private compromises and disagreements. It’s like any team or relationship. We do our best.

 

Y’all do a damn fine job as stewards of this game in my book.

I used to think Legendaries were impossible myself. It just required me to adjust the way I approach the game. It’s much easier with a co-op partner

 

I kinda understand what the OP is saying as well as mdk2005. I'm not a noob, I watch videos, I want to learn, I play Co-op, I solo leg missions that took me hours. In summary, I have hustle every bit of the game so far and sometimes I wonder If I have invested too much time and effort in exchange for the rewards. I'm ok with the legendaries being hard, I can handle a few, but some of them are just crazy. You know what they are and I guess there's a reason for it, but regardless, I LOVE the game and I will do my best to improve my skills and gear.

The thing is that telling a new lvl 40 player to go and play non legendary quests that yields leg items will eventually discourage him because he'll learn the hard way that getting a good hammer or gauntlet is very, very difficult. Unfortunately most of the strategies that you can learn from videos or guides requires good gear, which most people won't get and can't afford.

I've been helping players to go thru some missions and giving them tips, and having them as friends, but most of them never come back, precisely because they can't play legs and therefore they can't get decent gear. It's a vicious circle, at least from their perspective.

I know there are players in the other end of the spectrum which think that the status quo is fine and to be honest, I kinda am on your side, but I totally get the frustration on the other end, because I've been there sometimes.

 

Should we make Legendaries that are noticeably easier than the original legs like Marion, Soloi, and Paphos?

 

I take issue with this part. People incorrectly assume they need a good gauntlet or hammer to do legendaries, and this is one issue I see with some video guides. Newer players misunderstand video guides by picking up on the "good gear" part, and completely miss the "good macro" part, where as more experienced players would properly benchmark their macro performance and pick up on small details. This is why I emphasized the macro stuff in my guide with bolded words. Perhaps what we need are video guides where we equip bad gear. Additionally, macro skills learned in AoEO applies to other RTS like StarCraft and other AoE as well, so it's not like you are just learning for this game. In fact, I learned most of the basics of this game (and StarCraft 2, of course) from day[9].

And yes, I did try soloing a legendary without any hammer or gauntlet or dumnorix. It's definitely harder, but still doable.

 

I think we just need a cleaner path for gearing. There should be more of a natural progression of reward and challenge at level forty. Level 40 Repeatables->Level 40 Elites->Legendaries.

The reward value and reward pace for the first two steps there probably needs to be bumped up a bit, to ease people into being appropriately geared for Legendaries. Yes, you can overcome many Legendaries through skill, regardless of gear, but I don’t really feel any game should be designed exclusively for the very best players; we need to acknowledge the role gear has in bridging that gap and helping those players out.

Just my 2 cents.

 

On one hand, I strongly agree with you on the cleaner path of gearing, and have argued for it multiple times myself.

On the other, the difference top of the line gear vs 2nd tier is very small, with a few exceptions. Even if everyone suddenly have the best gear, the population of people who can do legendaries won’t drastically change. If a top player can churn out 2x as many units as you can, no gear can overcome that.

 

I don’t disagree with this. The biggest difference for me was learning to Macro faster. I still feel it’s relevant and important to have a cleaner progression system in this game, especially for any newer players or fresh 40 Civs.

 

What do you mean by a cleaner progression system?