Age Of Empires 3 Story Mode

[Irmgard Rossie]

OPis suggesting something for uber casuals and a story mode, no need to flex on personal achievements. I believe this will make some campaigns more accessible for new players. I think the classic AOE 2 has 5 levels of difficulty. The devs can add a Story mode difficulty and an Expert Difficulty.

There are some tricks to make campaigns easier. In singleplayer, you can use the active pause as much as you want. Want to take a few minutes to decide on the strategy ? Facing an enemy force and want to limit your losses ? Need to slow down the game pace ? One button to press.

Yesterday I started Ismail campaign and lost the first scenario right at the bat. The initial goal demands the player to be careful and vigilant, giving tight windows for a safe journey. Initially I tried to be the fastest to reach the destination but ended up with so many enemies on my tail I lost all of my units. Really caught me off guard.

No really, a bad joke. I have done every solo thing I can in this game and have decent 230 augmented gear. I wanted to try a "challenge" so i started veteran mode on the Eternal Empire story line....big mistake.

After I finally got Marr, the first companion option he spawned with no weapon and was punching the mobs...Luckily i had a lightsaber in storage that I could give to him. After I gave him a weapon he did a little better. My chances of surviving a single pull went up to 75%.

This is just the middle diffuculty setting? I can't see that anyone without full 246 Op gear would even stand a chance against these guys, much less a non raider looking for a single player challenge.

I ran KOTFE on Veteran on my first run as Vanguard Tank. Worst tank in the game, getting companions at level 1 with no gifts. Ran chapters 1 through 9 of the story before pausing for the grind that is alliance commanders and getting side characters. Died a total of 2 times, both on instances where you are solo.

When I did Chapter 1 of KotFE in Veteran Mode, Marr was instantly bumped to Rank 20 when I got him, and still had his lightsabre. I did it on my Sentinel and my healer Operative (greatly preferred the Operative because stealth ).

Yeah, it was hard work - especially since they seemed to have slapped a 0 on the trash mobs' attacks, but still doable. Haven't tried Master Mode yet... and probably never will. The only part of the KotFE & KotET storyline that I would willingly repeat is Chapter XIV: Mandalore's Revenge - because it has awesome music and lots of Mandalorians

This is part of your problem probably. What influence rating do you have Marr on? If he's just new to you and just influence level 3 or something, then yeah, they'll blast through him and his heals or whatever spec you use him for will not be very effective in the higher difficulty modes.

But you shouldn't be surprised, if you're casual and are geared casually then story mode is your place. For higher difficulties you'll have to gear up and get your comps some influence...or get help from another player of course.

Veteran mode is made to teach solo players how to use CCs, defensive cooldowns, interrupts, LoS. If you just jump in and do DPS without thinking about anything else you might have a bad time. If you play intelligently and approach some fights with a little imagination you won't have issues clearing most or all the fights in every chapter with the gear you have and low level companions.

I remember having issues on one fight on the veteran chapter you go to that weird planet where Vaylin is (the 2 champions after the bridge). Dunno if that was tuned cause I did that the first week 5.0 was out, and I was also in 4.0 gear.

Since then I soloed all the chapters in master mode with sub-10 influence companions. That required wipes/close to perfect execution/a bit of luck/good gear. It's pretty fun and can help you get better, so I suggest you go try that after you've learned everything you could from veteran mode.

You don't need a group. You DO need to cc. I did all of vet mode on a dps commando. I had to repeat some chapters while I figured out what I did wrong, or at least not right, in using my skills. It was entirely doable solo. (Item rating 242 mostly on that commando)

You can take a group into the chapters, however only the group leader will get credit for the run (I read this but haven't tried it). Some classes will find it easier than others. On my lightning sorcerer I found Chapters 1-16 KOTFE aren't too bad on Veteran; just remember to take some gifts with you and level up your companion where you use one. Also remember where possible to switch the companion to a ranged healer (melee ones are not as good I find, but there are very few chapters where you can do this). Darth Marr is possible! I was repeatedly failing on him until I improved my gear & realised that playing as a typical caster at that fight gets you killed; move around and use instant cast spells frequently or similar of your a ranged shooter.

Where I am stuck is on chapter 6 of KOTET. I gave up after many, many attempta on the last boss of KOTET chapter 6 (I suspect fighting Arcann here is a lot easier than fighting with him). I asked in the forums and no-one had a strategy for that fight. The only video at the time I tried was of those who had taken down Arcann there (rather than chose to save him and have him join you). I've had 248 gear for a while now so I will give it another go. There are some guides on strategy, however it's best to work out how to complete each vet chapter based on your own play style and boss mechanics.

Since most of the solo game is piss easy now (remember years ago when you had to get a friend to help you with your class boss?? ). I quite like the veteran and master mode chapters for the challenge.

You can solo them and they are not designed for groups but it requires a little bit more of the player than just running in with whatever gear and a low influence companion, not knowing how cc's work or rotations and such.

There were a bunch of places on the SWTOR website and social media spelling all this out, back when this stuff was released, which was maybe 9 to 12 months or so ago. Now you really have to dig around to find it.

More like the 5 to 15 percent of highest skilled players for Vet mode and the top 1 percent or maybe even less for Master mode. The people who were whining at length that the regular story mode content is so easy it bores them to tears.

Despite this, within a week or so of Master Mode chapters coming out, people were doing 5 minute speed runs in roughly 230-ish level gear in order to farm CXP for some chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 of KotFE in particular.

It got tweaked and nerfed later to discourage that sort of CXP farming, but once people figured out the mechanics, clearly it was not really all that difficult for what was "supposed" to be the intended audience.

Chapter 2 of KotET on the other hand is pretty brutal, even on Vet mode. It's pretty atypical though. Most people who do PvE at the HM/NiM Ops level can breeze through most of the chapter content for 4.0 and 5.0 in Vet mode in pretty much any class, any spec, with 228 crafted gear, and a companion with an influence level around 10 to 20.

As a former HM raider, I was very pleased with the tuning of most of the Vet mode chapters. With the exception of the aforementioned KotET ch. 2, I found just about all of it to be in a really nice difficulty range for characters in level appropriate crafted leveling gear, with occasional fights that are a real pain if it's a DPS check and you're not in a DPS spec. Overall though, I liked it enough that I generally set Vet to be the default when I take characters through story content.

It's a bit inconsistent as far as tuning and poorly explained/labeled in terms of warning less experienced players what they're opting into if they choose Vet/Master chapters, but that's pretty standard for SWTOR.

And this thread must be some kind of odd joke. Bioware gave us different difficulty modes and some guy who cannot beat the harder mode complains, that he cannot beat the harder mode. I do not even get the basic premise. Why the heck you should be able to, at your low skill level? It is the mode for those who feel unchallenged by story mode. It is not the mode for those who are not able to beat it for whatever reason.

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