Epic quests?/Story telling needs some serious redesign IMO

I’d like
to post my opinion on the game's story telling. I am sorry guys, but you
really dropped the ball this time! I like the game in general, however the
entertainment value of this game for me in 99% doesn't come from the story
itself (and
I believe it should, to at least some extent since this is not a
chess).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the main motivation for the majority of
the crowd playing this game is simple chase after XP's and fancy gear, which is
the motivation to participate in the "quests" and not to participate in the quests to
progress in a well written and engaging story with XP's as a side bonus.

I think this kind of approach is miles away from what a good all-round game
should be about. Again I don't want to compare games as doing so is like
comparing apples and pears, but just look at how much effort Lucas Arts is putting
into marketing the "story" value of their upcoming KOTOR game. Even
though I am not the big fan either, I can’t deny the same value for games like
SC2 or their previous RTS WC3.

I understand that AoE:O was probably never intended as a story driven game, but
look at some
of the previous titles in the series, most notably AoM with a pretty
good story, which made it a real fun to play in the campaign mode as well. Even
AoK did
better with it’s voice narrated campaign briefing.

Just look at quests in AoE:O, IMO most or at least some of them are
extremely uninteresting and feel somewhat like routine. Most of the time I can’t be
even bothered to read the small print and simply jump into the game without
knowing what’s going on, beat the opponent or build few farms, collect
some gold, collect the XP's and move on...

Again I am sorry to see this, because there is some very good potential in
this game,
especially with the game setting in the ancient world. Just look at
Trojan war quests... Why wouldn't you do a little extra work and call it
something like "epic quest" to
differentiate from the small build this build that type of quests. Add some short
in game cinematic, maybe some voice narrated briefing ...etc. I think that
would make a huge difference in the overall appeal of this campaign and build up
much more enthusiasm by making it “epic” as what this story really deserves as
well.

How
it works now, I read 3 lines of plain text, and next think I know I have
this fancy unit in front of me, so I click on it and I see its "legendary
Achilles" -> ok, whatever, he just look like any other unit, just more
fancy, no personality, nothing special about him... except for the unit tag. It would be
much different, if the same figure got introduced in some form of cinematic etc..

With a
simple things like that, the fun factor would rocket up at least for me. For now I
see this project as a good game, unfortunately not particularly memorable.

Thnx,

|||I actually like most of the quest but I hear you they do need alot more depth.
|||Thanks :). Well yea I mean the quest themselves are not always bad, but for the bigger stories such as above mentioned Trojan War I would like to see more "juice" to make them more engaging and interesting for the player.
|||There's a few things they can add some extra touches in. Do anyone remember the mission where you are supposed to destroy the wonder the old king of Mycenae built for himself, and the repeatable quests to destroy more of these things? I think the mission name was "What an Egomaniac!". Why are we destroying statues of Zeus? If he is an egomaniac, those should be statues of himself.
|||

I'm impressed, someone here actually giving constructive criticism

I share your opinions, the quests in this game share the same dilemma as the game it took this from (rolling my eyes at that games' box) Something that I would have enjoy would be the addition of voice acting. Maybe that could have been a selling point for premium too; Guess what, if you give us some money we will provide voice acting for the quests.

There are so many exciting stories in Greek mythology (I don't know much about Egyptian, but I am sure they have a lot to offer as well) that they could/can create quest lines from.

|||Agreed - wish they would have campaign-like quests (like AoM, AoK, etc). It was the only single player worth playing in Age games.|||Thanks guys. I'm happy to see more people share my opinion on this. Btw good idea to make it as an incentive for premium. And I think this is something that could be done with the future content add-ons. Hopefully we will be able to see some solid story driven quest DLC with voice acting in the coming months.