Middle-earth: Shadow of War (Shadow of Mordor Sequel)

j00t said:

This is the crux of the argument made by people who haven't played the game. Act 4 is the only part of the game that this is even remotely arguable. The first 3 acts which are really the meat of the game is like 20-35 hours depending on how much side stuff you do. Act 4 is much better described (game play wise) as post game. So artificially inflating the post game is kind of a meaningless concern

Click to expand...

I'm actually liking shadow wars more than the first 3 acts. I'd love it if they combined some of the features from one of my all-time favorite games, Mount and Blade, into Shadow of War.

Basically, make a huge RTS + RPG-style game.

j00t said:

This is the crux of the argument made by people who haven't played the game. Act 4 is the only part of the game that this is even remotely arguable. The first 3 acts which are really the meat of the game is like 20-35 hours depending on how much side stuff you do. Act 4 is much better described (game play wise) as post game. So artificially inflating the post game is kind of a meaningless concern

Click to expand...

I think you missed the point where we all stated Act 4 is what was inflated and designed to frustrate anyone but Tuco into buying orcs on the cash shop.

Utnayan said:

I think you missed the point where we all stated Act 4 is what was inflated and designed to frustrate anyone but Tuco into buying orcs on the cash shop.

Click to expand...

Nah. Pretty much everyone playing it says the same thing: Act4 doesn't frustrate anyone into buying orcs, and the whole loot crate debacle is overblown reactionary nonsense by well-intentioned fools.

Well, I'll be a well intentioned fool then because as you stated, the noise is a good thing in that they will consider not moving progressively forward as it will hurt their main sale. Doesn't mean I cannot play the game either. With Gamefly, I do not give them a red cent because the game was already sold and I am a secondary user. Or, better yet, buy it used. It's to the point I won't give publishers like WB a purchase price whether it is 5-60 bucks. I can just rent it, play it, beat it if I want, and they don't see a dime. I'll be doing this with CoD WW2 now because of their patent fiasco and then lying about their involvement to the general public (One look up on Linked in and these guys worked within Activision and were not an independent team). The same will probably go to Battlefront 2.

For games that institute it properly or without the idea of future malice/conditioning, like say Rocket league, I will reward them with cash for the game, and also use their cash shop.

Kiroy said:

Have you spent anything on loot crates?

Click to expand...

No, lol.

Though there is more reason to buy loot crates (vs orc crates), because at least the legendary gear you get could possibly change the gameplay a lot, and legendary gear doesn't betray you (though the big orcs can break your legendary sword, which creates a mission for you to go try to kill the orc to get your sword back).

Ex: If I got a decent Machine tribe (each tribe has their own legendary weapons) sword it would enable a build that revolved around explosions and glaive attacks. I could go home, drop however much $$$ it'll take to get a legendary that presumably has 1/36 chance to be a Machine tribe sword, and then uhm, play the game not too differently than I do now with whatever gear I picked up on the way.

I think part of the confusion about this is that people view these shadow wars as these super-tough, grueling battles that you need to grind for hours to prep for. I haven't beaten them all yet, so I don't want to speak too confidently about it, but I'll be very surprised if it's all that difficult if you spend a little bit before each conquest doing the normal gameplay to prep for them. In fact my #1 complaint about the game is that it's too easy with too many ways to easily overcome situations.

How is the input lag? Shadows of Mordor on PS4 was damn near unplayable and still is. I am not buying this, but I have it in the gamefly queue now for whenever it comes. I was more curious than anything.

Skanda said:

Stern frown.

Click to expand...

Just in case there's any confusion, you get significant amounts of legendary gear ingame as well. At a guess I've gotten ~30 pieces so far, and I've just started Act IV and haven't tried farming legendary gear (or anything else) in any capacity.

Utnayan said:

How is the input lag? Shadows of Mordor on PS4 was damn near unplayable and still is. I am not buying this, but I have it in the gamefly queue now for whenever it comes. I was more curious than anything.

Click to expand...

I didn't notice any true input lag in either SoM or SoW for PC, but thanks to consolitis there's quite a few control issues since they have to map so many actions to so few buttons.

Tallion will do a lot of things you don't want him to do, including: running up a wall instead of vaulting over an orc, dominating a random, already dominated grunt instead of the broken captain you've been fighting, vaulting over an orc that will throw you to the ground instead of running up a wall, etc. I think some degree of control-salad is inevitable for a game like this.

Some amazing legendary mob showed up to fight in a conquest. Tough son of a bitch with curses, fiery weapons and incredible regenetive capabilities. I considered replacing Az-Laar with him and put Az-Laar to the test.



Az-Laar actually went berserk and accidentally killed one of my low-level captains in the battle.

I really like Shadow of War, but I find I have a similar problem that I did with the first one, which is that I never seem to have Nemesis interactions. It's so tempting to just brand or shame every orc you come across which means that you end up hunting them rather than the opposite.

I really wish the orcs were more likely to hunt you down and actually be a thorn in your side. I wish betrayals were more common too, as a matter of fact.

gshurik said:

I really like Shadow of War, but I find I have a similar problem that I did with the first one, which is that I never seem to have Nemesis interactions. It's so tempting to just brand or shame every orc you come across which means that you end up hunting them rather than the opposite.

I really wish the orcs were more likely to hunt you down and actually be a thorn in your side. I wish betrayals were more common too, as a matter of fact.

Click to expand...

I agree. I wish the game was set up such that if there's no orcs high enough on your "nemesis scale", Sauron would start sending brutal orcs after you that would increase in power until they started kicking your ass.

Tuco said:

I agree. I wish the game was set up such that if there's no orcs high enough on your "nemesis scale", Sauron would start sending brutal orcs after you that would increase in power until they started kicking your ass.

Click to expand...

It'd be pretty cool if they'd take an orc that you "killed" ages ago, and brought it back but at a way higher power level, I feel like the Nemesis system is cool but really underutilised.