Shadow of Mordor Too Easy to Gather Intel
Not saying it is, but genuinely asking. I've only put a little more than an hour into it, so I couldn't say with certainty, but so far it seems really easy. I haven't died yet and already killed 9 Captains. I thought the purpose was to kill the Warchiefs and in order to get them you had to kill the Captains. Seems like in another hour or two I'll have all the Captains killed and can take out the Warchiefs relatively easily.
Or is there something I'm missing? I get that there are story missions and I'll do them at some point, but so far I kind of like getting intel and killing the Captains. I know that they will keep refreshing the Captains when you die, but so far I haven't come close to death. Do they refresh them after you kill a certain number of them anyway regardless of whether you die or not?
No.
The combat gets much more difficult. If you're only over an hour into it then I doubt you've started running into the more advanced enemies. Once you get a little ways into the story you'll start to notice the difficulty increasing. The captains won't "refresh" until you either manually advance time or die. I recommend doing story missions and things will naturally pick up.
EDIT: Now that I've finished the game I can take that back a little. The game starts out easy, gets hard, then gets easy again at the end because it stops trying to introduce new elements to beat your new-found powers.
This game has a strange difficulty curve. The middle of the game can get tough, especially when you're up against Captains with resistance to combat finishers. That said, if you level up regularly and don't fight too many captains at once the game is never difficult.
I was thinking the same thing after playing for an hour but then after about 15 hours, NO, the game is not easy.
Just keep playing and you will find out.
I thought the same initially. Now, not so much.
It gets difficult once you hit the second area. Not incredibly so but more than any of the AC or Arkham games.
It's not super hard, or at least my play style isn't, but I liked play batman on the hardest difficulties. I wish there was some difficulty slider somewhere
The game starts out quite easy, gets tough for a little bit because you bite off more than you can chew, and then starts to get really easy but also more fun as you have more abilities to play with. Nice power fantasy stuff at the end where you can just chew through guys.
I actually think it's a game that's better when you're worse at it. You get more cool stories and more revenge targets and more repeat encounters, which makes the captains harder and so on. Once you're good at isolating and killing captains, all of that stuff goes away - since you just kill a dude and that's it. Then you have to make up your own fun which requires a lot more effort.
I had the complete opposite experience than most of your guys. I died a few times early on, but as I got deeper things became very routine.
As for what the OP is talking about, I seem to remember commenting something similar on the QL. The thing about the game is that if you just critical path it and go straight for the chiefs you can very quickly plow through it. It gets a little more complex in the second area, but the idea is that you're supposed to get lost in the constant repopulation and power struggle of the nemesis system. The vast majority of the time I spent with the game I did not pay attention to the chiefs at all.
And yes, the captains will repopulate over time no matter what. I'd say it's probably close to impossible to actually clear out all of them.
It gets difficult once you hit the second area. Not incredibly so but more than any of the AC or Arkham games.
Wow. I had no idea there even was a second area. I just thought it was kind of a smaller open world game, that's more dense with detail and more complex enemies. Good to know there will be another area to explore later on.
This was one of the only disappointing things for me in a game that is currently my frontrunner for GOTY. I've spent a lot of time with the Arkham games, and have thus played a TON of the combat in this game before even starting it for the first time (cause the combat in this game is almost exactly the Arkham combat).
Don't get me wrong, I quite enjoy this combat style. It's just that in the early parts of the game, I only found myself dying when I went into a situation unprepared (not looking up intel on captains I was hunting, not scouting around to see if there were more captains about, etc). In the back half of the game, I probably only died 2 or 3 times once I realized one thing about the captains (which I will put in a spoiler block in case you don't want to know it):
Basically, the only thing that could really have improved this game for me (other than maybe some better writing) would be harder difficulty levels. Maybe some crazier achievements. Hopefully they'll do some cool stuff with the DLC.
Once again, just want to emphasize that I'm not trying to get super down on the game or anything. It's easily the most interesting thing I've played this year.
You can always make the game really fucking hard by going after war chiefs without dealing with their bodyguards first. Give em all death threats while you're at it and you'll end up against like 80 uruks with 5 or 6 lvl 15-20 captains that can kill you in 2 or 3 hits.
In a few instances some captains are immune to combat finishers and sword attacks and you can only kill them with arrows or stealth
@nophilip: You mean the B&Y execution? Not everyone is vulnerable to it. The Combat Master trait means they counter it and it does no damage. It's description is "Invulnerable to Combat Finishers". I had plenty of guys with that throughout the game, maybe 5 or 6. Sounds like you were lucky/unlucky not to come across it .
@nophilip said:
In a few instances some captains are immune to combat finishers and sword attacks and you can only kill them with arrows or stealth
If you level them up enough they become immune to everything, heal with each hit, poison with each hit, cannot be stunned or jumped over and will not give you a second chance if they land a killing blow. Usually, they have a single fear of Caragors or something but God help you if you have two of them duel in an area where no animals spawn, it will never end.
That being said, the game is not that difficult 99% of the time but that's just inherent to the batman-style combat.
@pyrodactyl: That's good to hear. Kind of weird how the RNG worked out though. I manipulated the crap out of the Nemesis system to my own twisted ends and probably chewed through 60-70 captains and warchiefs throughout the game and never saw the trait once.
EDIT: Does that trait maybe not work when they're stunned? Cause my playstyle involved keeping captains stunned constantly.
I found the game to be too easy, yes. Especially later when you can just send a head flying every second.
@pyrodactyl: That's good to hear. Kind of weird how the RNG worked out though. I manipulated the crap out of the Nemesis system to my own twisted ends and probably chewed through 60-70 captains and warchiefs throughout the game and never saw the trait once.
EDIT: Does that trait maybe not work when they're stunned? Cause my playstyle involved keeping captains stunned constantly.
Combat Master makes them immune to any kind of melee damage apart from stealth kills.
@crysack: Huh, I killed probably 6 or 7 max level warchiefs and none of them were immune to my previously mentioned strategy. Must've been weird RNG.
Early on it can be. Once they introduce new enemy types and captains/warchiefs with multiple resistances it starts to get fairly difficult. Also, it's extremely easy to get overwhelmed by dozens of enemies, at any point of the game.
If you're good at Batman it'll be relatively easy, if not it can be quite challenging especially in the later stages of the game.
@crysack: Huh, I killed probably 6 or 7 max level warchiefs and none of them were immune to my previously mentioned strategy. Must've been weird RNG.
It definitely happened to me with two captains. I had to abandon a duel mission because neither captain could kill each other and I couldn't kill them either because there were no Caragors around.
If you're in an area with archers or hunters tossing spears, combat can be a little tricky. Once those chumps are dead, it's mostly smooth sailing if you're handy with the counter button. Facing multiple captains at once has its complications, though.
I'd say the game is a fair difficulty. I've died a handful of times in 10 hours, but usually for being reckless.
I must be having a much different experience with the Nemesis RNG, because I've found myself bummed at how much of a lack of challenge the captains/game in general have proved (I'm sitting on the last few missions of the story about 16 hours in, for context). Playing with the nemesis system's been REALLY fun, but I've honestly been wishing that SOME captains proved more of a challenge. I WANT to die. I WANT to make nemeses. That's kind of the whole point of the system and I feel like I've largely missed out on that side of it because there's only been 3 instances where my attempt to kill/dominate a captain hasn't worked out (and only 1 of those lead to death). Otherwise it's been a fairly simple procedure of find intel, find fire/caragor/bees, and murder a fool (it's the best Assassin's Creed game I've played in a long time).
I still think the game's a ton of fun (and I've spent a good 6 hours now in the endgame doing nothing but stalling so I can keep playing with the system), but I wish there were a wider, adjustable difficulty scale, because this is one of those games where I totally would've upped it a bit; I've already turned off counter prompts and I've been diligently sending death threats. At this point I've got basically the whole army under my fist, and I'm just running time forward so that it gets repopulated and gives me some more people to go after; I am, in essence, stalling in the hopes that someone more threatening will present himself, so that I can develop the sort of emergent narratives that others seem to be enjoying.
Again, I imagine it's just a factor of the RNG being easy on me when I was more vulnerable. Now that I'm upgraded, though, I'm starting to think a threat's unlikely, and that's too bad. Otherwise I totally would've gone back in their little challenge mode to futz around with the systems some more, because the game itself is pretty incredibly built, and I've been loving my time with it.
I was thinking the same think, but I'm actually kind of glad. Difficulty in games is such a grey-area topic. I'm enjoying the feeling of conquering my foes when I see them, especially since a lot of it has to do with my reaction timing. If they made the countering system more finite and short-windowed, I think it would kill the game. I don't have the reflexes I use to when I was 16, and I'd hate a game to take advantage of that in lieu of 'heightening the experience through difficulty.'
I think the difficulty will depend a lot on two things:
1. How familiar you are with Batman style combat and;
2. Which Captains show up early in the game
For example, I hadn't played an Arkham game since the first one came out several years ago. The closest I got to that style of combat since was Sleeping Dogs. Starting up SoM, I was reminded why I hated the combat in the Arkham games and it took me several deaths to get back to remembering how to handle woefully overcomplicated combat controls again. Once I got used to it though, I started being able to wreck huge groups of enemies pretty easily.
Also, my first game started off with me encountering "Piguk the Swordmaster" as the first captain. He was (a) immune to melee, (b) immune to ranged, (c) immune to stealth (4), hit multiple times in a chain (5), called for reinforcements, was (6) fast, and (7) strong. He killed me a couple of times and then gained the "tracker" ability on one of his level ups, which resulted in him hounding me endlessly across the entire map. It was more or less impossible to get away from him or for me to beat him that early in the game. It was so bad I actually had to restart the game. Since then, I haven't encountered a captain nearly that bad and have only died a few times to Caragors and Graugs.
The combat itself is pretty easy, but you can start getting overwhelmed at some point and the melee targeting can be a bit iffy. I've died from carelessness a couple of times, but honestly playing this game recklessly is the way to go. Dying adds more to the game than it takes away I think.
The late game abilities sort of totally broke this game for me. 3 daggers + combat finishers at 5 hit streak + 2-for-1 combat finishes = super duper easy. Even on Captains that have resistances to practically everything, you can just spam Wraith Flash.
LOL. Maybe, it is too easy, because lord knows I'm not some game master. However, I have never played Batman or other such games, so these Orcs and Goblins are fucking my shit. I think my role in the game is not make every single enemy I meet into an even more powerful pain in the ass. Lord do I suck at this game...I like the look though...I just need to learn how to fight in the world.
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If the combat stays true to the Batman origins then it will get difficult by introducing enemies that are basically impervious to all but one or two moves and thus become a real chore to actually bring down.
So I should be advancing the story to make things harder? Does that mean that I can 'finish' the point of the game (killing the Warchiefs) easier if I don't advance the story? That seems really weird. I currently am having a ton of fun just going after the Captains and I want to keep doing that instead of the story missions.
Like @jkz said, I almost feel like I should commit suicide a couple of times to make things more interesting. I also feel like I'm missing out for not dying as much as they probably anticipated me to.
@monkeyking1969 I only played Arkham Origins and didn't even finish it. I think the combat in those types of games is inherently easy, because you are essentially invulnerable unless you mess up the button prompt. Not saying that's bad, on paper that's actually good design, but since the point in this game seems to be to take out the Warchiefs, I feel the combat is a bit too easy to support that. At least, that is my first impression.
@ares42 But the critical path is the story missions of which I have only done 1 of and currently have no interest to do more of. I'm not following the critical path at all.
I thought it was piss easy for the first couple hours (thanks to spending an insane amount of time completing everything in the arkham games). Then warcheifs started showin up with 4 captains, some with poison and some with invulnurabilities to my favorite and most effect combat tactics. The game was no longer easy, but quite hard. The difficulty spikes in the game are rather sporadic due to the difficulty being reliant on who you are actually fighting.
Nope. When you have 15 to 20 orcs bum-rushing you, at least, it becomes hard. Even more so when 1 or more captains show up. A random captain will more likely show up than you killing a captain. The best you can try to do is make sure no one is around when you start attacking a captain, and then a few seconds later orcs will show up, and then another captain or two will show up completely fucking your plans up.
So it's not that this game is too easy or too hard, it's that the difficulty is really weird. For one, the Nemesis system has a ton of RNG. This is generally awesome because it's constantly making for new and unique challenges, but it also means you can get weird RNG and have it be too easy.
But mainly it's the way it levels the orcs. If you are doing well you might not ever die, and so the orcs don't level. If you get killed repeatedly by one super nasty uruk... then all the orcs level up and you are even more likely to die again. Generally I like this because it makes it feel like a war -- deaths matter.
If you find the game too easy, go to a tower and 'advance time' 10 times. I just did this and am finding it nice and challenging now!
The early captains are pushovers for the most part. The difficulty comes when game starts dishing out captains and warchiefs with way more strengths than weaknesses, balancing the specific way you have to take down this one particular enemy in addition to dealing with the 20 orcs that surround you. Trying to take down a warchief that is invulnerable to combat attacks, wraith stun, and takes off 3/4 of your health if he so much as touches you, along with those 20 orcs that make up berserkers, shield guys and ranged attackers can get really hairy. You can easily go from full health to praying you press the right fucking button on that last chance mini-game in a matter of seconds if you don't manage, prioritize and deal with your enemies properly.
Doing the actual missions is what opens up most of the enemy variety--including the actual warchiefs. It also gates a lot of you powers. From what it sounds like, you are basically running around the tutorial version of the game.
I felt the game had a nice power curve: you start off with really basic enemies that let you practice countering/crowd management, eventually you get more difficult enemies that require much more careful play, and your late-game abilities allow you to dominate in a way that is really satisfying after the mid-game difficulty spike.
Doing the actual missions is what opens up most of the enemy variety--including the actual warchiefs. It also gates a lot of you powers. From what it sounds like, you are basically running around the tutorial version of the game.
I felt the game had a nice power curve: you start off with really basic enemies that let you practice countering/crowd management, eventually you get more difficult enemies that require much more careful play, and your late-game abilities allow you to dominate in a way that is really satisfying after the mid-game difficulty spike.
This is what I am learning, since I just did captains and challenges at first to learn. I'm now stepping into the main game and the requirements are becoming more complex combining basics they teach you.
It's about where I'd like it to be. I'm a bit surprised it's as difficult as it wound up being, honestly; having a big-budget game actually offer up a decent challenge is becoming a distressingly rare occurrence. At any rate, it's a refreshing change of pace from the Assassin's Creed model of "one dude capable of killing a million people without getting hit."
@zevvion: Play more story and you'll discover that it's only there to "tutorialize" you. The only "meat" of the game is the two quests you'll get that asks you to use what you've learned to deal with the orcs. There isn't some sort of win-state to the game if you've killed all the warchiefs. All that will happen is that other orcs will get ranked up and replace the ones you killed. But ye, progressing to the second area will increase the challenge. However, at the same time, as you level up you get way stronger as well. Still, I found the strongholds in the second area to quickly get more out of hand, and the captains was in general tougher (although they might've just scaled with my level).
Once you get Shadow Strike + Combat Drain + Shadow Strike Chain you can easily beat anything this game has to offer. Even without the SS chain, you just don't even deal with the captains until you can one on one them. I mean you get to a point where you get two combat drains after every 2 critical hits. Game is still super fun, but has gotten ridiculously easy!
After finishing the game I can say that I found the game far, far too easy past the first hour where you're still lacking in abilities and are getting to grips with the controls. After the first hour or so I was steamrolling my way through encounters with warchiefs and their full array of bodyguards.
That said, I hear a lot of complaints that it's too hard, which is leading me to think that the captains levelling up mechanic is working against the difficulty. If you die a lot, they get harder and harder. If you can beat them without dying, they'll never get any stronger.
Personally, I'm thinking I might need to advance time a bunch to allow the captains to level up so I can have more of a challenge next time I play. Like a lot of people have said, branding captains can make things far too easy too, so if you're not having trouble you might want to hold off on that.
It's about where I'd like it to be. I'm a bit surprised it's as difficult as it wound up being, honestly; having a big-budget game actually offer up a decent challenge is becoming a distressingly rare occurrence. At any rate, it's a refreshing change of pace from the Assassin's Creed model of "one dude capable of killing a million people without getting hit."
How far into it are you? There are some late-game upgrades that completely trivialize the combat, though it's welcome after the difficulty spike of the second area. Those caragors and shielded guys are pretty brutal with the counter indicators turned off.
The lethal combo is combo reset upgrade, the triple-critical hits, and the double-execution upgrade. Basically, you can get an execution every two hits, and use the combo charge twice before it depletes. You can execute dozens of dudes in a matter of minutes, or amass a giant army of branded mooks to roll around with.
It's very difficult, in a way that rewards you taking your time to figure out why you are dying and making that a mechanic; not too far off from Dark/Demon's Souls. (not in that deaths or the base gameplay feels anything close to that, but you should get the idea)
i've died quite a bit. Now, I am the first to admit that I am probably in the bottom 10% of skill amongst frequent game players, so take that for what it's worth. I would have loved to have seen a couple of different difficulty options, which could kind of solve the problem (in theory) for those who find it too hard or too easy.
I'm not sure what to think now. I see half of you basically saying: 'just wait until the later parts of the game, it becomes really hard then due to strengths and weaknesses of the Captains and Warchiefs' and I see the other half saying: 'the abilities you get later in the game make everything super easy'.
I guess I'll just have to wait and see what I think myself later on, but everyone is pretty divided in here.
Nope. When you have 15 to 20 orcs bum-rushing you, at least, it becomes hard. Even more so when 1 or more captains show up. A random captain will more likely show up than you killing a captain. The best you can try to do is make sure no one is around when you start attacking a captain, and then a few seconds later orcs will show up, and then another captain or two will show up completely fucking your plans up.
I engaged 3 Captains before and killed all three of them in that very fight rather easily. However, someone else pointed out the Captains are easier earlier in the game, so it might be that.
I've played about 5 or 6 hours of it so far, and I must say that while at first I was underwhelmed at how easy it was, it has really started to pick up in the past couple of hours or so. I didn't even realize that there was going to be a second area after this starting one, so I'm pretty excited to see how challenging it gets, although from what I'm seeing it sounds like your powers will start evening the playing field pretty significantly.
I'm really impressed with this game, actually. I was pretty cool on it before release, but I'm glad I picked it up.
Almost as soon as I was let loose into the world I started a fight with some Urak that had a named enemy in it. Then 2 more joined the fray. They were all at power level 10. At no point did I enjoy the luxury of thinking that game was easy
I'm not sure what to think now. I see half of you basically saying: 'just wait until the later parts of the game, it becomes really hard then due to strengths and weaknesses of the Captains and Warchiefs' and I see the other half saying: 'the abilities you get later in the game make everything super easy'.
I guess I'll just have to wait and see what I think myself later on, but everyone is pretty divided in here.
@stealthmaster86 said:
Nope. When you have 15 to 20 orcs bum-rushing you, at least, it becomes hard. Even more so when 1 or more captains show up. A random captain will more likely show up than you killing a captain. The best you can try to do is make sure no one is around when you start attacking a captain, and then a few seconds later orcs will show up, and then another captain or two will show up completely fucking your plans up.
I engaged 3 Captains before and killed all three of them in that very fight rather easily. However, someone else pointed out the Captains are easier earlier in the game, so it might be that.
I suspect that the reason people are divided is because if you're very good at the game, none of the captains have a chance to get stronger, and you just keep cruising. If you're dying a lot, the captains will power up over and over and you'll have an even harder time later.
@nophilip said:
In a few instances some captains are immune to combat finishers and sword attacks and you can only kill them with arrows or stealth
Yeah, there are definitely captains who are immune to finishers which even includes the wraith combo attack. I had a guy who was immune to combat finishers, stealth, and ranged. Very frustrating to fight.
I think it would benefit heavily from the removal of the last chance mini-game. The nemesis system feeds heavily off of you dying, and last chance lessens the impact of the Nemesis System on you because it is seriously hard to screw it up. Also Pin-Shot being removed would be good as well. It makes catching running orcs far to easy and I feel like the game should do more to slow you down in your pursuit. Like maybe grunt orcs chasing after and tackling you to the ground to allow the Captain to make space. This would also present an opportunity for whomever successfully prevents you from chasing a Captain to enter Saurons Army as one of the replacement Captains
Branding needs some serious tuning. I find it far too powerful. They should have made it so you can't brand Warchiefs and can only have one Captain branded until he becomes Warchief then you can Brand two Captains not including your current Warchief that you help'd raise through the ranks. So the basic formula for Branded Captains/Warchiefs should be # of Warchiefs + 1, because it currently trivializes the whole game. Add an additional formula to allow more Captains after all Warchiefs are under control for people who want to brand the whole Army, but frankly I don't find that any fun.
Personally the game does too much to help you succeed which minimizes the impact of the games greatest feature, the game should be slightly more punishing to force the player to learn from their mistakes and play smarter. If they add a new difficulty setting with these tweaks I would likely play through the game again. Self-restrictions to make the game more enjoyable just aren't my thing
Source: https://www.giantbomb.com/forums/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-633129/is-this-game-too-easy-1496376/
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