Shadows of Mordor needs a hard mode. Death mechanics and difficulty.

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

So I've been playing the hell out of Shadows of Mordor. Great game, the story is basically a bad fanfic but the emergent story from the nemesis system. Getting killed by Uruk Captains and accidentally contributing to their rise of power is a great way to develop a grudge, and having that one you really get killed a lot by becoming your super powerful nemesis is cool.

Problem is, on the second play through I feel I've gotten too good at the game, too much practice. there's no orcs that manage to kill me twice anymore, and without the grudges associated with being repeatedly killed the nemesis system feels hollow, without any of the captains being 'that ************' (Zunn the Rat I hate you!) it loses a lot of the character you apply to them.

All of this could be fixed with a hard mode but there isn't one. I think this is the first game I can think of so far with death mechanics that isn't ridiculously punishing like Dark Souls or Roguelike games, and I'm no super skilled gamer, I'm sure there's plenty of people who were too good from practice on Arkham Asylum to even enjoy the nemesis on their first playthrough like I did. So I'm thinking maybe if you want death mechanics like this that affect gameplay it's better if the game is really hard. I suppose I'll have to either impose arbitrary limits or wait for difficulty mods to come out. What do you think escapists? Death mechanic games should be hard?

 

[Morgoth780]

I don't think they should be hard, but I think they should have very difficult settings. Also I think it might be worth making "hard" or something the default setting and tell players that it is recommended to play on this setting to get the most from the nemesis system.

Still haven't bought this game yet though, I really need to at some point.

 

[brtt150]

I don't think it should be harder than it is. I wouldn't mind seeing a higher difficulty but I can also see where making it any harder may annoy some of the less hardcore fans.

 

[sXeth]

Well, for my second playthrough, I decided to go all Ranger (left side) abilities. No fancy wraith powers (other then the bow/no fall damage, technically) other then as the story demands (branding). Thats upped the challenge a tad. I guess you could go with no upgrades at all to be even more tough. Its an arbitrary limitation of course, but the option is there.

 

[josemlopes]

I had to disable the blocking pop ups to make the game a bit harder, and then also avoided some abilities because the game is so fucking easy, maybe its because I already had played the first two Batman games and Sleeping Dogs.

Still, the easy fix would just let the players choose their difficulty, how hard is it to understand that if the game only has one difficulty it will be too hard or too easy for most people? Even Dark Souls failed at that even though I didnt had many problems with it.

So yeah, only did one mission and fucked around quite a bit with the side mission stuff but in the end it didnt hold my attention for long, ended up enjoying Styx more.

 

[cfehunter]

Agreed it could really do with a higher difficulty. I died twice on my first play through and one of those was because I attacked the wrong war chief and had to deal with four captains at once.... (branded all of them and went back after him with *all* of his bodyguards turned to my side).

No my major nemesis came in the form of an orc named Turúk. I killed the git five times and he just kept on coming back with more and more scars. It was so satisfying to brand him and take him into the final battle.

Just a thought but, couldn't we artificially increase the difficulty ourselves? Just hammer advance time for a while before starting an area so the captains are much tougher before you start hitting them?

 

[Isalan]

Enjoyed it for the most part, but its true enough, once you get a certain distance in the game is stonkingly easy. Once you have the ability to teleport to a dude and kill him, Archers are less of a threat and more of a handy escape mechanism. The fact it just straight works on all types of basic Uruks too, means you'll never really have a problem with berserkers or defenders anymore.

In many ways that's the problem. You need to take away some of the abilities to make the game a real challenge, but without them it just doesn't feel like the same game.

Oh, and my nemesis was Thrak the Driver (yep, first captain you kill in the storyline, name may vary). I swear to god, that Uruk came back 5 times, 3rd time he came back with a bag tied too his head. But then it gets easy too tell if they're gonna make a return appearance. If you don't decapitate them on an otherwise usual decap kill, then you can bet yer ass they're gonna pop back up like eczema on a hobo.

 

[Savagezion]

I have only watched a Let's Play but this is actually my greatest concern and why I have yet to buy it. It does look piss easy and I am afraid that the Nemesis system would never reach nemesis levels. I am hoping that this game gets mod support. I feel like I sound cocky but the Batman games are fun because its easy to kick ass, like Batman. They have good stories and only get hard on special encounters for me. I don't give a crap about the patchy story thrown together for Shadow of Mordor and it just looks like a sandbox to kill orcs in. None of which look particularly difficult, especially when you see the power given to the player after a few levels. It probably wouldn't be too bad if the upgrades weren't so powerful. Insta-killing shouldn't be allowed until a 20-25 hit combo. These are all my preferences of course.

I kinda feel like a dick for talking shit on this game because the Nemesis system is a great idea. As well, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the Batman combat system in and of itself. The nemesis system would have benefited my tastes better with a combat system more akin to Dragon Age 2 honestly. How weird is it that I use that game as an example? Just keep the counter button in though as it works well. Ditto with the kill a downed enemy.

At any rate, difficulty is my concern with the game. I am afraid I won't really get the benefit of the Nemesis system and will have wasted my money. The combat in Batman I see as easy on purpose. It seems odd to throw it in something with the nemesis system. I have been lurking around this game for a while waiting for news like this.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

I feel like I sound cocky but the Batman games are fun because its easy to kick ass, like Batman.

Totally agree with this. The Arkham style combat is cool because it makes punching multiple people in a ballet of stylistic violence very, very easy. I feel like they should have used a more traditional hack 'n' slash combat system like DMC or Ninja Gaiden, and just made it more grounded (no juggling, etc). Giving you different moves based on the rhythm of your inputs with repetitive mashing resulting in short, easily interrupted combos. The combat is those games was great for taking on groups and resulted in satisfying and challenging single-combat which the Arkham-style combat lacks, imo.

Still the game is fantastic and the strengths some of the captains can obtain do result in some early game brutality. Sometimes they can be a handful at later levels, when they seem to resist nearly all of your abilities and regenerate their health.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

That shouldn't be too difficult to implement IMO. The captains and warchiefs seem to have random abilities assigned to them. Developers should be able to implement a difficulty mode where those random abilities have a higher chance of making them overpowered. Then give regular orcs and uruks more health and damage and you're done.

 

[Rednog]

That shouldn't be too difficult to implement IMO. The captains and warchiefs seem to have random abilities assigned to them. Developers should be able to implement a difficulty mode where those random abilities have a higher chance of making them overpowered. Then give regular orcs and uruks more health and damage and you're done.

The randomization can be a really big problem though, in my playthrough I had two insanely annoying guys pop up. A warchief for the first map post death threat was only afraid of graugs, so imagine my chagrin when he pretty much spawned no where near one. He was pretty much impervious to everything and even getting him near 3 explosive barrels he was only at half hp. I pretty much had to slowly kit him half way across the map to find a graug so I could actually take him out. Another guy, and my only death, he not only had an ability where unless you hit the dodge prompt he would instant put you into the last chance mode, but he also had an ability called no chance which blocked recovery in last chance...so pretty much a single hit instant killed me. I just face palmed that such an ability combination was possible.

 

[MHR]

I started playing yesterday and have played 10 hours and not died once yet.

Not once,

and I've never played any Assassin's Creed OR Arkham Asylum (Have played the hell out of some dark souls though, so to be fair, everything else is easy by comparison now.) I got pinned twice by caragors but succeeded in the last-chance quicktime and lived.

I had a really weird bug where my first game started me without a dagger and I had no idea how to play at all yet, and all stealth kills and ground finishers were impossible for me. I've since created a new game save file to solve this.

I thought the game was really hard for a moment there at the beginning, because the very first orc I got spotted by was a captain with the ability to call reinforcements with a horn and the ability to track me to the ends of the earth, so I was being pursued by a group of at least 10 orcs at all times, up to 3 of whom were captains, while I was scrambling around fighting skirmishes with no idea how to avoid it, learning along the way to cut up some herbs for healing and scarcely knowing how to fight. Running was always easy though, who knew Uruk were so sluggish and quick to slip by. After about 15 minutes of running around like a terrified chicken, I finally got the bright idea to grab that damn tracker captain and throw him off a cliff, but I've never died from that or anything since. I don't even know what the death screen looks like yet.

This game is pretty easy. It reminds me a lot of Far Cry 3, but I was able to crank up the difficulty in Far Cry 3 and died plenty.

I agree with some of the above. It sounds like it would make the game a lot harder if you just doubled the health of the common Uruk. Getting swarmed by them and fighting 20 at a time might actually be bad for your health at that point I imagine if you can't get any finishers off and hacking at them does almost nothing.

 

[laggyteabag]

You can artificially increase the difficulty in the options menu by turning the "COUNTER!" alert off; This pretty much brings it in line with the Arkham Asylum(?)/City/Origins hard modes. Otherwise, I have to agree. The level of power creep that you have as a player is just silly, and the game just becomes a cakewalk during the late stages of the game. I mean c'mon! Double takedowns, 5 combo takedowns, jump stuns, 20 seconds of uninterrupted takedowns, super easy.

 

[omega 616]

Yeah, it is a bit easy to whack away at enemy's, at least until the specialty types show up. (the spear throwers are a little BS, you're meant to psychically know when the spears are going to get thrown. Berserkers mean you can't just mash attack and the shield guys have their own annoyances).

Caragors and the big fuckers are tricky till you get some abilities.

I think the true challenge comes from perfect mastery of the combat system, like teleport kill, chain that into 3 more kills, double execute, repeat till you're out of elf shot, then double combat drain and start over.... All without taking a hit (as an example).

That might not up some peoples aisles, it's not up mine. So over all I agree with you but I can see how you can add challenge to the game.

 

[lordmardok]

Yeah this is one of the main things I had to complain about with this otherwise stellar game. I've played all of the Arkham games pretty much to death and I'm so practiced at the system that I haven't died even once so far. Even when I got into a hairy situation fighting two captains and their posse's at once I ended up butchering all of them. It was harrowing and exciting, don't get me wrong, but I really feel like I probably shouldn't have lived through that.

If there was ever a game that was crying out desperately for a higher difficulty curve, it's Mordor.