Act 4: Shadow Wars is not fun, largely due to RNG, anyone else feel the same? Act 4 spoilers.

[Nazgren]

Hey,
Am on act 9 now of Shadow wars, was defending Cirith Ungol, the last level 65 legendary captain (wasnt the cap meant to be 60?) was broken, only to have some grunt archer hit me and kill me with my 3rd last chance gone, meaning even though there was basically one orc left with no health, no way into the fort whatsoever and surrounded by his now dominated former colleagues i lost the whole thing. Literally the maximum possible number of captains, warlords and overlords possible and every captain / warlord from the attack bar one was guarding the fort and when i died they all laid down there arms before this one orc whos arms had basically been cut off his health was that low. my up until then virtually flawless defence was all for nothing and i now have to retake the fort from the now unbranded orcs that i dominated.

Massive issues with this aspect of fort defence aside, i can live with the odd instance of RNJesus taking a ♥♥♥♥ on me. The problem is theres something like this in every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stage. Wether its the navy seals trained javelin thrower hitting me through vast distances, other orcs and solid terrain, savages killing me during the uninteruptable portions of executions, etc or being one shotted by the lowest level captain whos rolled glass cannon traits and no chance, theres something like this in every single stage. Through the 20+ defences i must have done i have literally denied the enemy any access to the forts in all but 2 of them by destroying all means of them getting through the gates and walls yet have lost more then half of them due to stupid RNG. While i presume that the godlike trait rolls are randomnly generated and not predetermined (which seems to be being debated in some topics), the outcome of battles from the point of the players death is not which seems idiotic to me. By using whatever algorithim determines what orcs win in captain missions such as duels, trials, hunts, etc. It should be more then possible for the game to determine which side would win in a siege defence. The inherent benefits to the defending side would be outweighed by the fact that the ai side gets higher level captains then the player does, even if the player levels up the orcs before each siege (which would take hours if you did it for every siege). Even though this would also be subject to the same obscene RNG swings that the rest of the game is, it would still mean that situations like my one virtually dead orc v 30+ captains would take the logical outcome as opposed to what actually happens. The problem of Insane RNG seems to be a much bigger problem in this game then the previous. I have seen legendary captains die to normal rarity orcs 15 levels below them, even vefore fear / weakness traits simply because the lower level orc spam attacked while the higher level orc does literally nothing, maybe getting in the one attack which gets the orc down to half.

This whole of act 4 seems to be minimal content stretched out to meet a pre-determined level cap decided at the start of production rather then simply bringing down the level cap once they ran out of story after level 50. Instead of putting in what looks to be, assuming stage 10 is the last, about 30 sieges, they could have left it at say, 10, and dropped the level cap to 55. I understand the story aspect of it, holding back the inumerable forces of sauron so middle earth can prepare, but 10 sieges would get this point across well enough i think. I know I was bored of sieges by the 10th. Where were his "inumerable forces" before Act 4? We literally steamroll half of mordor and the only time one of our forts gets sieged is Nurnen when Bruz betrays us and seeing as Bruz just takes it for himself theres no guarantee that he didnt have Baz and Gaz (his left and right hand from before we branded him for anyone who havent encountered them yet, turns out Bruz was kind of a big deal) set up the attack. Besides, Isn't Sauron having to deal with bigger problems, like the fact that hes battling for control of himself with Celebrimbor? Given Talions current condition he seems like a problem that will solve itself given a few weeks. If Sauron manages to supress Celebrimbor then he can solve it there and then. IMHO the best thing for Talion to do would be, as crazy as it sounds, to leave Ratbag in charge. Ratbag has shown that he knows how to manage a fort. The overlords can ensure he doesnt do anything too stupid. Yes he lost to us but Sauron is too. That would leave Talion free to go solve the problem of Celebrimbor and Sauron.

TL;DR:
What do you think of Act 4 and the RNG present in game in all its aspects?

[Fastwinstondoom]

Not gotten to act 4 yet, but the rng-aspect was why I turned off nemesis difficulty. I just don't have time to get constantly ambushed, betrayed and whatever else xD Between work and my backlog of games I only have so many days to allocate to Shadow of War...by the sounds of it I might not make it through act 4 ;)

[Nazgren]

In ~40 hours on normal difficulty i think i have been betrayed about 4 times and ambushed more noteably at about 8. I dont much fancy trying nemesis difficulty mainly due to the fact that on normal and with gear at my level i am already one shotted a frustrating amount. After i was betrayed by an orc who had never been more then a captain who complained that he was overdue a promotion and was willing to stab me in the back to move up in the world i got the idea that betrayals were controlled by in-game events other then the blood-brother trait but after i was betrayed by my second favourite character literally minuites after he saved my life for the exact same reason of lack of promotion in a region you will reach soon that doesnt have the warchief / overlord fort system in place i learned that this was not the case and was simply the game rolling the dice to decide how to screw me over this time. I also would not like to do nemesis difficulty because quite honestly i have no desire to repeat Act 4 which i find genuinely unenjoyable. I dont want to put you off however, I am still pushing through it because i really want to see how the end of Act 3 pans out because what happens hit me as unexpectedly as seeing Ezio kneeling next to Altair if your familiar with the AC series.

I think its possible to get through Act 4 quicker then i have by sacrificing the well being of your orcs. I re level all my overlords and warchiefs when they hit 4 levels below me, with act 4 spanning about 12 levels. I dont bother with the captains because they generally arent rare or legendary, short of Cirith Ungol which gets the worst of the sieges. I also, as i said, go massively bunker strategy and completely deny the enemy any access to my forts with the only exceptions being when they have like, 3 Olog hai captains from the start, plus sappers, olog units, etc, too much for me to deal with, even from a drake. The main issue comes with the number of enemy captains being potentially 10+ at once as they come as bodyguards for the warchiefs but the only thing required for more captains and warchiefs to spawn is for the warchiefs to be defeeated meaning if you just zerg rush the warchiefs in hope of an easy finish you will end up with your last overlord being guarded by copious numbers of captains, half of whom no doubt have no chance, as i have found with my sieges. From what i have read on google a lot of people have simmilar thoughts to me on act 4 to the point of taking the end of act 3 as the ending and the end of act v as a bonus ending if you can bear to work your way through act 4 and i can see why. Without wanting to spoil the big event for you, as i said in the OP Talion becomes a problem that will solve itself for sauron and its easy to see how things would move on from the end of act 3 to the Fellowship of the Ring with only some question as to the fate of celebrimbor but that also seems an inevitablility. However the sheer soul crushing dullness of act 4 is seriously challenging my desire to know what happens, I have one siege and two defences left for stage 9 and im quite sure stage 10 will be 4 sieges, one for each fort and knowing that its coming i have having serious problems motivating myself to push through it which is a genuine shame because i was greatly enjoying the game until this point. Any replayability the story had for me is gone.

[Hyena]

Act 4 was built to promote microtransactions. They proved they could make a balanced game up until act 4. They decided to hit you with the "buy some loot boxes" crap once you were invested enough to see it through to the end. Simple as that.

Publishers do read reviews and they do learn. Yet, they won't just abandon a money making machine full of whales. While gamers want microtransactions to disappear completely, they will try to adapt them and make them more acceptable. The only way to get rid of them is to utterly deny them, even if they make them somewhat acceptable as is the case in SoW.

When you go into a store and buy a knife and they tell you it will break with a chance of 5%. If you buy the "100% upgrade" the knife has no chance of breaking.

How messed up is that? They have the knowledge to make a 100% unbreakable knife yet they try to sell you a 95% knife, just to push their upgrade sales? When a developer is not making the absolute best game they can(usually because of publishers), they are messing up and don't deserve a single coin.