Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor Catch-All

I would murder for another Morder game. Orc slaughter is the best slaughter.

Why is it that no one has ever copied the nemesis system from shadow of mordor in the time since the game came out?

It would seem a natural fit for at least six games I can think of off the top of my head and yet no one has copied anything from it.

Why?

Yeah, I'm disappointed about that, too. It really is the main thing that makes Shadow of Mordor awesome instead of just a really good orc slaying simulator. The whole notion of enemies with memories who share information with other enemies would make so many other games deeper.

I really, really wish they would adapt both the combat, and the nemesis system into the Star Wars universe. I think a Sith training academy style game (maybe with a setting of before the rule of two) where you kill other students to gain rank would fit well with the model.

PurEvil wrote:

I really, really wish they would adapt both the combat, and the nemesis system into the Star Wars universe. I think a Sith training academy style game (maybe with a setting of before the rule of two) where you kill other students to gain rank would fit well with the model.

This would have been great or build on some sort of bounty hunter concept.

I am really surprised not more has come out of this as well. Very odd.

You know the game that I really want a Nemesis system in? Bully 2. Imagine that random prep kid who kicked your ass that one time dynamically gaining rep with his clique, and then the next time you fight him he's got a couple of prep lackeys shouting taunts from the sidelines.

Gah, now I need to hop back in and play. Once I complete my current Dark Souls run I will hop back in and take over all the Orcs. I got most they way through but hit 100% in the game and had my fill at the time.

Hobear wrote:
PurEvil wrote:

I really, really wish they would adapt both the combat, and the nemesis system into the Star Wars universe. I think a Sith training academy style game (maybe with a setting of before the rule of two) where you kill other students to gain rank would fit well with the model.

This would have been great or build on some sort of bounty hunter concept.

I was thinking about bounty hunters when I wrote it, because it works more for the nemesis system, but it gets weird when you add in the combat system which is overwhelmingly geared towards melee combat. But take the game as it is now, and you can almost replace 1 for 1 a lot of the abilities in SoM with Star Wars. Sword for lightsaber, bow for something like force lightning, drain for force drain, shadow strike for force jump, wraith stun for force whirlwind, shoulder strike for force push, pin in place for force stasis, brand for mind control, and dispatch for force kill.

Like... I don't even think it would be hard to adapt it over, the problem would really be more in terms of the setting and story than it would be game mechanics. Hell, you could even steal most of the story elements of SoM by having some old sith or jedi master share your body... it wouldn't be the first time that story's been done.

Damn... this is making me want to play SoM again.

jrralls wrote:

Why is it that no one has ever copied the nemesis system from shadow of mordor in the time since the game came out?

It would seem a natural fit for at least six games I can think of off the top of my head and yet no one has copied anything from it.

Why?

Honestly? The answer is probably a combination of boring things. Development cycles are long, and the Nemesis system is the kind of thing you build a game around rather than introduce during development. And while it seems like it would be easy to just build a new game on the same idea, it's probably more complicated than that on the technical side. Randomization and dynamic procedural creation are things that tend to look really simple on paper but get very tricky once you get deep into the weeds of whatever your individual system is.

PurEvil wrote:
Hobear wrote:
PurEvil wrote:

I really, really wish they would adapt both the combat, and the nemesis system into the Star Wars universe. I think a Sith training academy style game (maybe with a setting of before the rule of two) where you kill other students to gain rank would fit well with the model.

This would have been great or build on some sort of bounty hunter concept.

I was thinking about bounty hunters when I wrote it, because it works more for the nemesis system, but it gets weird when you add in the combat system which is overwhelmingly geared towards melee combat. But take the game as it is now, and you can almost replace 1 for 1 a lot of the abilities in SoM with Star Wars. Sword for lightsaber, bow for something like force lightning, drain for force drain, shadow strike for force jump, wraith stun for force whirlwind, shoulder strike for force push, pin in place for force stasis, brand for mind control, and dispatch for force kill.

Like... I don't even think it would be hard to adapt it over, the problem would really be more in terms of the setting and story than it would be game mechanics. Hell, you could even steal most of the story elements of SoM by having some old sith or jedi master share your body... it wouldn't be the first time that story's been done.

Damn... this is making me want to play SoM again.

So basically you want a skin mod? You could swap out people and have an game in a volcanic world. Just like a Sith planet. Not disagreeing with you that would be awesome. Add Light sabers and all is better. Just was saying a bounty hunter game with Nemesis would be cool

^ [re SW Bounty Hunter angle] *wristgear lights up like a Christmas tree* *robotic voice: The H-utts have can-celed your pay-ment for off-ing Z-iiiii-x * What? Another chargeback? 'I tossed that guy out of an airlock AFTER I shot him through all five of his eyes.'

Also, yeah, gots the itch to load up SoM again. Nemesis system is such a one-trick, but really satisfying, gimmick.

I'm more surprised we haven't seen a sequel get announced.. perhaps at this years E3.

I think the basic problem with the nemesis system was that it was easy to miss out on it entirely. Because it is procedurally generated, the gameplay is largely emergent in terms of engaging with different orc captains. I knew about the nemesis system in advance, and still didn't realize that some orc I'd killed 3 times (he wasn't particularly hard to kill, so I dispatched him while hardly noticing him, and didn't even really realize he was the same guy) was my nemesis. When he showed up in a late game cinematic, it wasn't particularly exciting, because I'd forgotten he existed. Of course, that's an emergent plot note of its own - I'd killed so many orc captains, I didn't even realize I'd dispatched the poor fella multiple times only to have him return. The faces of so many dead bleed together, blah blah blah.

At any rate, I'm not sure the payoff is necessarily there for developers if the entire thing depends on the player to bring it to life. There's Minecraft for that. I happened to watch some youtube videos of people having a great time with specific nemeses coming back after them, so I can see how it would be awesome, but it might have been impactful if they'd given the nemeses some inherent default perk, like the one that makes them show up out of the blue (hunter maybe? it's been a while), so that it became obvious they were after you.

All this is said with love, as Mordor is one of my favorite PS4 games.

I keep thinking either Assassin's Creed or something would do something with the system.

Demosthenes wrote:

I keep thinking either Assassin's Creed or something would do something with the system.

Black Flag (Sid Meier's Pirates) with nemesis ship combat...

Love it.

Localgod54 wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

I keep thinking either Assassin's Creed or something would do something with the system.

Black Flag (Sid Meier's Pirates) with nemesis ship combat...

Love it.

I think it'd work just as well from a regular AC perspective... attacking some low-level templar henchman when some other henchman from days earlier springs out and tries to assassinate you in turn, leading to some kind of back and forth?

You're right. That would work pretty well. I must admit, I'm not very familiar with the AC series.

It might work pretty well in a Mount & Blade style game, too.

All this talk has made me hit the remote install button for my home system, while here at work. Tonight I will have to slaughter some orcs on my new machine. I bet it will look glorious. Doubt it will change the really disappointing QTE at the end though.

Localgod54 wrote:

I think the basic problem with the nemesis system was that it was easy to miss out on it entirely.

It's very dependent on player skill in order to be interesting. If you're good at the game, you can slaughter all the orc captains, never fast travel, and in doing so neuter many of the mechanisms for evolving your opponents in a meaningful way. You'll probably kill your nemesis and probably not notice.

On the other hand, if you're not as good as at the game, you can very quickly end up with a host of leveled up orc captains who you're going to have a hard time beating, who get more powerful each time you try to fight them.

Also, while it makes sense that characters would defend themselves against the attack that defeated them, granting enemies broad immunity to "stealth attacks" or "combat finishers" risks pushing players out of what they like about the game and into what they don't. I'm sure the goal was to force players to explore their full range of options, but if a player loves stealth and hates riding caragors, giving them a nemesis that's immune to everything but caragors makes the game actively less fun for that player.

The feedback loops in the Nemesis system all go in the wrong directions. You really need a player who is skilled enough to survive but not skilled enough to completely avoid death, who prefers to not travel by foot, and who enjoys all of the game's modes of play.

Interesting points, CWH. I don't know that I realized I was missing out on some of the mechanics until afterwards, despite knowing about the nemesis system from the start.

I agree with you regarding the way the enemies modify their behavior to counter your favorite tactics. It's an odd design decision to force the player to go against his probable preferred style of play. I found it didn't bother me much, as rotating through different styles of play is interesting to me. Some of the game mechanics are odd in that they become so much easier as the game wears on, so while you get better at, say, archery, your time slowing ability improves, as well as getting more arrows and recovering some of your focus (i think that's what it was called) when killing enemies in certain ways.

It turns out that with the right gear or glyphs equipped, you could form a nice little loop where the different kill types fed the power that fueled other kill types so that you could cycle through and always have murdery goodness at your disposal, but it required both a mastery of all the different types of combat and a knowledge of the way the items worked.

All that said, any complaints really feels like nitpicking considering I ran into the "no nemesis" issue and still had a blast with the game. The core mechanics felt so good that it never felt like I missed out on much.

I can see how somebody who has trouble early would get a quicksand effect too. It seems like it would be easy to be turned off by that.

It worked perfectly for me, but the biggest problem I remember from reading complaints about it is that it requires you to be killed by your enemies. If you never die, it never kicks in at all. There may be some minor effects like quotes from other orc captains about how you killed their friends, but the system just doesn't work if you don't die a good number of times. This led to a lot of frustration from perfectionists who hate dying in action games. This is especially true because being stealthy is a component of Shadow of Mordor, and just getting detected is a failure in most stealth scenarios, let alone getting killed.

Paired with a good enough adaptive difficulty system, it might have a chance of working for everyone, but that is a very hard development problem.

BadKen wrote:

Paired with a good enough adaptive difficulty system, it might have a chance of working for everyone, but that is a very hard development problem.

Yeah. I have no idea how Shadow of Mordor made it all work. My game had an early phase in which the captains I couldn't beat kept getting stronger because I couldn't beat them. Then there was a phase in which there were a few captains I couldn't take out but a lot I could, and then the last phase was the easiest.

I can point to a few runes and power unlocks that felt like they significantly increased my power level, but overall, don't understand how it all worked out to a playable balance.

I dunno. I do know how the Nemesis system worked, so I did actually actively suicide myself quite a few times to level the Orc captains once the ranks started to thin significantly. You need to kill captains to advance your own abilities, of course.

I'm only in the foothills of this game (I've just taken out my first Captain - Wossisname the Slaver - which I think is still pretty much the tutorial), but I can already loving the puzzle elements. Working out how to approach new locations, to take out certain captains, etc.

However, I'd welcome any not-too-spoilery tips.

Are the first 5 or so character upgrades automatic? I can't seem to move down the development trees yet.
What sorts of skills should I be focussing on first time around?
I'm a bit confused about defeating vs killing opponents. Is it straightforward to tell the difference?

What exactly is the save system in this game? I quit the game after clearing the area immediately after my first forge tower and discovered that some of my opponents appear to have respawned. Is this because I'd defeated rather than killed them, or is something else at work here? Do I need to do something specific in order to save?

Finally (at last), I notice some comments about fast travel. I've opened by second forge tower. Is fast travel penalised in some way?

Thanks, in advance.

I never understood how captains came back to life. That is a good question.

They recover from their wounds... severe as they might be. Mechanically, it's probably a combination of chance and what you do to defeat them.

detroit20 wrote:

Are the first 5 or so character upgrades automatic? I can't seem to move down the development trees yet.

Ability points unlock abilities, and Power will unlock the different tiers (signified by a white lock). It should be explained on the Abilities screen.

detroit20 wrote:

What sorts of skills should I be focussing on first time around?

Just grab what looks cool, they're all useful in some way. You won't be hurting for XP, so you don't have to be picky.

detroit20 wrote:

I'm a bit confused about defeating vs killing opponents. Is it straightforward to tell the difference?

Not really. You'll know for sure if they come back and reference how you "killed" them. (And look all kinds of messed up. More than usual.)

detroit20 wrote:

What exactly is the save system in this game? I quit the game after clearing the area immediately after my first forge tower and discovered that some of my opponents appear to have respawned. Is this because I'd defeated rather than killed them, or is something else at work here? Do I need to do something specific in order to save?

It likely didn't save. Certain events (dying, missions, etc.) trigger the auto-saving, but roaming around and just killing fools won't, and I think fast travelling is the only way to manually save.

detroit20 wrote:

Finally (at last), I notice some comments about fast travel. I've opened by second forge tower. Is fast travel penalised in some way?

Nope.

Hobear wrote:

I never understood how captains came back to life. That is a good question.

If they are not beheaded there's a chance they will return, and with some interesting patchwork holding them together. I took great pleasure in finishing them off for good!

Decapitation is no guarantee, either, despite best efforts. I've had beheaded Uruk come back with a bag over their... heads. I do believe it makes it much more unlikely, though.