WB hide Shadow of Wars true ending behind a choice, grind for 40 - 50 hours or pay

[Master Disaster]

Just to be super clear here, Shadow Of War has an ending at the conclusion of chapter 3 however if you want to see the games true ending and end credits then WB gives you a choice between grinding for hours to earn enough in game currency or skip the grind and buy currency with real money.

Quote

From Polygon:

However, Shadow Wars is spoiled by two major issues.

First, it’s not just postgame content. While the main plot of Shadow of War wraps up in relatively tidy fashion before act four begins, Monolith has confirmed that there is a “true ending” hidden behind Shadow Wars. I love the idea of offering dozens of hours of grindy yet fun content for players who really adore this game to sink their teeth into. But that works better as an option rather than a looming obligation for completionists. Having the game’s real finale locked away behind those dozens of hours — hours that, while fun, are devoid of story missions, side quests, cutscenes or other distractions that help mix up the pace — is a disappointment.

When you run out of in-game money, you have two choices: Make a huge time investment by hunting down orcs in your game world and earning chests via vendetta missions, or spend some real money to get the more powerful orcs you need now. Does the game ever force you to spend money? No. I’m sure you can get to the end of Shadow Wars without spending a dime, as long as you’re patient and persistent. But locking progress through this mode (and, again, toward the game’s true ending) behind either spending more money or doing tons of tedious busywork feels at least greedy if not predatory.

Basically if you want to fully complete SoW then you'd better get ready to invest multiple hours doing boring grindy side missions or pay WB

Quote

From GameSpot:

In the game's actual final act, you cycle through the four fortresses you explored previously for a total of 20 more defending siege battles. If you haven't upgraded the Orcs you met early in the game--and up until this point, there was no reason to--you have to replace and upgrade your entire retinue of Orcs to match this more powerful invading force. The enemies you face level up with each encounter, so you're also forced into upgrading each castle over and over again, either by building up your current Orc army or finding new fighters and replacing the old. This Sisyphean quest has no corresponding significant characters to keep you company or explain why it's important to tackle the defense missions in the order you do. It's not even clear, exactly, why you want to do them at all.

More than once I felt like giving up on this quest thinking I'd stumbled onto some optional side content that was clearly only made for obsessed completionists. But enduring on, I found that finishing every stage unlocks the final cutscene and credits. It did not feel worth it.

Games Radar explain how the end grind is heavily RNG based 

Quote

Now all you have to do is die. That sounds easier than it actually is because your objective is to be killed by a particular kind of Orc. You rarely encounter lone Orcs, so it's easy to accidentally have the wrong one make the killing blow. You can always try over though, so don't get discouraged if you end up with a dud.

Once the Orc of your choice kills you, it's in the hands of the Random Numbers Generator. First, there's a good chance the Orc that took you out will spawn as just a regular old Orc Captain. Secondly, if the Orc in promoted in a region with no empty spots for new Orcs, they'll duel someone for their place. This can either end up in your brand-new dream Orc being killed, or one of your other favorite Orcs in the region being murdered. 

However, if everything goes right, and you've cleared out a spot in advance for your new Orc, you can get an Epic or Legendary Orc Captain to spawn precisely how you want them to be. This method is incredibly frustrating, but it's the only way to exert any influence over what kind of Orcs spawn.

A comment from Eurogamer article claims the grind would take between 40 - 50 hours!

Quote

As I may have played more of this than Johnny, a word of warning about the microtransactions: if you want to complete the endgame and see the *true* ending, be prepared to buy the XP boosts from the store while you're playing the campaign or face a 40-50 hour grind. I finished the story in about 15 hours (and agree that it's awful), and have been grinding for 8 hours a day for the past four days just to level up enough to finish the "Shadow of War" endgame content, and it is indescribably tedious.

http://www.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=1443533

 

I called this year's ago, locking end game content behind a paywall basically forcing players to pay if they want to complete a game. Of course back then I was being facetious and here we are at that exact point right now.

 

Fuck the gaming industry, we need another market crash to clear away these bloodsucking leeches.

[RagnarokDel]

Like, how do they not realize that this is unacceptable?

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, RagnarokDel said:

Like, how do they not realize that this is unacceptable?

I genuinely believe they think we're all so stupid that we will just accept this BS and carry on paying them. I genuinely believe that most of the big games publishers have gotten so greedy that they don't care what affect their bullshit has on their reputation.

 

The worrying thing is sooooooooo many people do, sooooooooo many defend this BS, sooooooooo many carry on paying them that it vindicates this behaviour and tells them that we are OK with it, maybe next time they can just push it a little more.

 

I swear by the end of this decade we will be paying for games on a per level basis, £40 for the game with level 1, 2 & 3 then £10 per level after that plus DLC, microtransactions & loot boxes all thrown in too.

[ZestyJalapeno]

If Red Dead: R 2 turns out to be like this bullcrap, I may have to just pack it all in and play scrabble forever. The AAA industry's unregulated greed is just depressing.

[Tech_Dreamer]

Knowing how much of a piece of shit i am , I'd probably go through with the hours .

[goodtofufriday]

Pirates always prosper these days. Therell be a cracked version with the true ending ready, not needing a completely impractical to accomplish grind. 

[ZestyJalapeno]

1 minute ago, Master Disaster said:

 

 

I swear by the end of this decade we will be paying for games on a per level basis, £40 for the game with level 1, 2 & 3 then £10 per level after that plus DLC, microtransactions & loot boxes all thrown in too.

By 2020?! One can only dream, by December at the most.

[Sack]

And people wonder why pirating games is still a thing... (not endorsing piracy, but still)

[AresKrieger]

Between this and Battlefront's pay to win loot box system this year is going down as they year the AAA publishers fuck up everything they had to scam that extra dime out of people.

[TimeOmnivore]

Guess I'll just do what I did for Shadow of Mordor - wait a few years until I can get the "Complete Edition" (whatever it's going to be called), with all DLC included, on sale for about ~$5. At least with Shadow of Mordor, I just did that because I'm a cheap bastard, whereas with Shadow of War, I just don't want to feel too bad if I feel the need to buy those microtransactions, since I (hopefully) won't be spending $100+ by the time I've finished playing the game.

[Master Disaster]

Just now, Sack said:

And people wonder why pirating games is still a thing... (not endorsing piracy, but still)

I haven't pirated a game since I got a full time job and Windows Vista launched (actually that's not true, I pirated No Man's Sky and regretted wasting the bandwidth) but I'm seriously considering getting back into it.

[AresKrieger]

4 minutes ago, Dogeystyle said:

By 2020?! One can only dream, by December at the most.

It's already happened given that episodic games already exist

[ZestyJalapeno]

1 minute ago, AresKrieger said:

It's already happened given that episodic games already exist

Yes but episodic games are priced at fractions of what a full release would cost, and IMO no one should ever buy them because an episodic point and click game can easily be consumed by watching someone else play it. Didn't think WB would actually try this BS on a 'full' release, actually, wait, I did.

[goodtofufriday]

4 minutes ago, AresKrieger said:

It's already happened given that episodic games already exist

Thats not fair. They dont release episodes for 60$  and the episodes come out as they are finished. 

[matrix07012]

 

[Jito463]

And now I'm glad I decided to wait on buying SoW.

[Taf the Ghost]

If this was a Japanese game maker, they could get away with it, maybe. Some of the "True End" to games are actually designed to be behind hours & hours of work. Adding the option to the skip to the end would, to the Japanese Dev, seem stupid, but I can see an argument for it.

 

The problem is that Western Developers don't normally do that, so is seems like an insulting cash grab.

[Sauron]

27 minutes ago, RagnarokDel said:

Like, how do they not realize that this is unacceptable?

They don't realize because it turns out people do accept it and give them money. This is partly the fault of the customers not voting with their wallets.

 

I know they won't be getting my money.

[Od1sseas]

Edited October 8, 2017 by Od1sseas

[Ithanul]

I was somewhat considering to buy this game, since I bought a cheap used copy of the first one and enjoyed the game.  Seems I will pass; there enough other games to play.

[8-Bit Ninja]

Sad part is, everyone is pissed at WB for pulling a stunt like this, but within the next few years this shit will be standard with almost every AAA game 

[Matu20]

They keep doing this because people keep buying this. People with more money than intelligence keep feeding the fire and the shitty devs who exploit it are more than happy to pocket the money.

 

VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET AND IT WILL STOP!

[79wjd]

Just now, Matu20 said:

They keep doing this because people keep buying this. People with more money than intelligence keep feeding the fire and the shitty devs who exploit it are more than happy to pocket the money.

 

VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET AND IT WILL STOP!

It's not a question of more money than intelligence..... It's wanting to play the game more than you want this to not become commonplace in a few years. 

 

If I really wanted to play this game and I didn't have a backlog of games, then I'd still buy it. (Sure shitty practices that I wouldn't want to support might encourage me to pirate the game, but then I lost the convenience of steam.)

[RotoCoreOne]

2 minutes ago, Matu20 said:

They keep doing this because people keep buying this. People with more money than intelligence keep feeding the fire and the shitty devs who exploit it are more than happy to pocket the money.

 

VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET AND IT WILL STOP!

unfortunately, the general masses aren't very informed and they will buy. At best the game pisses them off and no1 buys the sequel

[goodtofufriday]

42 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

If this was a Japanese game maker, they could get away with it, maybe. Some of the "True End" to games are actually designed to be behind hours & hours of work. Adding the option to the skip to the end would, to the Japanese Dev, seem stupid, but I can see an argument for it.

 

The problem is that Western Developers don't normally do that, so is seems like an insulting cash grab.

Usually in rpgs that do that the gameplay is complelling and and there are at least side missions and what not. Real post game material.

 

But SoW is literally just a grind of the exact same action for 50 hours.