In case you didn’t know, Middle-earth: Shadow of War, the sequel to the highly successful Shadow of Mordor, will join the loot box bandwagon and in turn, have microtransactions. While a lot of people might not care about this feature being included in the action game, Monolith has explained why it’s included in the first place; especially since the first one didn’t have even a hint of it at all.
In an interview with Eurogamer, Shadow of War Design Director Bob Roberts explains that the loot box and the Market that sells orcs, XP boosts, etc. are all part of a "system" for the people who are "protective" of their spare time to play, and even compares it to a game’s difficulty setting.
Yeah, in the game you earn resources at a regular pace and the systems are tuned to that so you don’t need another option. At the same time, it’s there as a player choice. It’s there, from my perspective, for people who are protective of their spare time and scared when a massive game comes along that they’re not getting to see the full experience.
It’s the same design philosophy as us adding in difficulty modes. So we now have Easy mode, and we’ve added Hard mode at the other end of the spectrum. Frankly the Nemesis system comes to life when you are dying loads, so you could see Easy mode as a system which makes the game less enjoyable if you are the type of player who really should have put it on Hard. It’s putting more control in people’s hands – saying, you know how you play best, you make that choice.
The ideal for people who set it to Easy is if they are just finding things too punishing, not because they don’t want to die. We’d rather you die regularly to get the full experience of the Nemesis system.
You can read about Monolith’s entire take on Shadow of War’s loot box and microtransaction stuf right here.
Do you agree with Roberts? Is this a help for gamers who have limited time to game? Or is this just him defending the game’s inclusion of it? Regardless what the reason is, it seems it’s not affecting the game’s sales numbers; for now, at least. Let us know what you think in the comments.
Middle-earth: Shadow of War will make its way out this October 10 on the PS4, Xbox One and PC.