Middle-earth: Shadow of War Interview

Microtransactions in single-player games aren’t exactly a beloved feature, and any game that includes them becomes way less attractive for a significant portion of potential players. In order to placate and reassure these people, Monolith’s Bob Roberts spoke to Eurogamer about the loot boxes in the upcoming Middle-earth: Shadow of War, and how they, supposedly, had no bearing on that game’s overall design and balance. Here’s an excerpt from that interview:

What can you say to reassure the fans who will never buy a loot box that Shadow of War has still been balanced with them in mind?

Bob Roberts: We’re working our tails off to make this massive game and as a designer – the design director – I focus on balancing it. We do a ton of playtesting and make sure it is tuned to a setting where people can enjoy it. We kept all of the loot boxes and the economy of real world money turned off in playtesting so we know we are balancing around an experience which is rewarding without any of that stuff.

Because some people think you guys have ulterior motives – that you’re waiting for a tough bit to pop up an onscreen prompt saying ‘hey… have you seen what we’re selling…’

Bob Roberts: No – absolutely not. 100 per cent not. It is important to clarify this as there were a couple of misconceptions. First, the concern about balancing – hopefully when it is out there and people are able to talk about their experiences then the balancing question will be answered, hopefully by people you trust to play through it and see that.

The other big misconception was whether the game had to be online too – and it’s important for people to understand that no, it’s not required to be online to play the game, and it’s a massive game where you can enjoy the full experience without putting any extra money in.

Which begs the question – why put it in at all? As a design director your life is spent ensuring players don’t get bottlenecked in certain places, that people never run out of resources when they really need them. Why complicate that?

Bob Roberts: 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.