Nemesis System lacking purpose? (Late game spoilers)

So I've just finished SoM and LOVED it - apart from the weirdly rushed finale, but whatever!

Anyway I love the combat and the enemy designs, and the very idea of the Nemesis stuff, but like, what's the point in moving your dudes up the ranks? Sure at the end you're amassing an army so it makes sense to get the top tier under control, and if someone takes you out then finding intel and taking revenge is sweet too, but for the rest of it moving them up and down the tiers and interrupting things... I never really got any sense of why we're doing that?

They mention a lot about how not diving into the red-logo'd events around the map mean that low-ranking chaps will go up levels and get stronger, but does this actually effect anything really? You might have to do a little bit more to draw them out if they're at Warchief status, but if you could stealth kill a dude in one tier, you can do the same higher up.

As I say I've just finished and it's fun to mess around with this stuff on its own merits for the sake of video games, but I don't really have any endgame other than branding guys in high position just 'cause.

How much time have you guys put into messing around outside of missions, and what role do you feel like you're playing when reordering the various lines of orcs in the world?

I also wanted to apologise for the potentially misleading post title, the 60 character limit wouldn't let me have 'Lack of overarching purpose in Nemesis System (Late game spoilers)! Obviously it's in the late game when the whole thing comes together! :D

I don't consider it much of a draw on it's own, and not really worthy of the sheer amount of praise and credit it's getting for the game's success. I think it's a really neat mechanic that serves in making the game better and a more unique beast, but the game would still be worth playing if the system wasn't as dynamic as it is. I am not treating it as anything more than a tiny motivator. For instance, I could be moving through the story missions quickly, but I kind of enjoy the process of identifying and encountering new captains, which is drawing out the length of the game. It's making what could have been a 12-15 hour game into a 40 hour game for me simply because it's a fun thing to kind of toy around with.

@kittentactics: I think that a mechanic that adds 25 hours of playtime is pretty praiseworthy. SoM would be a game worth playing without the Nemesis System, but that's solely on the strength of its combat. The Nemesis System really lets the game breathe, and acts as a constant threat to you, one that you have to engage in and learn the workings of to be really successful. That it does it so well on its first outing as a mechanic is wonderful, because it could have easily been a bland, repetitive, or frustrating feature. Without it, this game would just be Assassin's Creed in Middle-Earth. It would be a perfectly serviceable 10-hour open-world game.

@shalashaskauk666: Captains will gain strengths and lose weaknesses as they level up. In fact, a Captain who was vulnerable to stealth finishers may become immune to them if you allow him to climb through the ranks, or purposely make him stronger. A big draw of the Nemesis system is the idea of a fluid army that you have to actively cull and keep tabs on. If you do the thing where you advance time maybe 5 or 10 times, you get some pretty damn powerful Uruk to deal with, and that's really unpleasant. Another nice side-effect is that the Uruk a captain has in his gang will also be under your influence if their leader is, so once you start dominating a lot of captains, you can go into a stronghold with 10 or more Uruk already under your control without having to do anything.

Only one thing missing, multyplayer mode designed by someone way smarter than me.

My main problem with the Nemesis system is there isn't enough stuff. There's not enough names, not enough titles and not enough types of power struggles.

This happens in other games too where off the top of my head games that feature "territorial control" also suffer from this late game decline. At the start of the game, doing a side mission that changes your area of control from 5% to 6% feels like a lot but at the end of the game the balance of power is so tipped in your favor that doing a side mission that changes it from 95% to 96% is feels far less so if not a bother.

But that said, the purpose of these "building power" style design to see and feel the change in power. At the late game you can run around with impunity and that can be fun in of itself.

@the_nubster: I suppose I agree, I just don't agree with the opinion I've seen that it's the only thing that really makes the game sing. It's a great addition, but does less for the game than the quality of the base game it's layered on to. I'd rather play a mechanically sound AC clone sans the Nemesis system than a game as mechanically void as Dynasty Warriors but with the Nemesis system on top, if that makes sense. It's a great system because it's combined with an already strong title.

Oh, of course. If this game was a steaming pile of garbage, the nemesis system wouldn't do anything to save it. If you're talking about praising the Nemesis System to the detriment of the game's other mechanics, than I fully agree. To say that it's the only strong point of the game is nonsense, because everything else works in concert perfectly well.

Having finished the game, i feel like i liked the Nemesis system more for the potential that i felt for it early on but the further i got i realized most of it wasn't that deep or necessary because the game wasn't difficult enough. Despite the fact that i didn't apply runes or upgrades in an effort to keep the game at a more engaging level, the captain fights seemed to have come off more as a battle of attrition rather than strategy.

Some things i think could have made it better is playing with the fear/hate mechanic. Maybe make the captains invulnerable to all attacks unless stricken by their fear, through which their weaknesses are then exposed. And if they become too powerful then they'll remain invincible unless you built a small army of bodyguards against them, fear of mutiny. Mix that with different locational characteristics, for example, spawning a captain who fears flies in a stronghold that has none will force you to try and manipulate the system to position them in a location where they can be exposed and defeated. I think this would add more strategy to the nemesis system and go beyond just novelty, though, it's a REALLY effective novelty.