@marticus: Welcome to farming games. The grind to an extent is part of the point. You get in a routine and get a zen going with the games charm and it turns into a time sink to just play and relax without thinking to hard.

@Zero_Maniac: Other than the fact that they allow many games to exist that otherwise wouldn't. Yeah other than that kind of important benefit. Game development costs money, that money has to come from somewhere. So unless you have some plan that allows every developer to just be rolling in money that they can spend making whatever they feel like then some variation on publishers is going to need to be there to fund the whole thing.

@yukushi: The microtransactions thing isn't really Monolith's fault to be fair. They wanted to make a good game, WB wanted to add microtransactions. When the publisher funding your games very existence and who owns your company tells you to put microtransactions in you don't really have the option to say no. Given that case Monolith honestly did the next best thing. They implemented the most useless and unnecessary microtransactions possible and balanced the game without having them activated so people can safely ignore them if they want to.

@risingdawn: Depends on the player. To complete the game you are probably looking at around 30 hours at least. Those who really get into it can easily play for hundreds of hours ( I personally have 250 hours in it). But it is dependent on whether the harvest moon style of game is for you. For some people it gets boring quick and they don't make it past a couple hours before giving up.

I wish they hadn't gone the route of having it focus on Dutch's gang. I would have preferred to just have all new characters and story that stands fully on it's own without needing to tie in with the other game.

@Dragon_Nexus: IT IS NOT THAT IT IS BORING PEOPLE DO NOT JUST SKIP THINGS SOLELY BECAUSE THEY ARE BORING. People have different preferences and choose how to play based on those preferences. If someone chooses to play one way it doesn't mean they dislike the other or that the other way is bad. It just means they prefer the way they chose. If someone chooses to skip the progression it doesn't mean the progression is bad or boring, just that they are impatient and would rather cut right to the chase and play with a powerful army now rather than spending any time building up to it. Some people like instant gratification and that is the purpose the microtransactions are there for. Not because the progression is somehow flawed or boring, but because some people are impatient and just don't want to wait or put effort in to be powerful. Yes, as I have said whether or not microtransactions are the right way to handle it or not is a whole different matter but the inclusion of them does not mean that the thing they allow the player to skip over is somehow bad as a result. It just means that there is the option to skip over a section of game so that players can focus on a different section if they so desire.

Also it is entirely possible to play the full game without loot boxes. Nothing in the game is gated behind loot boxes and everything can be gained without paying a single dime for microtransactions. Not to mention the game was designed and balanced with the lootboxes disabled to make sure the game plays fine for those who choose not to purchase them.

@Dragon_Nexus: They aren't paying not to play it, they are paying to play the part they are most interested in immediately. You compare it to buying a movie and skipping through but the concept isn't the same because games and movies are inherently different in their very nature. A movie is linear. There is a beginning, middle, and end and no room to really deviate at all. With a game however a lot more control is given to the player. Do they hang around one area of the world longer before moving onto the next, do they focus in on certain mechanics they personally find the most fun and want to put extra time into, do they put more time into the main campaign or the side content, maybe they are a completionist and just try to do every tiny little thing the game has to offer, then there's players who get to end game and just screw around with that for hours well after the story is finished. Different people play in different ways.

It's not a matter of "oh this aspect of the game is boring I wish I could skip it" it's a matter of "the end game and just messing around with the mechanics is the best part of the game to me so I would rather go straight to that now rather than working up to it" then you have other gamers who enjoy the sense of progression and working towards a goal as opposed to that just give me the toys now and let me play with them approach.

It's not a matter of the time not being well spent, it's about different people enjoying different things from their games. Just looking at Shadow of Mordor for example you have some players who just played through the campaign and moved on, then you have players who spent hours just messing around with the nemesis system in the process but once they got to to the end still moved on, others after the story is over spend hours at max level just killing the captains and trying to get their perfect nemesis or trying to see the numerous different nemesis system possibilities, still others intentionally nerf themselves so they can do that but with a greater challenge.

People enjoy games differently, it's not all about a mechanic being boring as much as certain people just have more fun playing in certain ways. That's what these microtransactions are focused on. It's not about skipping a boring mechanic it's about being able to play the way you specifically want to play immediately rather than having to play the rest of the game first before your able to get to that.

@BeefoTheBold: Except not always. Again you usually see that trend because most microtransactions are in free to play games which means the devs are dependent on them in order to make money. Shadow of War isn't in that position. They don't need the microtransactions in order to make money because the majority of their revenue is more likely to come from sales and dlc content. As such there isn't the same incentive to screw with the balance. They don't need everyone to buy them and considering comments from the developers they aren't even expecting everyone to buy them. It's an extra revenue stream to make a little extra off a certain type of player not a primary source of income that needs to get everyone to jump in.

@BeefoTheBold: Except there is incentive without grind. Some people are just impatient and want a strong army right now. That's who the microtransactions are aimed at. They are targeted at people who are lazy and don't want to put any effort in and just want to rush to end game.

@ghost140: Not necessarily. Many microtransactions models do focus on grind because many of those games are free to play meaning the microtransactions are their primary income and it is therefore actually necessary to do so in order to make money. In this case though microtransactions aren't the primary source of income and WB/Monolith likely aren't expecting to make a mint off of them. The lions share of income for the game will come from the actual sales and extra content whereas the microtransactions are there to make a little extra not off of people not wanting to grind but off of people who just want to skip straight to having a powerful army without having to work at it. In that situation making the game grindy isn't necessary because the targeted audience are those who look at it from the perspective of time vs instant rather than speeding up the grind.