Shadow of Mordor Power Struggles? Why bother?!

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Hey all, looking for a little insight here. Been playing Shadows of Mordor on my 360, which I can tell you leaves a lot to be desired. The textures drop out randomly, leaving things looking like an episode of Reboot roughly 50% of the time. Also loading! Oh my Celestia, SO MUCH LOADING! Cut-scenes, every other word requires a loading screen.

"Gollum -loading screen- is -loading screen- odd -loading screen-" etc...

Very hard to endure. 360 port needs an update, and right quick!

Having said that, when I can play the game, I'm loving it! Truly! It's basically Arkham: Asylum, but with Orks, murder and bees.
But my question is this: How do power struggles work? Or, more accurately, is there a way to have the captain in question fail without just killing him? With duels, hunts, ambushes, feasts, trials, etc... it all just seems like a contrived way to kill the randomly generated captain. And the randomness really shines through when you have Ugrog the Example afraid of fire, bees, giant wolves, ponies, spiders and commitment to that nice she-Ork he's been seeing, and yet during his feast power struggle, none of these things are present. And the feast will be over before I can drag his girlfriend in to yell at him for missing dinner with her mother to have drinks with the guys.
So I just kill Ugrog and his mates, and I feel a little obsolete. Like, why bother with the mission when bugger all changed? Why not just kill him without the mission? Was I missing a way to have him survive the feast, but still get a reduction in power? Is that even possible? Or are the Power Struggles just a way to 'adopt' various random NPCs and pretend to have some sort of connection to them, ie baby them until they're war-chief bodyguards? Then sacrifice them for the sake of an easier kill?

Follow up question: weaknesses? What's the bloody point?! Literally the first Ork I tried to kill when I got to Mordor was a captain(well, technically 2nd as I stealth killed one and the guy he was standing next to was a Captain. Bear in mind, this was before the game told me what Captains were) And before he was dead, a second joined in. Then a third. So I killed three captains, each of which gave me an Epic rune for my weapons(1 for each) within the first 5mins. After that the idea of using bees or fire to kill Urgog just seemed a waste of time because every Ork is vulnerable to mashing X until he dies. Seems to me a point was missed with adding weaknesses without balancing them with 'immune to the single most basic attack'.
Without that, I find no reason to look up weaknesses at all.

Now, again, really enjoying the game. But some of the heavily praised mechanics just seem a little useless. I'm sure I'm missing something. What is it?

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Later on in the game theres a mechanic that lets you-

Spoiler

Mind control the orcs. So all those power struggles allow you to come and ensure your orc suceeds at them and help your orc grow powerful. You can command your orc to go in duels with other orcs to bring them out in the open. You can take a random orc nobody and build him up until hes your personal warchief.Its pretty fun to have your sleeper agents bodyguarding a warchief, then just sitting back as they all murder him for you.

 

[Comic Sans]

As you go through the games the captains tend to get tougher. More strengths, less weaknesses, the strengths are much more extreme. As such, knowing weaknesses makes things a lot easier. That obnoxious guy with the shield who blocks your attempts to flip over him, does extra damage, and calls allies might be a pain to take in a straight fight, but if he's vulnerable to stealth finishers or ranged attacks you can tactically take him down no problem. Killing enemies with what they are weak to also yields more specific rewards. Killing a stealth weak enemy with a stealth kill with get you a dagger rune, for example. I feel that in early game knowing weaknesses isn't as big a deal but becomes so later on.

As an extra note, just mashing attack becomes less viable later. Enemies with shields require you to flip over them or stun them, and berserkers will block a regular hit and hit you back, ruining your combo chain. The game isn't horribly difficult, but at the same time just button mashing will at points not work. And yes, there will be captains with these traits as well as others that make getting into a straight fight with them incredibly difficult.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

Just a note, Im pretty sure the Nemesis system is severly gimped on the ps3/360

 

[Gizmo1990]

It will become very important later as it makes the really hard captains easier to take down. For example late game I had to take down a vet captain who was immune to combat, stelth and ranged finishers. He took me down 4 times before I could kill him and that was with me mind controling his bodyguards.

That being said as Blue Rider said the Nemesis system was toned down alot for the 360/ps3 version of the game so it might not be as important for you.

 

[Thebazilly]

The second half of the game turns up the difficulty a little. Captains will start spawning at a strength of 10-12 instead of 5 or so, and they'll start having a lot more strengths than weaknesses. The warchiefs on the second half of the game can be absolutely fearsome. It's difficult to take down a giant Uruk swinging a flaming halberd at you when he's utterly fearless and immune to all types of damage except ranged. And you can't even use flaming arrows, because those just piss him off more.

Spoiler

There's also the branding system. As mentioned above, it makes the power struggles a LOT more fun, since you're babysitting your favorite pet captain. You can follow along on the rooftops and snipe any opposition to make your branded captains stronger. (And then later harvest them for sweet, sweet runes.)

It kind of sucks that you got so many epic runes so early in the game. I think you're sort of supposed to get your butt kicked early on, since it gives you a chance to see how the captains get stronger when they kill you. You learn to hate that one guy who keeps jumping you when you're in the middle of something, and there's a bit more catharsis when you finally chop the head off the one Uruk who's killed you three times now.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Okay so I've played a little more(10+ more hours) into Shadow of Mordor, and I still can't for the life of my understand power struggles or weakness. Or, let me rephrase; I get that power struggles are for adopting certain Captains for various plot reasons. Sure. Good. Great. Got that!
But other than that, why bother?
And weakness/strengths?! I'm at a point where I just killed 4 warlords easily because they were all vulnerable to stealth attacks. So yes, at this point this single weakness was valuable. But all the others?! Or their strengths? The game basically gave me a one-shot kill attack and then wonders how I killed them so quickly.
I've noticed that yes weaknesses do help sometimes(I'd say 1 out of every 15 captains), but not nearly enough to be bothered with. I see a captain is afraid of giant wolves, so I can enter a Power struggle, look around for a wolf, not see one, run off to get one, have the captain finish his feast, THEN ride up on said wolf and kill him in 1sec after the power struggle, or I can walk up and hit him with a sword and kill him in 10secs in the middle of his feast.
Somehow, it doesn't make much difference, except to waste my time and risk the captain disappearing before I get back with Balto. I'm killing captains left and right with easy and rarely looking them up. No one seems to be invulnerable to the most basic weapon in the game!
When I went to assassinate my 2nd warlord, he had(through random happenstance) two captains walking beside him. And without looking them up at all, I stealth killed both of them and then stealth killed the warlord. Easy money. Took me all of 30secs. Hell, killing the warlord's supporters to get him to appear took more time!
I haven't even gotten to the 'branding' parts, and every single rune on all my weapons is Epic level. I feel like I'm playing Diablo 2 on Normal with a character kitted out for Nightmare mode.

 

[MHR]

There are actually orcs that have "immunity to basic attacks" but they're pretty rare. Then there are things like "hate of defeat" where he just gets mad if you hit him and he gets all his health back. Then there are some orcs with [/i]no weaknesses at all[/i] except the fact that they take damage from fires or some other trivial nothing. Most orcs just fall over with sword+face, true, but some don't. Running into these at the wrong time can be disasterous, as evidenced by some of the vendetta targets I've had to kill that have killed up to 3 people each.

Power struggles are just there to tell you who's going to get a power surge next time you die. I'm pretty sure you get more rewards for doing them too compared to just killing them when you see them on the street. Orcs can actually fail their missions by running away or having their execution targets escape. At least I think they can escape.

Random is random where the events are concerned. Some orcs just seem to get missions to suit their strengths. They'll go on a caragor hunt while having the beast slayer perk and get an instant win, and you'd just be putting yourself in a predicament even trying. Others will have a fear of betrayal at a feast, and then a little poison in their grog sends them in a full panic.

The game is powerfully easy though, no mistake.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Power struggles are just there to tell you who's going to get a power surge next time you die.

OH! Okay! Yeah, see I've only died twice and both times during a main story mission, so it just reset from the start of the mission.(not bragging, just reasoning) I looked it up and apparently time passes by if you're dead and various captains get promotions. Cool beans! Its just never happened to me.
But doesn't that seem to be an odd thing to put in the game? Dying being something that gamers are bred to not do, and yet this central game mechanic only happens if you do die!
Its like leveling up, but only by turning off the console and leaving.

 

[MHR]

Yeah, you didn't die, I didn't die either till 15 hours in. Lots of people complain about how that nemesis system works if half of it is based on your dying, but then the game is too easy. Too easy for lots of people. That's the only reason I haven't replayed it. Too damn easy. I died maybe twice to orcs in my entire blind 100% run, and then 4 more times on purpose when it came time to do the achievements that involve dying to an orc. Failing QTEs on animals happened a lot more for me, but those aren't supposed to be the main villains, are they?

It's like a roguelike that's too easy. What's the point? Where's the frustration if you don't die? 'Tis silly.