Playing the game for a few hours and haven't heard anything about microtransactions yet.

Also looked into some of the claims that the true ending is locked behind a massive grind and that it forces you to pay for lootboxes to get it. It seems to be a misunderstanding that started with the Gamespot review.

The game's true ending comes at the end of the campaign. After that you enter the postgame. People wanted more reasons to kill orcs in the last game, so they added this optional postgame that is pretty much nothing but killing orcs and storming strongholds. If you complete all the postgame they give you a little fanservice-y scene.



*Very mild spoilers, nothing specific, but in regards to how it's fanservice-y


[spoiler]



The scene is meant to tie the events of the game into Lord of the Rings somehow



[/spoiler]


*End spoilers



That's not a true ending. It's just a little bit of fanservice to reward the players that do finish all the optional content. Like completing 100% of Kingdom Hearts 2 and getting a teaser for the next game at the end of the credits. Or completing 100% of the Arkham Knight and getting a single extra 1min scene added to the ending of the game. It's there so completionists feel a little reawarded. Like the previous examples, if you're not planning on doing 100% of the postgame regardless, for the gameplay alone, then you're better off just watching the 30s cutscene on Youtube. As for needing microtransactions to escape the grind: the grind is the entire point. It's for players who want to keep playing past the end of the campaign. If you then pay to rush through it, you'll just be cheating yourself out of content.

Not that I've encountered so far, till somewhere in chapter 2. They're there in the market section of the game but so are the ingame currency ones and you're likely to pick up some of those anyway. There's also some dailies you can do for the real world 'currency' (gold), and maybe some weeklies (or one offs, hard to tell atm)

Why not?

Arsessas...I mean Assassin's creed will also have loot crates, but done propeerly(?)

Ubisoft is getting in on the loot box craze for the upcoming Assassin's Creed: Origins. The new title will have loot boxes embedded into the gameplay experience. However, before gamers get completely irascible over the inclusion of such a feature, Ubisoft is adding a twist. All of the chests can only be acquired using in-game currency.
Daily quests does seem sort of odd in single player. Hell, even in an mmo, but that's more to keep you going back & paying to continue (subscription etc).

Oddly, even Terraria had daily quests. The fisherman used to offer a different quest once per day (could cheat & speed time if ran a server hehe).

I prefer daily challenges, like Spelunky (steam version only...), Gauntlet: Slayer edition etc.
They don't really offer anything other than some content to cycle through when you can be arsed to, but you miss out on nothing if you don't.

The lootbox system in Battlefront 2 looks more painful.

One "day" in Terraria lasts 24 minutes. The Angler in Terraria gives 24-minute-ly quests, not daily quests.

How does the ring work? Are there any consequences from using it?

Yeah, I think the only ones who'll actually pay for this kind of stuff will be more casual players who want to advance faster...

... And those casual players aren't going to be around for much longer, I think they'll get bored eventually and find better ways of spending their money.

I am pretty optimistic that this won't be around for too much longer, but then again... Dead Space 3 happened quite a while ago, and I said the same thing then.

and if those casual players like to spend monies like this for faster progression (not everybody can play 24/7) - is there any reason why they should not be allowed to?

In a way, there is a win-win-win situation here. hardcore players ignore them completely, casual players get faster progression and the developers get more monies.

I like that outlook, but I fear that devs will have an extra incentive to make games a little more grind-heavy like other users mentioned in this thread to incentivize the purchase of loot crates. This will really make games less fun for everyone.

I mean, in the best case scenario they won't change the way they are designing games. Then you'd be right! :)

I'd just urge devs to cut back on development costs and make smaller or less 'cinematic' games to get higher profits instead of making microtransactions the name of the game.

Turning down the difficulty has the same effect, so I fail to see why anyone in their right mind should feel cheated by the absence of loot crates.

phew, good thing no one mentioned that players feel cheated by the absence of loot crates, then.

True, the amount of RNG with those crates and the costs make any korean mmo grind a walk in the park by comparision to SOW.

But seems its already cracked so maybe we can see some quick and easy cheats/hacks to make the 20-50 hour grind nonexistent, but again that pales in comparion to the new battlefront 2 grind...

Yeah. The lootbox system in "Battlefront" 2 is pay-2-win. Once I found out about it, I uninstalled the beta instantly. Disgusting.