I agree Spellcrafting should have been in the game. Also, about the different blade skills as they forced players to make decisions - I especially liked the differentiation between daggers and short blades. But I'm not sure about the rest of the things you mentioned. I think there is a lot of confusion about what makes something complex. Complexity comes from tension. It comes from having to make decisions with trade-offs between benefits and penalties. It does not come from mindlessly having to click a bunch of times.

The ability to wear different armor pieces was nice for dress up, but it was not complex - There was not a strong benefit/penalty tension among individual armor pieces. If you had the heavy armor skill you wore full Daedric or you wore something else for looks, but you never had a hard decision about which armor pieces to wear. Certain ones were always clearly better than others and you either wore it for stats or for looks.

The weapon/armor wear and tear also was not complex, it was just a gold sink. You used a sword until it broke, then you clicked "use" on hammers until it was fixed, or brought it to a smith and clicked "repair." It was nothing except an annoyance and I don't miss it.

Alchemy was like this too. You just had to acquire a few items before your potions were as powerful as they could be. That is a barrier but it's not complexity. There was no reason to use a mortar and pestle but not a calcinator, no potions benefited from that, you just had to have all the pieces.

There are definitely some missteps with Skyrim, but removing the need to constantly have 30 smithing hammers in my inventory is not one of the problems.

I loved the atmosphere in Morrowind, it was creepy and alienish.

This exactly.

I have had Morrowind installed on a computer since I first picked it up several years ago and I still play from time to time.

That being said, I already own Morrowind and I'm not looking to own Morrowind again.

I see where everyone is coming from with the whole nostaglia and affection towards Morrowind. For most of us, it was the game that first got us into the Elderscrolls series.

For me, it'll always have a place in my heart; the atmosphere was like nothing I'd seen before in a game. It makes me tingly thinking about it.

I also see the point about how the skills system was better in Morrowind, but I can also remember starting a new game on Morrowind and having to decide RIGHT THEN what kind of character I'd like to play. If you had a clear RPG character in mind then no problem but if you wanted to just see how the game panned out, you would find it very difficult to move onto heavy armour if you chose to specialise in light or medium armour at the start.

I'd argue that Skyrim has a BETTER system because I can mould my character as I go along...there's no need for me to choose a focus I want to follow. If I want to be an archer, I'll use a bow regularly. Same with armour type and magic etc. I also remember holding a sword and swinging it frantically at a mudcrab whilst being a lvl 1 character and then getting nearly mauled by it because the Morrowind system worked on a % chance of hit system which in truth was a nightmare for a new character just trying to get started.

I DID prefer the different parts of armour you got in Morrowind however ie greaves and pauldrons.

In summary, Morrowind was just iconic IMO. And Skyrim is just an evolved version of that.

Morrowind vs Oblivion

Graphics: Oblivion
Art Design: Morrowind
Sound: Oblivion (honorable mention to Morrowind)
Atmosphere: Morrowind and Oblivion
Combat: Oblivion
Mechanics (Spells, Skills, Armors etc): Morrowind
Exploration: Morrowind
Overall World Design: Morrowind (Open cities if nothing else)
Immersion: Morrowind
Content Quality: Oblivion
Story: Morrowind

Morrowind: 7
Oblivion: 5

Morrowind vs Oblivion vs Skyrim:

Graphics: Skyrim
Art Design: Skyrim
Sound: Skyrim
Atmosphere: Skyrim
Combat: Skyrim
Mechanics (Spells, Skills, Armors etc): Morrowind
Exploration: Morrowind and Skyrim
Overall World Design: Morrowind (Open cities if nothing else)
Immersion: Skyrim
Content Quality: Skyrim
Story: Morrowind
Exclusive to Skyrim: Animations

Morrowind: 4 (Still a better game for those who want hardcoe RPG mechanics)
Skyrim: 9 (Better game overall for those who can enjoy)
Oblivion: 0 (Forever Alone)

At least, thats my opinion anyway.

No, I'm glad to see it go. I want to sit down and have fun, not spend ages looking for a stupid box which is hidden in the corner of a bookshelf, which are dotted around EVERYWHERE.

I never understood the problem with the Dwemer puzzle box.. The first time I did that quest, I found it my first run through the ruins. :shrug:

This is why options are so damn important. For some of us looking around for a stupid hidden box is fun, for some it isn't.

Skyrim was a great step forward with the toggable quest markers. Too bad Bethesda was still stupid enough to not actually give any directions outside of said markers, making them required anyway and pissing people like myself off.

Let me buy you a beer. :foodndrink:

People confuse quirky mechanics with complexity, and it's a shame.

[quote name='Eficus' timestamp='1322593426' post='19530493']
Not until it's created.

perfection is a concept, no game can ever or will ever be perfect, there will always be some flaw or problem, that's just the nature of things I'm afraid. I get wat you're saying morrowind+Skyrim in a different setting would be a good game

as i said before morrowind was the rennesaince of the series with all due respect to daggerfall and arena alot of us would not be here were it not for mw i started with it myself but i will say this id think wed be happy if they combined the things that made daggerfall,mw,and ob great with some new additions here and there that would end the arguments if only for a bit that said skyrim= more eldar scrolls lore and goodness im cool with that

Morrowind was, in my opinion, needlessly "complex." It had a lot of skills, but some were redundant, and others just useless. I'm glad they took out medium armor, for instance, and just divided it into heavy and light. That's enough differentiation between armor types. I like how Skyrim broke the skills into combat styles, 1 handed vs 2 handed, and then within those styles you can specialize in a type of weapon. You want to be a short-blade wielding assassin character, just go the dagger route in the 1-handed skill tree. Makes much more sense to me. With the perk system, I feel like there is more character customization involved with Skyrim skill-wise than Morrowind. I feel like I gained a tangible, useful skill whenever I level up and get to choose a new perk.

Spellcrafting was ok, but not a huge make or break feature for me. It was basically just lumping multiple effects into a one-shot spell. With dual casting, you can more or less achieve this same effect, which is probably why they left the spellcrafting out. I do wish they included more individual spells in Skyrim, and more non-combat spells. Also, with dual casting, it would be nice if spells interacted with each other (ie, create a wall of fire, and then cast a wind spell to spread the flames). I'd much rather see a spell interaction system such as this instead of having a spellcrafting system.

I like the new alchemy system as well. Having to carry around multiple pieces of alchemy equipment was a weak mechanic. Most of the fun with alchemy is hunting for rare ingredients, and discovering what the effects are, not making sure you have an upgraded mortar and pestle.

Combat was very clunky in Morrowind, and a lot of the quests were boring. For its time, MW was awesome, and I logged many hours. I'm enjoying Skyrim as much, if not more, than I did when I first got into MW.

What you seem to be saying is, "Skyrim would have been good if only they had taken Morrowind, put it a new location, updated the graphics and tweaked some of the mechanics."

What I'm saying is that if Bethesda had done that, this is just a sample of what a huge number of threads on this board would be like.

"Bethesda promised me a brand new game, and I paid 60 [censored] bucks for a Morrowind map and mod pack! "
"I always hated how X was broken in Morrowind, and instead of fixing it, Bethesda made it worse! And why couldn't they have fixed Y while they were at it?"
"I loved Y in Morrowind. Why did Bethesda have to break it?"
"Z was the most epic location in all of Morrowind. Why did they have to take it out? I know this game's in a different province, but they should have made it to where we could visit Z!"
"I'm so glad they nerfed the (insert favorite uber weapon/spell here) in this game. It was just way too overpowered in Morrowind."
"Why did they have to nerf the (same uber weapon/spell here) in this game? I miss it from Morrowind!"

And on and on and on and on.

What you see as an improvement to an older game, many other fans of that same game will see as something akin to blasphemy. And a lot of people will feel honestly ripped off if they end up paying full retail price for a warmed over version of a 9-year-old game.

Look at what happened with Duke Nukem Forever.

"hardcoe mode" in New Vegas was a DIRECT RIP of the mod "Fallout Wanderer's Edition" that the community made. Just like denocking arrows in THIS game (Denock Arrows Mod for Oblivion). Just like the decapitation and dual wielding in this game (Deadly Reflex Mod for Oblivion). I think it's funny how they get all their inspiration the PC modding community to put into their next games, then trample all over us and deliver a crappy console port made easy enough for the casual console player.

I have to disagree. I've been trained to kill with a combat knife. I have spent ages learning how to effectively use it to its strentghs.
But when I first picked up a sword, I could for the life of me not wield it.
The weight, the lentgh and the Technique of it were far different.
Now give me a mace and see what happens.

There's the casual word again, knock it off.

That being said, the modders do a great job and service. However those that extoll their virtues and skills over Bethesda should realize that they're not making the games.

Tell the modding community to make their own perfect game, then maybe the [censored]ing will end.

Hmm. There's quite a few things I wish they hadn't taken out of Skyrim (or failed to include in it, depending) but it does seem that the prevailing opinion that Morrowind is some sort of transcended be-all and end-all of RPG playing is getting a bit tired. It's an opinion that's infested TESF for over five years now and I'm not sure it's really improved with age. I enjoyed Morrowind, but it's not that great. There, I said it.

"Don't you miss the complexity of Morrowind?"

Past tense?
No. I'm still experiencing it.

In what exactly is Skyrim more complex than Morrowind?

I miss the fact that the game can be about something other than leveling and perks. I miss that I didn't have to think about what perks I take just so I can compete when the level scaling catches up. I miss artifacts being useful instead of quickly ruined by how superior, and necessary, smithing is.

Skyrim is a great game, but it really gets on my nerves just how important leveling and perks are now. It seems that I'm always on a quest just to be shoo'd to the next place so I can pick up some levels (and thus, perks). The loot I get from the quests and from the dungeons is awful. Just look at the forums and how much talk there is simply about what "build" to use.

I might as well be playing world of warcraft if I wanted to focus so hard on builds and perks.

:clap:

Nope I don't miss Morrowind at all, the terrible combat can stay dead and so can the flawed Attribute system.

I never found Morrowind to be all that "deep," outside of the politics in the lore. It had more variety, though, in terms of items. It had complexity (which isn't always a good thing) in terms of some of it's mechanics. But the overall way the games play, hasn't changed much since Arena.

I think they need to give staves the ability to clonk things again, and maybe bring back spears. Well, they dont NEED to, but it would be cool.

More than anything though, I want the ability to fight from horseback.