So Nearly anytime I try to search for a morrowind discussion I get some video or discussion on how "morrowind's combat is a piece of [censored] because you don't miss your target in real life even if you have low skill" well I am sorry to tell you this but you are, based on my experiences, wrong. A few months ago me and some people I knew would set up fights with practice weapons, I knew a few things about swords so I was decently good with them, however when I first tried using an axes I did hit miss my target quite a bit actually he wasn't even dodging most of my attacks. You see fighting, as an inexperienced, was very hectic and chaotic you are trying your best to flail your arms into someone while at the same time trying desperately to not let them hit you back sometimes they have a big shield blocking them and sometimes you do to. A few months after this I was more experienced in using an axe, one of the people who did this invited his new friend to join us and, he was almost always failing to hit us while we were hitting him at least 75% of the time. You see combat isn't the way the media portrays it, it isn't some overly dramatic slow swinging one hit hobby, IT is chaotic. Morrowind seemed to capture this in a realistic way for me as when my character first started he could barely hit his target, then as my character became a master of his weapon type he now almost never misses his target.

You offer interesting insight. However, I don't think it's the lack of realism that annoys people as much as the dissonance between actions and their results, visual and mechanical. As all Elder Scrolls games, Morrowind is an action RPG. We don't passively watch the dice roll, don't let our character strike on their own, we guide their hand. We aim and strike correctly - but the game says we missed even though we saw the sword connect with the body. We can hit a rat squarely on the head with a warhammer and do no damage. It doesn't feel right or fair to some people. If there was a dodging animation, maybe it would be easier to accept.

I agree with Rosveen. Many of us have said this for years. The lack of animations is mostly to blame to for the complaints.

Of course, there will always be those first-person shooter players who dislike character-skill combat. These people will never like Morrowind's combat. They will always want player skill to determine the outcome of combat.