You seem to assume that the phrase "Oblivion is too action based", means "Morrowind is perfect". Don't do that.

I've seen you many times on these forums defending Oblivion whenever someone mentions a fault, by explaining how Morrowind isn't perfect. While Morrowind has it's flaws, it has nothing to do with Oblivion's flaws.


When a non-existant fault is being beat on, I will defend the game. I stand by the fact that if you're using a weapon you have no skill in, or fighting people you just shouldn't be yet, or have no fatigue, and you complain about not hitting every single time, you're an idiot.

Morrowind has nowhere near a 2/10 hit rate on an average playthrough. When I first get off the boat, I hit roughly 7/10 times. 5/10 if the weapon is a minor. Stating that Morrowind has a 2/10 hit rate isn't an opinin, someone is trying to state a fact that isn't true.

Sorry, if I skipped a few posts, but to reply to seti's last comment towards me:

Yes, you're right, it's such a flawed RPG that it ends up playing like an action game... because leveling is meaningless. It's all about reflexes and blocking quickly enough because the difficulty is static.

Either, you modify the correct attributes and become overpowered or modify the wrong ones and become underpowered. Either way, you can't flee, level up, and come back when an enemy is tough. Because that enemy will have leveled up as well.

I honestly never noticed a difference between any two levels. Except when I unlocked a perk, like getting the ability to zoom the scope on my sniper rifle... I mean bow and arrow.

I meant level one, possibly with marksman skill closer to 20 or 30 (I don't remember, I'd have to experiment. But I do recall Marksmen usually gives me grief until I reach 45-50 with it). Sometimes my agility is even closer to 30 than 50, which drops my chances even lower (though with low enough agility, even having marksman as a major skill doesn't always equal having a high hit rate). Sure, you could argue that its poor character design, but not everyone goes into Morrowind building a character that will be absolutely beastly. If I was thinking of Marksman as a backup for a Nord Warrior to use as a distance weapon, for example, I would likely use Endurance and Strength before Agility. Then I would try Marksman and completely fail at it, to the point of wasting 8 out of 10 arrows. If only I could hear my Nord cursing up a storm as he missed the Cliff Racer for the thousandth time...

I was saying that the learning curve is frustrating on Morrowind, which, as I believe I have mentioned on a number of threads (please ignore this if you have), is the reason I wound up leaving for a long time (after I went through two characters, one of which died after using a spear *not a major/minor skill* against a mudcrab and failing and the other as a Redguard level 5 warrior who seemed unable to explore any dungeon without dying (I didn't know about the wiki then, and even now it irritates me that it gets difficult to find a low-level dungeon) a horrible death). It was after Oblivion I came back to Morrowind (and after I bought it for the PC) and grew to love it.




That was my problem with Oblivion-- leveling felt more like a punishment than an accomplishment. Especially because its so easy to level certain skills over others (say, Alchemy over HtH) which leaves you running away screaming from Minotaur Lords and Black Bears (or on more performance-enhancers than a baseball player). It's like "Hey, congratulations on reaching level 20, now we're really going to release the hounds! I hope you have a couple thousand septims to spend on trainers mwahahahahaahaaa!"

(I think someone else mentioned Goblins being a prime example of having creatures that leveled to the point of being more difficult than clearing out bandit camps. I whole-heartedly agree. And since I have yet to encounter a Goblin cave actually worth the trouble, I stick to clearing out Milk and Fort Hand (I think) for the thousandth time.)

Daggerfall.



Sorry just had to say it
It's better, just like Doom 1 is still better than most shooters today. Thanks to Critical Strike and Backstab skills, in Daggerfall you can one-hit-kill opponents, but they also pack a punch, and some spellcasters can blast you away in a split second. Compared to that Morrowind's combat is frustrating, while Oblivion's combat is already boooring. It only works in low levels when you die easily and so do the enemies. Not long, and you have 100 heal potions behind a hotkey, and enemies take 500 hits to die. Who the heck thought that would be good gameplay? In Morrowind, the combat turns to interesting only after a while... Been so many years since I've played either of them actually...

Out of non-TES games, Mount&Blade. Out of rogue-like games, The Unreal World.

It seemed to me that Morrowind's hit or miss system even screwed up the rpg elements because you only gained skill with the weapon when you landed a hit. This means when you weren't good with the weapon your skill went up slowly, and when you were average with the weapon your skill shot up like a rocket.

On potions, I'd like them to be unusable during combat and spell scrolls removed from the game.

I'd like for there to be a drinking animation, to distract me from combat for a few seconds. Most realistic method, imo.


What? One of the few awesome things Oblivion retained.

That would be alright.

A large part of the mages guild is earning money for casting spells, they're throwing away their monopoly by having scrolls. People who make a character without magic skill don't deserve all the benefits of the magic with no drawbacks, it kills the rpg element. And how do these peasants learn to read daedric? They can't even read Imperial!

Thrown bottles as well, that act like napalm.
Or do potions have to enter the body to begin the effect?

Bah, it probably wouldn't matter much.

I had to think back a few years to remember an RPG where I would often fail, flee, and come back later, and remembered that it makes both leveling and exploring much more enjoyable. Regardless of how fun it is, I still can't agree that that experience is the sole purpose to leveling.

Depending on the choices you make while playing your character in Oblivion, you can run into the leveling problem that has been a rather big topic over the years. If your choices have left you relatively weak compared to your enemies, then you run into the situation you are describing where you have to flee and come back later. Only further leveling will help you catch up (I use leveling loosely here to refer to raising skills and to raising actual levels to improve your attributes).


If you mean only that there are no enemies that can give you a serious kicking and that make you have to flee and come back later after leveling up some more, then I think more such creatures are available depending on how you develop your character. Quite a few players have characters that can't stand up to a mountain lion the first few times they encounter one. If however, you mean that a white troll was the only creature you met that didn't level up with you, then you weren't paying attention. Not counting the ever-scaling NPC's, there are only ogres, minotaur lords, goblin shamans, goblin warlords, gloom wraiths, liches, and xivilai as the entire complement of creatures who level up as you do. Everything else -- rats, mud crabs, bears, storm atronachs, spider daedra, and more -- are static.


I'm not talking about exploiting the combat system in Morrowind; I am talking about using it the way it is meant to be used. Some weapons have a longer reach than others -- take advantage of that reach and keep out of your enemy's range. Some weapons allow more frequent attacks than others -- move in close and take advantage of that speed. A claymore is going to do more damage with a slash than with a thrust, so move sideways while attacking rather than forward or backward. A big two-handed weapon has a slower attack rate -- take advantage of an enemy using such a weapon by moving in, striking, and moving out between his swings. As far as style of combat goes, Morrowind and Oblivion are practically identical.


I do notice the impact of my character's skills, levels, and attributes in combat in Oblivion. I won't defend Oblivion's scaling system, which in principle functions like that annoying grammar and spelling checking in MS Word.


But for some minor exceptions, everything there is to do in Morrowind there is to do in Oblivion, even if you personally dislike how either game handles things. In both Morrowind and Oblivion, the objective is to play a role. Combat is present only to make playing a role more fun; it is not the objective. Combat is aim-click, aim-click, aim-click in both games (Well, okay, blocking in Oblivion provides the periodic aim-click, aim-click, uh-oh-click). Morrowind introduces a character-skill-based probability to its clicks so that some clicks result in no damage to the enemy, yet the player does the exact same thing as he does in Oblivion. As far as I can see, there is no sound basis for categorizing one game as action and the other as something else

I second this. I've been delving deeply into Daggerfall, lately, and I'm enjoying it more and more.

The combat is intricate in principle, but very simple in practice. It's easy to screw yourself over in point distribution, but then it's easy to see what you did wrong and fix yourself within the next two levels.

Each fight is short and sweet. And I can really grow to hate certain enemies, but I always seem to best them before it gets to the point where I want to throw my keyboard at the wall.

I have to point out that you could get the one-hit kills in Morrowind and Oblivion, too. But in Daggerfall there's a lot more to the stealth system. You can get skills that compliment sneak and make it more effective, like backstab. In Morrowind and Oblivion, it's all bundled neatly into the sneak skill... makes things less interesting.

Plus, I like the mouse motions to get the different attacks, as opposed to the keyboard dance.

@Dinrauko: I pretty much agree with everything you say except for that last bit.

I really felt like I was constantly being forced to fight in Oblivion. There weren't non-combat options for the quests, like there were in Morrowind and there was only the one non-combat guild.

And so many dungeons were either empty or closed off until I got the quest for them, which made the world feel more scripted to me. It was a "go anywhere, but ask us if it's ok before you do anything" kind of atmosphere.

And the thing about the static creatures is that they disappear and get replaced with stronger static creatures. So, the wolves really do level with me. It's just that they eventually morph into minotaurs.

It sounds like youre a bit dramatic in regards to defending the hit probability in Morrowind. Either that or your mathematics are abominable. At a weapon skill of 60 hitting 90% of the time may be close, but only if you have a high agility to match as well as luck having an effect too. 90% seems more accurate for a weapon skill of at least 75 -80 with a decent agility attribute as well. Also, I wish I played the same morrowind as you where I only missed 5-10% of the time from level 1 -20. With a starting weapon skill of 50, youre still going to miss around 30% of the time, with other attributes being a factor as well. With a nord, level 1 and warrior birthsign and warrior class, I still was missing a noticeable amount with a longsword.


If I had to choose the better combat system it would be Oblivion hands down. I love morrowind, but I think the combat is horrendous. Sword strikes sound like hitting a puddle of mud with a baseball bat and enchanted weapon strikes cause mini little 'explosions'. The missed hits I completely understand, being it a statistic driven system of combat, but i certainly wont defend the combat system by saying in my game i miss 5 percent of the time for 20 levels.

Nah, they don't need to enter the body to work. I'd think you'd have to light them on fire after throwing the bottle though, Dark Messiah did a good job with throwable flamable liquid jars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EROEwh1Acc

There should also be jars filled with scorpions, like in ancient Greece.

Yes, and that avreages out to around 5-10% misses through to level 20. (Overall character level, not weapon skill level)


I don't get how people can knock the actual system for what they believe to be a problem with the sounds. They're not the same thing.

Sweet

yes but oblivion has more fluid movments and the morowind spears are small they are like so small they should be used one handed and a regular shild not a tower sheild but a round one and i do agre no crosbows or throwing stars and stuff svcks in oblivion i wont use glass armor because its so ugly compared to morrowind the same with orcish aswell

i prefer with oblivions but i canot agree more when your surounded and if you were not always flinching or stumbling i would survive even without half my armor but no they hav to make it so i die surounded by 4 impirial sailors and 2 boarders because of the combat sysytum but both were horible and oblivions was the lesser of 2 evils (pirate mod)

Do you consider blatantly ignoring all those red, squiggly lines under your misspelled words an act of rebellion?

Because I just find it annoying.

I voted Morrowind for reasons already stated.
One thing I would like to comment on is H2H combat. I think Morrowind had the right idea -
-no damage dealt until the opponent is knocked down
-ability to paralyze with very high skill

edit - of course there's always room for improvement

I don't believe I've ever heard of an instance where someone was punched, died (standing up), then fell to the ground.
I'm sure it's happened, but I doubt it was due to an extremely devastating punch. So unless you hear rumors that (npc) has heart problems, I don't expect to kill him with a few punches.
TES V Mortal Kombat?

I don't think there's any point in bringing realism to this, cause if that were the case, every time you punched somebody wearing armour you should take damage, not them

punching someone with armor should be ineffective IMO