Not draining all of your fatigue by sprinting everywhere before getting into a fight helps too.

I doubt most players see vengeance as the whole point to leveling. That concept works fine in some action movies and martial-arts flicks, but I think in RPG's players like to level to discover what more their characters can do and to prepare for more powerful and varied challenges. Leveling for self improvement, variety, and preparation for the future makes leveling relevant regardless of how things are scaled.


Oblivion features a good number of creatures that are always around and that do not continually level with you. I was surprised when my one stab with an unenchanted, non-poisoned dagger in a sneak attack killed a troll. It is nice being able to eventually stand up to a mountain lion. I have also noticed that increasing your intelligence, willpower, and skill levels makes your pool of magicka more effective in combat.


I found Morrowind to play like an action game. Move one way and your weapon does more damage; move another and your weapon does less. Attack more often; hit more often; do damage faster. Dance around skillfully; get hit less. Pretty much the same as Oblivion.

I see someone is playing modded Oblivion. At level 20ish, I would start to see Minotaur lords. This is ALL I would see in the wilderness. Perhaps the occasional wolf (just so I can't run away), but, on the most part, pretty much everything was a minotaur at high levels.


Is anyone saying that Morrowind isn't veering towards an "action game"? Oblivion is just further down the line. Bethesda has been trying to turn TES into an action series since Morrowind.

I'd love to see TES V have a combat system as beautiful as Oblivion's...

...that worked like Morrowind's.

I disagree with that completely. One of the great things that separates RPGs from action games is the ability to fail, flee, and come back when you're stronger. If you want to be able to fight and beat everything the moment you encounter it you're stuck in the action game mentality.
Plus there's no such thing as self improvement when the world levels with you. If you're doing it just for the personal joy of hearing the "level up" noise, then you're just deranged.

If it's a good number, how come I only met one.... once ever. An obscure white troll hidden up in the north corner of the map. Every fight, no matter what I fought, was the same 10 minute long mini-game of swing, block, swing, block. I was ALWAYS able to stand up to a mountain lion.

And as for magicka... duh intelligence gives you more magicka, which means you can fry your enemies and be overpowered. Since any level one can beat anything in melee, granted he blocks quickly enough.


You don't have to dance around/ hit then run. Every RPG let's you do that, and it's totally your choice if you want to be lame and exploit the combat system that way. The real point is:

Oblivion's combat takes the skill of the character completely out of the equation, (and since everything's your level) you don't have to level to prepare for anything. With Morrowind, the challenge is preparing for the fight. In Oblivion, the challenge is just enduring the long, boring, repetitive fight.

In other words, in Morrowind I found the challenge in figuring out how to kill this guy who is way above my level with the enchanted items I happen to have in my inventory for emergencies. The challenge was also is searching places out, collecting the right buffers to convince people, leveling up to advance in my guild sneaking through then escaping the overpowered dungeon. In Oblivion, the challenge, for me, was literally to put up with the constant, mind-numbing fighting long enough to just see how the stupid story ends.

Did I mention the biggest problem is that there's way too much of it? And literally nothing else to do unless you want to make some poisons. When there's nothing to do but fight and the fighting is based on the reflexes of the player, then it's an action game, duh.

I hate saying things that have already been said, but if you turn the difficulty up then you still have to prepare for fights and fight to survive. If you don't have a means of healing yourself and your difficulty is about 3/4 the way up, you're as good as dead and it's never really boring. The issue is that the difficulty never goes down after that, so there isn't a way to really "get better" since everything else gets better with you, which is a problem. :shrug:

Again, they solved this in Fallout 3. So I think we should be fine.

Actually, they didn't take the problem out of FO3, they just watered it down a little. At level 1, you'll face 95% Molerats in the "tame" areas between the Vault and Megaton. As you level up, you start running into Radscorpions, and eventually those will be all but replaced by the various "advanced" types of them, with perhaps 1 Molerat at most for every 5 or 10 more advanced opponents. I don't mind a "slight" chance of encountering higher level opponents in close proximity to a "town", but when they all but replace the basic creature types, then it feels fake to me. The most "dangerous" areas of the game were fairly "tame" at low level, but got noticably tougher as you advanced. As with OB, there was very little incentive to improve, because the world got tougher to match you, unless you ran around and entered everyplace at a low level, which "locked" its difficulty to your current level. Silly, just silly.

You do more damage with each shot in FO3 with a higher weapon skill, because it must be obvious to everyone that a bullet to the "center of mass" always does more damage if the person firing it is a better shot, right? How exactly did FO3 "fix" the problems?

Well, actually I've run into plenty of things way higher level then me at low levels from being in places I shouldn't. Yao Guai, Centaurs, Deathclaws, etc. at level 3. Not exactly easy to defeat, and they killed me in a few hits. They weren't "tame" areas in the least bit. You run into a lot of Molerats and Bloatflies no matter what your level anyway.

Fighting Dagoth Ur or level 20s has nothing to do with how often you hit or miss.
Perhaps your Morrowind copy is different from most peoples', but at level 1 with low fatigue, I hit about 1-2/15. With full fatigue it's more like 2-4/10. (with about 50 agility and 40 weapon skill)

Watch veriax's interactive Morrowind LP, part 11 I think, where he is trying to get the Lord's Mail at level 1. He's a Dunmer with Long Blade as a major. Seriously go watch it.

But anyway, the point of my first post was that Morrowind does have it's flaws, and truly it's about the same as Oblivion (which is a much newer game, and had so much more technology at its disposal), but the very same system could be vastly improved upon by some good animations, and a little bit more advanced dice rolls.

Most of MW's "miss" difficulties could have been avoided by using an "opposed" skill comparison between attacker and target. The target's Agility and overall level should have had more effect on your chances of hitting. That way, you'd RARELY miss a sluggish Mudcrab, but would have some minor problems with hitting a more agile Rat, and LOTS of problems hitting a high-level NPC or Daedra who's probably dodging, blocking, and parrying your feeble attacks with ease.

I've only played one character so far, but I remember, in the lower levels, eventually being cornered by mirelurks or something if I wandered into the wrong area. And there was the super-impossible monster now and then.

And I definitely noticed the opposite, too. Finding molerats at level 18.

But, the scaling was really overt. As in, an area where there used to be a bunch of molerats now has a bunch of radscorpions instead. Then there's a bunch of giant radscorpions. The overt, obvious replacing is something I don't like.

What I did like is that they put thought into the animals this time. Molerats like to travel in packs of three. Radscorpions are solitary. And it wasn't the annoying five-foot increments, along the road, like in Oblivion. The placement felt more natural and scattered and it made more sense. And they don't chase you forever.

You rarely find a radscorpion out in the open. It's generally in the grass. The opposite goes for molerats. So traveling through the wilderness is traveling again, and not the Onimusha-style hack your way through hordes of enemies from point A to point B.

Hey, and now NPCs can travel without being marked as essential.

I don't believe there's much more I can add to the idiocity of this statement.


I've never said Morrowind has no flaws. The combat system just doesn't seem to be one of them. (You can't count the lack of animations as a flaw in such an old game, really) While the addition of animations would have been great, I doubt they'd implement Morrowind's system without them in TESV.

Morrowind's animations were atrocious for 2002. Even Daggerfall(a game 6 years older than Morrowind) had better combat animations, and when a hit did not succeed in Daggerfall, I heard the sound of metal clashing that made me think my enemy either successfully blocked the attack or their armor defended them. Morrowind lacked that sound, as well. I would see Daggerfall's combat brought back rather than Morrowind's, although my ideal combat system would be a combination of Daggerfall and Oblivion's. I want skill to affect hit/failure rates as in Daggerfall(and Morrowind), but to a lesser degree, and damage dealt as in Oblivion, but also to a lesser degree, with Daggerfall's metal clashing sound representing the failure. Daggerfall's magic system is also my preferred style. It's a combination of Morrowind's magic system and Oblivion's magic system. In Daggerfall, failure with magic is possible, but not as common as in Morrowind(from my experience, at least), but spell cost also goes down with increased skill and spells can be casted with one's weapon out, as in Oblivion. Stealth, well, I like Oblivion's most, by far.

Yeah, I'd say that Daggerfall had the best execution of magic in the series. It's a shame half the spells didn't do anything!

What do you mean?

Hircine, you have a habit of insulting other people who like Morrowind just because they find a fault in it(and I'm not saying it's a universal fault or even one I dislike, but it's his/her opinion).


Have you ever heard of the leveling problem Oblivion has? If you don't efficiently level and plan your character poorly by not taking advantage of stat gains, your enemies will get more powerful than you. They don't remain equal, they get more powerful, and if you don't efficiently level, as you say, the best you could do is not getting more powerful but not getting weaker relative to your enemies. This is a flaw, but it is an RPG's flaw. If the game really was an action game in which character stats don't matter, there wouldn't be a leveling problem. The leveling problem comes from characters with stats that are too low as a result of poor character planning. That strong emphasis on character stats is both a flaw and proof that the game is an RPG. Enemies don't scale to your stats http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Creatures Many enemies will eventually be surpassed in power, but many continue to grow levels with you, but while gaining more stats per level than a character who doesn't use some form of efficient leveling. Oblivion is NOT an action game, and that is not an opinion or a negotiable statement. It is a fact. Character stats and character planning have NEVER been more important in the series, and yes, it is flawed, but it, undeniably, makes the game an RPG. In Daggerfall and Morrowind, by level 15, nothing is powerful enough to be a threat to me. At level 40 in Oblivion, if I planned my character poorly, goblins will trample all over me. Leveling can, in fact, make you better or worse at fighting. If you actually played Oblivion or looked into it instead of following the misguided view of "itz an acshun gaem" that gets tossed around, you would know that. It's not based on how good your reflexes are, because quite frankly, if you swing in your enemy's general direction, you will do as much damage as you will when you swing at their head, or their arm, or their foot. If character skill doesn't matter, then try fighting a level 40 goblin warlord with a bow, a marksman skill of 5, and a stealth skill of 5.

Character stats in Oblivion are very important, and it's more of a matter of keeping up with your enemies than them never being a factor. They are more important than they were in Daggerfall and Morrowind, because at higher levels, if you have poor skills in Oblivion, you will get slaughtered. That is not the case in Daggerfall and, to a greater degree, Morrowind, in which you always end up being a god in power. For that reason, I could easily claim Morrowind is an action game. The game's combat couldn't be easier above level 15, and therefore, character stats don't really matter.

Ewww. :yuck: Now you destroyed all my desire to play Oblivion by describing how awful the mechanics are in reality. So it will get worse if I play my way.

Oblivion might seem like an RPG but it is on the wrong side of the force.

I admit that is a major flaw, but as I said, it's the flaw of an RPG. I hate it, but everytime I efficiently level in Oblivion, I know I'm playing an RPG, an RPG whose RPG mechanics are so unforgiving that building up my character involves tedious efficient leveling, which becomes a chore. No action game ever does that.

It is not an action game, exactly. But I find myself pressing my mouse button overly with pressure or swinging my weapons a lot. Since I actually liked the FF8's http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Junction_System, I think I can do with the efficient leveling of Oblivion. Ohh, how much time I spent on first CD to gather enough spells but everyone's stats were all 99999 in the end. Except Irvine.

For me those stats were there only to acknowledge the system is working. I just use my short blade and see the increase and say "Oh, it is working then I'm doing it right!" and that's all. I never need to look back again. I'm not sure if I want to lose that aspect. I mean maybe I can just efficiently level to 30 or something and then actually start the game, similar to what I did in FF8?

It appears I will need mods. Lots of mods.

There is also the difficulty slider. I do the efficiently leveling to level 30 before actually playing the game thing, but it takes a while. After getting over that gaming hell, though, the game is open and fun.

No. That means the game is like MapleStory and unless you develop your character along a certain universally agreed upon skill and attribute tree, you'll never reach your maximum potential.

Then the same thing is true for Morrowind, because if you don't efficiently level in that game, you won't reach your full potential, but the utilization of that efficient leveling is more important to staying alive in Oblivion. People claim character stats in Oblivion don't matter and therefore, the game must be an action game. That is not the case. The character stats matter greatly, and my point is that if they didn't matter and the game really was about player reflexes, then the leveling problem wouldn't exist, yet it does, and it's one of Oblivion's greatest flaws.

On another note, I want a Daggerfall-esque leveling system back, but without the 4-6 stat increase per level, but rather a constant possible stat increase per level.

I have to disagree. I consider the series as a whole to be "sandbox action-RPG". You tend to take it upon yourself to be Oblivion's champion and defend it against all perceived criticism, but you're really stretching it when you argue against its action elements.

There are 21 skills in Oblivion. Of the 14 non-magic skills, 5 are not explicitly combat-based; athletics, security, sneak, mercantile, and speechcraft. Security and Speechcraft are nearly useless due to being dominated by their respective minigames, the latter made more so by a lack of any important or difficult dialogue situations where you might need it. Half of sneak's function is combat-related, and 3 of its 5 perks are as well. Mercantile is useless thanks to a nonexistent economy, and the fact that it's raised only by selling things (NOT by haggling or anything else, though "anything else" pretty much doesn't exist), making it function pretty much the same for all characters. Athletics doesn't have a lot of point with fast travel, and if you're not inside a city, almost all locations you can possibly be walking to are monster-filled dungeons.

Of the 85 spell effects in the game (not counting restoration, or alchemy, which can functionally replace almost all skills), only 10 have any use outside of combat; chameleon, invisibility, light, night-eye, detect life, telekinesis, feather, open, water breathing, and water walking. Even then it occupies much of their use; if you're not using invisibility to be unseen doing something illegal, escaping monsters is about the only other use. I've never used light/detection spells outside of dark dungeons to better see what I'm fighting, or feather for anything but carrying the loot I got from all my dungeon-diving. Restoration's extra 25 effects can largely be used anywhere, but again, the majority of their function is combat. You only catch diseases in combat. Stats (and thus fortification) have almost no use outside of combat. The vast majority of health loss, and subsequently healing, comes from combat. So yes, I can negotiate your opinion on whether it is an action game. Oblivion has a very, very heavy emphasis on combat.

Planning, in your words, is important because raising your level with non-combat skills will cause the enemies that scale to become too difficult for your non-combat character. The argument that this somehow makes the game more of an RPG is completely empty. It's poor balancing and nothing more. The average FPS, obviously, expects you to pick up a gun and start shooting enemies. The fact that you can avoid guns and ammo and as a result probably die unpleasantly does not make the game an RPG. I consider player choices to be vital to whether something is an RPG. That awkward scaling reduces choices by punishing you for straying from specific options. This does not help the game as an RPG. That you would call them "unforgiving RPG mechanics" is baffling. Any genre can limit your options with crippled mechanics.

Now, Morrowind is much the same here. I can't speak for Daggerfall or Arena or the non-numbered games. There is stealing (most of which is for loot that's either useful in combat, or can be sold for money that can be spent almost solely on items useful in combat), exploration (for either interesting things to look at, or dungeons), and combat. Not much else. I would say that just about the only reasons I'd consider Oblivion to have a higher combat emphasis is less dialogue (albeit equally unimportant), fewer cities (thus less stealing), and the minigames that make it pointless to train in the few non-combat skills available. Much of that, even, are balancing matters more than fundamental changes.

By all means defend Oblivion from unfair attacks, but I don't think an action emphasis is one of them. Claimed to have far more of one than Morrowind, sure, but not in general.

I don't deny that it is an action-RPG, but the "Morrowind is an RPG while Oblivion is an action game" claim is what I dislike, and you do not disagree with that, do you? What about the "Morrowind's combat is character skill based while Oblivion's is player skill based"? Do you believe that Oblivion is in a different genre than Morrowind? By action-RPG, you're still acknowledging that it is an RPG and not an action game(not a pure action), are you not? I only care about the unfair claims favored towards Morrowind that you also seem to disagree with, for the most part, because I agree, the entire series is a sandbox action-RPG series, but I don't agree that, somehow, Morrowind is an RPG while Oblivion is an action game that's all about player skill and reflexes.

Arena is pretty action-y, as well, but has no character skills at all, so I would say it is even more of an action type of game. Daggerfall has more non-combat based skills than both Morrowind and Oblivion, but it is also pretty big on action(a lot of killing involved with almost all quests, and no alternatives). Daggerfall is probably the least combat-oriented game of the series, but not by much. Battlespire is one big dungeon crawl, so it's pretty big on action, but it's character creation system is good from what I've read, and Redguard is an action-adventure game.

Well, to be fair, Oblivion is a lot more player skill based rather than character skilled based. In Morrowind if I tried to kill a level 40 monster with a longsword and I'm only level 10 in long blade...I'll get my ass kicked. In Oblivion, the stats affect the amount of damage you do, but I could still take down a level 40 monster with a level 10 long blade blade skill, as long as I have good reflexes and plenty of health potions. While in Morrowind, if I have a low long blade skill and try to take down a level 40 monster with it...My character would keep succumbing to all of the dodges and whatnot that enemy would do.

I'm not saying that Morrowind's system is better, and I'm not saying that Oblivion's system is better. All I'm saying is that Oblivion is based more on player skill rather than character skill.

Sorry for any typos or grammatical issues, it's 2:00 AM and I'm really tired.