Just started Morrowind - things I've noticed Skyrim doesn't : III - Morrowind

» Sun Nov 27, 2011 9:02 pm

- More diversity in NPC races.

What?

» Mon Nov 28, 2011 9:28 am

Just one question - what's the MGO modpack?
I'm also starting to think to get a feeling of morrowind again (I didn't play it for few years), and compare the two.

http://morrowindoverhaul.net/blog/

» Mon Nov 28, 2011 12:56 am

Just one question - what's the MGO modpack?
I'm also starting to think to get a feeling of morrowind again (I didn't play it for few years), and compare the two.

MGSO http://morrowindoverhaul.net/blog/ . Warning, I had to upgrade my FO3 capable graphics card to play with this!
-----------------------------------------------------------

Now, slightly on topic. Are we to burn the Mona Lisa because Dali ate some cheese or Hirst pickled a sheep ?

Opinion: Skyrim is a great, fun game and a technical tour de force.
Opinion: There are still some things Morrowind does better than Sk.

Conjecture: If some simple things, dungeon ambient noise for example, were on a par with Mw then Sk would be even better.
Conjecture: If some more complex things, NPC disposition and the way it was conveyed for example, were on a par with Mw then Sk would be even better.

Opinion: Mw supported many different character builds - a benefit of the semi-leveled world.
Opinion: Mw attribute system allowed mush greater fine tuning of character builds.
Opinion: The flexibility of Mw's enchanting and alchemy further enhanced the variety of viable character builds, though I grant you this could be abused.

Conjecture: Sk would be an even better RPG experience if it provided support for more varied character builds.

Opinion: The far greater diversity in (almost?) all item types helped make the world of Mw credible.
Opinion: The Mw progression through guilds felt very satisfying adding credibility to the players place in the world.
Opinion: The feeling of political tension between various factions added credibility to the world.

Conjecture: The world of Skyrim could be made even more credible.

Opinion: MW put you the player in charge of the way you wanted to play the game. Sadly some fail to, or are unable to appreciate this.
Opinion: In many ways, Skyrim is a game designed to be played the way the devs intended it to be played. This is not necessarily a bad thing given some of the target audience.

Fact: I'm enjoying Skyrim.
Opinion: It could be even better.

------------------------------------

Quick edit:

I wonder why people say that mods are the reason why morrowind was so succesful. I played that game like hell but didn't use many mods, i think balmora expansion was my only one. Same with oblivion.

^^ I love this.

Morrowind is the reason why the mods are so successful.

» Sun Nov 27, 2011 11:46 pm

I'll start off by saying that I love MW. It was the first game I played where I feel truly on my own. However, it also did have its bad points to it. Skyrim does some things good and some things worse than MW. Any game that has sequels will have people that live pt 1 better than pt 2 or vice versa. Personally I don't like the 'magic compass' and prefer to find it using vague directions or just a mark on the map. But I know it can be very frustrating as well when you spend 20 minutes trying to find a cave due to poor directions.

Simply the game changes between chapters. What one person likes another may not. Play the game and live it how you want.

» Sun Nov 27, 2011 7:37 pm

9/10 RPG fans do not like FPS so that advice is terrible and you're just trolling.

THIS is a big part of the reason for all of the "nostalgia". Skyrim is apparently a great "COMBAT/rpg", while Morrowind was a great "RPG/combat" game. The difference in focus appeals to different audiences, with some overlap. Saying you like one or the other doesn't necessarily mean one game is "better", just that it better suits your playing style. Insulting someone for liking the other style of play is neither a sign of tact and intelligence, nor acceptable behavior on this forum.

Many of the criticism about the later games, like FT, aren't merely that FT exists, but that it was all but required in the next game. MW gave you a fairly detailed set of directions, and relied on you following them and searching a bit in the process. Oblivion gave you a big, annoying compass arrow and often useless directions: "It's west of here" when it was half-way across the province in a NW direction, which limited the location to about 1/3 of the map. If you mod out the compass, you'll simply never find the objective except by sheer luck. Skyrim, with the OPTION to take carriage transport, at least allows you to RP your character arranging and making the trip in safety and comfort, whereas OB merely "skipped" the whole event. - BTW, MW did have a compass in the center of the mini-map, but it was ONLY a compass, not a "magical homing beacon". That's not to say that MW didn't have plenty of room for improvement, or that Skyrim hasn't added new features and ideas, but the loss of so many things between titles is a price that obviously many players don't feel is worth it.

It sounds like Skyrim "fixed" a few of the RP issues with OB, but created a few new ones. The "punishment" for RP due to "inefficient" levelling unless you focus on combat-related skills, along with the limited starting options for the character, make it a weaker RPG, although they aren't even a concern for combat gamers. If they don't affect you, that's fine, but don't insist that they aren't there.

» Sun Nov 27, 2011 9:00 pm

I remember the first time I played Morrowind, I got to the orc-lady with the rat problem. Got absolutely [censored] by the rat. Hated the journal in MW though. Was hell to navigate. Especially if you hadn't played for a while and forgotten what you were doing.

I actually really liked the journal, though that was from a time before TES became less text based. Did I remember properly what an npc told me? Check journal. Could I have forgotten some detail? Check journal. Am I curious what was going on at the time of an old quest? Check journal. I can see it being overwhelming though,

» Mon Nov 28, 2011 6:54 am

In Skyrim you CAN get an extreme feeling of vulnerability.Both smithing and enchanting should be removed from the game, they are utter game destroyers and who ever developed them at Bethesda should be sacked for lack of understanding what games in its essence is all about. Hard words, but true.

My character who leveled both does have a sense of vulnerability, but only because of the Apprentice sign. I almost want to avoid resist magic enchantments because I worry without having the "kryptonite" of enemy magic that nothing will endanger my breton tank mage, at least until a mod adds more randomly patrolling powerful enemies so powerful, that extremely high quality gear isn't a thing that makes you immortal, but instead the only possible way to even survive. I'm sure someone will add a mod that makes randomly patrolling super powerful enemies, that makes the smithing/enchanting character (even a highly defensive one) actually feel gravely endangered. I'd like to fight enemies where unless someone stacks enchantments/top tier gear/prepares an ambush with just the right timing/spells/etc/ that there isn't even a chance of survival. For now until then, I've at least got the challenge of nearly every caster one shotting me.

» Mon Nov 28, 2011 8:29 am

Neither Oblivion nor Skyrim hold a candle to Morrowind, in particular Skyrim. When you manage to do this in Skyrim, or Oblivion for that matter, give me a call:

[img]http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/3595/morrowind20111122223104.jpg[/img]

» Mon Nov 28, 2011 8:48 am

The definition of nostalgia is 1. A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past. 2. The condition of being homesick; homesickness.
What you'll notice is that those who liked elements from Morrowind aren't suffering the second, and that if they are suffering the first, then it is completely valid.
If someone changes something to make it perceptibly and definably worse (and the reasons are being presented all over the boards), and can present the exact points that make it bad, then they are justified.

Saying "it's nostalgia" and "this is better" isn't presenting an argument against the incredibly similar complaints all these people are having. As such, wouldn't it be necessary, therefore, to stop saying "nostalgia" like its some winning card and start trying to prove why making the game easier and less challenging is better (and doing so without falling into the trap of admitting you want to just hack things to death with your sword).

Similarly, people on the boards after MW was released weren't complaining about anything more than the combat third person inconsistencies. The complaints that absolutely dominated the boards after OB was released are exactly the same you're seeing here today. Fast travel and GPS. You'll notice that for these complaints to last FIVE years, they're pretty big ones.

Also, Morrowind wasn't dubbed "worst in the series" (please provide me ANY source that said this). Games that are worst in the series don't spark a huge modding community and legions of psychotically passionate fans. The mods have just given MW a playability, graphically and otherwise beyond 2002-2003. MW was an amazing game, and is an amazing game as a vanilla game, but it's also an amazing blank canvas on which mods were able to be made.

The answer is really simply to get rid of 80% of the complaints on the boards. Scrap or limit fast travel (why the hell do the carriages exist in the game beyond the first hour?), get rid of compass markers and the majority of map markers (especially for the bloody "ancient, hidden, unseen cave that is rumoured to exist, but I've marked on your map!") and you'll find a lot of happy people. And guess what, I bet that no new player would complain at all about being "forced" to actually walk across the amazingly beautiful landscape they've created, and you'd sure as hell satisfy all the old players who are sick of the default being "special school mode".

I cannot find you quotes because the Morrowind fourms do not go back that far anymore. Anybody who was around at that time remembers how bad the forums were and how badly MW was slapped around for being a dumbed down Daggerfall. It was an endless barrage of attacks towards the game. /shrug. I'm sure there are plenty of people here who remember those dark days on the forums (Morrowinds release).

» Mon Nov 28, 2011 2:18 am

I cannot find you quotes because the Morrowind fourms do not go back that far anymore. Anybody who was around at that time remembers how bad the forums were and how badly MW was slapped around for being a dumbed down Daggerfall. It was an endless barrage of attacks towards the game. /shrug. I'm sure there are plenty of people here who remember those dark days on the forums (Morrowinds release).

I was around back then. I was even around back before MW was released, on the old forums. Morrowind wasn't berated as much as you're implying - maybe because the fanbase back then was smaller. Certainly there was a lot of complaining about MW being dumbed down, but it wasn't really overwhelming. Just like how the negativity in the Skyrim forums right isn't overwhelming.

Oblivion's forums, on the other hand, well, that's a different story...

» Mon Nov 28, 2011 1:12 am

Neither Oblivion nor Skyrim hold a candle to Morrowind, in particular Skyrim. When you manage to do this in Skyrim, or Oblivion for that matter, give me a call:

[img]http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/3595/morrowind20111122223104.jpg[/img]

so you want to be able to hoard books in Skyrim?

» Sun Nov 27, 2011 6:22 pm

so you want to be able to hoard books in Skyrim?

Don't we all?
Storing your stuff in your house is like 25% of Elder Scrolls games...

» Mon Nov 28, 2011 9:28 am

so you want to be able to hoard books in Skyrim?

Why ask, when you know the answer. Everything on those two bookshelves, which I built by myself for my one-room home with CS, is placed, in-game, by me. All of it. This is what I do, because I like it. Even with an insanely modded Oblivion, I couldn't get close to that, and I fear Skyrim will be worse, two year down the lane.

But being able to properly placing things in the world, is just the tip of the iceberg; Morrowind, in my opinion, owns both Oblivion and especially Skyrim, which I think is pretty bland, to be honest. Overall, I would give these points, on a scale of 0-10, to the last three Elder Scroll games:

10 Morrowind
8 Oblivion
6 Skyrim

» Sun Nov 27, 2011 10:45 pm

In Morrowind it's so much easier to turn a house into a home. I was never able to do this in Oblivion, and I don't think I'll be able to do it in Skyrim.

I miss walking into my house and seeing my Dagoth soul gem collection, my full set of Daedric armor (that I had to wait until Bloodmoon to complete - oh how giddy I was when I discovered that right pauldron), my hidden box full of ash statues, all my books lined up on my shelf the way I want them to...

Morrowind's things-gets-stapled-down-when-you-drop-them system, while very primitive, worked really well. The new system in which things apparently drop from the air is a disaster.

» Mon Nov 28, 2011 12:32 am

I'm an advlt, I have a career, I have a girlfriend and I have mates, I also have interests away from the PC. I'm lucky if I get and hour or 2 of game time in the evening. when I play a PC game I don't want to be forced into an incredibly slow paced style of play, running back and forth, despretaly trying to remember/find the quest giver, just because some elitist whiney mongtard without a decent social life has too much time on his hands and can't restrain himself from clicking fast travel.

Oath. I love running around the map, exploring new places, but when the call comes in saying "Hey, job tomorrow. Plenty of pay, just operate this ride." I go to bed. When the friends say "Beer and rock n' roll right now.", I switch off the console. When the girlfriend says "I'll be over in five minutes and I had a [censored] day and need to unwind with freakiness" - I use fast-travel. I can't always spend an hour or two looking for the right yurt in an empty desert whilst being attacked by cliff racers.

(Morrowind happens to be one of my favourite games of all time.)

» Sun Nov 27, 2011 8:46 pm

MGSO http://morrowindoverhaul.net/blog/ . Warning, I had to upgrade my FO3 capable graphics card to play with this!
-----------------------------------------------------------

Now, slightly on topic. Are we to burn the Mona Lisa because Dali ate some cheese or Hirst pickled a sheep ?

Opinion: Skyrim is a great, fun game and a technical tour de force.
Opinion: There are still some things Morrowind does better than Sk.

Conjecture: If some simple things, dungeon ambient noise for example, were on a par with Mw then Sk would be even better.
Conjecture: If some more complex things, NPC disposition and the way it was conveyed for example, were on a par with Mw then Sk would be even better.

Opinion: Mw supported many different character builds - a benefit of the semi-leveled world.
Opinion: Mw attribute system allowed mush greater fine tuning of character builds.
Opinion: The flexibility of Mw's enchanting and alchemy further enhanced the variety of viable character builds, though I grant you this could be abused.

Conjecture: Sk would be an even better RPG experience if it provided support for more varied character builds.

Opinion: The far greater diversity in (almost?) all item types helped make the world of Mw credible.
Opinion: The Mw progression through guilds felt very satisfying adding credibility to the players place in the world.
Opinion: The feeling of political tension between various factions added credibility to the world.

Conjecture: The world of Skyrim could be made even more credible.

Opinion: MW put you the player in charge of the way you wanted to play the game. Sadly some fail to, or are unable to appreciate this.
Opinion: In many ways, Skyrim is a game designed to be played the way the devs intended it to be played. This is not necessarily a bad thing given some of the target audience.

Fact: I'm enjoying Skyrim.
Opinion: It could be even better.

------------------------------------

Quick edit:

^^ I love this.

Morrowind is the reason why the mods are so successful.

This is hitting the nail on the head.

People are getting confused and think anyone who liked Morrowind is polarised between loving only Morrowind, or only Skyrim.
If I had Skyrim with these added or retained traits, I believe the game would be much, much more immersive and I believe that having them in the game, with the option to use them unrestricted at any time is immersion breaking, and it worries me that these things to make the game easier and faster are becoming the norm. It's as simple as that.

Similarly, I find the odd argument presented to me when I talk about things such as the removal of fast travel.
People say "I'm an advlt, I have too little time to walk anywhere, etc etc", and when I say that I breezed through every questline and a majority of the smaller ones in about forty hours (which is fast for a TES game) they say "slow down then, take time to walk around and look at stuff", or "you're not playing the game properly". If I'm playing at the speed I usually do (which is pretty leisurely and generally follows whichever story I'm currently interested in), with the game mechanics available to me, then I am playing the game properly. But then again, it's these type of spurious, anecdotal dismissals of any complaint that marks the hallmark of the "I'm too busy to play a typically 100 hour rpg, BUT, I amazingly have a right to talk about it given the fact that, if what I say is true, I'm about six hours in".

Lastly, I too am an advlt, in a relationship and I work, and I've found time to play a good chunk. I don't limit myself to reading James Patterson novels because War and Peace wouldn't give me as fast satisfaction. This argument is that same as saying that McDonalds is better than a haute cuisine restaurant because it delivers faster, quicker satisfaction than a three hour degustation at El Bulli.

Similarly, there are millions of games to cater to the quick release crowd.

» Sun Nov 27, 2011 10:46 pm

Don't we all?
Storing your stuff in your house is like 25% of Elder Scrolls games...

never fussed over my house in Morrowind, Oblivion or Skyrim.

» Mon Nov 28, 2011 1:41 am

I cannot find you quotes because the Morrowind fourms do not go back that far anymore. Anybody who was around at that time remembers how bad the forums were and how badly MW was slapped around for being a dumbed down Daggerfall. It was an endless barrage of attacks towards the game. /shrug. I'm sure there are plenty of people here who remember those dark days on the forums (Morrowinds release).

I don't doubt that you saw such posts, but I was around these and other forums at the time (though only as a reader; don't usually like to register). I honestly don't recall seeing comments about Morrowind being dumbed down. What you may be remembering are the complaints that guild access was dumbed down, made far easier. As you'll recall, once you joined a Daggerfall guild you only gained access to its basic services. You had to advance significantly to enjoy more benefits. In Morrowind, you gained access to everything at once. -That said, Morrowind was also more difficult than Daggefall, because the later game removed the cookie cutter series of quests for each guild (8-10 in number) and the cookie cutter dungeon layouts. You didn't know what to expect when you entered any dungeon/cave/etc in Morrowind, and my first character, taking a swim off Seyda Neen, found a cave on an island, took a look inside, and was immediately killed by mummies. Caves and such in Morrowind were generally not scaled to character, where they often were in Daggerfall and Arena--which made Morrowind more difficult in that respect.

Skyrim has a compass, a spell that shows you the exact path to go to your destination, dungeons that are scaled within a few levels to your character, alchemy that always succeeds, attacks that always succeed, enchanting always succeeds, and character creation that requires very little forethought. It can and should be argued that none of these make Skyrim a bad game. But it is a simpler one than Morrowind, and players who want the complexity of the earlier game may find themselves disappointed in the later one. This doesn't make them wrong, or right. All of this is simply a matter of personal preferences--opinions.

For the record: I think Morrowind is the best thing gamesas has done. Some things are done better in Oblivion, others in Skyrim--and even one or two in Daggerfall. None of these are bad games. I have no problems with anybody who prefers one of the others, and frankly would find it a very tiresome world if everybody thought as I did.

» Sun Nov 27, 2011 8:21 pm

delete

» Sun Nov 27, 2011 7:41 pm

Neither Oblivion nor Skyrim hold a candle to Morrowind, in particular Skyrim. When you manage to do this in Skyrim, or Oblivion for that matter, give me a call:

[img]http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/3595/morrowind20111122223104.jpg[/img]

Which book mod is that?

» Sun Nov 27, 2011 5:32 pm

As if Morrowind getting gushed about in the Oblivion Forums on release wasn't enough, here we are a decade later with Skyrim, still gushing about Mororwind.

It was a decent game for it's time, but really? :dry:

Another Morrowind praising thread.. move along....

I'm confused. Did this thread get moved? Cause it's now in the Morrowind section. Which means we have Skyrim and Oblivion [censored] coming to a forum for a decade old game to get defensive? Really?

» Sun Nov 27, 2011 9:08 pm

I think that rather than focusing on perfecting the gameplay experience with each new release, the temptation is just too great to make use of new technology and focus on graphics and animations. Not that those aren't appreciated, but if I had 4 years to make a new game, would I spent it making the perfect interface, story line, and setting.....or would I spend it maximizing the new graphic tech that is suddenly available?

People are out there ripping the graphics on Skyrim, saying they haven't come far enough. Some people would apparently prefer a movie to a game. That's fine, but for me personally, I would be fine if gamesas had never released Oblivion or Skyrim and just released a dozen expansion packs to Morrowind. Call me crazy.

» Mon Nov 28, 2011 12:01 am

People are out there ripping the graphics on Skyrim, saying they haven't come far enough. Some people would apparently prefer a movie to a game. That's fine, but for me personally, I would be fine if gamesas had never released Oblivion or Skyrim and just released a dozen expansion packs to Morrowind. Call me crazy.

How awesome would it have been to get expansion packs that gradually filled up all of Morrowind, instead of just Vvardenfell, Solstheim and part of Mournhold?

» Sun Nov 27, 2011 9:20 pm

Just got the TES bug after buying Skyrim so I blew the dust off a very old copy of Morrowind, added the MGO mod pack and I'm blown away. Some things have lept out at me in the first couple of hours mucking about in Seda Neen -

(1) In MW I feel very "unsafe"....the atmosphere and sounds seem very oppressive and everything feels very alien...stepping outside a town just feels so risky...
(2) No handholding - nothing to say "STEAL" when you mouse over an item
(3) Feels very hardcoe...I really do feel like a complete child struggling to kill mudcrabs
(4)

So far so amazing...gonna play them both in parallel but I would def. say that Skyrim is missing "something" that sets MW apart.

Morrowind kept scaling to a minimum--largely in outdoor random encounters, and in some of the last dungeons. Most of the game consisted of hundreds of caves, caverns, etc, each of which was part of its own (or a group) "mini-plot" with specifically chosen enemies of a certain level. Your character's too low to fight them? Too bad. When you saw that mummy coming at your fresh-off-the-boat-in-Seyda-Neen character, you should have run away. Got a high level character? Go ahead, check out the Dwarven strongholds. Smirk at how easily you deal with most threats. You've earned it.

By contrast, Oblivion is scales directly to character, and most dungeons simply fill with monsters, then refill later. There's no attempt to create an appropriate mini-plot. The enemies are fodder to level and provide booty. That's all. Of roleplaying atmosphere and real danger, there's little. Skyrim changes this back to hard-leveled dungeons, though the levels will scale a bit towards the character. (If your character is level 8 and you're in a dungeon set for level 15-20, you'll encounter enemies who are level 15.) There's again no attempt to create mini-plots, and all dungeons refill.

I can understand the preference of those who just want endless hack-and-slash, but mine lie towards roleplaying environments. Which is why I prefer Morrowind, like the need to save up for alchemy equipment, run the risk of enchantment failure, miss frequently with weapons, etc. Each to their own. All three games have their adherents. Those are just my choices.

» Mon Nov 28, 2011 12:39 am

I kinda liked Morrowing back when it first came out because I felt it challenged the mind more than the average game. This was no game for CoD fans. The one main gripe I did have about Morrowind was the strange alien looking enviroments and creatures. It seemed more a Sci-fi game. You had these dog looking creatures with strange tentacles coming out of their face (cant remember their name as I haven't played the game in years). Then you had this bizarre looking insect with long legs that would transport you between cities. Vampires didn't resemble vampires at all. If I remember correctly they were skeletons wearing a robe. The game lacked many of the attributes that would classify it as a fantasy game.

Arena, Daggerfall, and Oblivion had a strong fantasy look and feel to them. As far as appearances went, I was pretty disappointed with Morrowind.