This x2.

I have Seti's mentality when it comes to mods too, that it ruins a sort of "purity" of the game.

The problem is the game isn't pure to begin with. It's deeply flawed even by its own standards of lore, etc.

Bethesda is composed of human beings. Mods are written by human beings.

Bethesda humans have time pressure and meddling management. Modders don't.

Sometimes mods really CAN offer a deeper, more TES'y experience than Bethesda's writers.

Not to go too off-topic, but there's also the fact that writers of a long running series of any type can decide that they no longer like something they came up with a long time ago.

So, the contradictions in lore aren't always laziness or the like. Because when you invent a world, it's gonna be close to your heart and, therefore, change as you change.

i still play morrowind and oblivion on my xbox

:banghead: I had a long post almost completed describing my opinion about mods, and I accidentally hit backspace and lost the whole thing.

Here's a synopsis. I don't feel as if anyone knows lore more than Bethesda. What they make is accepted by me as canon. The jungle-like Cyrodiil being turned into what it is now is accepted as canon by me. If Hammerfell was turned into a winter wonderland, I would accept it as being canon. For inconsitencies, I make up my own explanations or ignore them, but I never want to change them with mods. I don't want change game mechanics, not even the ones I loathe. Even though I dislike Oblivion's level-scaling system, I wouldn't change it, even if I could.

I wrote much more than that, but it's gone.

Scaling is a very good thing to have in games. Especially open-ended sandbox-style games like any of the main TES games.

That said, like anything else, it ought be somewhat invisible. If I enter a daedric shrine in Morrowind at a low level, I encounter some scamps that I can mop the floor with and then OH MY GOD, THE NPCS TAKE OUT 3/4ths OF MY HEALTH IN ONE HIT IN MELEE -- WHICH IS BETTER THAN THE SPELLS THEY CAST WHICH DRAIN MY HEALTH FASTER THAN I CAN DRINK HEALING POTIONS, MUCH LESS HEALING SPELLS!!! If I start a new game and skip that daedric ruin until I'm at a relatively high level, I can mop the floor with those stupid NPCs. It is the occasional Daedroth or Golden Saint that really gives me a run for my money, especially in combination with those weak NPCs who can still do enough damage to push me over the edge while I'm focusing on the enemies that can really kill me.

Either way it is (ideally) not like I get to mop the floor with the place. But Daedric ruins go from being essentially inaccessible to a fight I can slog my way through. The problem with Oblivion is that there aren't any stators like the NPCs in Morrowind, so the leveled list is very in-my-face.

Daggerfall also had a workable leveling system. It is rare, but you can encounter something entirely inappropriate for your level. You are wandering around a dungeon and you hear what sounds like a skeleton, but somehow more menacing. The green player isn't afraid of a skeleton! And is then dead, staring at the feet of an Ancient Lich. A new player is experienced enough to know something is awry, but doesn't know precisely what that is until they are dead and staring at the feet of an ancient lich. A moderately experienced player starts screaming like a little girl and running around, hoping to avoid the ancient lich (which is actually pretty easy since they get stuck in walls a lot, because Daggerfall is a deeply broken game). The truly experienced player laughs the noise off and convinces the ancient lich to explode itself, because Daggerfall is a deeply broken game. Had Daggerfall been done in the modern video-gaming era, it is reasonable to assume that the response of the "moderately experienced" player is the correct one. Maybe even without it following you too closely (AKA getting stuck in a wall). In Daggerfall, quests are time-sensitive and it is also OK if you don't complete them. So, if you encountered an unbeatable monster, well, it kinda svcks but that is life. Sometimes you bite off more than you can chew. Go back to the guild with your tail between your legs (literally if you are what will become the "beast" races) and the hopes that you will recover from this embrarassment. Or don't live with the shame, and go to a completely different province to start your life anew!

Lots of different options to make leveled lists invisible but still able to fulfill their function.

This may be off-topic, but when I first started playing Daggerfall, I encountered, with a level 4 knight character, an ancient lich, but I survived the encounter. It blew up, killing itself and leaving my character with barely any health. That was fun.

Well, here's a screenie of http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v620/thelobo/Picture5.png?t=1275961172 in Arena. In case you were wondering what it "originally" looked like.

However, keep in mind that Tamriel and its lore were invented by a group of people, not even a quarter of the size of Oblivion's development staff. So, a lot of people at Bethesda, currently, haven't been with Tamriel from the beginning.

Another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of modders have read all the in-game books and dialogue and the imperial guide. Tamriel Rebuilt, for example, is very Morrowindy.

I remember being very skeptical and then pretty impressed. I was walking through the wilderness thinking, "if this was vanilla Morrowind, some ashlanders would have attacked me by now." Then, literally at that moment, some ashlanders attack me.

One of the first things I did when I first started playing Arena was to check out the Imperial City and Cyrodiil. I'm aware of Tamriel's origins(DnD world) and I read somewhere that 17 people created Arena, but from another source, I found out that over 80% of Daggerfall's development team are still at Bethesda and Todd has been at Bethesda since Arena's development. They're probably aware of any lore inconsistencies, and so I'm sure there are valid reasons for changes(mostly due to limited resources). Still, when I think of the Imperial City, I think of Oblivion's version instead of Arena's version. Maybe it's just me, but believable areas didn't seem to be too important back in the 90's when it came to video games. The Imperial Dungeons in Arena didn't appear to be dungeons, and Daggerfall's dungeons make absolutely no sense as once usable structures.

I don't know what you're looking at, but I think they look alike.

I think Oblivion's opening was obviously an homage to Arena's opening. And I think Arena's Cyrodil looks like Oblivion's Cyrodil, except no piles of hay.

Look at the screenie, it's no jungle. It looks like Maryland.

I know it is not a jungle. The Imperial City is different, though.

Yeah, but c'mon, this is Arena. Almost everything in Arena has been ret-conned in some way.

What art thou speakingst ofith?

What isth thy Solstheim? What isth thy Imperial? What isth thy lizard man our thou cat man?

God it's hard speaking like that.

Visit Morrowind in Arena and look where Ebonheart is. Then, you'll know what he means.

And I think the Imperial City is different just because every city looks alike in Arena. I was just talking about the wilderness. It's Maryland, just like in Oblivion... and FO3, come to think about it. See a trend?

The Elderscrolls Five: Baltimore
lol

The location difference? I was just joking around by speaking in Arena's version of Cyrodiilic.

They're located in different spots.

Changes like that aren't too uncommon, are they? Just during the last year of Oblivion's development Sutch changed locations.

I know. The made me mad...I wanted my Sutch. :cryvaultboy:

But yeah, there were a lot of other changes since then too. Such as Imperials, lizard-like Argonians, cat-like Khajiit, friendly Orcs, the Imperial City difference, and much more.

it does, in everything but its completely broken game mechanics.

Combat is better, choice of weapons is better, archery is better, the storyline and enviroment are better, but everything is so easy that it takes a conscious effort to keep the game challenging . If you are just interested in roleplaying then the restrictions of oblivion aid that. Sure oblivion is a boring medieval setting with a brain dead mainquest, but creating and playing characters is much easier. Yes leveling is less than perfect, but the economy and basic game mechanics can't be manipulated as easily as Morrowind making role playing feel more natural.

I thought the same thing at first, but trust me, it's worth it.

Opinions. Morrowind's game mechanics were what you would expect from an RPG. While Oblivion's game mechanics are more suited toward an action game, which is closer to what Oblivion is.

I don't see whats wrong with Morrowind's game mechanics.

I usually call myself, a TES gamer, not in particularly any specific game. I hate the bias, at least the ignorant bias, and usually fight it whenever I see it. I started with Oblivion and was very disappointed with morrowind after having heard about it on the forums. It's wasn't that it was bad, Morrowind is amazing, but it's not what it's made out to be and I think I would have enjoyed it more, had I just randomly started playing it.

I don't particularly mind people who prefer morrowind, I only mind it when people attack the people who prefer Oblivion, or attack Oblivion with bad arguments. Once you've played both games extensively, it becomes easy to distinguish real critical thinking about the mechanics about either game, from what is simply disguised bashing or praising. Usually though, it doesn't have anything to do with the actual games, it's more about the peoples hidden discrimination or generalization. It's usually the terms which are thrown around in these discussions that I disagree with. Oblivion is for example not a casual game, and morrowind is not only for hardcoe gamers, and usually the people who use these terms use them wrong IMO.

I do have a Morrowind bias, and it does seem to be that way a lot, and I think I have a guess.

• Morrowind is the awesomest RPG I've played. So you do have that one spot-on.
  
• Morrowind is the kind of "love it or hate it" game. People who outright hate it would likely not become TES fans on the whole, so they wouldn't play other games and come here for those. So most people here who played it first are the "love it" group, which is a lasting fanbase, and those few who say "Morrowind is alright" are the ones who started elsewhere..
  
• The Oblivion for Xbox thing I think is the opposite. I, at least, came to TES because Morowind made it widely available to non-PC gamers like myself, meaning TESIII was the first "widespread" TES game, meaning more people found it than Daggerfall.
  
• Morrowind, being the first TES game console users had, was the "access RPG" for people who were beginning to want more than mindless action from their fantasy games, and Zelda is just one series, and a Nintendo-exclusive to boot. So it was a good fantasy on the Xbox.
  
• A lot of the more esoteric lore was made in Morrowind. So a lot of the lore-folk are Morrowind people as well, at least those who acknowledge that TES is primarily a game series without wailing and gnashing of teeth.
  
• Daggerfall was great, but buggy as hell. So many older Daggerfall fans either hated it for shrinking down and being "less politics, more mythology" or loved it for being more focused and clean.

So there are a lot of reasons.

Well, that's people for you. If there are two sides and one has a majority, for the people on the winning side, it's proof that their opinion is "better." For people on the other side, it's a "bias."

Yeah pretty much, Don't even get me started on the appeal to popularity fallacy.