/\/\/\
miss
miss
miss
miss
miss
Hit
killed by rat

No, just no.
Most of the people I know think oblivions magic system is miles above morrowinds.
Though I do miss levitation.
I don't care if they add invisible walls above citys,I want to levitate.
Love how feather lasts a while instead of thirty seconds in oblivion,feather is useless in morrowind.

I must be in the .00004% of the population that really didn't care for Levitate at all.

Sure, it's something not possible without magic (or extreme electromagnetic forces), but it just is, well, "blah". If it has to come back, it needs to be "difficult as hell" to get, and "only works within narrow confines", otherwise it's just "Airwalk". I say "forget levitate, I want NPCs to sleep IN beds, not ON beds."

Actually, Morrowind's system is this:
miss
miss
miss
miss
miss
hit
miss
miss
kill rat
get attacked and killed by cliffracer(s)
:P

Even worse is you survive but guess what!
You caught a blight disease!
also there are two more cliffracers who just found you.

Oblivion's magic-fighting system was better.

But there was hardly any magic in Oblivion. The cut backs to the spell effects made me sad and the spell makers were hard for immersion.

But most of all, Morrowind's magic was more fun for me because of all the cool spell effects that ended up going away.

And by the way,
"miss
miss
miss
miss
miss
Hit
killed by rat"
- only happens when you have no idea what you are doing.
Don't bash a combat system you don't have the patience to figure out.

Just saying.

Imo i thought both combat systems were decent. Minor changes could really fix them. Simply adding Melee attack skills. I know there is on touch. but i mean like "your attack does an extra 30 damage- costs 45 magicka 8 second cooldown, or dot wounding strikes. The mages guild can teach you lots of magicka, why cant the fighters guild teach you melee skills?

Also dual wielding daggers. How many assasins/rogues/thiefs/ do you see whip out a dagger and shield? there pretty much useless because of the short range without dual.

These minor changes would change this "2D" combat system to "3D"


On a side note, i would also like to see a more diverse crafting system, alchemy is alright and all, but putting the armorer skill to use by crafting gear would be so sick.

because Morrowind's really IS junk, and I freakin loved that game. Fiore is right, but Oblivion is no special case. it's just amazing how many people will bash the sequel to a game they loved no matter how great it is, just because it's not what they were used to. like people claiming that the first super smash brosh is the best, the first diablo is best, etc. at a certain point you gotta draw the line and be objective. for example I prefer GTA vice city to San Andreas, but I'll admit that SA is a better game overall. sometimes sequel really ARE worse, like for example warlords 4 compared to 3, but those are rare. overall, with all its blatant flaws, oblivion is clearly the better game. hardcoe RPG fans will say otherwise, but that does not change reality. ( although I will admit that Morrowind is better for when it came out, it was just freakin incredible back then. but then you'd have to say that super mario bros 3 is the best game ever... it just doesn't work ) for example, I hate how you recover stamina WHILE RUNNING in oblivion, but it's undeniable that it makes the game more enjoyable. more gamey and casual, sure, and I generally hate that. but it's obviously more fun to run round instead of SLOWLY WALKING because you gotta save stamina for battles, a la morrowind. it's clearly positive for the gameplay. all in all, Fiore is right and Oblivion is bashed way too much. the sad thing is that it SHOULD be bashed for its shortcomings, but when people go berserk about it just because it wasn't morrowind they lose the chance to make construcitve criticism imho.

I shouldn't have to tailor every character design decision towards combat, in order to kill a rat. Not even 50% of your decisions, it's a rat. Even if I have no idea what I'm doing, the above situation should only happen when I extensively tailored my character towards non-combat. So in a funny way, the above situation should only happen when I know exactly what I've done with my character.

Case 1: I play a fighter-oriented character. Not being able to hit a Rat at least 40% of the time, even at Level 1, can only be because of gross incompetence or some other problem, like fighting with an empty fatigue bar, while diseased, or with a weapon you've never used before in your (short) life.

Case 2: I play a magic-oriented character. Of course I can't hit a Rat with a dagger or axe; that's what SPELLS are for. ZAP, one less Rat.

Case 3: I play a Stealth-based character. If the Rat is attacking you, you've already done something wrong. Besides, you should have some skill with a Dagger as "insurance", and high enough Agility to hit things with relative ease despite low weapon skills, so a Rat shouldn't be that big a deal.

Case 4: I play a wandering minstrel, chef, or librarian who is strongly against fighting. Apparently I should have listened to that Imperial's advice in the Census and Excise office and just taken the Silt Strider to Balmora. I'm obviously NOT geared up for fending off the local bandits or wildlife, and definitely shouldn't be wandering around some fetid swamp all by myself.

Morrowind's combat system was bad, but so was Oblivion's, for totally opposite reasons. The next TES installment really needs to incorporate elements of BOTH the character's skill AND the player's intentions. That means: more than the one standard attack that we had in OB (with the exact same nerfed damage EVERY time), a wider range of possible results than the hit/miss in MW (hit for FULL damage or miss completely), heavy but not TOTAL reliance on the character's skills (or you might as well just "auto-resolve" combat), and more animations for the various attacks, both successful and unsuccessful (so you don't have your weapon passing harmlessly and effortlessly through the opponent because the random result says "you missed"). The Oblivion players deriding Morrowind's weak combat system reminds me of a turtle calling a snail "slow", Yes, it's bad, but OB was more of a lateral shift than an improvement; going from a clunky and almost totally character-stat based system to one that ignored the character's stats almost completely, AND it was far less responsive than MW's combat. It's more "entertaining" at first, but quickly becomes just as annoying as (if not more than) the more primitive system it replaced. Something better is desperately needed in the next game.

You're not tailoring every character design decision to combat. Just only use a weapon your character has skill in.

Honestly, it's not rocket science. If you're missing that many times in a row and getting owned by a rat, there's something wrong with you and your brain, not the game. Don't mean to sound cruel, it's just true.

It's as if someone were to criticize the design of a car because they're too daft to figure out which key fits in the ignition.

Yeah. Mount & Blade's combat system is one of the better ones out there, though the game is severely hurt by it's limited scope. That would be awesome if there was something like that in TES V.

Only thing I didn't like about Morrowind's magic was that magicka didn't regenerate on it's own. Being based on fatigue was also kinda annoying, but that might have been my fault for jumping everywhere.... but I couldn't help it, in lieu of a horse it made travel so much faster. Of course, that problem was solved as soon as I got my first Golden Saint soul and enchanted a Restore Fatigue shirt that kept me at full fatigue even when I was bunny-hopping.

Still, bunny-hopping should never make a character more effective.

I feel Mount & Blade is what Morrowind would have been like, had they stayed truer to the spirit of Daggerfall. I don't mind a bland wilderness when it's that expansive and there are that many towns and villages. If they added dungeons, and temples to the divines and guilds and a main quest, it really would work well.

If the map is small, like Morrowind and Oblivion, though. They definitely should go the opposite and fill every inch of the wilderness with little personal details.

I don't understand why people get so uppity about the hit and miss things. Come on, you have low skill and agility, you're not going to hit anyone - that's the essence of RPG's. And more, it is abstracted, that's why the animation looks crappy, but I can live with it.

At higher levels, I can hit and kill practically anything. Seriously. I guess it's a symptom of Morrowind being the first Bethesda game to have truly caught with the mass market: gamers really love the shiny stuff, I know.

the combat system in OB made it feel much more epic. Slashing around dodging and parring (although the ridiculus amount of times one had to hit before the enemy would die was just plain annoying stupid goblins :gun: ). This made it much more with the aspect of the "save the world" senario.

Whereas in Morrowind i agree that it has a more RPG feel in the way the damage dealt is relative to the char skill but the amount of times i had to try and hit a mudcrab was just bbbllllaaahhhh. It makes no sense that i cant hit a mudcrab. Alright my skill isnt good enough but even me that hasnt wielded a proper sword should hit a mudcrab at every swing, espescially the size they were in MW.

So there needs to be a compromise, like many a person has said before me, where the enemy AGI, STR and dodging skill should determin whether or not (s)he does not get hit and the char's weapon skill anlong with STR and AGI should counter the enemy's.

my humble opinion

Well, to be frank, I do not really care what most the people. I just cannot see much thatwould be better in Oblivion's magic. The effects look fancier, but that is a given. Some of the Morrowind's effects were not working well, sure, but you can say the same thing about Oblivion as well. And as long as there is spell making you can adjust the time the spell effects last.



Ah, of course! All the people who think that Oblivion is worse than Morrowind are not objective! You know the truth of the universe and it is obvious that you alone can decide which game is better then which.
1) Judging games is a metter of taste
2) Tastes are subjective
3) Therefore you cannot objectively say which game is better

The fact that people do not share your opinion does not mean that they do not see reality, that they are fanatics or any of that junk. It means that these people have different opinions then you. Try to learn with this.

I'm sorry, but no. They are simply different game design philosophies.Morrowind's combat is primarily roleplaying combat; Oblivion's combat is primarily first-person shooter combat. Neither one is better. Both are fun in their own ways. Oblivion's combat system is different, not better.

I suspect those of us who grew up playing roleplaying games are used to the concept of character stats controlling the outcome of combat. After all, that is what roleplaying is all about. I'm perfectly happy knowing that my character's stats are the deciding factor when I play Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, Neverwinter Nights, KotOR, etc. But I also enjoy getting in and bashing things with a sword in Oblivion. This is not a zero-sum equation. Both systems can co-exist without people feeling some aggressive need to shut down other's opinions and call a different system "junk".

I'm sorry, but Morrowind's combat system cannot be called FUN by any means. you can say you like it more because it's more RPG, it fits the game more etc. , but fun? how is it fun to just click the same button over and over again and hope you hit and the enemy misses, plus hope you block if using a shield? I will accept it in action oriented games like diablo where the action is fast paced, I will happily accept turn based tactical combat like age of wonders, I will accept it in true stat+chance based RPGs like neverwinter nights. but you gotta have control over what's going on to be entertained. Morrowind sorely lacks that, you're just clicking until you can move on. it was bearable in 2003 because the game was so damn good you would happily forgive its flaws. but after playing Oblivion going back to Morrowind's system is painful, and that's not even considering games with a WAY better combat system.

@Najak: you sound like you're worshipping "taste" and "opinion" . sure everyone has their own tastes and is entitled to their opinion, but you gotta be able to justify WHY you have that opinion, otherwise you're a moron. opinions need to be based on facts, otherwise it's just delusions. I mean why do we even have game reviews with scores? just say " I liked that game, maybe you will too, no idea" and off you go. clearly it doesn't work that way. in my post I tried to explain my point of view in a way anyone can relate with, I didn't just OMG OBLIVION ROXXORZ U N00BZ. until you come up with better points that prove me wrong, I'm afraid yes I'm right and you're wrong. that's how it works. and I'm not stubborn, if you come up with reasonable points I will acknowledge them. your post was just insulting frankly.

Not true. I don't like Levitation in Morrowind. I just don't. There's no reason for it, and it's certainly not a delusion. My opinion is simply "I would never miss levitation if they never offered it again". The reason? because it's true. There's no justification necessary. It's my opinion because it's my opinion. It's not a delusion, it's simply acknowledging the way it is. A Delusion would be thinking you can prove to me that levitation is a GOOD THING and that I should love it.

not possible. either you're just indifferent to it, i.e. don't care, which is not really an opinion I guess. or you dislike it for a reason but can't be bothered to think about the exact reason.

I don't like it because I don't like it. It just doesn't work for me, and that's all that counts. You can waste your life trying to prove there's a reason. Or you can accept that my preferences are as often as not based on feelings, whims, and whether I've been listening to jazz or heavy metal. I can point out songs that I don't like "because it should do something else here". No basis for that opinion, but it's very obvious to me that it should.

Not everything is reason. Humans are irrational creatures just as much as rational ones. Some of us just trust our irrational sides more than others. As my coworkers would tell you, my irrational side dominates.

Unlike Oblivion's supposedly "better" combat system, Morrowind's combat had a very direct and meaningful timing factor. It made a big difference WHEN you pushed that attack button. Too soon, and your attack didn't develop full power; too late and you wasted time while your opponent got in an extra swing on you. With some enchanted weapons, rushing the attack and "spamming" the button to deliver enchantment damage was actually beneficial, at least until the weapon ran out of charges, and different opponents often required different timing to prevent them from using spells or to stagger them before they got to use their own weapons at full potential. There were different attacks, although Bethesda wasted the opportunity to do something more meaningful with them.

In Oblivion, you had only one attack, and no way to vary it. Press the button and wait for the animation to play. Yeah, real fun. The "special" attacks took even longer before there was any reaction. I felt disconnected from the character. If that's an "improvement" in your opinion, then we obviously don't have similar interests or opinions. At least MW worked well from a RP standpoint, despite its sorry showing as a FPS game; OB was absolutely terrible as an RP combat mechanism (how is it RP when the character's skills really don't have much of an effect) and mediocre as a FPS combat simulator as well. The focus of the games was never "combat", at least until OB, so MW's system was fine for its purpose. OB's system attempted to serve a dual role, and failed at the one while being poor at the other. Believe it or not, I actually enjoyed MW's combat mechanism to a small degree (and still enjoy it, since I still play the game). OB's combat was fun for about the first couple of hours, but I got really tired of how "shallow and pointless" it felt. I suppose that some players actually enjoy "shallow and pointless". You're welcome to your opinion, but don't try to pass it off as "fact".

I can also understand how someone could fail to enjoy Levitation. It wasn't particularly exciting, and was somewhat "contrived" and "gamey", but it opened up a whole extra dimension of the game. I found it to be a mixed blessing, but found its absence in OB to be worse than its implementation in MW. If someone found that the bad outweighed the good in their opinion, I don't have a problem with it. Unfortunately, the design of MW's Telvanni mushroom towers required Levitation, so it WASN'T optional (where have I heard THAT phrase before?).

I disagree with most of what you said, particularly the bit about the only thing great about TES being the lore, and scrapping everything else. The lore is important, but the skill system and whatnot are equally if not more necessary for the TES feeling. If it doesn't feel like a TES game, I'm not interested.

However, I do want to see more than just a graphical upgrade and watered-down gameplay. Oblivion felt too small. I'd like to see a balance between old (lore, skill system, pre-oblivion static enemies,) and new. The only big gripe I had about Oblivion was that certain things were no longer static that should've been. Dungeon loot, for example. It never felt rewarding to complete a non-story dungeon. In Morrowind, you could find artifacts, weird items, and many other things just by random exploration. I remember finding the bittercup and hanging on to it for weeks before I figured out what it was for. I also liked being able to kill story NPCs, and getting the "load a saved game or remain in this doomed reality" message.

@Kovacius: you are way overestimating the deepness in Morrowind's combat system. you got different attacks yeah, and one is obviously better so the other two are worthless. now that's awesome! and look, you get to choose how much you charge the attack, just like power attacks do in oblivion!

Oblivion's combat system is crap, but Morrowind's is basically non-existant. I've talked about that game with a lot of serious gamers, and they've all agreed that, as great a game as it was, the combat system was horrible. the only guys who will insist that it was good are vocal hardcoe Morrowind fans on forums. exactly the kind of people that will defend their favourite game no matter how obvious its flaws are, and the same people that will bash Oblivion beyond any reasonable limit.

well, at least I've experienced the Morrowind bias I've had read about first hand

Well, first of all, I do not worship anything (save for icecream these days). I went through all your posts in this thread and I really failed to see any arguments to support your opinion as well. I do not count "Morrowind's (system) IS a junk" as an argument. I prefer Morrowind's system because it is far more diverse, more strategic and more character based in an oposition to Oblivion's. That is why I like it better.
As for teh other part of your argument, that is more for a philosophical debate. The strength of your subjective arguments never change your subjective opinion into a fact. The reason is that facts by themselves are not totally objective and their interpretation never is either. And only if you speak about objective facts you can use the cathegories of right and wrong as (if not stated otherwise) these are usually seen as objective cathegories. So, to demonstrate:

Objective statement (and an objective fact): "Oblivion used HAVOK engine to draw physics while Morrowind did not" - pretty objective
Subjective statement (not a fact at all): "Oblivion's impelementation of physics engine was not good at all." - very subjective.
And no metter what you do, you cannot change the second statement into an objective one, because it is a metter of taste

And thus, no metter what manner of arguments you use you cannot change the statement "Morrowind's system is a junk" into and objective truth. Trust it or not, but some people like it or even prefer it and their feellings about this are not any more delusional of fanatic then yours.



My point exactly. Could not say it any better.