It seems that you are allowing your subjective preference for Action/Adventure games to cloud your ability to understand an objective classification of a game.

At no point did I say that RPG > Action/Adventure, I simply stated the rule for determining if a game actually is more or less of an RPG than another game.

You are allowed to believe that RPG elements are terrible and that Action/Adventure elements are great, but that belief should in no way impact your ability to answer the question "Is Morrowind a better RPG?" because what is and is not an RPG can be objectively classified and compared.

then theres no point to this arguement, as morrowind is clearly action and adventure with RPG elements just like all the other TES titles, even with its ridiculous math based hit/miss combat. you the player still have to aim spells, arrows, and even your sword, and even have full control over your movement in a 3D world.

Of course it also is an Action/Adventure game with RPG elements, but that doesn't answer the question now does it?

it does in that they are identical. but everyones on their high horse about "the original is always best" and jumping on the consoles are ruining everyones life bandwagon.

Yes, that was JUST as bad as hitting someone in the face with a hammer larger than their head, but only bruising them slightly in Oblivion, simply because your skills were low. Morrowind's total lack of dodge and miss animations was infuriating for any action gamer, but Oblivion's blatant scaling of damage was just as broken, but from a RP perspective rather than a FPS viewpoint. When you DID hit, in Morrowind, you did full rated damage for the weapon (assuming that you took enough time to bring the weapon back for a full swing, and that your fatigue wasn't way down), which made up in one hit for all of the wiffs. Compare that to Oblivion, where you hit some opponents over and over, doing relatively trivial damage with a three-foot length of sharpened steel moving at high speed. BOTH games needed improvements in their combat systems, but for totally opposite reasons: OB's combat worked fine as a FPS mechanic, but failed utterly from a RPG perspective; Morrowind's combat engine was a bad joke for an FPS player, but made a lot of sense from a RP point of view, the game just didn't show "WHY" you missed. Anyway......

The inability in Skyrim to start with any defining features to your character (all stats virtually identical to every other character) severely limits RP potential. The perk system, while a good idea overall, and an ideal SUPPLEMENT to an Attribute/Skill system, apparently makes a mediocre substitute for Attributes. The game's heavy bias toward melee combat means that you can run up and punch a dragon to death more easily than destroy it with direct elemental magical attacks. Actually, the most effective uses for magic appear to be as supplements or buffs to melee ability. Conjuration merely allows you to have OTHER creatures do your melee combat for you; ultimately, it's still only effective as an "indirect" melee combat technique. The "rat race" levelling and scaling of the game's adversaries means that you don't dare "waste" more than a small fraction of your time and attention to non-combat skills, or at least to skills that don't directly enhance your ability to fight (smithing and enchanting are directly applicable), otherwise the opponents get stronger than you as you level. To me, that's strongly counter to RP, unless you're strictly RP'ing melee fighter characters for every game.

While it looks like Skyrim may prove to be a "better game" than Morrowind (and a basically good but "very limited" RPG), MW is likely to remain a "better RPG" than Skyrim.

well if youre a feeble weakling who svcks at using hammers youll obviously do less damage. as you became more skilled and gained strength your damage went up. if bill gates and mike tyson both punched you, who do you think would hurt you more?

if you were rping as a pure mage, why should you be limited to just flinging fireballs around all day destroying everyone. you have to use all your spells. i can agree that mage enchantments svck, as the only one is spells costing less, but that just means you can cast more spells.

and losing the whole attribute system is for the better. its dated and annoying. if i want to crunch numbers ill head to elitistjerks or just play with a calculator all day.

I'm willing to bet that even if it was Bill Gates who hit you in the face with that large hammer (assuming he could lift it), you wouldn't be standing afterwards (or in that case, his lawyers would have you on the ground in a moment). Obviously, damage is affected by strength (Strength affected damage in Morrowind), and often by skill (possibilities for critical hits), but the weapon itself in the hands of anyone even remotely healthy should do some serious damage whether you're stabbed in the chest by an olympic athlete or a middle-aged housewife. Nerfing damage heavily, based on skill, was an unforgivable move in Oblivion. Skill allows you to AVOID getting hit in the first place, either through active blocking and dodging, or by the inherent threat of your OWN offensive abilities causing the opponent to devote 75% of his/her/its attention and movement to not getting killed. Most REAL melee combat consists of more "posturing", feints, jabs, and parries than actual attacks, because survival instinct prevents you from dropping your guard and going total offense (with the likely result of you getting killed). Morrowind's "miss, miss, miss, HIT, miss...." represented that well, although the pitiful lack of animations made it look stupid. MW even allowed you to take quick "low damage" jabs, moderate strength swipes, or hard hits, depending on how long you "charged" the strike; Oblivion's "press the button and wait for the animation" took away a lot of player control over how to conduct a combat, and I considered it merely a "lateral move at best" over MW's simplistic combat system, despite how much nicer it looked.

Personally, I prefer not to SEE the stats. In Morrowind, I use either GCD or Madd Leveler, and in Oblivion it was Kobu's, so your character just "improves through doing". The numbers, and more importantly, their effects, are still there; I'm less than fond of "bean counter" RPG, where you're playing solely for the stats; many of my MW characters went through the majority of the game with seriously sub-standard gear and less-than-stellar combat stats because I ran them as I felt they would act under the circumstances. Sadly, the "rat race" scaling in OB made that a much more difficuly option, and I felt it far more necessary to switch to the "best" gear and pay some heed to the stats just to survive against the increasingly boosted opponents (such as late game Goblins). The absence of Attributes in SR means that a bodybuilder and an accountant hit just as hard, and can carry the same amount of stuff. That's not "better", in my opinion, it's "simpler" only because it's "less".

Personally I think part of the problem here stems from the OP's choice of the word "better." I think if the OP had phrased his question "Is Morrowind still a truer RPG?" we probably wouldn't be having the problem we've been seeing in these last few exchanges.

Having similar traits does not make two things identical. What exactly is identical about Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim? One is capable of being better than another in someone's view, due to the fact that they are NOT identical.

I really think most peoples issue with Morrowind is that it had a much slower start. You needed patience to make it far enough into the game to survive, when you start you are next to useless at everything. In my experience it take 2-3 hours of play time to become competent in your preferred play style if you aren't a power gamer.

All in all Morrowind had an extremely detailed world with a wide range of possibilities. Crafting was possible and it was possible to play through the game as any type of character or as a power mad player who wanted a 100 skill in everything

Morrowind just allowed more freedom to the players. If you "should" be able to do it worked. It was up to the dungeon designers not to leave obvious ways to bypass the entire dungeon. Honestly if there was a deep dark tower full of dark creatures and I see a window on the 3rd floor that goes directly to where I need to be....I'm climbing the wall and why wouldn't an adventurer. And before anyone says "well you wouldn't know it was up there" I'm still more likely to find another way into an evil stronghold or dungeon than to walk in the front door where all the locks and traps are most likely to be...

All the features that have been removed seem to be around forcing the players to "follow the rules" instead of the free form "do what you want how you want" that always made these some of my favorite games.