To me it seems you don't care what otper people say, yuo just say what you think and thats that, but to business....


I realize it is fun to travel on the map FIRST, but after a while it gets boring and thats why the fast travel system should not be changed from what it is now....
some people migh feel that they have accomplished something after finding their way to some quest point, but IMO if you feel frustatedwhile ppalying game it's not worth it....expecially if its hjour and hours of walking before you can actually do the thing you want to do in the game......

Sir, i think you're the first person to ever defend this fast travel system on these forums. :celebrate: Well anyways that's your opinion.

for !"#¤%/(&%¤#&( sake if you have a point and you want to talk about it then state it clearly....say what is your point....maybe color it so we all know....its pretty hard to see your point when your own words go in conflict with them....

Well, I hope it's not about fast travel then... But the reason I used Oblivion's fast-travel so much wasn't from a lack of stuff to do on the journey: Quite the opposite, in fact.

If I wanted to get to point B in a reasonable amount of time because I've been over everything to do between points A and B 10 times already, then it's not going to be more interesting...

Does nobody remember how tedious and annoying normal Travel in Morrowind was once you've been all over the place, and are just down to doing quests with nothing new but more cliff-racers between you and your destination?

Nice very well articulated post, thanks for your opinion. Also i dont see how ive lost my credibility just because i feel that switching everything over to voice acting has had an effect on bethesda taking all directional dialogue out of the game and replacing it with quest markers. Or are you suggesting that bethesda is just assuming everyone has just become dumber and moreso just needs their hands held all/pointed in the right direction with zero effort or work put in on player part. I guess that could be a more viable reason. :shrug

I must be in the minority....i enjoyed traveling in morrowind even after i had been most places....there were still little caves and camps i hadnt seen before....and if i needed to i could get around extremely quick and easily using intervention spells and scrolls, silt strider/boats, mage ports, recall, etc. I never really had a lack of interest in traveling, always enjoyed it. Maybe im just easily entertained though.

I played Morrowind. The directional information given in that game for quests was no better than the information given in Oblivion... Or did you miss all the directions Oblivion gave to locations, because you were too busy staring at the arrow?

Which is why... You ready? Which is why I included an "in my opinion OF COURSE" at the very end. My theory and thoughts, hopefully apply to most true TES fans. But again had you read and put everything together you would know I don't want the game in my vision. I want it to be the vision the developers, who are actualy making the game, want it to be. Instead of catering to the slow and needy making the game complete simplistic casual [censored]. In my opinion of course...

You seem to not understand the concept of a character having abilities that a player doesn't.... which is one of the big differences between an RPG and a straight Action game. (like, in Morrowind, your character's skill with weapons determined if you hit, rather than just the fact that you moved into the right position and clicked "attack" at the right time. Also, one of the reasons some people complained about the lockpicking minigame in Oblivion - it was based mostly on player skill, rather than character skill.)

From an RPG point of view, having your character able to notice things that you don't, is completely normal and rational. (D&D and similar games - characters can have a "detect hidden" skill. As you're walking around, they constantly have a chance to notice secret things nearby - hidden doors, clues, the ninja assassin trying to sneak up behind, etc. And there are all sorts of similar things in other RPGs). So, no - it's not "hand holding". It's a standard RPG game mechanic. Your character has been given a defined ability to notice things - the game therefore needs to have some way to indicate that they've done so.

Sorry but i still consider it handholding....a more reasonable mechanic imo to give your sniper character an advantage would be giving your character a longer range of vision, an ability that granted you a much further seeing distance. Or a better ability that would help you notice things others dont, which is what you want i guess....would be to give the enemies a slight tinge or glow to them thats a bit more visible from a distance....not automatically pointing to them.

I guess we just disagree there.....i do understand the difference in player skill and character skill....and i agree with you in that that difference is a major component of rpgs....i just think there are better ways to do it than taking all forms of effort/work away from the player.

I'm not seeing how it takes the effort/work away from the player, as you put it. You still have to pay attention to who's where.

If you cant see the difference in using your eyes to actually look over the entire landscape for people/creatures that might be a threat.....and then just having a red marker pop up on your compass when someone is near...idk what to say rofl. But i guess if you consider the game alerting you to enemies to be an effort i can see where youre coming from....eyeroll....one obviously takes thought where the other doesnt.

You still have to split your attention and scan for number of features. Actually, I prefer the red marker on the compass to something that would make the actual character stand out more as you suggested: The compass just gives you the general direction, and sometimes relative distance to you, to your target (The same information you gain from sound and other vibrations IRL), as opposed to pinpointing their exact location on your screen. Audio cues in games do not have the sophistication of audio cues in real life, even with the best surround-sound systems.

The game screen gives us ~65^o of awareness to view the world, and left/right audio awareness. In real life, we have about 160^o-210^o of visual awareness alone, and ~320-355^o of audio/tactile awareness. Also, while the games may be pretty photorealistic, 'photo-realistic" images =/= the real way we see and percieve the world. There will always be errors that keep games from being able to emulate what we can see, and things like the compass, quest, and enemy markers are there to reduce the frustration caused by that disconnect.

There always has to be a blend of character skill and player skill. In games like Dragon Age we only directly control the players movements and choice of tactics, the rest our characters control 100% (ie, accurate or inaccurate sword swings, firing off a bow, etc), leading to character skill trumping player skill. In games like Morrowind or Oblivion, where we control most of our players actions directly, with character skill only deciding the effectiveness of what the player manages to succeed in doing, we see player skill trumping character skill as the dominant factor.

To look at it from a different perspective, think of RTS games. Micro-managing versus Macro-managing. Games like Dragon Age are more about macroing your character. Not really sitting there doing the actions of a mage, but controlling the actions of a mage. Games like Oblivion are more about micro-managing. You directly control every aspect of your character and you directly carry out the actions required to make that character who he is. You actually fling magic. You actually draw back that bow and aim at your target.

And as this relates to whats been going on in this topic, macro versus micro, knowing the world automatically versus finding out what the world is as you go, flinging the character towards what only the player can see versus discovering what neither the character nor the player can see together.

Discovering the world with my character always trumps automatically knowing the world and just telling my character to go there.

Well, I'd like to start with a single statement in response to your long post: Shut up about fast travel! I realize people aren't fully reading your post, and are offering poor arguments, but can you not see why? Fast travel is just about all you talk about for a good portion of the post.

Now, apart from how that sounded, that's not meant in a negative way, I just felt it had to be said.

On to the main topic of your article: I agree with a lot of what you said. The reason that I loved Morrowind so much is that it did what no other game has ever done for me: It made me feel like I was a part of the world. When I first started playing Morrowind, I had never even encountered an open-world game before, it was in fact the first game I got for my x-box, and coming off of Super Smash Bros. for the Gamecube, I was utterly shocked at the game. Anyways, my point is that when I started Morrowind, I had no idea what the Silt Strider was, so I never used it. I never paid attention to directions, and I didn't even realize that I had a map! I spent my first fifty hours in the game without doing a single quest. I loved it. I actually memorized the world, I could tell you exactly where I was in Morrowind without even checking my map (when I eventually found it). I spent many hours completely lost, wandering aimlessly, I didn't even realize there was a main quest. The first quest I did was for a woman who had been robbed by a bandit, and she wanted me to bring him a note. After that whole quest was done, I thought to myself "Wow, this game has some pretty neat quests, it's even cooler than I thought." I also didn't discover my journal till nearly two hundred hours had gone by... When I got a quest, it felt like I truly got the quest, not my character where it was recorded in a journal.

Anyways, I think my point got lost somewhere in there, reminiscing about my early Morrowind days. Which reminds me, I still need to get another disc, after about three thousand hours my disk wore out completely, it won't play anymore. What I'm getting at is that in Morrowind I didn't use any features that took me out of my character. I didn't use my map, I didn't fast travel, I didn't use my journal. Everything felt real, like it was happening to me. Morrowind was my favourite game because it offered something no other game had, it was a true RPG, where I felt like my character. So, when I read through your OP, I can honestly say I know exactly what you're getting at. Oblivion lost some of this feel. Partially because of the compass, partially because of the easy-to-use-map, partially because of quest markers, partially because of fast travel, and partially because of many other things. I agree with the point you're trying to make, and I am hoping Skyrim can, in a way, remedy this.

It does worry me though a bit, knowing what I know of Skyrim. There are level up messages that flash on screen, they haven't removed any of the other features from Oblivion, they have a 3D map, and a few other things. I realize however, that this is nothing I can get mad at Bethesda about though. They are not streamlining, or catering, they are simply making a game that they would enjoy playing. They are making the game hat they think is the best game they can make, and I applaud them for that. I also don't see any breaking in this trend. TES games are seeming to become less like a true RPG as I described Morrowind to be, and more of a traditional 'game'.

Knowing all this though, I think it is I who will have to learn to live with it. TES may not always go the way you want it, it may even go so far awry that you quite the series altogether, but for me at least it hasn't even come close to reaching that stage yet. I think I will have to become better at playing the games myself, the way I want to play them. If Bethesda doesn't put limitations in the game, then I'll have to learn to be able to give them to myself. You make a very valid point in the OP, and a point that I can very much agree with, however I don't think it will change anything. The way I see it, it is still possible to get that feeling of living as your character, you just have to do a better job of making it happen.

All of that said, I will always love TES and Bethesda. If I ever want to go back to Morrowind gain, then I simply have to put the disk back in and fire it up. I will immensely enjoy Skyrim and I hope that it can help me bring back that feeling of being my character that I got with Morrowind. Long live TES, and enjoy your gaming! :tes: