Really? I've yet to meet a single person IRL who prefers Oblivion over Morrowind *shrug*

Jeez, I don't think you know many people do you? Heck, I used to prefer Oblivion over Morrowind and called Morrowind fans stupid, until I stopped being so damn ignorant and realized they were completely right. But there are A LOT of people who prefers Oblivion over Morrowind, you just don't see them often in this forums.

Yeah, my bad. I skimmed a lot of the posts after I posted, and I'm quite surprised at how many people have the right idea.

Sorry, I over-reacted, and yes: Skyrim should be like Skyrim. There are things from all the previous titles to add to and improve upon, as well as things to be avoided at all costs when they're making the new game, but overall, this game should feel like no-other.

Hah I dunno if I know a lot of people xD, medium amount I guess? Maybe I just only hang with class A nerds eh?

What was wrong with the atmosphere of Oblivion then? It had a sense of fear and doubt in the air due to the Oblivion gates. Was it not dark and shadowy enough for your tastes? The problem with most people that hate Oblivion is that they don't try to immerse themselves in the game like a true RPG but instead they just move along until they find a glitch or something that doesn't quite look right and then harp on it. I have lots of issues that I didn't like in Morrowind but I don't go around complaining about them saying The Elder Scrolls Morrowind is the greatest game in the history of the universe.. Morrowind was a good game but imo, Oblivion was a better game overall but I don't try to shove it down people's throats and denounce Morrowind. Thus when someone says how awesome a game Morrowind was and then start pointing out things that make it better than Oblivion that have no merit I point out that Oblivion had many things better than Morrowind but somehow the Morrowind Fan boys can only see the few bad things about Oblivion like the short main quest or the Creature leveling and then overlook the far greater amount of game content that exists in the side quests of Oblivion. Frankly the only thing I enjoyed about Morrowind is the environment and the lore within the main story line, otherwise I despise the rest of the game.

As for spot difficulty like you would find in some dungeons in Morrowind, just bring up your menu and set the difficulty higher. Personally the Oblivion was about the same for me as Morrowind until I set my difficulty to max. When I did that, Oblivion felt like a real world and I felt like I was actually my character in the game. When you can feel like you are actually in a real world with real living people around, that's when you know it's a true rpg. I never really felt that in Morrowind but I truly felt it in Oblivion and Daggerfall. I do agree with you on the point that Morrowind was more complex than Oblivion but Oblivion was a testing ground for several things like their new AI system and full voice acting on a massive scale and thus they were most likely testing with difficulty level. Morrowind just got under my nails sometimes, especially combat when I'm fighting off three mobs at once and then when I get knocked into the water and I have no fatigue, I just sit there unable to move while my breath bar runs out and I drown or I am doing a quest and I'm thinking I'm looking for a town so I am looking around for hours and then I finally find the place to be a doorway into the mountain side hidden by the corner. Stuff like that really put me off to the game when the game became more tedious than fun and thus my mind wandered from getting immersed in the game into making sure I don't miss a single object, that's a gameplay style I like in my FPS not in an RPG.

I'm still getting a kick out of this history repeating thing. I found these forums years ago, looking for tips and tricks on a new game called Morrowind. And there was a lot of dislike for Morrowind at the time, Daggerfall was king. Then a few years later we got Oblivion, and well we all know how that comparison generally goes. I don't know what the future holds for Skyrim, but I can say with full certainty that no matter how good it is, it will still svck to some people.

I'd like a Morrowind-like world, deep and rich., with proper RPG questing and options, but with Oblivion's gameplay.

Honestly, haven't Morrowind and Oblivion had roughly equal sales figures? Maybe Oblivion was more of an instant hit, but Morrowind's game of the year editions can still be found all over store shelves and the game itself was even re-released as an Xbox classic. They both have fans somewhere in the millions.


Actually, whilst I generally encounter a lot more people who enjoy Oblivion than Morrowind, most of them haven't even played Morrowind to begin with. Then I urge them to check it out, and they become a righteous convert within a month or two.

I would say Skyrim should be the best of both Daggerfall and Morrowind - with the best elements from Oblivion thrown in for good measure - and then a whole smattering of new hotness, just to make it perfect. :celebration:

OK, man, lets keep our prejudices at bay and look at the matter from a different aspect, and give the result of our survey to anybody that you say who likes Oblivion over Morrowind, and see if they still want Skyrim to be more like Oblivion, or Morrowind.

I'd say except for the really radical supporters of Oblivion, who can not open their mind to new opportunities, and would remain adamant in their beliefs, other would accept that what I'm going to suggest can result in a better game than both.

I start with the trend of time, and say, lets strip both games from features from both games, that we are sure will be in Skyrim, and Skyrim would be better than both in those features, or at least equal with one of them, so that there is no point in arguing about them:

• Better graphic Engine, and visuals.
  
• Better NPC AI and schedules.
  
• Better physics, animation, and traps.
  
• Better Combat mechanism.
  
• Voiced dialogs. (More on this later)
  
• Less level scaled monsters and loot. Oblivion was a proof that it does not work, and they know it. (I hope it would be Non-level-scaled)

But I wanted to talk about, voiced dialogs, and I know that it remains with future games, and there is no doubt about that.

Some would say that it adds to immersion and makes the game a better one.
I say, sure, it would make the game more immersive, if implemented the right way, with a lot of voice actors, and so on...

But on the other hand it severely limits the amount of background life, story, drama, conversation that you can give to any single individual in the game, (developers, or modders later), and the complexity of NPC AI and the responses that they can give us as the result of their own AI, not scripted dialogs.

And it kills the notion of procedurally generated events and quests on the bud, where you could define scenarios for the events, and the engine could fill in roles with any suitable NPC available, and fill in any item template with available resources and so on...

OK, so I'd say in open world games, voiced dialogs were a bad thing to happen and severely and negatively impact the game's background life of its individuals, and the chance of modders making them better.

Lets strip both games from the features that I listed above, and argued that they are sure to appear in the next game, in better condition, and and argue abut the rest of the games, and see which one is better to be coupled with those sure-fire features that the game would no doubt have.

Oblivion: Generic lush landscape that was mostly flat from one end of the game world to another, generic dungeons, less quests which mostly have more detail, less hand placed loot and monster to create unique encounters and rewards, absolutely no under water life and detail, straightforward main quest with no twist, conflict and surprises, no conflict between factions, and rivalry between clans, and few examples of choices and consequences, factions that required no minimum player abilities so that a non-magic based character could become the head of mages guild, if he liked. Hand holding mechanism in every aspect of the game to help enlist non-RPG games toward as the potential buyers, and in doing so, diminishing the sense of progression and triumph after winning over the dumbed down challenges and game environment.

Morrowind: More exotic and diverse landscape, with hand placed monsters and items to make a unique discovery or encounter after each hill, manually created dungeons that, felt a bit more unique than Oblivion's, although not much. More hand placed encounters, loot, and misc items, like letters, that gave a different life to each dungeon, cavern and surface area, and a lot of underwater content, ready to be explored with rewarding challenges, some unforgiving game mechanism that might initially scare more casual players away, but ultimately would result in more rewarding experience if you could master it, a lot of inter-faction conflicts and inter-clan/great house rivalry, complex main quest with a lot of twists and surprises, demigods that people love, but will be found out to be cheating bastards.

More unique sense of culture of every town, faction, and clan, and a lot of consequences for player choices, especially in the factions, and faction requirement to prevent non-suitable members become the head of them, no wide spread hand holding, so that it encouraged players to chose strategies for survival, and think about their problems, and be set back to try again when more prepared, which resulted in more sense of progression and triumph, when they finally they could overcome the initial difficulties.

=== === === === === === === === === === ===

In the end, if you strip down both the games from what is the trend of time, and would be surely better in Skyrim, What remains of Morrowind is better than what remains of oblivion, and we say that add those features, to the features that are surely in the game, to create a perfect game from the combination.

Add more detail to Skyrim quest like Oblivion, but keep the culture, rivalry and politics from Morrowind, and add some hand holding inherent in Oblivion, as optional features, to help casual gamers find their way around the game, and attract new blood to the genre, and it will result in a game better than both.

Except for the problems that come with "Voice Acting", which would remain with us until we can have passable procedurally generated voice-overs, which would open a new world of possibilities for us.

If you are implying that Oblivion has more content then Morrowind, this is an outright lie, Morrowind has FAR MORE CONTENT then Oblivion. How many playable factions (that weren't part of the main quest) are there in both games? How many expansions are there for both games? How many unique items and artifacts are there in both games?

Just as a little sample, here are some numbers that I compiled while perusing the UESPWiki database.


Morrowind - 14 joinable factions, 309 quests total.

Aundae Clan - 2 quests total, must contract vampirism to join.*

Berne Clan - 2 quests total, must contract vampirism to join.*

East Empire Trading Company(Bloodmoon expansion) - 15 quests total, two separate paths.*

Fighters Guild - 31 quests total.*

House Hlaalu - 33 quests total.*

House Redoran - 38 quests total.*

House Telvanni - 31 quests total.*

Imperial Cult - 25 quests total.*

Imperial Legion - 19 quests total.*

Mages Guild - 33 quests total.*

Morag Tong - 25 quests total.*

Quarra Clan - 2 quests total, must contract vampirism to join.*

Thieves Guild - 30 quests total.*

Tribunal Temple - 23 quests total.*


Oblivion - 9 joinable factions, 113 quests total.

Arena - 22 matches, can continue entering fights for money after attaining highest rank.*

Dark Brotherhood - 25 quests total. In my opinion, by far the best content in vanilla Oblivion.*

Fighters Guild - 20 quests total.*

Knights of the Nine(Knights of the Nine downloadable content) - 11 quests total.*

Knights of the Thorn - 0 quests total, membership given as a reward for completing a miscellaneous quest.*

Knights of the White Stallion - 1 quest total, membership given as a reward for completing a miscellaneous quest.*

Mages Guild - 20 quests total.*

Thieves Guild - 13 quests total.*

The Order of the Virtuous Blood - 1 quest total, membership given as a reward for completing a miscellaneous quest.*


I am not about to compile an artifact/unique item list or miscellaneous quest list as that would take up more time then it is worth. The above information should give readers unfamiliar with either games a good idea about the amount of content available to them. If those of you are curious about the amount of items and miscellaneous quests in both games, I implore you to check out the link provided below as it is a great resource for Elder Scrolls fans.

* All above information was gathered from the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page.

How about the best of both?

Wow, that's a lot of stuff. But I doubt it will have this much, I think it's safe to say that it will have full voice-acting... recording dialogues for this massive quantity of quests and crafting them with the game's graphics would require more work on models, textures, for items and assets, etc...

I doubt it will too for the very same reasons that you mentioned. Lack of content is not necessarily a deal breaker for me so long as the content available is of high quality and offers significant replay value. My wish is that TES:V returns the gameplay mechanics (extra skills and intricate attribute to skill relationships, not to mention the lower number of major skills that can be selected) and consequences from your decisions (you can't join every faction with one character and rival factions grow to hate you) that was more present in Morrowind. Oblivion is not a bad game, it was just too streamlined for my tastes as getting rid of some skills and changing the ones they retained did not increase my enjoyment of Oblivion. Add in the hand holding with things like the compass, overall, gave Oblivion a 'kid friendly' tone to it which further depreciated the game in my eyes.

As for story, I preffered Daggerfall because of all the political machinations;)
On environment and many core game mechanics I preffered Morrowind, because face it, the world was beatifully detailed and the culture of the region really shone through. The systems like magic, enchanting and alchemy were fully fleshed out and enjoyable.
On graphics and combat, if we restrict it to TES gamesOblivion takes it, It had the most modern engine (though morrowind with the enhanced graphics mods really looks pretty too), and the combat was more polished than the previous games.

Arena, well, from what I remember of it, it was great in its day, but it felt a bit too hallow because of its proceduraly generated world. It had the biggest world in any game I have ever played, and I would love to see a game come close to its scale again, but after a while it started to feel too repetitious.

If they could produce a world the size of Arena, add the intriuge of Daggerfall, the environmental and cultural detail as well as the depth of magicka from Morrowind and then throw in a pinch of the modernity that Oblivion had in terms of graphics and gameplay and I think they would have a cult classic.


As a side note for those "skyrim for skyrim" folks, everyone wants skyrim to be its own game, all this talk is not about making TES:V set in morrowind, or ensuring they use the same armor models from Oblivion... Its about identifying the things in other TES games that were done well, and those that were not done well, so TES:V does not repeat past 'mistakes'. Even Beth have admitted that they are taking lessons from Oblivion into account in their production of Skyrim.

Co-sign. :goodjob:

I honestly (save for animations) can't see much of a difference between Oblivion and Morrowind combat. There's actually very little difference. They're both click-as-fast-as-you-can style combats.

I want Skyrim to be like Skyrim. I don't want an Oblivion or Morrowind 2.0.

I've been well exposed to morrowind and oblivion, and am a huge fan of both. I played oblivion before morrowind, then came back and played morrowind. Things i noticed: oblivion's combat system was great, and morrowinds was... ehh... Graphics, Oblivion is awesome, morrowind is good, but still nowhere near as good as oblivion. After playing oblivion, i found some of the quests of morrowind to be very vague without a clue where they were, "south of (insertnamehere)" could mean hundreds of places. But i have to admit, Morrowind did have a lot of things oblivion should have. Overall, i think the games are about even, both great, i don't perfer either. As for the poll, as some other have said, i want a completely new game, a new adventure. I don't want a morrowind with better graphics or an oblivion with morrowind-like qualities. I want something new.

^^^ This. Skyrim should simply be like itself, neither side should be pandered to.

Actually, Oblivion combat has a bigger strategic depth, diffent power attacks result in different effects, you have to dodge and block, there is also timed block that you use to stun the enemy, and contrary to Morrowind, it deals damage everytime your weapon touches the enemy.
Morrowind's used a dice-rolling system or a formula, I don't know, that makes you hit the enemy only sometimes, IMO it's kinda frustrating, at level 1 you had to hit an NPC 20 times to strike it only 2 times even if you were aiming exactly at his face. It was more simplified, but the skills and attributes affected it in a substantial way.

Both were great.. but I liked how in Oblivion you had a choice between fast travel, and walking. And I also liked that it was easier to hit things in Oblivion. And people in Oblivion had more character, (Face expressions, sleeping, going into buildings and out, etc.) So I would like it to be more like Oblivion, however, like the thread my brother started, (Lennybird) I would prefer to have my magical weapons charge over time.. instead of having to pay Septims to get it charged, let alone finding someone who could charge it. So, maybe a little bit of both?

Voted Other. I want it to be like Skyrim, and nothing else.

Seriously, people, don′t you like innovation? Although there are good features in both games, if they tend too repeat themselves too much, they get boring and dull. Personally, I would like to see new approaches to gameplay and a fresh game. I would like it to be more like Skyrim. :wink_smile:

I'll take Daggerfalls before the other 2 games(I love both MWand OB)They took to much stuff out from DF to MW.

Like:
1)Time quest.

2)differnet quest endings-You give the item to the quest giver, are you keep it, are give it to a 3rd party.(TG)