Yep.

Scaling is not bad.

BAD scaling is bad.


And as I've mentioned before, there's some form of scaling in more games than you'd think. A game with absolutely no scaling tends to be completely dead linear. Freedom of choice to go different directions tends to require some amount of scaling. (Note that I don't consider "meat walls" - i.e, yeah you can try to walk north, but the monsters there eat your face - to not be any different in practice than physical walls. You still end up having to go through the areas in the proscribed order of difficulty.)

Morrowind was better in many aspects, but Oblivion/Skyrim have their advantages, too:

- Would you ever play an archer again in Morrowind after having played Oblivion/Skyrim with new ballistics and ragdoll effects? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't.

- Playing a mage in Oblivion/Skyrim isn't nearly as satisfying than it was in Morrowind. Custom spells, levitation, miss chance, unarmored skill (why cut this out anyway?) just made the mage in Morrowind a much better experience.

- At first glance, the quests in Oblivion/Skyrim seem far superior to those in Morrowind - and they are. Beth put enormous effort into maknig every single dungeon unique with dialogues, secret passages, traps and so on. On the other hand, it lacks the very thing the OP mentioned: being forced to figure out how to solve the quest with all its requirements on your own. Oblivion/Skyrim are much too convenient in this regard, which hurts the overall experience in my opinion.

Skyrim is a great game, indeed, but has nothing to do with what Morrowind stands for, except the lore.

There will be a plethora of mods for Skyrim in the future, that will help restoring the Morrowind-ish feel for those who desire it.

There was nothing elitist in his post. It was a well thought out, well articulated statement on his feelings towards Skyrim and the direction TES is going. You're the fool for stopping to read after one sentence.



That is also untrue. The fact that you spent roaming and questing took you 10 hours to get to that part is not how it is in truth. The Greybeards summon you exactly an hour into the game after you've defeated your first dragon near Whiterun.




@ope I will not say anything other than - Yes. You're absolutely right.

To add a bit more substance to my post here is how you can turn off the compass in the game should you wish to:

Find your SkyrimPrefs.ini

Find these lines:

bShowFloatingQuestMarkers=1bShowQuestMarkers=1

Change the 1 to 0 and save the file.

And then this

bShowCompass=1 

Change the 1 to 0 and save the file.

Now, you were absolutely correct in the fact that almost zero to none information is given to you. As such, you may keep bShowQuestMarkers=1 which will display the location on your map, and the only thing you'll have to do is reference the map to see if you're going in the right direction.
That's how I try to play at least.

Thank you for the grat post, I wholeheartedly agree with you.

May you find all that you seek, traveller

One thing I've noticed about Skyrim is that the game is on rails if you only quest...so stop questing and just explore for a while. I've found some of the darnedest things going off the railroad and just saying "I wonder what that thing over there is?" That style of gameplay kinda recaptures some of the Morrowindesque feeling.

Now i know [censored]'s gonna get real.

wow that was the most interesting review and synopsis ive ever read on this.

i totally agree as well.

That was a great read. Let me start by saying that I agree with you %100. I have been having this same conversation with friends of mine recently. Many of us have been playing these games as well as online games for many years now. The entire macro-genre (including fantasy MMOs) has evolved over the past 15 years and some of us are not very happy with the changes. We can, and have, debated the changes from a players standpoint for many an inebriated night. I do, however, think that in order to find the catalyst that sparked this evolution, the situation needs to be viewed from a business standpoint. To me, that can be boiled down to one driving reason. Money.

I really think that bethesda had to take a look at their design philosophy and weigh the pros and cons of making a game more or less streamlined. As we get older many of us stop playing these games. I know that in my personal life, I have a 4 month old and a full time job, so pouring hours daily into a game like this is no longer an option. When I was going to school, I could sacrifice my own time, personal life, and health. Now I have a wife and kid and can't sacrifice that. My point is that the consumer for this product is quickly becoming the next generation. Without painting with too wide of a brush here, the next generation is asking for a more streamlined game. They don't want morrowind. They don't want Ultima or EQ1. They want WOW and Call of duty. They are also the masses and the driving monetary force that keeps these companies lucrative. We are quickly becoming the minority. The loyal minority, but we don't purchase 5 copies each in order to offset the difference.

There is another interesting notion that a friend of mine came up with. What if there was a retro revolution? What if the a game was released that went back to the roots of fantasy role playing games and it took the genre by storm. If the current generation of gamers discovered that they really enjoyed exploration, reading quests and books, and thinking outside the box in order to conquer the current quest, and we reverted to that type of game design, that would be amazing for many reasons. One of the main reasons is that, as I have mentioned before, this is a copycat business. Suddenly there would be open world sandbox type games that followed the money and made the type of game that we are looking for with the awe inspiring-blow your mind graphics of today. A pipe dream? Probably, but it's fun to dream.

In the mean time, I will continue to enjoy gaming the way I have for years as well as these conversations about the good old days. I'll leave you with some Bob Dylan lyrics that seemed to float around in my head as I was typing this:

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Let me start by saying Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim are great games. Now that were past that, let me say that I so far (I'm not done with skyrim by a wide mile) Oblivion is my favorite of the three.

Oblivion took what made morrowind good, and improved most aspects. It also took most of what made morrowind broken and fixed it.

Fast travel is a hot topic, but once you add hundreds of interesting locations around the world, and knowng that to use fast travel somewhere requires actually going there the first time (*), I think fast travel is a good thing to remove some unneeded tedium of overland travel somewhere you have already been. You WILL still walk that land in the first place to find the locations after all.
(* other than a few exceptions, which they have changed in skyrim, you always have to visit first before you can fast travel, which is a good change)

They removed some of the more blantently broken effects from morrowind (regen and flight mainly) to keep the game more down to earth (literally), and keep you in the environments and puzzles. Overall there is a lot more adventure space/content in oblivion than there was in morrowind.

They put in a nice primary quest, but left it to sort itself out over time, I feel the plot and pacing was a bit better than morrowind, and obviously the graphics and voice acting and whatnot were an improvement.

My main complaint with oblivion was the mechanics of leveling and forced stat choices, which was fixed with mods. I feel the complete removal of such in skyrim was heavyhanded, but so far hasnt hurt the gameplay too much.

The spell an enchantment building in oblivion was more complex and interesting than morrowind, without some of the larger loopholes that allowed morrowind to break (they partly brought them back in skyrim tho?) Overall, I felt that my 'toolset' for solving problems was largest in Oblivion (except for flight).

But lastly, the main concern you had was scaling. I actually like a little of what I have seen with skyrim so farm, but morrowind had some of that scaling already, just more fixed items, which allowed you to get lucky or unlucky (or just read a wiki as it were) and have rewards often not line up with challenge. This could be fun, and some people attribute that to intellegence, but it really wasnt that way. A person wasnt able to consciously pick the dungeons that had the best items, they either found them from out of game means, or just got lucky.

In oblivion there were items that were powerful for doing certain things, but most of these were scaled to your level, which was unfortunate at times because people often did the interesting things for thier character first. So the mage character does the mage quests at low level and got saddled with a weak mage staff as his character progressed. This was a problem, but is it a worse problem then a similar setup without scaling, where either the item is low level, so a high level character is always saddled with a weak staff, or make it high level and give a low level character an item that trivializes content for the next several hours of gameplay?

Just because the loot is off a leveled list doesnt mean there isnt a point to exploring different places or a lack of fun.

Skyrim appears to have improved the scaling from there, older dungeons stay low level, and I have definitely noticed some places have harder critters than other places even when my level is static, so there is some sort of 'modifier' aspect to the scaling. One area might be 'scaled to player level' where the next might be 'scaled to player level +2' or something. If this proves to be the case, I may wind up liking skyrim more than oblivion, except for the lack of spellmaking.

And really thats where skyrim falls shortest to me, I like playing mages, and the complete stripping of the ability to customize spells was heavy handed. Sure you could make some good stuff in the old system, but I would rather have seen the work to prevent abuse than just thowing out one of the key interesting systems in the game.

Ok, enough of my disjointed rambling reply
Long story short(ish). Morrowind was good, but it was not the best ES game, and the evolution of the line has logical aspects that dont scream 'sell out' to me, just more of a difference in preference from what you are looking for.

+1

I remember when you had to work to gain something, it wasn't so laid out for you to see, they would be like do a quest for me, here are the directions. "go straight down the path out of Balmora then take the first left fork you find..." Stuff like that just made the game so real for me. Remember getting off of the boat to Morrowind and having Socius Ergalla give you directions to Caius Cosades place?The fact that you as a player where not handed everything. I remember busting my ass to obtain full sets of Glass and Dwemer armor.I will admit, I love the NPC interaction stuff of Oblivion and Skyrim, how they actually talk, but the things they say still aren't hald as in depth as they where in Morrowind. I LOVE Skyrim, but it is beginning to feel like Fable to me, Just Barely an RPG and more of an Action title. It feels as though they are catering to those damn COD types.

Omg wall of text, I'm out of here...

Was rather long-winded just to announce that you're one of those people who is permanently blinded by nostalgia.

Baldurs Gate was a great game, is a great game. Everquest was a great game and online experience was fantastic as well. Those games and many others regularly place high in various polls and are remembered fondly by the fans.

However, if they were released today... They. Would. [censored]. Bomb. Hard.

That's the reality of how games have evolved. Dying 20+ times on the starting dungeon in Elder Scrolls: Arena back in the 90s is hilarious to look back on, and I enjoyed the crap out of that game. But with a 2011 release that game would have been murdered in the reviews, hated by fans, and written off as too difficult and not worth the effort. Ultra-hard games have their place in the market, but its' become more of a niche associated with dungeon crawlers. The big open-ended RPGs don't allow you to flounder and fail anymore because they don't work with obscure interfaces or vague explanations, to be mainstream they need the quest markers, the fast-travel, and the lax death penalties among many other features.

I'll admit I used to revel in the fact that I could clear Baldurs' Gate II on the higher difficulty settings, that I knew how to play it well, and that most people couldn't because the game didn't hold their hand. How wandering into the wrong area or messing up one fight could set you back hours, but games and the people who play them at large have moved past that harsh unforgiving gameplay. What was that vanilla World of Warcraft statistic that something like only 1% of players ever completed the very end game instances. Nowadays never mind needing 40 coordinated geared players on voicechat with hours of practice just for the entry level stuff, a couple expansions later and as long as you have 10 players with a pulse you're good to go.

I know I know WoW isn't Elder Scrolls, isn't Baldurs' Gate but the entire industry has evolved past that harsh unforgiving "[censored] you figure it yourself and don't play bad" mentality. You could no more argue against this evolution then you can argue in favor of 2D sprites in lieu of 3D graphics, the entire industry has moved on. You can ramp up the difficulty, and purposely make game harder by not using fast travel, quest markers, etc but that's your own choice and even that won't replace the learning curve of the old school rpgs, because everyone's moved on.

Great article, and hell yes I agree. I still enjoy the game though, but I approach it as an FPS with some light RPG frills. The concept of exploring a massive world and killing stuff still remains infinitely appealing, but the wonder is all but gone now. Clearly they feel they've cut the fat and to go back now would kill the series. I've always dreamed that as this type of game becomes more popular and players become more accustomed designers would slowly get back to what makes an RPG appealing in the first place.

Also, I tried turning off the compass and way points, but it made quests impossible because none of the quests were descriptive enough to where I could actually figure out where to go on my own. That's the best example of the problem you've outlined in your post. The developers have come to realize they don't even need to tell you anything anymore. The quest markers will do all the work! Huzzah. Or how about opening a book and before you've read it, a quest notification comes up, "Find Red Eagle's Sword!" Um, okay, because having to actually do investigative work on my own would just be the worst thing ever. Way to kill any sense of wonder, and to do it to such a neat quest line. Shame.

I have a feeling there are more prominent figures within the company making these decisions. I'm sure there are many devs on the team who would love to go back to that world, but bean counters, men in suits, and the like have other ideas for what will sell, and sadly, they seem to be right. I mean, seriously, you had people who thought the "Blood on Ice" quest was bugged because you had to follow the trail of blood, but the giant quest arrow only pointed to the origin of the blood. This kind of game design has indoctrinated players into a system where the only thing required of you to succeed is a heart beat. This is why we have players fretting over what's the best build more than anything else, because being able to figure out where to put your skill points is the only real challenge left in this game, though it's a menial one at that.

Maybe Divinity 2 captures the essence of wonder and adventure a bit better?



I don't think that's what the OP's post is about. Brutally hard games and developing a sense of wonder and exploration in the player are two completely different things. It's not just that quest markers and fast travel have made the game easy, it's just that it's completely negated the massive world they've given you to explore. The OP isn't advocating that games be made stupid hard again, but that some element of mystery and wonder be placed back into them through simple design choices. Dragging the player along by the hand has really gone a long way to damaging the core of this series appeal.

I love Skyrim, but it would have been much better if it used the leveling and attributes from Morrowind or even Oblivion.
Leveling in this game seriously svcks. Everything is perks, skills don't mean anything, and what happened to attributes? Obviously they dumbed down the leveling system to make it more appealing to the masses at the expense of more choices. I HATE IT.

Give us back attributes, skills (that matter), I want more options not less!

Don't misunderstand - that I don't think that Skyrim is flawless, but the over-arching sentiment of your OP was on the trend of games to dumb-down elements, when in fact what it's done is remove the tediousness of the them. For example, to really make an set of leather armor, I need much more than a tanning rack and a forge. (In fact, I don't think your really need a forge for leather armor) I mean, should I have to go to Belethor's shop and purchase a buckle mold? Maybe you'd prefer it if I had to wait 10 game days for the leather to harden in the sun and I had to remember where I left it, or hit the sleep button 10 times to get it? You seem to be calling that dumb... I call it smart game design.

Some of your above points, true though they may be, are unrealistic. Did you want each and every character in Skyrim to have it's own voice actor? I'm pretty sure Morrowind didn't. In fact I'd go so far as to say I've been pretty impressed with the wide array of personality types Ive met in Skyrim for an open-ended game such as this. In fact in fact (hehe) I'm pretty sure that chactacter development was NEVER a strength of TES - so I don't see how your point that Bethesda is straying from what they were famous and loved for because they have NEVER been famous and loved for that.

After this post, I'm more convinced that you have rose-colored glasses on for Morrowind. It's ok, I have rose-colored glasses on for other older games too, but I don't lament the realities of game evolution in favor of them.

Try pretending Morrowind never existed and see if you like Skyrim more (or want to post here less). If you can. It has many, many improvements over Morrowind and Oblivion, and it has some faults that the other games didn't have (or had less of)

Agree, MW wasn't even all that great. I was hoping this MW cult following here on the forums would have died out when Skyrim was released, suppose that was too much to ask for. Even Beth was tired of it, turned MW into a smoking crater, and these people still won't shut it.

It was two chapters in the series past, almost 10 years ago. Let it go lol.....

Face palm.
Your straight up WRONG on this. If you enter a dungeon the enemies lock at a specific level. So you can indeed go get stronger and come back and own the dungeon. Again Skyrim is not oblivion and I'm tired of reading the same mistakes

MW was an awsome game. I don`t think skyrim is all that different though. Instead of text we have full voice acting now. They still put in most of the books from the past games and alot of them are still the same text as it was in MW. Yeah we have the gps arrow on out compass, but that was done because the community asked for it since finding objectives in MW was such a pain. It was a good/bad system but I am now glad it`s gone to an extent.

In MW the spellcraft and enchanting was cool. I wish skyrim had it. There are also indeed plenty of places you can wander into that you will die in skyrim. The best way to encounter all this goodness is to just travel and explore from the start. Most people will start the mainquest and go from there, but me I like to get out there and explore. Just as dangerous as MW was if you just take tto the highway. Bandits will trash you, wolves will trash you, even a mibcrab wil kick your ass!. You will feel totally helpless like you did as lvl 1 in MW making the run to balmora with a nix hound or a few rats on your tail. You will also find equipment like in MW that was godly stuff in skyrim that can be obtained just like the old ways. I have found various unique swords and even got volendrung! Once you get a companion it becomes alot easier but play alone if you really want the challenge. I assure you that you will be reloading alot of saves going that way, but it`s alot more fun. Following the mainquest from is where the lvl scaling seem the most easy because they wanted you to progress in difficulty at a very gradual pace with a zinger here and there. Not very challenging but most people nowadays don`t want to be thrown to the wolves at the very start difficulty wise.

You can stealth around and use the rune landmines to weaken your enemies, or find a perch and use your bow. The gameplay really isn`t all that different, just a little more modernized I would say. There are lots of different ways to complete objectives and almost every dungeon has a back door, but those are a little harder to find. So you could still use levitate and try to sneak in and rob the place like you used to for coin/gear.

Something else to think about would be that MW is like 10 years old or so. Maybe it was your first game of this type? I know my first mmo was EQ back in 02 and every other I have played since then i compare to it and find things I don`t like that eq had or did different. You usually always hold your first in very high reguard and nothing can compare with it no matter how good it actually may be.

So far for me though I have a little over 70 hours in the game so far. The friday it came out I played it all weekend like a madman. From the start I hit the highway and the games been pretty difficult most of the time. I use pretty much only what i find and it does indeed change the experience you have while playing. Try that on your next playthrough and see if you like it any better.

Both games are great.

its just like how I find the old turn base games more fun and charming then the current ones.

Morrowind was definitly less polished. Some of those dwemer ruins were difficult to even get through terrain wise. Again things that added to its charm..

but I won't say that takes anything away from Skyrim. IMO they made another great game.

With regards tot he voice-actor thing, you can't really mention that as a sleight against Bethesda. That's purely a technical implementation for limitations. Would having every tavern have its' own unique look be awesome, with its' own unique cast of voice actors for their throwaway dialogue? Possibly yes. Would having the world populated by thousands instead of hundreds, with dozens of houses instead of a few make more sense? Yes. Would all of that be worth the game being a 40gb install instead of 5? Er... Would it be worth it to ostracize every player except those with a 4000+ gaming rig? Er.. Yeah eventually you have to look the other way and recognize some things not as laziness in development but a practical solution to make the game playable, you want the game to be appealing sure, but it first has to be playable on the technical hardware level.

Adapt or bankruptcy...

Running a company bears a lot more responsibilities than just simply becoming a fan. And Bethesda did a superb job to both attending to that responsibilities and creating/producing a TES overally greatest of the series (Skyrim).

I didn't read all of the replies, but I wanted to offer a couple of comments. I apologize if others have already stated these points.

First, you write well, and I appreciate the effort you put into your post, as well as the intent to start a dialogue. You stated a couple of misleading points, though.

Morrowind, while excellent, had scaling of both loot and enemies. By the time you got to the teens with your character, this was very apparent (at least if you went back to dungeons who had already cleared, or if you cleared dungeons with a different character at different levels).

Also, Morrowind explicitly stated that you were "special" or "born to greatness" right from the opening movie, and even more so when you talk with Caius in Balmora. After all, the Emperor pardoned you, sent you to Morrowind, and even ordered some funds to be put at your disposal, all because he thought you might be the Nerevarine of legend. Same with Oblivion. Frankly, Skyrim handles the "unique" aspect much better because it offers you the chance to have your character behave in a way that indicates that your heritage is as much a mystery to yourself as any else. You can also choose to be supremely confident in your unique destiny. However, such choices are yours in the dialogue, not explicitly stated by some powerful NPC.

For mages in Morrowind, the road to increasing skills was pretty much potion making and/or enchanting items, coupled with spell making and practice casting in safe places.

For both Oblivion and Skyrim, PC players can simply turn off the compass and quest markers. Quest marker off is an option in the menu in Skyrim, although the compass is not (for some unfathomable reason).

Regarding examples such as the Dark Brotherhood being obvious in Skyrim, I think you will want to go back to an intellectual review of the lore of the world as it exists in contemporary Tamriel. The Empire is falling apart and barely exists as such. Elves of all races are viewed very differently now than in the past. Khajit are more closely allied with the Elves than with the Empire and humans. The Argonians are much less involved with the Empire, and the Redguard homeland of Hammerfell is no longer an Imperial province. The latter are openly hostile to the Empire due to feeling betrayed during the event of the Great War. In this environment and socioeconomic, political context, it is very easy to see that the Empire is facing an era of upheaval and unrest, just as it has done in various periods of its history. However, prior periods are not experienced by players; they are only read about in the lore. In Skyrim, you are living in such an era, and everything around you reflects this fact. In such a setting, it is quite plausible that factions such as the Dark Brotherhood have become far more open because they have the genuine power. This is true in certain areas of real life and real history, too, of course. They do not need to be secretive, or not anywhere near as secretive as in the past.

The context of Morrowind is far different than the context of Skyrim. What is most important is that the world accurately reflects the events of such contexts, and it does so in both cases.

Having said all of these points, you offer some good input regarding certain concerns about requiring more cerebral effert on the part of players. My thought is that this was considered and was a design decision, similar to how mounted combat has been tried and tested since Oblivion, but has always been taken out despite player complaints from certain quarters. We have to remember that just because something isn't in a Beth game doesn't mean that it was not considered, perhaps even attempted.

I don't get it. Why post this? Is it an attention thing? Will you come back here and see if anyone replied to you and said, "Wow, that was a witty response, I wish I could be that funny!" I can understand not having the time or attention span to read the entire post, I really can. It's this new TLDR crowd that has decided that if nothing is getting killed or naked then they can't be bothered to put the words into sentences then paragraphs and mentally digest a point, however they are going to make sure that everyone is aware of their deficiency and hopefully approves.

The thing is, it is actually relevant to the topic being discussed. You didn't even realize that you were contributing to the conversation did you? I would postulate that if you can't be bothered to read a thread, but want to somehow try to be included in the conversation, then you wouldn't dare read in game text, but want to play the game and hit things with your sword.

If you read any of my original post you'll see that none of it is nostalgia, it's a raw examination of a few key game design issues. I don't think Goldeneye is the best FPS ever made, nor do I think Morrowind was the best RPG ever made. In fact, it's unfortunate that these design concepts took place in Morrowind, because I'd much prefer to reference G3 or Witcher or anything else so that I'm not lumped in with the MW nostalgics. Read what I've said. I'm not craving crap combat, or bad graphics, I'm craving not being treated like someone from special school, constantly being told I'm unique by virtue of my existence and pointed to the cave tailor made to my abilities (however bad) with my blazingly accurate GPS/teleporter. And they still haven't fixed bloody speechcraft. Please, I want to meet one person who actually happily and wantingly maxed out speechcraft

Problem with Skyrim is that its more like watching a movie than actually playing a game,you dont have to think about anything,the top of intellect requirment is that claw puzzles which i got bored after 3rd one.When you take quest npc just tells you do this,rarely explains anything,and why would he,you have a giant fck1ng arrow pointing you what to do,even those parts of quests where you had to find a required potion,or book in a 3 room part of dungeon there is a STUPID arrow pointing you where to go,you dont feel any satisfaction finding things and doing that way.In Morrowind you had to read,observe,investigate and search,and it was fun,sometimes you couldnt find a dungeon doors because they were underwater,hidden or whatever,but when you found them you were happy and excited.Plus i wont even talk about fraction quests,in Morrowind every city had its branch of mage,fighter guilds etc and would give you missions,you would earn ranks,you just felt you are achieving something.Here in Skyrim everything is just INSTANT.I was shocked at lenght of DB quest line,hoped it would be much better than in OB and at the end it turned to be more shallow,bland and that was a major disappointment.Skyrim is a fun game,but everything feels just so damn easy,short,rushed..