I think Morrowind and Oblivion both have decent inventories, which are certainly better than some other games, but they both need work. Oblivion is a bit weird to navigate and even after all this time, I still click on the wrong symbols to get to something, because some of the symbols aren't memorable as to what they mean... it's weird and they layout of the symbols is a bit screwy. Morrowind's grid is more appealing. I prefer nice icons for objects within a grid, rather than a list of stuff.. I prefer Oblivion but think Morrowind had a better inventory, tho Oblivion's is improved a lot thanks to mods. Also I don't see why I should have to go into inventory to click 2 or 3 or 4 symbols to get to things like the map. Lets us hit M and go right to the map.

I don't know if this would be a good idea or not but for a long time now I wanted an inventory that I mostly sort myself. I want stuff that I pick up to go into a common panel. Then anything I want to keep, I drag to my weapons, or armor or potions, etc... panels. That way when I go to sell, I don't have all my good stuff mixed up with the garbage. I hate when stuff gets mixed together and I have yet to play a game where this doesn't happen. Things like keys and ingredients can automatically go into the proper panels... hell, why not have that as an option, so you can set stuff to go where you want. Once you get to a merchant you can easily sell the crap in the common panel without having to worry about it being mixed in with your good crap. I certainly would like to try this out in game....

I had an idea there, some items are not measured by amount but by total weight, or example flour would not be measured in each single "grain" of flour but the total of how much it weighs. Flower petals or liquids too, you don't take each individually but the collected amount.

That's not what you said.

You said that most things about Morrowind were annoying and nothing from Morrowind should ever be implemented again.

If you believe that Oblivion is the only Elder Scrolls game worth playing, then you're not a fan of the series and shouldn't declare how future games in the series should be made, in my humble opinion.

EDIT: That's exactly like saying, "I hate first-person shooters, therefore every future Halo game should be like that short-lived RTS and everything from the older Halos should be forgotten."

If you only like Oblivion and have no respect for the rest of the Elder Scrolls series, then enjoy Oblivion as a stand-alone game and keep your grubby fingers off of the rest of the series. This includes TES V.

Oblivion did alot of things smoother, but inventory system wasn't one for me. Toggling through stuff to find what I need was not easier for me, as opposed to a grid with Icons that told me everything I needed to know about an item. If I needed details I just clicked on the item. You could still look up things in subcategories if you wanted to do it that way in morrowind. I would think that somebody who didn't want to spend a hundred plus hours a week playing a game would appreciate a grid with Icons.

Think I'll go back to the Lore section where the threads are civil and based on facts.

The main separation needs to be between "loot" and "my stuff". One button when you pick things up makes it loot, the other makes it your main inventory. Then you can in bulk sell the loot category. Then there will be relatively few things to sort through. If they have a list of keys instead of keys as items, it would help as well. No spell scrolls and fewer potions available or needed would help as well.

Yes there is nothing wrong with that either. The case around here points something other than you think. Don't you see where you did wrong. People going into detail about their posts is a good thing. Some people are harsh about Oblivion which I don't share the same harshness, I can't say they are wrong. They can go in detail and they have a point.

The "jumping" one... You're describing yourself, you're the one who said "I don't want to see anything from Morrowind implemented into TES:V." and then Oblivion "garbage". You're letting your perception to be clouded from the cumulative criticism towards Oblivion. No one is calling anything garbage, young Padawan.


Oblivion's UI is nice. It is easier to read, artwork is better, but design is for consoles. PC users are searching Morrowind's customize-able window designs. The ability to see map, inventory, spells, stats at once is neat. I think both platforms deserve their own UIs.

Now, that's better. Peace!

I like this idea of sorting items not by weight or size, but by actual use. I think they could flesh this out more with the containers others have mentioned and make things real organized.

Your equipped clothes and armor can go on your "body." Your readied weapon can go in your "sheath." Your potions and scrolls meant for quick use can go in your "belt pouch." All misc. loot for selling can get stuffed into your "backpack."

I'd be happy if in the next game, opening up the menu opened all four screens (map, items, inventory, and stats-- journal could be separate again), but the individual inventory menu was a list instead of a grid (though using a much smaller font than Oblivion, hopefully )

I very much like this idea.


Yeah, Oblivions inventory font size really aggravated me. It's bad enough that it's a damned scroll inventory (which is terrible), but add to that the fact that the font size is like 1000 and there are only 4 items on the screen at any given time, and scrolling down through that on the 360 version takes a long time. Just bad design.

Well, as I said before, the alternative was using teeny tiny text that was only legible on an HDTV, which a lot of people still didn't use when Oblivion launched. A text-heavy game like Oblivion would have been broken and unplayable if the majority of players couldn't read it. That being said, I don't know why that issue needed to carry over to the PC version since I don't know anyone who doesn't use an LCD monitor nowadays.

EDIT: However, just so we're clear, I LIKED the scroll inventory...

I just rly RLY RLY want them to make a separate tap for ingredients, potions, keys, scrolls, and quest items cause all those things can stack to unimaginable numbers.

a potion belt is a MUST, short cut just for potions that is, and a magic list/book is also a MUST with deleting placing options instead of the [censored] alphabet order.

and yes grid>>>>>>list BUT if they can implement BOTH option (like a mod I have for oblivion) it will be grand.

Yea this would be one thing where a option would be good and not THAT hard to implement, i mean the mod made it optional too, you could actually switch between the views in game.

This topic will not stay open, and warns will be issued if it devolves into Yet Another MW vs OB Flamefest. Stay on topic.

Are we referring to UIs? If so, I believe that Morrowind's is better as a PC UI amd I believe that Oblivion has a better console UI. I would like Bethesda to have separate UIs for the PC version and the console versions.

As said they don't even have to make two separate ones, this could be a easily optional one. The mod that integrated the grid inventory in Oblivion made it switchable in game too, there was a little button in the corner of the inventory that switched between line and grid view.

That could be done fairly easily with a multiple-container system; just make a hotkey that cycles through available containers as far as which is chosen for storing things you pick up. You could separate your items by bag and have one filled with just loot to sell.

When you carry more than just one set of armor, one weapon & not much else, then the grid might be ok, but when you are carrying a few sets of armor, a bunch of weapons, & a bunch of supplies, the list style works much better for me. I would hate the grid style if I had a bunch of items in my inventory.

The best possible setup would be to offer both as options. That probably wont happen, but it would make a lot of people happy. Same goes for the fast travel. I prefer the Oblivion style & I know other prefer Morrowind's style. An option would make people happy.

Options is the key for making people happy.

Options often DON'T make a lot of people happy because equal work must be done on all the options for all the options to have equal quality. Of course, this may also mean that the quality was split between the two, and we could have had a better system if we would have just had 1 option.

As for me, the list is inferior because of its size, at least in Oblivion. I have played Fallout 3 with a modified UI which decreases the font size on the inventory and allows more items to be viewed at once, and its pretty nice.

However, my largest issue is that its difficult to tell anything apart (even with sorting options) in a list, because the words start to run together. In Morrowind, I eventually could tell the slightest difference between inventory icons of weapons, armor, potions, etc. It was extremely easy for me to find exactly what I wanted when I wanted with no sorting or searching. The problem with the list inventory is that you will literally ALWAYS have some search time (unless the item you are looking for is at the top of the list). You will always have to scroll through it to find what you want.

There is a mod for Oblivion that makes the font much smaller, so you will see more of your inventory at one time. It's called DarNified UI. It works great.

The icons for weapons, armor, & spells is very easy to navigate through. I will admit that the Icons for the different spell types was a little strange, but still not very hard to navigate through.

Unless the grid style grows to full screen, it would be quite difficult to find what you need when you have a very full inventory. I installed the MGE mod for Morrowind & when I set the screen res to my normal desktop res, which is 1920x1200, the grid icons are extremely small & a little hard to actually see what some items are.

If the big problem is font size, wouldn't a slider in the options to change menu font size solve the problem?

You know what I am thinking: Custom inventory windows. I can create a window and call it essentials and fill it with my essential stuff. A non-restricted window like in Morrowind. And have tiles, detail, list, small icons, large icons options. Just like in Windows. And a search bar for both journal and inventories. I think TES should follow the innovations in Web and OS UIs, at least for PC version.

I think PC deserves that extra development time.

Funny enough, I'm just the opposite. Morrowind's icons all run together so I have to mouse over each individual item to look for something specific (particularly annoying when dealing with potions or scrolls; ugh), while Oblivion's is much easier for me to find what I'm looking for by having the item name (and a couple stats) all right there. That said, I don't enjoy clicking around to switch between maps, items, spells, and stats, with the quest log inexplicably mushed in next to the map. Being able to see more items at a time would be nice, too.

The icon-based inventory in MW was far faster and easier than scrolling the tiny viewable portion of the list in OB, in my experience. I can understand how someone playing on a lower-res system would have trouble identifying the icons, though, especially while still learning the game. The sorting tabs and alphabetical order made it hard to pick out "groups" of similar items, like keys and potions, which tended to scatter all through the inventory due to a lack of uniformity in naming: "Bronze Key" would be nowhere near "Strange Key". On the other hand, once you knew what you were looking for, picking items out of inventory in MW was just a wave of the mouse and a click, not OB's lengthy procedure to select the right menu page and then have to scroll through 40-50 items, 8 at a time, while seeing less information about those 8 items than you could get in MW by hovering over the icon for a few seconds, if you chose to do so.

Being able to resize, minimize and call back, or otherwise adjust the various inventory, stat, and spell windows was a great feature in MW, but probably wasn't practical on some consoles. Having the world map, your stats, your spells, and your inventory all visible (and usable) on the screen at the same time was impressive. The game REALLY needs both a PC-specific interface and a console-specific interface, to make the most of the features of the appropriate platform.

Contrary to some posters' views, I'm a MW fan to the core, and yet perfectly willing to point out its faults, or admit that Oblivion actually did improve on a number of aspects of the game. I just feel that OB gave up more than it gained by a substantial margin, the menu system being one of the prime examples.

exactly.