1. Except combat is one of the few things I thought Bethesda got right with Morrowind, the mechanics made character skill a priority as opposed to player skill. Didn't have a high enough long blade skill? Good luck stabbing people with swords.
2. I don't see how either of these things are any worse in Morrowind than they are in the company's subsequent releases. Bethesda has never had particularly good movement or dialogue systems.
3. I'm not sure how anyone could call Morrowind irrelevant, especially since Morrowind is a big part of why they're considered so amazing... prior to Morrowind Bethesda was an unremarkable studio that was close to brankruptcy, Morrowind's success/amazingness is what saved them.
Morrowind isn't the greatest RPG ever, but I definitely enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than Oblivion and Skyrim, and slightly more than Fallout 3.
1. Dicerolls do not work in First Person for me, they don't, and I won't play in 3rd person because it's horrible without a auto-target system and when the game isn't hack'n'slash.
Yes, it should be about character skill over player skill, but when I see my [censored] arrow go into the [censored] enemy I want it to get some damage, at least 1 in damage would suffice, that would just mean I hit it badly.
Or that with a healing spell, if I get a bad diceroll then it could svck out more mana or give me less health, but not even being able to use the spell? That makes spells too unreliable and somethin I can never trust.
2. Here is the problem: movement, actually I should have said 'travel', the world is boring as [censored], but that's okay, every gameworld becomes boring as [censored], the difference between Morrowind and the newer Beth titles is that outside of town you can't fast travel so you have to walk everywhere, with the awkward map and the barren landscape it takes forever and was just a tedious chore, even if I try to judge it "for it's time" it's complete crap, I've never been happier to have a fast-travel system than I was after having played Morrowind.
And yes, I know, I can use Mark and Recall, but again back to Point 1: Dicerolls, I used about 50 Mark and failed it every time, so once it works how reliable is Recall gonna be? And no, I am not going to torment myself through 60 hours of gameplay just to get Mysticism up so I can use it.
Next up is the dialouge, it's not the writing which I care about or that they
use topic dialogue, it's
how they used topic dialogue which pissed me off.
Every damn topic lists up and creates this huge ass list of things you can talk about and sometimes, juuuuust sometimes, some NPC has something new to say.
And since Bethesda has OCD with naming the most worthless characters instead of just using generic citizens that became a pain in the [censored] ass.
And here is the best damn example:
I was in a town and I got a quest to find out about an escaped Khajiit slave, and it said I should ask around town.
And look and behold, the new topic comes up, but here's the kicker: The citizens doesn't trust me enough to talk about it with me.
So I use bribe to get liked with an NPC, thought that I was gonna get the information, and what dialogue response do I get? "Oh I don't know anything about that".
...
I ask "Do you know anything about an escaped Khajiit slave?"
He said "I don't trust you enough to talk about that"
So I earn trust by money and I try again and the bastard has the nerve to say they have no idea what I'm talking about?
And no, this did not happen with one NPC, it happened with a dozen NPC's.
After that I gave up.
The topic dialogue used in Morrowind is the worst I've ever seen in how it functions.
Every damn topic lists up on top of each other, every damn NPC has to be named and I have no way of knowing who is going to have something new to say.
So either I avoid talking at all or I talk to every NPC about everything. Not a good design decision.
3. It's irrelavent to me because they've obviously abandoned it's design. It's what made them famous? Well, then Bethesda decided to lock it in the cellar and make streamlined games. Whatever Bethesda was back then when they designed it it is clearly not what they are now. They've changed. So Morrowind is irrelavent to me, because of it's horrible game design and that Bethesda has abandoned what made them famous.
So.
Fallout 1/2/T works with dicerolls because they are from an isometric point of view. But they do not work for me when I can see my arrow hitting the enemy and the game has the nerve to say "No it didn't..." Dicerolls in Fallout were also more reliable, nothing in Morrowind was reliable. Want to use a healing spell in combat? Well better hope it doesn't kick you in the balls and rolls a fail then! Want to use a sneak attack critical? Well better hope the game isn't being a dike and rolling a fail! I did not see any way to justify how bad it was in Morrowind.
Travel works in Fallout 1/2 because they cut out the pointless crap of a barren landscape and it works in Fallout 3, Oblivion and whatnot because you can fast travel.
But when it it becomes a tedious chore to explore in the slightest then it has gone wrong.
And dialogue in Fallout games work because a named character has a point and it has something unique to say.
And it worked in Oblivion because even generic named character with generic dialogue had a great way to streamline this in a good way: The topic who's response you've already heard goes from gold to dark grey.
None of these things worked in Morrowind.
Dicerolls in FPP? Horrible.
Travel across a barren landscape which can be 20 minutes of running with nothing to do? Horrible.
Stacking up every damn topic on top of each other and naming every damn character? Horrible.
Morrowind is probably the worst and most overrated game I've ever played.
I've never quite a game out of complete disgust in how it's designed.
Even Resident Evil 5 I was able to mildly enjoy despite the /rage I got from it.
That's just my opinion on things though.
[edit]
As a final note, someone once said to me that the game becomes more fun and smoother once you get further into the game and get your skills up.
But why should I play the game for 40 more hours only to have a horrible gaming experience just so that it can become fun later?
The whole "It gets better later" argument has a limit, and I trudged through 20 hours of Horrorwind despite these flaws.
So it's not like I played it for one or two hours.
I played it for 20 hours and was boring and frustrated the entire way.
TL : DR / Summary* Dicerolls: I do not think they work for a first person perspective, I know it's about character skill>player skill, but it became too unreliable, tedious and frustrating to have clear hits with weapons be fails. * Movement: I meant to say Travel, it's barren landscape became a chore to travel through when there was no way to travel faster. Those taxi thingies are only in town, mark and recall are too unreliable with low Mysticism skill and there is no fast travel.* Dialogue: The topics stack up and it becomes a pain to find new information about the same subject since out of 20 people living in a town only 1 might have something worthwhile to say about a topic, meaning you either have to use a guide, avoid talking at all or test every topic with every character.
* Irrelevance: Bethesda from back then and Bethesda from now clearly design games differently, and in comparison to Obsidian, who try to do compromises, to go mainstream while still trying to stay old-school to the best of their efforts, Bethesda has instead abandoned what made them what they are now and have not shown any signs that indicate they're trying to go back to Morrowind or even Arena's roots.
If you're going to respond to me please read the entire thing for a better, albeit long, explanation of these points.
» Fri May 04, 2012 2:29 am 
