Actually, Morrowind and Oblivion have the same kind of leveling system. Level-scaling is a difference between the games, but the actual leveling system is the same in both games.

ahh man in my opinion morrowind was unique everywhere you looked
oblivion is like hecka small and hecka bland
i actually liked reading txt instead of hearing half of a sentence spoken and half of a sentence in txt
BTW the quests in morrowind were mostly longer and more in depth
they required a lot of thought especially the thieves guild ones

:confused: The quests in Morrowind aren't always longer and more in depth than Oblivion's, especially the Thieves Guild quests, and the Thieves Guild questline in Oblivion has a good reputation. Compare these two quests:http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Kill_Hard-Heart_(Thieves_Guild), http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:The_Ultimate_Heist

Morrowind doesn't have level-scaling, and I prefer not having level-scaling in a game.

B'vekh! Why didn't you say so sooner?

Face replacers at Telesphoros list of mods: http://www.mwmythicmods.com/telesphoros.htm#5
Better Heads: http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=2735 (This was the first major head replacer mod and I still use it.)
Westly's Master Headpack: http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=6173

As for the bodies:
Better Bodies: http://www.psychodogstudios.com/betterbodies/
Better Clothes: http://www.psychodogstudios.com/betterclothes/

Morrowind didn't really get old for me. Something about the game still maintained its allure of magic, which is what Oblivion failed to do for me. Sure it did for a long time (about 2 - 4 years), but even now Morrowind still maintains this romantic notion to me, while Oblivion is...Oblivion.

I agree. And I think what it was for me, boils down to the fact that the exploration was not only more fruitful in Morrowind (I'll never forget finding Chrysamere totally accidentally, or a Daedra statue under the water while swimming,) but also that the exploration was there *at all*. The quest markers, the fast travel, everything about Oblivion encouraged this "get in, do the quest, get out" mentality. I knew precisely where to go, I could probably fast travel to it, or at least to another point really close to it, and there was little to no guesswork or working it out involved.

Morrowind's lore and culture were also more exotic and appealing. It wasn't just exotic because they slapped it into an asian setting and added some samurai swords and ninja gear. It was a culture and setting totally unique to Elder Scrolls. Cyrodiil was all right, I suppose, but compared to Morrowind it always felt shallow to me. I'm told Daggerfall had even more depth, though I never got to play that one growing up.

Nitpicky issues aside:

I liked how the music in Morrowind was calmer and more subtle (Oblivion's music was too loud and pushy)

Morrowind's main quest was less rushed: "Here's some gold, go explore and do stuff, come back whenever!" While in Oblivion we get "Take my amulet! Oblivion Gates! Madman on the loose!!!!"

Your "the chosen one" in both games, but you feel less like one in Morrowind. This makes it easier to RP

Most stuff in Morrowind isn't level scaled, for which I am glad. If enemies get stronger when you get stronger, there's no sense of progression.

In fact half of the MW MQ is finding out that you are the chosen one. This allows you to just drop the package for Caius into the river and never worry about the main quest ever.

The one drastic difference was that when you cleared a cave or ruin in MW, it STAYED clear, aside from a few "vermin" which might show up from time to time. You were encouraged to move on, and explore another site, of which there were plenty, and varied. In Oblivion, everything just respawned in 3 days, so you could keep going back over and over and over and........

Loot in MW was mostly levelled, but there were a few hand-placed items, and the levelled lists often had a slim possibility of a higher-level item appearing. You never really knew what you'd find. In OB, the levelled lists were heavily constrained, so you never got anything "interesting" at low level, and there weren't enough "hand placed" items to find worth mentioning. The high-level items simply didn't exist in the game world until you reached a certain level, which was ridiculous.

Ideally, something about half-way between that would be perfect, where places would "usually" remain clear for weeks or months, but there would be an increasing risk of dark things creeping back in again.... After 6 months or a year, in game, they'd be "likely" to be re-inhabited, so your "old" character would still have something to do.

I was working on a mod for some time with a few friends in which the idea was to progress the timeline of the game if you failed to complete the main quest in a certain number of in-game days. it turned out to be way more work than we had initially estimated and was abandoned pretty early on.

The idea was that if you never made it as far into the main quest as to be officially named Nerevarine in a certain amount of time, you would begin to hear rumors that someelse had done so (united the Houses, etc.) and that you weren't the chosen one and someone else had succeeded where you failed. . . and eventually after a time Dagoth ur would be defeated and Morrowind saved by someone else.

Or. . .

If you did unite the Houses and the Tribes and become Neravarine, but didn't defeat Dagoth Ur yourself in a ceratin amount of time, then everything would go to hell in a proverbial handbasket. It had potential and had some good story points, but it was just too gawd-awful huge.

I agree. Morrowind allowed for a smoother progression of the story and encouraged exploration. Oblivion's plot set the character immediately off on the main quest and expected the player to complete it.



That's exactly what I'm talking about.



I agree here too. However, I don't know if the game would be able to process that correctly. I'm worried that ultimately caverns will be cleared out and then, after an extended period of time, the exact same enemies will appear back there and just sit around and occupy it. There needs to be some sense of change and movement involved, otherwise the action becomes repetitive. With Morrowind, at least there was a sense of absolutism.



What was the most constraining aspect of that mod?

Anyway...Sorry if I'm taking this off-topic. I don't mean to.

Time and motivation.
I'm not really sure, I was working on the story and plot points aspect. . . not really sure what the technical limitations were.

Sounds to me like the "Daunting Task Syndrome" I get. I just made up the term, lol.

But if something seems too big and time-consuming, and I'm not 100% motivated, I just move on.

Which is why I have to trick myself into doing it in parts like: "Well, I'll just play it and have fun."

and then I go: "Well, I could always make a metal grate to cook on, that wouldn't hurt..."

and it ends up being tons of new scripts, items, enchantments, spells, cells, NPCs, and AI.

To make a successful mod, I have to feel like I'm not making a mod.

I think the biggest hurdle was that I was simply way more into it than the other members of the "team," but I don't have the technical knowledge to write scripts and such. I wanted to make Morrowind even better, they wanted to play Warcraft.

I have to disagree on that one. In Oblivion I felt like Martin was more the chosen one than me, I was just a soldier in a war. In Morrowind you're forced into the history a little bit and you realize that you're not just some guy here to close a gate, you're a hero, a great general, a lover, a friend etc.

There were three things in my opinion about Oblivion that made it an easier to enjoy game: Graphics, Physics (I'm a svcker for havok), and the combat system. If Morrowind had those three things, it would be damn near perfect. The voice acting would be a nice touch, but not completely necessary. Although Oblivion was bigger physically (16sq miles compared to Morrowinds 9 I think) Morrowind felt like a much bigger game which to me is a lot more important. I loved the subtle music and even though it was a pain a lot of the time it was fun following someone's directions to get somewhere rather than following your magical green arrow. Although graphics alone don't make a game (I can remember clear as day playing Daggerfall when I was a kid) It felt really nice watching the sunset from Dive Rock. It's a tough choice but I have to say I enjoyed the Shivering Isles more than I did Tribunal/Bloodmoon Sheogorath > Hircine. One last thing, I really liked how in Morrowind you could kill anyone you like, even Vivec if you're up to it whereas in Oblivion important characters simply get knocked unconcious (You must be a god to walk away from Goldbrand).

All in all I'd say Oblivion was more fun, but Morrowind was the better game.

I was eight-years-old when I first tried Morrowind, I hated it and put it in my closet. Years later I got Oblivion and LOVED it. Recently I tried Morrowind and I have to say, I can't play Oblivion anymore, I just find it so boring.

A wise man once said, "With no risk, there can be no reward." That is basically Oblivion. There is no risk, because it's all leveled. There is no reward, because level up 3 levels and get a new suit of armor.

In Morrowind, there is so much risk at low levels you'll be afraid to even walk outside town. But if you're brave enough you can find wonderful thinks like Chrysamere, a piece of daedric or glass armor, and all kinds of wonderful things. In Morrowind, there is always risk, and always reward just waiting to be found

Give it a try, you'll love it if you're patient enough.

Culture, detail, and originality. People still like exploring the place, most even agree Fallout 3 was perhaps AS good as Morrowind for just wandering around and exploring. That's right, a game made 7 years later for no doubt more than quadruple the budget managed to be AS good as it's predecessor at a major component of the gameplay.

The other thing was, and thankfully Howard agrees, culture. People still mock some of Oblivion's terrible writing "It's the Hero of Kvatch!" "I saw some goblins yesterday." are still occasionally used in mocking derision of any number of things.

Alternatively when people gush about a game made 4 years before that just the opposite occurs. "Ma Sara" "Greeting Outlander" etc. are all remembered fondly by even casual fans of Morrowind as hallmarks of their experiences. Even "We're watching you... scum." gets a few laughs out of people who haven't played the game in years. This is how you know you've made something a "classic".

I sincerely hope they can repeat these feats.

Congratulations! You've all convinced me to purchase Morrowind for the PC and play it again. Good job.

Loreseeker - having the "previously cleared" sites respawn after a random amount of time shouldn't be anything difficult to program. The individual corpses and containers in Oblivion were already "time stamped" by the game to respawn in 3 days, so placing a similar "stamp" on the door would allow the game to track when the place was last visited. After a certain amount of time elapsed, there would be a random number check, and if the time exceeded that number, the dungeon could "respawn" fresh adversaries and loot pretty much the same way that OB did it (but hopefully NOT the same way OB did it, with blatant 100% levelling of everything). The only major noticable difference would be the time until it happened, which would be variable. Keeping a degree of uncertainty makes life "interesting", and that way you don't get a fully repopulated and restocked "supermarket" to loot every 3 days like clockwork.

It could even use the time difference to vary the maximum "quality" of the respawn, so the longer it went, the harder it might get. You can still use the cleared site for "semi-safe" storage, as long as you keep going back every few days. If you wander off for a week, the odds are good that the game won't obliterate your entire collection, but it MIGHT. After 6 months, the odds are high that someone or something has moved in by now. That might even make LOCKS useful, so your recently cleared ruin DOESN'T respawn.

That you can read faster, doesn't change a thing, you can also stop them from speaking if you're finished reading what they have to say, and you can turn the subtitles off, so your forced to listen. But they were exactly the same voices that was used in morrowind, I don't see the difference, in morrowind you just have a written version of the same characters, the fact that it is written makes it even more obvious. I would argue that the Oblivion characters are the ones with the most personality.

This.

Imagination is key. Very few games are purposefully deforming reality to make a point. Very few games put enough time in creating an atmosphere to make people unconsciously ignore or fit that which doesn't belong. It's something that I've only encountered in games that weren't quite finished or were delayed for a good while. Stalker comes to mind.

Then try listening to a male Dunmer in Morrowind and compare it to the voice of all male elves in Oblivion.

In Morrowind each race had a unique voice actor for both males and females. They kept the voice actors who voiced the Nords (now used for Orcs as well), Redguards, female Bretons (now also used for female Imperials), female Dunmer (voices all the female elves), and Argonians (now also used for Khajiits). Male Imperials, male elves, and male Bretons all use a new voice actor. I think the new male Breton voice is an improvement, but the other's aren't.

I think it's probably even more key than you're stating here, though I certainly agree.

It's the difference in entertaining yourself and being entertained. In Morrowind I felt that I was entertaining myself, whereas in Oblivion the focus was more on being entertained. I think it's a problem with the direction games are heading at the moment - they identify too strongly with the movie market, and it's emphasis on entertaining someone, where I feel that games should be more focused on letting the player entertain themselves. Letting a player use their imagination is one element of this, rather than having the experience be force fed the 'way the developer intended'.

Yeah, pretty much. I might describe it a bit differently, but I won't confuse the topic with another hackneyed response. My complaint about both is they aren't open enough, I suppose. Then, Morrowind didn't match the concept art, from the story boards, closely enough. I don't know, when I see the concept art, and play the game, I miss the concept art. Future games need to emphasize Kirkbride's style, in the graphics. Photo-realism can kiss my ass. anyway

same here!!





the part about the loot is really good...i agree completely




haha yeah i actually was convinced last week by this topic to start playing MW again....haha silly right?