I just don't like how Morrowind has this godly status on here and Oblivion is made out to be a horrible game that failed, when in reality they aren't that far apart in terms of quality.

Nicely said.

Yes! Let Skyrim be Skyrim! :foodndrink:

BGS is known for innovating, taking risks, and pushing their games to the next level. So let them do it! :biggrin:

Good point, the sheer number of books completely slipped my mind when I typed that. And about the quests, I'm ashamed to admit this, but...I haven't even played every quest in Oblivion yet. So far, I've only done all the guilds, the MQ, and the occasional odd job, so I've probably missed out on a lot of lore. :cryvaultboy:

Good thing I still have another 9 months!

Every TES game has played differently, and felt different from the last. I don't expect Skyrim to be any different. Morrowind the was the series' first mainstream success, and so it's the touchstone a lot of players look to. (It's my favorite, too.)

But with Oblivion, what a lot of people don't seem to realize or want to accept, is that they were actually attempting to address the complaints the majority of players had about Morrowind. That changes the feel of the game, though. So you end up with people having their complaints addressed, yet - almost paradoxically - feeling the atmosphere and vibe of the game less than they did its predecessor. There are probably a lot of players who entered the series with Oblivion, who would hate Morrowind because it doesn't feel like Oblivion did. They may dislike Skyrim for the same reason, even if it addresses a lot of people's complaints about Oblivion.

Bethesda can't win.

That said, I do suspect Skyrim will have more depth, granularity, and nuance than Oblivion did, just by virtue of its setting.

It potentially shares spell mechanics.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1162905-skills-we-know-are-confirmed/page__view__findpost__p__17083983

Oh your missing so many fun/cool quests lol. The daedra prince quests are usually pretty interesting, especially Sheogorath's lol.

What does that even mean? Oblivion appealed to people who don't want to be forced to pick the fun parts from a convoluted, slow game? Some people want to play a game without it feeling like a chore.

There's a difference between dumbing something down and streamlining it. Why should someone else having fun with a game bother you? Why would you feel the need to insult them? Do you really feel superior because you think it makes sense to have redundant skills that could be easily combined to make something more intuitive and less restricting.

I'm getting pretty tired of these Morrowind people. It was a good game but if you're going to keep criticising every new Elder Scrolls for not being enough like Morrowind than be quiet and go back to playing Morrowind.

apparently BAM wasn't enough to get everyone's attention. By the way larry, there is a much better way to deal with that problem that what you are doing, I assure you.

anywho, the aforementioned bam:

I want to bring up another observation, and I want this spoken from the mountain tops.

In that picture Destruction is highlighted and its description goes:

• "The School of Destruction covers the harnessing of elemental energies. This skill makes it easier to cast spells like Fireball, Ice Spike, and Lightening Bolt."

Easier to cast -> as in: difficulty in casting -> as in: not automatic success
And I feel very comfortable extrapolating that to:

chance of complete spell failure

hell yeah

Good lord, what is it with people reading into my post like I've issued some kind of grand declaration of war? I'm not an elitist, I just don't approve of change for the sake of change and balancing of things that weren't an issue in the first place, it's better to fix problems than to place priority on altering and removing what was done right,

I always welcome innovation and logical streamlining, but cutting things out for the sake of useless simplification and (good lord how I hate this word these days) balance (IE your use of the term OP) is just... well, stupid.

Stacking enchantments in Morrowind cost an unnatural amount of gold, an amulet that healed you at 1HP per second for instance (CE) would cost around 100,000 drakes if not more and pre-made items that held constant effect enchantments were few and far between, and at that, they were generally extremely difficult to acquire. Levitation still had a cost and on top of that was a fairly advanced alteration skill, not to mention it actually added to the difficulty and fun of the game as it provided another outlet for dungeon exploration and puzzle solving, wheras Oblivion's method simply revolved around running through each slightly different dungeon, pressing buttons on the wall and killing monsters and enemies indiscriminately (with the exception of a few specific quests). Beside that, the only real reason they removed levitation was because of the nature of the towns (what with being contained in separate, isolated cells) and for the sake of simplifying dungeons. On the subject of spears I think it's pretty safe to say you can easily use that tactic with any other weapon regardless and at that requires a fair amount of skill stacking in speed and agility while even the more powerful spears which are both incredibly difficult to obtain don't really have amazing stats.

I'm not criticizing the game for not being Morrowind, I loved Oblivion (primarily at the behest of mods), but the more and more I look back on it it bothers me how so much of the game is just wrong. Especially the main quest which was just a steaming pile of refuse with the depth of a puddle of rainwater even in comparison to games with the most rudimentary of stories, with the biggest twist revolving around... uhh, wait, there weren't any twists to speak of really. I honestly can't think of a character in the main quest, or really in all of Cyrodil I actually liked and felt some sort of fondness for beside Antoinette Marie, which I suppose is an accomplishment in and of itself.

Plus, where the [censored] was my jungle?

If Skyrim has Scribs in it I will literally jump out of my chair, open my door, wait for the elevator, go down the elevator, run through the lobby, open the doors, run onto the sidewalk, hug the nearest person I see, weep on their shoulder and proclaim, "Scribs aren't extinct, oh my god I'm so happy."

...so yeah, lets hope it has Scribs in it.

It will share the ash and volcanic waste of Dagoth Ur.

So you want to devolve the series into something from 2001? Instead how about they (which it seems they are) evolve and revolutionize the series to stand on its own achievements, not something else's and surpass all of the predecessors.

If they delivered a morrowind 2.0 everyone would be crying foul.

Not necessarily. It's quite possible that it is, but it can also simply mean that it will be easier MAGICKA-WISE. If I remember well, in Oblivion it was written similarily too (don't quote me on that though, I haven't played in a while)

Didn't vote.


I'd rather have Skyrim be Skyrim, instead of Skyrim (Morrowind) or Skyrim (Oblivion).

Levatation might have been broken, but it could've been fixed without being completely removed. And I think the reason that most people here liked levatation was because it allowed the developers to design dungeons vertically. I mean, in Morrowind there was so much hidden loot that was stored in some little nook on the ceiling of some random dungeon that you wouldn't have if not for levatation. That's why people (or at least, that's why I) enjoyed levatation. It allowed variety. Yes, it did need improvement, but totally removing it wasn't the answer.

And, by your reasoning about why spears were overpowered and were rightly removed, then bows are overpowered and should be removed. Sure, some people really enjoy them, and they add variety to combat. However, they were SO overpowered. I mean, everyone that used bows in Oblivion must've jumped up on rocks, out of reach of enemies, and simply poked them to death without getting hurt. Sure, they could simply limit the exploits and FIX bows, but they were too overpowered to deserve improvement. They deserve to be axed.

See how ridiculous that sounds? Spears could've been exploited for their range, sure. But most people that used them used them because they actually LIKED the weapons, not just because they could be exploited. You can't just remove every factor of a game that can be exploited. No, you need to fix them so that they CAN'T be exploited. I hope that makes sense.

Morrowind had deeper Main quest and almost all the other aspects that an RPG can have.

Oblivion had some side quests that had more meat to them, but because of Hand holding inbred in all aspect of gaming, those were not that much of challenge.

Yes! ...a border.

But seriously folks, I feel pretty confident the devs have been listening.

Uh, why does the thread title say Morrowind but the poll options say Oblivion? :confused:

Because you didn't read the first post.

That's exactly what you were doing, you were being an elitist. You claim that the game was "dumbed down" for the "casuals". That's Elitist, especially when there is no evidence for that at all seeing as nothing in the game was "dumbed down" it was simplified but it didn't require any more brain power to play Morrowind than it did to play Oblivion, in fact, Oblivion was had more brain stimulating activities than Morrowind such as lockpicking and the speech wheel. Lockpicking was semi-difficult that required you to actually think more than just equip lockpick and press the attack button. The speech wheel wasn't difficult for most but it also required you to read the expressions on person's face and try to maximize gains compared to picking between admire and intimidate and hope their disposition goes up.



What was cut for simplification? Not one thing was cut for simplification. The armor system was cut down because it caused enchant stacking, spears could be heavily abused so that you could never be hit in combat if you were good at combat and realized how to do it. "Balance" is essential in every game. You can't have your skills and spells that are overpowered/abusable in a game, most game developers (the good ones anyhow) don't want you to have something that will break the flow of the game they made, that's just bad game design. I'm convinced that people only want these things back because it made them gods. Everything people ask for to be returned to the game (except for the travel networks) were all overpowered/imbalanced and were removed thusly for it. I mean, if you really can't see that levitation was broken, I can't help you...



So basically your saying it's okay to have a broken system that makes you a god that is unstoppable as long as you have to pay a lot of money? Godmode should not be attainable in a game by normal means no matter how much time you put into the game. You should become a powerful character, yes, but not an unstoppable juggernaut that fears no amount of enemies because if they hit you, it doesn't matter. Levitation has a cost you say? I didn't know spells had costs /sarcasm. Levitation allowed you to fly all over Morrowind without having to worry about being attacked, allowed you to float above NPCs and kill them and they can't do anything about it and also doesn't fit in the lore as levitation has only been used for very short periods of time to get to secluded ledges or something or someone used a flying potion. Levitation is OP, period and doesn't even fit the lore. Levitation was removed for being overpowered, if you don't believe that then you have little faith in Bethesda to balance their games. As for dungeon crawling, that's exactly what Morrowind did. You would run through dungeons, killing monsters and enemies indiscriminately, you didn't even have the buttons to push, yep, Oblivion was dumbed down all right...



Oblivion had a decent main quest line, I don't see where your getting where it was such a steaming pile of refuse. Also, if you required mods to play Oblivion, I GUARANTEE you just picked mods to make it have Morrowind's features. You must not have played all the quests if you didn't like any characters in Oblivion. I tend to see people that couldn't enjoy Oblivion because they were spending too much time trying to compare it to Morrowind instead of paying attention to the game and enjoying it, you missed out on a superior game and I'm sorry. The only thing Morrowind had over Oblivion was a stellar main quest line and the main quest does not equate to the full game, you have to rate it as a whole and overall, Oblivion blew Morrowind away.

Also, your jungle was transformed into a temperate climate by the ninth divine, Talos in the second era, so you missed the jungle by several centuries.

My question still stands. Why is Morrowind in the thread title when the poll options and first post are about Oblivion? If he's asking if Skyrim will share as much with Morrowind as Oblivion did then the he made just made an oddly structured thread.

quick suggestion to the mods: Instead of suspending intelligible people like me who lightly insult those who deserve it, start banning everyone incapable of making a halfway decent thread or post. Some of the garbage in this forum is either unreadable or makes absolutely no sense and is full of all sorts of errors and emotional outburst without even a hint of logic or thoughtfulness.

See, you just compared apples and oranges with comparing Spears to Bows. They aren't even the same combat experience. When your able to keep people out of range while still hurting people with melee, that's too much. Yes, bows had a problem with backpedaling, that is fixed in Skyrim and bows have been buffed in power but are even slower than before. Spears have an issue with being able to stagger people while keeping them at a range as melee, you don't even need backpedal, just remember to impale the enemy in the face when they charge at you. As for the removal of levitation, spears and armor layers, when your building a game for a system that hasn't even been made yet, your a little pressed for time and they didn't have time to try to fix broken features and finish the game at the same time. I completely agree with fixing things and putting them back in, such as I've given ways you can do it such as putting back in the armor layers but keep you from enchanting the extra layers, but of course I was shot down because people said the only reason they wanted them was to enchant them to overpower themselves (I'm serious, that's what they said so my talk of people only wanting things because they just want to be overpowered is not unfounded) and when I suggested a way to bring back in levitation without it being broken, by making it where it constantly and rapidly drains magicka so that you can only get about 50 feet in the air and 30 feet in any direction before you run out of magicka, people just ignored it and kept saying "I want levitation back like it was so I fly all over the province unrealistically in the context of TES, I wantz it to be like Worldz of Warkraftz!" It's funny that people that always advocate for people to put in the systems they want because it's not fair that the people that advocate for keeping the new systems should get what they want and the people that want the old systems back shouldn't suffer for it, yet those people continually shoot down compromises to get aspects of the old systems back in the game while still keeping aspects of the new system because they just want it their way. Seems hypocritical imo.



Really? What parts of Oblivion where hand holding other than the magic compass which you could follow the quest marker with? That wasn't even meant to be a hand holding tool, it was just something new they were trying and it turned out that way. I really don't see what Morrowind had that Oblivion didn't have in the RPG aspects. I see people saying how TES is moving away from RPGs but I say that those people saying that don't have the first clue what an RPG is, let alone what an Action RPG is...

They have [censored] a lot of new ideas that turned out to be hand holding, and removed the challenge and novelty of the game, or reduced my enjoyment from an aspect that I liked in Morrowind, you might call that RPGing or not, but it was a viable aspect that went bad in Oblivion:

• Magic compass as you said yourself: Adventuring and novelty of finding the target, gone, surprises of finding some place new by yourself, gone, because all the paces around were shown in the compass, immersion in the actual game, and sinking in the atmosphere, gone, as at least half of my mind, of not the most part, was on the compass and not the actual scene, as I was forced to do in Morrowind.
  
• Leveled creatures and Items: The sense of accomplishing something and feeling more powerful as we level-up, gone, the surprise and joy of finding unique and interesting that we stumble upon, gone, the initial set back in our encounters and then the sense of triumph when we later came back to conquer the place that had defeated us earlier, gone, the novelty of finding high level items in the later stages of the game, gone, just kill a few bandits, the need to gather our money for a goal, gone, those bandits that I mentioned.
  
• Guild requirements: Role playing as a specialized character, gone, an Orc Barbarian as the arch-mage of the arcane university? The sense of triumph of reaching higher levels of the guilds, gone.
  
• Minigames and the shift from character skills to player skills: The need to improve some skills, gone, repeatitive and boring minigames, introduced.
  
• Removing levitation and 3d dungeon design, grottoes and under water dungeons: The need to look in all direction in dungeons not to miss some nice surprise, gone, immense variety of the dungeon design and ideas, gone.
  
• The unique feel culture and atmosphere of each area, faction and person, gone, the drama and rivalry between factions and great houses, that gave life and believability to the game environment, gone, ease of mod-ability for new life stories and additional drama and culture, gone.

These are just what I remembered right now, and I'm sure that I can dig more flaws if I think more about the game.

you must be a bit behind on the game informer news. Check it out man. They heard our 10 year cry.