Morrowind is just a plain bad game

[Sul]

Adamantine Tower and Green-Sap are destroyed? When did that happen? Numidium is also still around, it was just blown into Aetherius.

Also, White-Gold tower was never meant as a foundation. The Ayleids built it right in the middle of all other towers with the purpose of reversing creation.

Green-Sap (Falinesti) simply stopped moving, presumably dead.
Yes, Numidium was blown into Aetherius, but either way it's not inside the Hub.
Adamantine never worked, at least since the Aedra fled from creation. Now it's just a hollow tower with made of metal.

Didn't know about the White-Gold Tower being built with the purpose of reversing creation. Either way the Amulet of Kings, with used to help Mundus stay in place, is now destroyed.

 

[Longshanks]

Trolling or not. He's right. Morrowind is a dull game. Beth did the right thing in trying to liven things up for Oblivion; they just went about it in the wrong way.

To raise my interest they'd need to make some serious core design changes (I've not found any of their games enjoyable, not even enough to play the last two). Dungeons and drudgery just doesn't do it for me, especially when the dungeons are themselves a drudge.

 

[metzger]

One-button action combat with chance-to-hit is an awful shit, that's true. I can't really imagine anything worse. And the world design is so monotonous. There's no real difference between the south coast and the north coast. They may look differently, yes, but content is the same. Tombs with undead, caves with smugglers, shrines with cultists, dwemer ruins with dwemer robots. You'll never see anything new after maybe five hours of gameplay - at most. No motivation to explore. Do exploration supposed to be game's main strenght? Meh. Even rare items like daedric became totally devaluated after level 20 or so when every dremora lord starts to drop them. Suprisingly, it became even worse in Oblivion. Not sure about Skyrim.

 

[DraQ]

Literate

I wouldn't say so.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Daedric armor never gets dropped by enemies in morrowind. There are only two sets in the entire game, one scattered, and the other on an NPC you can only get it from using some cheesy disintegration trick. There are tons of placed items and artifacts to find and interesting things to discover. Though I'll admit most of the items are rather boring, I never cared much for the spell charge system morrowind used. If I wanted spell effects I needed to recharge by resting I'd just use magic. (Well, except enchanting is OP and easier to crank than all the spell schools, but that was just balance fail.)

But shit like finding some nice piece of unique/non scaled equipment or raiding a vault felt awesome in morrowind.

 

[Wyrmlord]

One-button action combat with chance-to-hit is an awful shit, that's true.

Daggerfall and Ultima Underworld have much much better combat, in my opinion. Their system involves different body parts getting hit by guiding the direction in which you swing the weapon. At the very least, you actually feel involved in the combat, because you can feel yourself guiding the character's sledgehammer from the floor right up to his chin. At the same time, it's very stats-based and involves different armour classes for different parts of the body.

In defense of Morrowind, however, there are three types of attacks with each meelee weapon, so it's not that monotonous. It depends on whether you really diversify between attacks. But in many cases, you don't have to do it.

Skyrim, by virtue of being more action-ey, gives up the silly midway compromise of Oblivion, which tried to be both a complete action game and a complete stats-based game. In Skyrim, you can sprint and use shields as a battering ram to knock down enemies who are too vicious to be fought directly. If somebody is charging straight at you, and you'll likely by killed by his charge, you can gamble on a very slow attack in which you run back and swing around to hit the enemy straight in the chest for a temporarily paralyzing attack. Moreover, you can simply give up all the chance to defend yourself, using a flurry attack which does a little less damage, but is too fast to allow the enemy to recover and hit you back. Admittedly, it's not nearly as sophisticated as Daggerfall, but it's more serviceable.

However, I would prefer if Skyrim had Morrowind's or Daggerfall's spellcasting.

 

[Skittles]

Obvious alt is obvious.

On topic, the combat in Morrowind truly was secondary to the exploration, wasn't it? I'm trying to remember the number of enemies you absolutely had to fight in order to advance with the MQ, even without metagaming. Maybe somebody can help me out.

But realistically, I remember quite a few playthroughs were I would go ten hours before engaging in combat with anything more challenging than a mudcrab, cliffracer or rat.

I'm not saying the criticism of the combat is invalid; it's just that it played such a small role in the game that I for one just kind of ignored it. I'd go the opposite direction from the OP in criticizing the number of enemies--I'd want a Morrowind with less combat in general. Nothing ruins a good exploration/adventure game like being randomly attacked by generic enemies for no logical reason, especially if the combat system is so weak.

 

[metzger]

I wouldn't say so.

Yes, I wouldn't too. I am not a native english speaker, so there might be a lot of stupid mistakes in my posts.

Daedric armor never gets dropped by enemies in morrowind

I know, I mean weapons. Armor seemed so unimportant in Morrowind, I don't even know how it works if it works at all. There's no noticeably difference between armor 10 and 60, for example. I played breton with Dragon Shield spell which gives 50 armor. Never helped me.

On topic, the combat in Morrowind truly was secondary to the exploration, wasn't it? I'm trying to remember the number of enemies you absolutely had to fight in order to advance with the MQ, even without metagaming. Maybe somebody can help me out.

It's not secondary, because you have to fight a lot if you want to explore. Enemies are everywhere. To advance with the MQ you have to fight bandits in dwemer ruins to get the puzzlebox, then undead in the tomb to get the skull etc. Yes, you don't absolutely have to fight them, you can just run away. But shitty running doesn't seem like a good alternative to shitty combat.

 

[Skittles]

It's not secondary, because you have to fight a lot if you want to explore. Enemies are everywhere.

The primary activity in Morrowind: exploration.
"...you have to fight a lot if you want to explore."
Therefore, the secondary activity: combat.

In a combat oriented game, you would explore primarily to find stuff to kill. The exploration would be secondary. It would be retarded to say of this game "Exploration's not secondary, because you have to explore a lot if you want to fight" if fighting is the main reason you play the game.

My 'wasn't it?' was meant to indicate that there's plenty of room for interpretation--there may be some perverse soul who plays Morrowind solely for the combat--but your post is not that.

While we're talking about you, whose alt are you? Also, do you consider your past few posts proper trolling (I'll admit you're getting some reaction), or are you just warming up? Lastly, would you consider changing your sig to "S.E.N.T.I.N.E.L." for me?

 

[LoPan]

Daggerfall and Ultima Underworld have much much better combat, in my opinion. Their system involves different body parts getting hit by guiding the direction in which you swing the weapon. At the very least, you actually feel involved in the combat, because you can feel yourself guiding the character's sledgehammer from the floor right up to his chin. At the same time, it's very stats-based and involves different armour classes for different parts of the body.

In defense of Morrowind, however, there are three types of attacks with each meelee weapon, so it's not that monotonous. It depends on whether you really diversify between attacks. But in many cases, you don't have to do it.

I'd argue the problem lies in the visual representation. In Daggerfall, for instance, you have the abstraction of 2D; the world may be a load of 3D planes but you yourself, the weapon in front of you, as well as the enemies are 2D and when swinging a weapon or firing a bow in the vague direction of the enemy a system of hit chance is more acceptable as the general aesthetic of the game is already an abstraction. I, and it seems at least a few others, found hit chance wildly out of place in Morrowind and this is probably because Morrowind is full, glorious 3D. When you actually have to aim your bow or your character to hit the enemy and then you don't hit it just doesn't seem right to the brain because it is full 3D meaning it is trying to be realistic and is, compared to Daggerfall, yet uses an abstract system. It really is the antithesis of what an RPG is, which is the abstraction of reality to allow the handling of a larger scope whether that be in a system or a world.

The primary activity in Morrowind: exploration.
"...you have to fight a lot if you want to explore."
Therefore, the secondary activity: combat.

In a combat oriented game, you would explore primarily to find stuff to kill. The exploration would be secondary. It would be retarded to say of this game "Exploration's not secondary, because you have to explore a lot if you want to fight" if fighting is the main reason you play the game.

My 'wasn't it?' was meant to indicate that there's plenty of room for interpretation--there may be some perverse soul who plays Morrowind solely for the combat--but your post is not that.

While we're talking about you, whose alt are you? Also, do you consider your past few posts proper trolling (I'll admit you're getting some reaction), or are you just warming up? Lastly, would you consider changing your sig to "S.E.N.T.I.N.E.L." for me?

What in goodness name is there to explore in Morrowind? Went all over that world and all I found was a load of rubbish and mud. I have never been able to understand how anyone could find exploration in Morrowind interesting, neither do I understand it when said about Skyrim. Both games look absolutely atrocious, I don't mind old 3D--I quite fancy it--but there is hardly anything to see in Morrowind, or find, or experience; point is, don't get what part of the notion of exploration could be satisfied by Morrowind.

 

[Damned Registrations]

First this I ever did in Morrowind, before even reaching Balmora, was explore a random nearby cave. Found an artifact ring worth 3000 coins with constant effect enchantments I'd never be able to duplicate. Second thing I ever did in Morrowind: stumbled into another cave with those cultists that populate the endgame, picked up an ebony helm about 20 hours before I'd get one the normal way. Escaped by using my high athletics to leap over a pit of lava and run out of the cave with demons and cultists chasing me.

There was shit to explore.

 

[LoPan]

But what about the tenth cave? Or any non-cave area? You also did those things in the beginning which is when everything seems new. Personally, playing Morrowind, I found after having played the game for twenty hours that I had seen everything there was to see in the first four or so hours. Sure I've never seen this new magical item I just found, but its just a magical longsword, just a 3d model with attributes and they're everywhere. What makes good exploration is mysterious, but I figure it is not about how much stuff is in the world but what you can do in it. Could be the reason Shadow of the Colossus is fantastic to explore, even though its world is desolate, is due to great moving around, horsing around and climbing around mechanics. You jumped over a bit of lava but how many times more did you get to use a skill so specifically to your advantage?

 

[DragoFireheart]

First this I ever did in Morrowind, before even reaching Balmora, was explore a random nearby cave. Found an artifact ring worth 3000 coins with constant effect enchantments I'd never be able to duplicate. Second thing I ever did in Morrowind: stumbled into another cave with those cultists that populate the endgame, picked up an ebony helm about 20 hours before I'd get one the normal way. Escaped by using my high athletics to leap over a pit of lava and run out of the cave with demons and cultists chasing me.

There was shit to explore.

And then I sold the super expensive armors to power level and make the game a joke with my alchemy and 10000 strength potions.

 

[DraQ]

Yes, I wouldn't too. I am not a native english speaker, so there might be a lot of stupid mistakes in my posts.

Like making bafflingly dumb statements?

There is a lot of stuff in Morrowind that may be impossible to duplicate on your own.
There is also a lot of stuff that is just plain cool or interesting from various points of view.

Places of interests generally have some leads to attract the players, although they may be very subtle. In any case, given the sheer number of unique locations, you can't see everything worth seeing in just 5h, especially if you're not cheesing the exploits.

I know, I mean weapons. Armor seemed so unimportant in Morrowind, I don't even know how it works if it works at all. There's no noticeably difference between armor 10 and 60, for example. I played breton with Dragon Shield spell which gives 50 armor. Never helped me.

Unarmored bug. Get MCP.

It's not secondary, because you have to fight a lot if you want to explore. Enemies are everywhere. To advance with the MQ you have to fight bandits in dwemer ruins to get the puzzlebox, then undead in the tomb to get the skull etc. Yes, you don't absolutely have to fight them, you can just run away. But shitty running doesn't seem like a good alternative to shitty combat.

You can sneak by or disable enemies in various ways.
Most don't carry anything worthwhile anyway.

 

[Quetzacoatl]

Draq, why aren't you butthurt? Will it take Wyrmie calling the lore uninspired to draw your anger?

 

[Damned Registrations]

And then I sold the super expensive armors to power level and make the game a joke with my alchemy and 10000 strength potions.

For a whopping ~500 gold each? Brilliant. Or did you read a guide to do that by finding the secret mudcrab merchant before whining about it.

Morrowind engame was indeed broken (I arrived via the -Mercantile skill abuse for infinite gold available in the expansion) but before then I had shitloads of fun, ripping off the alchemy equipment and soulstones from mage guilds across the province, stealing things from wealthy landowners and out of guarded vaults, and wiping out important quest NPCs and looting random useless but unique or rare crap to decorate the mage guild in Alduruhn I stole my house.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Draq, why aren't you butthurt? Will it take Wyrmie calling the lore uninspired to draw your anger?

Isn't it common knowlegde Morrowind lore uninspired? It's got Christian undertones, which makes it especially derp.

 

[DragoFireheart]

For a whopping ~500 gold each? Brilliant. Or did you read a guide to do that by finding the secret mudcrab merchant before whining about it.

Found creeper on my own. Found the potion thingy later on. Enchanting broke the game much earlier than that.

 

[Quetzacoatl]

Isn't it common knowlegde Morrowind lore uninspired? It's got Christian undertones, which makes it especially derp.

What are these Xian undertones and what makes them "derp"?

 

[Wyrmlord]

Draq, why aren't you butthurt? Will it take Wyrmie calling the lore uninspired to draw your anger?

He has thick skin.

Or rather very hard scales.

 

[DragoFireheart]

What are these Xian undertones and what makes them "derp"?

You: Jesus reincarnated.
Dagoth Ur: Satan.
Azura: God.
Vivec and co: The Followers of Christ.

It's derp because it's been done to death.

 

[Skittles]

What in goodness name is there to explore in Morrowind? Went all over that world and all I found was a load of rubbish and mud. I have never been able to understand how anyone could find exploration in Morrowind interesting, neither do I understand it when said about Skyrim. Both games look absolutely atrocious, I don't mind old 3D--I quite fancy it--but there is hardly anything to see in Morrowind, or find, or experience; point is, don't get what part of the notion of exploration could be satisfied by Morrowind.

I really enjoyed hearing somebody mention some ring in a tomb on the other side of the island and then the subsequent journey to recover it. I may be falling into LARP territory, but that shit appeals to me sometimes.
For the time, I thought it was a well constructed simulation of a fantasy society, with static, but existent economy, political structure and cultural tradition. I liked walking around and learning about that stuff.
I liked exploring to find slaves to free.
I liked travelling to remote ash wastelands to find a small settlement nestled in the only cover the landscape provides.

It kind of sounds like you're implicitly limiting exploration to one of two things: better loot (making exploration secondary to acquisition, which is itself secondary to combat in most games) or beautiful stuff to see. I think Morrowind's strength wasn't the graphical presentation of its world--it's what of the world it chose to present, including religious texts, farms, pornography, weird art, political tension of sorts. The reward for this wasn't loot, it was seeing more of the world itself. It was appreciating the abstract world, the linkages between it and the game world, and the linkages between different parts of the game world. So it may be a lot of mud, but it's mud with its own history and art, with people wallowing in it, and that's what I liked to see.

Sure, it's not best game ever material, but I'm not going to pretend that it wasn't an enjoyable part of the game.

 

[Papa Môlé]

Subcontinental gets butthurt over Kodex dissing his precious Skyrim.
Makes obvious revenge thread bashing the superior Morrowind.
Successfully trolls Kodex for 7 plus pages.

Glorious.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Subcontinental gets butthurt over Kodex dissing his precious Skyrim.
Makes obvious revenge thread bashing the superior Morrowind.
Successfully trolls Kodex for 7 plus pages.

Glorious.

Depending on how you view the ES series, both Morrowind and Skyrim are shit games and Daggerfall is the only good Elder Scrolls game. But, I digress.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Everyone is jesus in purgatory.

You realize the concept of a savior existed before jesus right? Just because a hero shows up to save everyone doesn't mean he's fucking jesus. Since when the fuck would jesus travel to hell and stab satan in the face anyways?