-
Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.
"This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.
I'm sorry, but Morrowind simply is not a good 'game' but it is a good digital world
- Thread starter ThatsRightImInIt
- Start date
belowmecoldhands
Savant
- Joined
- Jan 4, 2014
- Messages
- 795
I agree sort of. When I first played Morrowind--was it 2003?--I thought it sucked and wanted to go back to Daggerfall. Daggerfall gets a lot of hate for its randomly generated cities and dungeons, but I loved it nonetheless. It had a magic not repeated in Morrowind. Better dungeon crawls. It felt freer and bigger. More epic. Morrowind models looked ugly too.
What really saves Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim are the modding capabilities. Without mods, they mostly suck. It's the same with hte x-series space opera games. Vanilla is too bland.
Daggerfall is too old to play anymore. The new renederer being made doesn't change the fact everything else is 20 years old. Maybe if they worked on the rest of it.
But this is my own opinion, so--reader--don't get angry over spilled milk. Don't waste time. Your opinion is equally valid. I'll have my butterscotch, you can have your caramel.
Daggerfall Unity is the latest renderer i know about:
Last edited:
TemplarGR
Dumbfuck!
I realize this is a troll post, but damn...
Dude, when you criticize a classic, you have to take into consideration the standards of the time it was released... This is the same mistake retards typically make with games like Final Fantasy VII, which many idiots on the internet proclaim "most overrated of all time" even though it has been shitted on more than any other game in video game history.
Yes, Morrowind has aged HORRIBLY. It is already more than 16 years old, it is in fact older than many posters on this forum, LOL. So what? Back in the day, it was one of the best games released that year and certainly a top contender for RPGs.
Many of its shortcomings are just due to limited technology back then. I remember playing it on a Pentium III 666mhz with 128MB 133mhz RAM and a TNT2 M64 32MB vram system... Not exactly top notch, but i later added 256MB ram more and a Geforce 2 Ti 64MB and it helped considerably. My system had issues playing it at 1024x768 with high settings... The game was HEAVY. It had a huge open world, with nice graphics, detailed environments, lots of interactive items, NPCs, etc. It may not impress you today but back then it was a marvel of gaming. We didn't have many fully 3D first person RPGs of that magnitude. Deux EX was not a "proper" RPG and featured a hub world, not open world. Gothic was a true open world but was more limited in RPG, NPC, world, items aspects. There were tradeoffs...
It was a great game but 16 years later we are used to bigger-better games. Many people have tons of nostalgia for Morrowind and i can understand that, but i do not have any nostalgia for it. I suppose people who say Morrowind is not a good game never played it in the context of 2002 and got it much later because they listened a lot to nostalgic veterans.
In reality Morrowind is not really worth playing today. As i said, it aged HORRIBLY. Even stuff like OpenMW don't really help. It is just mediocre. Life is short and there are better things to do than playing mediocre (in 2018) games. So, if you are a new gamer, try it only for nostalgia sake or if you are really into elder scrolls and can ignore its shortcomings. If you are a veteran who refuses to try new things and just wants to play the same thing for 20 years, good for you. But for most of us Morrowind today is just stuff for "best ever" lists and nothing more.
So don't badmouth Morrowind. It deserved its accolades and fame. It is a classic for a reason.
Dude, when you criticize a classic, you have to take into consideration the standards of the time it was released... This is the same mistake retards typically make with games like Final Fantasy VII, which many idiots on the internet proclaim "most overrated of all time" even though it has been shitted on more than any other game in video game history.
Yes, Morrowind has aged HORRIBLY. It is already more than 16 years old, it is in fact older than many posters on this forum, LOL. So what? Back in the day, it was one of the best games released that year and certainly a top contender for RPGs.
Many of its shortcomings are just due to limited technology back then. I remember playing it on a Pentium III 666mhz with 128MB 133mhz RAM and a TNT2 M64 32MB vram system... Not exactly top notch, but i later added 256MB ram more and a Geforce 2 Ti 64MB and it helped considerably. My system had issues playing it at 1024x768 with high settings... The game was HEAVY. It had a huge open world, with nice graphics, detailed environments, lots of interactive items, NPCs, etc. It may not impress you today but back then it was a marvel of gaming. We didn't have many fully 3D first person RPGs of that magnitude. Deux EX was not a "proper" RPG and featured a hub world, not open world. Gothic was a true open world but was more limited in RPG, NPC, world, items aspects. There were tradeoffs...
It was a great game but 16 years later we are used to bigger-better games. Many people have tons of nostalgia for Morrowind and i can understand that, but i do not have any nostalgia for it. I suppose people who say Morrowind is not a good game never played it in the context of 2002 and got it much later because they listened a lot to nostalgic veterans.
In reality Morrowind is not really worth playing today. As i said, it aged HORRIBLY. Even stuff like OpenMW don't really help. It is just mediocre. Life is short and there are better things to do than playing mediocre (in 2018) games. So, if you are a new gamer, try it only for nostalgia sake or if you are really into elder scrolls and can ignore its shortcomings. If you are a veteran who refuses to try new things and just wants to play the same thing for 20 years, good for you. But for most of us Morrowind today is just stuff for "best ever" lists and nothing more.
So don't badmouth Morrowind. It deserved its accolades and fame. It is a classic for a reason.
Finishing Gothic in 2001 and playing Morrowind the next year felt like a massive dumbing down in everything else but graphics. I tried to enjoy Morrowind but, in the end, I felt it just didn't have any soul. Such a shallow, dull, low-energy... thing. Entirely forgettable, except for the music, which I really liked.
So I got openmw. Immediately noticed few bugs. Fixed most for 0.46, the more involved ones are in discussion/planning phase.
I kind of like how "dull" the conversations are in MW. Letting Bethpizda go more creative and in-character makes it necessarily worse, as can be evidenced by their later games. Writing dialogue that's nominally in-character but more of like a real-life person talks, is easier for a hack writer team. Especially if almost all NPCs have no defining traits or personality to begin with.
My interaction with factions is more of what I want from them (advancement for more training, steal everything, sell everything up to the cap) than an epic narrative about evil necromancers with a pushover boss called Mannimarco. That NPCs are "soulless" is mostly relevant for the next point, which is my subjective criticism:
Factions give quests to go somewhere and do something relatively simple. It's much of a chore to go out of my way and trek a long way just to finish a faction quest. I'm not invested in it, and the pacing is poor. One of the early Mages Guild quests got me go into a cave and kill three people. The last one summoned some hunk of flesh that drained my Strength attribute. There was assorted loot. Then trek all the way back to Balmora - I didn't have both Mark and Recall - and turn in the quest for some other tedium. The quests for mages, fighters, and thieves are of MMO-quality. Missed effort to introduce how they fit into the world's politics. No "wow" factor when stumbling into places. Underrail did more with less! They didn't have amazing writers either (except for PhrygianDominant, that guy's a polymath).
To break the mold I abused trainers for every last stinking cent. Levelled up to some unnecessarily high value. I'm talking about level twenty before getting out of Balmora, without grinding or exploits. Realized my build sucks but it doesn't matter since I can abuse trainers anyway. Got Telekinesis and Stealth. After enchanting a Fortify Magicka shirt and a paralyzing Glass Sword I'm taking a break. Oh, I taunted a random irrelevant NPC because he had that glass sword to begin with. Maybe that's where the game's fun is at? That and jump/levitate spell effects.
As far as I'm aware there aren't any real choices to make, and character interactions don't get better. If there's any great aspect to MW that I missed, please share. Maybe in the Tribunal expansion NPCs have any personality? That Vivec guy seems like one serious piece of work.
Funny note on Vivec's sermon. This sophomoric philosophizing was meant to make sense but is actually gibberish. No point going into detail.
I don't think the game is either very bad or very good by today's standards. It must've been great back when it came out.
I kind of like how "dull" the conversations are in MW. Letting Bethpizda go more creative and in-character makes it necessarily worse, as can be evidenced by their later games. Writing dialogue that's nominally in-character but more of like a real-life person talks, is easier for a hack writer team. Especially if almost all NPCs have no defining traits or personality to begin with.
My interaction with factions is more of what I want from them (advancement for more training, steal everything, sell everything up to the cap) than an epic narrative about evil necromancers with a pushover boss called Mannimarco. That NPCs are "soulless" is mostly relevant for the next point, which is my subjective criticism:
Factions give quests to go somewhere and do something relatively simple. It's much of a chore to go out of my way and trek a long way just to finish a faction quest. I'm not invested in it, and the pacing is poor. One of the early Mages Guild quests got me go into a cave and kill three people. The last one summoned some hunk of flesh that drained my Strength attribute. There was assorted loot. Then trek all the way back to Balmora - I didn't have both Mark and Recall - and turn in the quest for some other tedium. The quests for mages, fighters, and thieves are of MMO-quality. Missed effort to introduce how they fit into the world's politics. No "wow" factor when stumbling into places. Underrail did more with less! They didn't have amazing writers either (except for PhrygianDominant, that guy's a polymath).
To break the mold I abused trainers for every last stinking cent. Levelled up to some unnecessarily high value. I'm talking about level twenty before getting out of Balmora, without grinding or exploits. Realized my build sucks but it doesn't matter since I can abuse trainers anyway. Got Telekinesis and Stealth. After enchanting a Fortify Magicka shirt and a paralyzing Glass Sword I'm taking a break. Oh, I taunted a random irrelevant NPC because he had that glass sword to begin with. Maybe that's where the game's fun is at? That and jump/levitate spell effects.
As far as I'm aware there aren't any real choices to make, and character interactions don't get better. If there's any great aspect to MW that I missed, please share. Maybe in the Tribunal expansion NPCs have any personality? That Vivec guy seems like one serious piece of work.
Funny note on Vivec's sermon. This sophomoric philosophizing was meant to make sense but is actually gibberish. No point going into detail.
I don't think the game is either very bad or very good by today's standards. It must've been great back when it came out.
No. Wanna good open world rpg? Play the best: Gothic, Gothic 2.
Micormic
Unwanted
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2009
- Messages
- 939
OP criticises Morrowind's travel system, but it is, among other similar immersive limitations (no quest compass, player can only join one Dunmer Clan, tough skill requirements for advancing in faction hierarchies etc), exactly what makes Morrowind so much more immersive than RPGs where such limitations don't exist. In Oblivion I became Grand Master of Wizard's Guild with a Destruction skill of 50 and without any other Arcane skills. That's one pathetic Arch Mage if you ask me. I also became the leader of Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood almost by accident. Morrowind makes you earn your place in the game world and that's so much more satisfying than a game where you're always the focus of the story and where everything is handed to you on a silver platter.
You don't really immerse yourself into the game world if you're not required to behave like you live in it. If you're always riding a horse in a straight line to reach where your quest compass is pointing to, you have completely lost the point of playing a CRPG. Instead your thought process should go something like this:
"OK, I'm in Balmora and this guy is asking me to go to find a person in Sadrith Mora. What is my best mode of transportation to reach there? Should I first take a Silt Strider to Vivec and take a boat from there? Or should it use the teleportations service provided by the Mage's guild? Should I maybe visit some other locations or people while I'm travelling such a long distance? Is the journey going to be dangerous? Do I need to restock food, equipment or magical items to be safe? Once I'm in Sadrith Mora, how will I find this person? Should I just ask around or is my reputation and faction alignments there going to make it unlikely/dangerous for me find him that way?" Etc etc.
You don't really immerse yourself into the game world if you're not required to behave like you live in it. If you're always riding a horse in a straight line to reach where your quest compass is pointing to, you have completely lost the point of playing a CRPG. Instead your thought process should go something like this:
"OK, I'm in Balmora and this guy is asking me to go to find a person in Sadrith Mora. What is my best mode of transportation to reach there? Should I first take a Silt Strider to Vivec and take a boat from there? Or should it use the teleportations service provided by the Mage's guild? Should I maybe visit some other locations or people while I'm travelling such a long distance? Is the journey going to be dangerous? Do I need to restock food, equipment or magical items to be safe? Once I'm in Sadrith Mora, how will I find this person? Should I just ask around or is my reputation and faction alignments there going to make it unlikely/dangerous for me find him that way?" Etc etc.
Last edited:
Turns out you don't have any active arguments, only reactive ones. Picking out some weak aspects of a game don't make it bad. I can say Donkey Kong's base building sucks (you can't even stack the barrels!) and its tunnel shooter sections are unmemorable ... but that would be missing the point. You missed the point.
Trans-Financial-Man
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2018
- Messages
- 999
At the cost of sounding like the sort of unbareable hipster the Codex just loves to bits: Normal people, the people who play Skyrim and think it's a good game. They just don't "get" games like Morrowind. Things that to a modern little shit like my boy seem janky and awkward are all part of the immersion. I remember quite vividly spending all my gold on a shiny weapon in Seda Neen and not being able to afford the Bug Bus. So I had to walk all the way to Balmora. By doing that I ended up getting lost and nearly being raped by Cliff Racers. That's fun to me. Getting lost. Fucking up and nearly dying because what you do has real consequence. Not just a shitty little "Jimmy Saville will remember this slight against his wrestling ability" lark we have nowadays.
Looks good enough to me. If anything, fog was one thing mods should not have removed. Just like in Silent Hill where they added it because consoles couldn't handle loading 3d assets and it became a feature of the series, Morrowind being foggy fits it too.
The funny thing is that I find the actual "ugly" screen shots of Morrowind beautiful and full of character. I also love how every screen shot has been taken from the first 2 hours of gameplay - the poor ADHD sod didn't have the mental fortitude to push any further before rage quitting.
#metoo
#couldn'tfindCaiusCosades
Last edited:
The only things about Morrowind that have aged horribly are parts of the UI and the walking speed.
Seriously, that walking speed...
I have no clue how I ever played that without the mod that makes movement bearable.
Seriously, that walking speed...
I have no clue how I ever played that without the mod that makes movement bearable.
The only things about Morrowind that have aged horribly are parts of the UI and the walking speed.
Seriously, that walking speed...
I have no clue how I ever played that without the mod that makes movement bearable.
You cheesed the game with a 2 second Resist Magicka 100% spell combined with the Boots of Blinding Speed, just like everyone else.
I'm partly wrong, too.
Maybe I'm too used to being bombarded with stimuli (whether news, IM, videos, etc.) as to not appreciate the bit of subtlety Morrowind has. The worldbuilding has probably aged due to me playing Potato Head and Skyrim. It's like Hendrix, and I don't like Hendrix either. Or LOTR. Does anyone here like LOTR? I hated reading "The Hobbit" some 20 years ago as a school assignment, having already dealt with plenty of fantasy.
Wow, that's actually partly fixed in openmw.
- local map can have its resolution and scale set. looks good in 4K.
- journal has a non-blurry font, TTF
- overall scale can be applied, as well as font size scale and DPI
In this part of the dev cycle there aren't plans to go changing the design all the way. There are further plans, like
- highlighting text that only particular NPC/small-faction has. some guy already did a proof of concept.
- volumetric fog for high elevation areas.
Also some other juicy stuff:
- on a high RAM system set min cell cache size to 256/384. fixes not just "loading area" (you don't get this either way) but generally removes loading screens. nearby indoor areas are automatically loaded before you enter them. they stay there till the entire cache is filled, and later retired in sane order. I got my 256-way cache take 6 GB of ram and that's a pushover on this system. I'm gonna try 384 next.
- caching areas basing upon predicting player's move path.
- I don't feel like saying what I'm working on right now. The work's credited under my common username and that can too easily correlate with my Codex activity (saying "nigger" a lot, etc).
Maybe I'm too used to being bombarded with stimuli (whether news, IM, videos, etc.) as to not appreciate the bit of subtlety Morrowind has. The worldbuilding has probably aged due to me playing Potato Head and Skyrim. It's like Hendrix, and I don't like Hendrix either. Or LOTR. Does anyone here like LOTR? I hated reading "The Hobbit" some 20 years ago as a school assignment, having already dealt with plenty of fantasy.
Wow, that's actually partly fixed in openmw.
- local map can have its resolution and scale set. looks good in 4K.
- journal has a non-blurry font, TTF
- overall scale can be applied, as well as font size scale and DPI
In this part of the dev cycle there aren't plans to go changing the design all the way. There are further plans, like
- highlighting text that only particular NPC/small-faction has. some guy already did a proof of concept.
- volumetric fog for high elevation areas.
Also some other juicy stuff:
- on a high RAM system set min cell cache size to 256/384. fixes not just "loading area" (you don't get this either way) but generally removes loading screens. nearby indoor areas are automatically loaded before you enter them. they stay there till the entire cache is filled, and later retired in sane order. I got my 256-way cache take 6 GB of ram and that's a pushover on this system. I'm gonna try 384 next.
- caching areas basing upon predicting player's move path.
- I don't feel like saying what I'm working on right now. The work's credited under my common username and that can too easily correlate with my Codex activity (saying "nigger" a lot, etc).
CyberWhale
Arcane
The only things about Morrowind that have aged horribly are parts of the UI and the walking speed.
Seriously, that walking speed...
I have no clue how I ever played that without the mod that makes movement bearable.
You cheesed the game with a 2 second Resist Magicka 100% spell combined with the Boots of Blinding Speed, just like everyone else.
Just the boots.
ZagorTeNej
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 10, 2012
- Messages
- 1,980
Succeeding at being a "good digital world" is exactly what makes Morrowind a very good game (leagues above consoletard shit like Oblivion/Skyrim) because guess what, it's an open world sandbox game. Exploration is what that genre is all about and Morrowind nails that aspect despite all its flaws in other areas.
The artistic design, lore, atmosphere, the way you traverse the world (no dumb fast travel gimmick, have to use salt striders and boats, spells/items or just go on foot) is all meant to draw you in and immerse you in its alien world. That's what Morrowind does so well whiile most other games (CRPG or otherwise) fail spectacularly.
The artistic design, lore, atmosphere, the way you traverse the world (no dumb fast travel gimmick, have to use salt striders and boats, spells/items or just go on foot) is all meant to draw you in and immerse you in its alien world. That's what Morrowind does so well whiile most other games (CRPG or otherwise) fail spectacularly.
Fair enough, where are the best bits though? Should I actually do the main quest? Some fun things I noticed so far:
- Caius Cosades' cover as a worthless skooma addict. Blades being spooks, not some ancient holy paladin dragon killers.
- Locales are already getting varied with worthless shack places vs Balmora vs Ald'Ruhn vs Vivec, Sadith Mora
- Sadly no interesting NPCs or interactions. Are there any important questlines that I missed?
- A ring of 20 pt Jump is just so liberating. That I stole.
TemplarGR
Dumbfuck!
I have been at both sides of the fence. Back in the day i was your average nerd with no social life who loved crpgs so i played Morrowind a lot and i enjoyed it. Today i am your average linux sysadmin and programmer who has no time to waste anymore. I don't view video games as useless timewasters, i still enjoy gaming and i cherish the time i play them, but i hate doing mundane stuff. Because everytime i have to face hordes of trashmobs, or grinding, or walking like a moron with no fast travel etc, i constantly feel that i could use my time more productively. Everytime i spend time gaming i don't spend time doing something else, whether working, studying something new, spending time with family/friends, fucking my wife etc. So at least i expect that video game time to be worthwhile, fun, immersive. Not just walking around in an empty landscape of nothingness.
As i grow older i value compact games that pack more punch during less playtime. That is why i enjoyed games like the rebooted Tomb Raider trilogy so much. They are stellar AAA games with nice story and action and you can complete them in a few hours and you are never bored until you finish them. They are not "thinking games" but i don't game to tire my mind i game to relax after a hard day at work....
So to summarize, it's not that we don't "get" games like Morrowind, we get them but they are not for us. And this is fine.
I've noticed the same with my time management behavior. There's only one nihilistic conclusion to be drawn from this realization: We're all doomed to become casualtards, become the very thing we once so eagerly fought.
"You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself to become the villain."
TemplarGR
Dumbfuck!
There is nothing wrong with being a casual. Gaming is not an achievement, it is not work, and is not something to put on your resume, unless you are an esport faggot exploiting the morons on twitch and getting rich.
It is something we do for fun, a hobby. There is no good and bad way to have fun, if it works for you, it works for you. Which is why i find all those edgy "git gud" teenager retards hilarious, they will grow up, eventually.
Still, being a casual does not mean you have to play Farmville, it just means you don't have time for padded gametime anymore.
It bears mentioning that there are great games out there mostly about atmosphere and worldbuilding that don't require 100 hours to complete. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter instantly came to mind. Even if your time is limited, you have other options besides QTE/cover shooter/achievement checklist games.
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2015
- Messages
- 664
I still think the weird-ass combination of roll-to-hit plus having to aim and hit enemies yourself is pretty dumb. But yeah, Morrowind is great. I even like the UI--you can move it around and customize it and stuff and that's coolThe only things about Morrowind that have aged horribly are parts of the UI and the walking speed.
Seriously, that walking speed...
I have no clue how I ever played that without the mod that makes movement bearable.
Sinder Velvin
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 8, 2005
- Messages
- 378
Everything mentioned in the original post is a valid criticism, but a good part of what is mentioned in there can also be fixed (or at least alleviated) with mods to an extent that is mostly unavailable for other RPGs.
Playing Morrowind without mods is like playing Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines without its highly praised Unofficial Patch, except moreso: you're missing out on the game's real potential and focusing on some problems that don't need to be there.
Of course, finding all the right mods and making them work together can be a pain, but that's a different matter.
Playing Morrowind without mods is like playing Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines without its highly praised Unofficial Patch, except moreso: you're missing out on the game's real potential and focusing on some problems that don't need to be there.
Of course, finding all the right mods and making them work together can be a pain, but that's a different matter.
CyberWhale
Arcane
Which ones (gameplay altering) would you deem necessary for an enjoyable ride?
As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.