Daggerfall was better than Morrowind? Tell me why.

[mrgah]

I think the DF/MW question is a hard call. I played DF constantly when it came out, had high expectations for MW, and felt like my expectations were sort of met. I find it harder and harder to play MW any more, though, whereas I think DF held up better after you'd played it a long time.

The difference between MW and DF that jumps out at me is that DF gave you a real sense of place. DF felt like a world, whereas MW felt sort of like a movie set. To extend the simile, MW's sets worked fine your first time through the movie, but they seemed sort of tawdry and cheap after being around them for a while. The MW world got old for me in a way DF never did. Even good FPSs have a good sense of place, and use space and atmosphere better than MW.

The first impressions that MW made were breathtaking. The first time that I went into the big ass mudcrab shell (Skar?) in Ald'ruhn, walking around in Vivec-- even smaller things, like being outside Holamayan Monastery around dawn. But the world never really lived up to the promise of those first impressions.

To me it seems like part of the problem might have been that in DF, Beth could fall back on generic fantasy for a lot of things, whereas they had to cook everything from scratch, so to speak, in MW.

Everything was so fucking small in MW (forgive me, I feel like people have said this before)-- dungeons, cities, castles. Because everything was small, the things that were supposed to be small felt more organic, more lived in. I think Caldera's has a nice, cozy feel to it, for example.

-m

 

[Drain]

Compare:
DF thief: short blade, sneaking, climbing, critical strike, backstab, swimming
MW thief: short blade, sneaking, athletics
OB thief: blade, sneaking, athletics

Slightly offtopic, but the trend looks so familiar:
Might and Magic 9: Combined sword and dagger skills into one skill: blade.
Combined axes, staves, maces into one skill: cudgel(axes and staves governed by the same skill - huh?)
Combined leather, chain, plate skills into one skill: Armor.


The result - Dark Messiah

 

[Deacdo]

DF had one of the best character creation systems ever made.

Morrowind's paled by comparison.

Oblivion's sounds non-existant.

As for gameplay...I didn't really like DF or MW that much. DF was a much, much, much more ambitious game than MW.

 

[deus]

Daggerfall is the only game with a main quest in which you can ignore the main quest and still have a non-trivial amount of content. Sure, you can ignore the main quest for a bit in MW, but unless you have a fetish for bland landscape, fed-ex quests or tiny dungeons, there isn't a whole lot to do. Daggerfall's random quests kept me occupied for weeks before I started the MQ in earnest.

My biggest pet peeve with MW was how the game just threw all this material for multiple paths and then never did anything with it. You should clearly be able to side with either the Tribunal, Dagoth Ur or the Ashlanders. The Tribunal wants Dagoth Ur defeated, Dagoth Ur wants to overthrow the Tribunal, and the Nerevarine Prophecy calls for the defeat of the Tribunal and Dagoth Ur. And then what does the game do, give you an offer to join Dagoth Ur that can't be accepted, and not react if all the members of the Tribunal are dead. If that isn't shitty design, I have no idea what is.

The only thing BS can do to redeem themselves from the fuckups that are MW and OB, is to release the source code for Daggerfall. At least then someone can finish the game and make it what it should be.

Daggerfall: Size of Great Britain
Morrowind: Size of a small city

That's actually really funny. If you look at a map of Tamriel, Vvardenfall is bigger that the Illiac Bay region.

 

[Section8]

The result - Dark Messiah

At least Dark Messiah looks like it might actually have some gameplay, even if it's essentially just FPS action. If it lives up to what's been shown, it'll be Hexen squared. I just hope they don't actually try and push it as an RPG, and start spouting off fucking nonsense about the minimalist RPG features it has being "cool, trust us."

 

[Blacklung]

Hexen squared? Hmmm I may have to look into this one. That game was one of the first FPS's to gain my interest. *google searches*

 

[Country_Gravy]

Equipment weight meant a lot in MW. If you were carrying a lot, you would move slow and have very little jump distance. Not good for a spear or ranged weapon user or an acrobat.

Easy fix. Just take out spears and then you only have to worry about the affects on bows. That IS what you meant by ranged weapons, right.

 

[Solik]

Congrats, you win the award for most pointless post in this thread.

 

[bryce777]

People who like dressing up their characters and decorating rooms like morrowind. Otherwise it has no value. Any time someone tries to explain what's good about it they fall into nonsense like fork placement. There is just nothing else that is worth liking in the game, period. Even in the early 90s we expected an rpg to have actual dialog, for example.

Daggerfall is the only good game bethesda put out, except maybe redguard, and it's obvious they will never put out a remotely similar game again let alone an 'even moreso' version of daggerfall. It seems bizarre to me they still get so much attention here, this being the case... know the vast majority of people here agree with me about bethesda. I can't wait until they go out of business.

At least the ES forums ban threads here so there will not be quite as many fanbois showing up any more.

As for why I liked daggerfall, it was mainly the exploration and discovery of a whole world. Finding out about summoning the daedra lords, waking up from a dream to realize that you have become a vampire or a werewolf and then the elaborate quests to free yourself of these curses (if you bothered to). Doing quests for the underlord...now he actually seemed quite evil in his way.

Everywhere you went there were people walking everywhere and honestly they looked more like people than the shit oblivion models coming out today.

Everything artistically was better than in morrowind, though they had much less to work with. More pixels does not equate to better art.

The random dungeons were at times huge and therefore trying when you are just trying to collect some damn mummy wrappings, but they are very different and interesting.

 

[Thrawn05]

Daggerfall is the only good game bethesda put out, except maybe redguard, and it's obvious they will never put out a remotely similar game again let alone an 'even moreso' version of daggerfall. It seems bizarre to me they still get so much attention here, this being the case... know the vast majority of people here agree with me about bethesda. I can't wait until they go out of business.

I would think Bethesda would do another Redguard type game. They would butcher it into a simple hack and slash adventure game suitable for Xboxers who like to spend $60 a week on a quick game. They could churn out a dozen of these all using the same code. It's the perfect business model while they sit on fallout 3's license.

 

[Micmu]

I would think Bethesda would do another Redguard type game. They would butcher it into a simple hack and slash adventure game suitable for Xboxers who like to spend $60 a week on a quick game. They could churn out a dozen of these all using the same code. It's the perfect business model while they sit on fallout 3's license.

Hey, don't get your hopes up too eary. It is already known "FO" 3 will take place in a single city. I think this is a good start for Fallguard 3 - The Linear Adventure.

 

[Thrawn05]

I would think Bethesda would do another Redguard type game. They would butcher it into a simple hack and slash adventure game suitable for Xboxers who like to spend $60 a week on a quick game. They could churn out a dozen of these all using the same code. It's the perfect business model while they sit on fallout 3's license.

Hey, don't get your hopes up too eary. It is already known "FO" 3 will take place in a single city. I think this is a good start for Fallguard 3 - The Linear Adventure.

So I guess no RadiantAI? :wink:

 

[kingcomrade]

"Hey, don't get your hopes up too eary. It is already known "FO" 3 will take place in a single city. I think this is a good start for Fallguard 3 - The Linear Adventure."

Probably, but Planescape pretty much took place in a single city and it was well enough done that I really enjoyed the change from the "romping across the entire known planet."

 

[bryce777]

"Hey, don't get your hopes up too eary. It is already known "FO" 3 will take place in a single city. I think this is a good start for Fallguard 3 - The Linear Adventure."

Probably, but Planescape pretty much took place in a single city and it was well enough done that I really enjoyed the change from the "romping across the entire known planet."

Except in the sense it took place in about a dozen different planes, and only a small part of it was in the city, then yes it took place in a single city. If you look at the overhead map it gives a good idea of how much. Not even a quarter of it if memory serves.

This is not to say it's not possible, but it seems needlessly limiting.

 

[kingcomrade]

Well, no, it took place almost entirely in Sigil. Only at the end do you go off for a quick trip through a town, a small empty area with the skulls, and then to the final fortress place.
More than 75% of the game takes place in Sigil.

 

[crufty]

So MW is I think a better *game*, but as others have said DF is a deeper simulation. DF was buggy as hell when it first came out and beth caught a lot of flack for that. I suspect thats why they moved away from that kind of content. DF had enormously torturous random dungeons for even the most minor of quests--while I appreciated the difficulty there, I just don't have time anymore to spelunk 10 levels for a knit shirt.

Arena really had the broadest scope of them all, but didn't really age well if I remember.

 

[HardCode]

MW is still buggy as hell, even when they are still SELLING the game and earning money off of the GOtY edition. You would think they would put that money into supporting a product they still churn out for the shelves, no? But of course not. Four years after the original release of MW, there is still crash-to-desktop every 30 minutes.

Does anyone think that Oblivion isn't going to be buggy as hell too?

 

[Thrawn05]

MW is still buggy as hell, even when they are still SELLING the game and earning money off of the GOtY edition. You would think they would put that money into supporting a product they still churn out for the shelves, no? But of course not. Four years after the original release of MW, there is still crash-to-desktop every 30 minutes.

Does anyone think that Oblivion isn't going to be buggy as hell too?

Alot of the bugs had to do with how the game engine manages level creatures. Too many creatures on the list made the game crash.

The other thing I found was that the game was far less buggy if you don't join the legion. The script to check if you are wearing imperial armor made it crash every two seconds.

 

[bryce777]

Like I said, just count of the maps or better yet look at the big map and realize the city takes up much less than half the area. Let's see, baator, carceri, rubicon, curst, your maze, ravel puzzlewell's maze, the fortress of shadows, the valley with the dragon in it. The in the city there is the hive, the temple district, undersigil, and I suppose you could count the trash warrens and tombs as in the city but that is stretching it.

There is a big difference between being BASED in a city and in it. Jesus christ, the game had the biggest variation of locations I have ever, ever seen in a fucking game.

 

[kingcomrade]

I don't think the number of locations on the map really represents the portion of the game that it contains. The Modron's Cube got it's own map section, but would you call it a significant portion of the game?

 

[AlanC9]

MW is still buggy as hell, even when they are still SELLING the game and earning money off of the GOtY edition. You would think they would put that money into supporting a product they still churn out for the shelves, no? But of course not. Four years after the original release of MW, there is still crash-to-desktop every 30 minutes.

Is MW that buggy for everyone, or is it only certain HW configurations that do it?

I've been playing the game recently (fiogured I ought to finish the damn thing, and once you know the exploits it's a lot less tedious). MW seems stable, except for occasional video freakouts. And since I've been having those on everything lately, I'm not blaming MW.

As for PS:T, the vast majority of the game takes place in Sigil, and most of the maps are of Sigil locations. Judging from Dan Simpson's FAQ, I'd say PS:T is over 75% Sigil. OTOH, Sigil is a little more varied than either Athkatla or Baldur's Gate.

 

[bryce777]

I don't think the number of locations on the map really represents the portion of the game that it contains. The Modron's Cube got it's own map section, but would you call it a significant portion of the game?

It's a pretty time consuming portion of the game. It might not have the most dialog, though it does introduce you to nordom, but it is still pretty big.

You do spend a lot of time elsewhere in the game, and I think that helps break up the game a lot and keep it from egtting stale....

 

[Thrawn05]

Is MW that buggy for everyone, or is it only certain HW configurations that do it?

I've been playing the game recently (fiogured I ought to finish the damn thing, and once you know the exploits it's a lot less tedious). MW seems stable, except for occasional video freakouts. And since I've been having those on everything lately, I'm not blaming MW.

The game dies when it runs out of memory when loading the next cell. Turning off the buffer in the INI file helps alot. But you really need at least 512MB of RAM.

 

[oherror]

Both games are shitty, as long as I'm concerned.

i agree both are boring shitty games.

 

[kingcomrade]

Nordom? Who's that?

I did really like the Cube, but even though it can take up lots of time, there's not really any content or storyline in there. I loved how it was a parody of typical fantasy RPG dungeons, though, it made me laugh. I did the easy and medium difficulties, and tried the hard difficulty but the enemy were a bit too hard.