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Morrowind was massive decline and should be considered as such

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Is it better to play Morrowind the first time without the expansions?
I don't think you can get them separately anymore, just get some mods that delay the expansion hooks until you're past a significant point in the main story. Otherwise tribunal will throw stuff at you early on that will break the gameplay/economy. A lesson bethesda never learned (vampire spawns in skyrim).
 

JarlFrank

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Only thing missing was having 3 or 6 second rounds and a pause option, heh.

There is no combat system I utterly despise, abhor, loathe as much as RTwP with arbitrary 6 second rounds.

I hate it. Hate, hate, hate, hate. If the word hate was written in every single post made on the Codex from its founding to today, it would not describe even a fraction of the hatred I feel for this kind of system.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Is it better to play Morrowind the first time without the expansions?
I don't think you can get them separately anymore, just get some mods that delay the expansion hooks until you're past a significant point in the main story. Otherwise tribunal will throw stuff at you early on that will break the gameplay/economy. A lesson bethesda never learned (vampire spawns in skyrim).

When you launch the game from Steam, or with the launcher exe directly, or with the Open Morrowind engine, you don't jump into the game directly but get a launcher in which you can select which mods to run with the game.

The official expansions can be enabled or disabled in exactly the same way as mods. Just remove the checkmark from Tribunal.esm and Bloodmoon.esm and you won't have the expansion content.
 
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The official expansions can be enabled or disabled in exactly the same was as mods. Just remove the checkmark from Tribunal.esm and Bloodmoon.esm and you won't have the expansion content.
Forgot about that, but are you sure that in doing so there are no compatibility issues with all the unofficial patches, codefixes, script and MGE-like extensions that you really should use made with the 2 expansions (and various plugins) in mind? Using a mod to change the tribunal quest from triggering once you reach lv5 (or whatever) to only trigger once you get to equip the ring seems relatively safe.
 
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JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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The official expansions can be enabled or disabled in exactly the same was as mods. Just remove the checkmark from Tribunal.esm and Bloodmoon.esm and you won't have the expansion content.
No compatibility issues with all the unofficial patches, codefixes, script and MGE-like extensions made with the expansions (and plugins) in mind?

I don't know because I never tried running any of those unofficial patches and fixes without the expansions. I'm running OpenMW right now which isn't compatible with codefix mods for the original engine anyway.
I think you should have no problem running OpenMW without the expansions active.

Any mods that explicitly state they require Tribunal and Bloodmoon should be run with Tribunal and Bloodmoon.
Both expansions can be entirely ignored though. Solstheim is an island in the northwest which you can just never step on. The only annoying thing is that each vanilla NPC gets a new dialog topic about Solstheim, which they did so players can get pointed towards the expansion content. Funnily enough that topic even appears in the dialogue windows of mod NPCs, including Tamriel Rebuilt and Project Tamriel. You can ask people in western Cyrodiil about Solstheim because that new dialogue topic is available to EVERY NPC in the entire game by default.

The only unavoidable thing about Tribunal is the Dark Brotherhood assassins who attack you when you rest sometimes. You can get rid of that by doing the first stages of the Tribunal main quest, I think once you get teleported to Mournhold the assassination attempts stop and you can ignore the rest of it.
 

Robotigan

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Read this entire thread. It's a lot of spilled ink just for people to affirm Todd's claim that everyone's favorite TES is the first one they played. Practically every counterargument Codexers make in this thread is lifted straight from Skybabies with some shaky "no but you see we were peak streamlining, it's only the game after our favorite that went too far" excuse. You can easily discern a forum's peak years by its favorite game: Codex->Morrowind, 4chan->Oblivion, Reddit->Skyrim. Like Heilein said: "Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal." Your definitive RPG is decided when you're young and impressionable which then calibrates your expectations from then on. At forum scale, forum consensus emerges early on by whatever online teens played at the time. Everything since then has been your standard social dynamics reinforcing group identity. Gamers tend to be low on the EQ scale though so it's tough for them to suss out what's really going on.

By the by, the reason normies criticize Skyrim is actually in line with this. They're not criticizing it for being less like previous games. That's just what they say because they notice that argument carries more purchase with experienced RPG gamers. But based on what they play/praise you can tell that really they just want Elder Scrolls to be more like TW3 or RDR2, i.e. more cinematic, because those games take the place of when a TES sequel normally would have been released.

In my next chapter, we'll discuss why JRPGs are considered distinct from CRPGs because Slavs in the 90's couldn't afford video game consoles.
 

Raskens

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Nah, I played I Skyrim before Morrowind and thought it was mediocre. Played morrowind a couple of years later and was blown away.
 

Ryan muller

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Read this entire thread. It's a lot of spilled ink just for people to affirm Todd's claim that everyone's favorite TES is the first one they played. Practically every counterargument Codexers make in this thread is lifted straight from Skybabies with some shaky "no but you see we were peak streamlining, it's only the game after our favorite that went too far" excuse. You can easily discern a forum's peak years by its favorite game: Codex->Morrowind, 4chan->Oblivion, Reddit->Skyrim. Like Heilein said: "Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal." Your definitive RPG is decided when you're young and impressionable which then calibrates your expectations from then on. At forum scale, forum consensus emerges early on by whatever online teens played at the time. Everything since then has been your standard social dynamics reinforcing group identity. Gamers tend to be low on the EQ scale though so it's tough for them to suss out what's really going on.

By the by, the reason normies criticize Skyrim is actually in line with this. They're not criticizing it for being less like previous games. That's just what they say because they notice that argument carries more purchase with experienced RPG gamers. But based on what they play/praise you can tell that really they just want Elder Scrolls to be more like TW3 or RDR2, i.e. more cinematic, because those games take the place of when a TES sequel normally would have been released.

In my next chapter, we'll discuss why JRPGs are considered distinct from CRPGs because Slavs in the 90's couldn't afford video game consoles.


I literally started with daggerfall.
 

Robotigan

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There are other dynamics going on, in-group social politics is going to precipitate a selection bias for Morrowind fans while alienating Oblivion/Skyrim fans. But I think if you control for this you'll generally find that preference aligns with first game played.
 

JarlFrank

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I played Daggerfall after Morrowind, expecting it to be even better because of its reputation. And while I do prefer its systems as they're much more complex... I still prefer Morrowind overall.

Because Daggerfall is 90% randomly generated and I prefer hand-made worlds, landscapes, dungeons etc. Daggerfall's dungeons start feeling the same very quickly because they're made up of exact same building blocks over and over. Most of Morrowind's dungeons aren't great either but the overworld is excellent, which Daggerfall pretty much entirely lacks.

And my first RPG was Diablo, whose levels are randomly generated, so going by your theory I should prefer proc gen over handmade.
But I don't. I dislike random content and love hand-made.
 

Raskens

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Nah, I played I Skyrim before Morrowind and thought it was mediocre. Played morrowind a couple of years later and was blown away.

But what was your first RPG?

Hmm, something like this:

- Fable 1, 2 and 3
- Skyrim
- Fallout 3 and then NV
- Deus ex
- Morrowind

Then I found the codex, and I played through something like this:

- Bg1 and 2
- Fallout 1 and 2
- PST
And then maybe 20 rpgs after that.

This is my top 5 actions rpgs and crpgs:

Action-rpg
- Deus Ex
- Morrowind
- Gothic 2
- Gothic 1
- Ultima Underworld

CRPG:
- PST
- Arcanum
- Fallout 1
- Shadowrun: Dragonfall
- BG2

Born in 95 and played through 90% if the rpgs the last 5 years.
 

Bruma Hobo

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Morrowind is far from perfect, but it was glorious incline if you compare it to the kind of garbage that was becoming the standard at the time: Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, KotOR. Morrowind's more old-school and holistic approach to game design, quest structure and exploration could have saved a whole generation of young gamers if Oblivion didn't come out shortly after to ruin everything.
 

Blutwurstritter

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Only thing missing was having 3 or 6 second rounds and a pause option, heh.

There is no combat system I utterly despise, abhor, loathe as much as RTwP with arbitrary 6 second rounds.

I hate it. Hate, hate, hate, hate. If the word hate was written in every single post made on the Codex from its founding to today, it would not describe even a fraction of the hatred I feel for this kind of system.

Why ? The Infinity engine games have enjoyable combat overall. I'd switch Pillars continuous rtwp with the infinity engines variant that uses 6 second rounds if I could.

But since this is about Morrowind, I'll add that It was the first and last Elder Scrolls game that I have and will touch. The first person combat was horribly bland and the other games in the series look just as bad. My general disposition against open world games did the rest. I might change my opinion should they ever manage to implement combat mechanics on the level or above Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.
 

Robotigan

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Nah, I played I Skyrim before Morrowind and thought it was mediocre. Played morrowind a couple of years later and was blown away.

But what was your first RPG?

Hmm, something like this:

- Fable 1, 2 and 3
- Skyrim
- Fallout 3 and then NV
- Deus ex
- Morrowind

Then I found the codex, and I played through something like this:

- Bg1 and 2
- Fallout 1 and 2
- PST
And then maybe 20 rpgs after that.

This is my top 5 actions rpgs and crpgs:

Action-rpg
- Deus Ex
- Morrowind
- Gothic 2
- Gothic 1
- Ultima Underworld

CRPG:
- PST
- Arcanum
- Fallout 1
- Shadowrun: Dragonfall
- BG2

Born in 95 and played through 90% if the rpgs the last 5 years.
Fair enough. This is probably the selection bias I mentioned at work. You're on RPG Codex because you have similar tastes to most people here. I'm here because I disagree with Codex on nearly everything and like to pick fights.
 

Kainan

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There are other dynamics going on, in-group social politics is going to precipitate a selection bias for Morrowind fans while alienating Oblivion/Skyrim fans. But I think if you control for this you'll generally find that preference aligns with first game played.
You are just rationalizing...

I installed Oblivion as I don't want to start over Morrowind right away; I found Azura Star but it felt like cheating bc of the op armor.
Immediately some things in Oblivion are "better" (gfx and combat) but some are way worse ( rest and travel systems).
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Only thing missing was having 3 or 6 second rounds and a pause option, heh.

There is no combat system I utterly despise, abhor, loathe as much as RTwP with arbitrary 6 second rounds.

I hate it. Hate, hate, hate, hate. If the word hate was written in every single post made on the Codex from its founding to today, it would not describe even a fraction of the hatred I feel for this kind of system.

Why ? The Infinity engine games have enjoyable combat overall. I'd switch Pillars continuous rtwp with the infinity engines variant that uses 6 second rounds if I could.

Because it is incredibly slow, especially in a single character RPG. Neverwinter Nights has the most tedious combat ever because of that, it's just so slow and boring. Morrowind with this kind of shit would have so much worse combat than it already has, holy shit.

It's also an unfitting cargo cult feature that makes absolutely no sense in a real time game, and the only reason it even exists is because someone somewhere thought "A-ha, this is how we can translate D&D rules into real time!"

Do you know how long 6 seconds are? In a single character game that would mean only ONE action every six seconds because you only have one character under your control. Extremely slow, therefore turns combat into a slow and tedious slog. If you are attacked by 4 enemies and each of them takes 5 hits to kill, that means you require 2 minutes to dispatch them at minimum, assuming you don't miss a single attack. So even weak trash enemies that should be quick fodder to dispose of, like a cliffracer, would bring extreme tedium with it because it takes so long to dispatch. That's why NWN is such a shit game, not only does it flood you with boring trash mobs, those mobs also take a lot of time to get rid of.

Morrowind specifically (since that's what Fluent argued would be a good thing) would suffer heavily from such a system, because using a lot of different custom-made spells is such a core element of its gameplay. Utility spells, buffs, damage spells, etc. Imagine you had to wait 6 seconds between each casting, it would be so tedious.

The six-second-round in real time systems is basically like a cooldown, except it applies to EVERY action and not just the one you just used (unlike spell cooldowns that only let you cast that particular spell once every 10 seconds, for example). Performing several actions in quick succession becomes impossible. Also, Morrowind's system of quick attacks and power attacks depending on how long you hold down your mouse button wouldn't work under such a system either - because real time systems constrained by "rounds" are extremely static and restrictive. Every action becomes equal, there are no quick actions vs lengthy actions.

Any good RTwP system uses actual real time and slaps a pause function on it. Games like 7.62 High Calibre, for example. Which in itself is an attempt to approximate the turn based mechanics of Jagged Alliance 2 in a real time system, which works much better than attempting to translate D&D into real time - because JA uses action points rather than one-action-per-turn. It makes combat more tactical because you have a choice between quicker and slower actions, weaker weapon types like pistols and daggers actually have a use because they cost fewer action points to use/have a faster attack animation and therefore can be used to attack more often than with a more powerful but slower weapon.

Round-based real time is the absolute worst possible combat system ever conceived. It combines the worst aspects of real time with the worst aspects of turn based and tosses out the fun aspects of either.
 

Robotigan

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Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim play more similarly to each other than Morrowind does to other celebrated RPGs celebrated on Codex. The more logically consistent Codexers use this to claim, as thread OP did, that Morrowind is overrated.
There are other dynamics going on, in-group social politics is going to precipitate a selection bias for Morrowind fans while alienating Oblivion/Skyrim fans. But I think if you control for this you'll generally find that preference aligns with first game played.
You are just rationalizing...

I installed Oblivion as I don't want to start over Morrowind right away; I found Azura Star but it felt like cheating bc of the op armor.
Immediately some things in Oblivion are "better" (gfx and combat) but some are way worse ( rest and travel systems).
So first of all, an item/ability or combination thereof that completely trivializes game difficulty is like the hallmark of a classic RPG because most were simulationist first with balance being a secondary or nonexistent concern. Bethesda's jank is arguably one of the ways it remains most faithful to genre history.

And secondly, Morrowind plays more similarly to Oblivion and Skyrim than it does to many of the RPGs Codex celebrates. So it's just plain weird that Morrowind is rated as one of the greatest RPGs of all time while Oblivion and Skyrim are irredeemable trash. At least the Codexers who claim Morrowind is overrated, like the thread OP, are being logically consistent. For everyone else it just reads like Morrowind was a formative RPG for them, but they're so pissed off at the direction Bethesda took the series (reworking mechanics rather than expanding on them) that they've rebuked the company and its games altogether. It feels more politically motivated than an honest assessment.
 

Robotigan

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Christ in a crap basket. This is why I need an edit feature, I can't fucking type coherently.
 

JarlFrank

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And secondly, Morrowind plays more similarly to Oblivion and Skyrim than it does to many of the RPGs Codex celebrates. So it's just plain weird that Morrowind is rated as one of the greatest RPGs of all time while Oblivion and Skyrim are irredeemable trash. At least the Codexers who claim Morrowind is overrated, like the thread OP, are being logically consistent.

Plays similarly to =/= has the same level of quality as.

Pillars of Eternity plays very similarly to most of the Codex's favorite RPGs yet many Codexers think it's bland and boring, because playing similarly to Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape Torment, Fallout, Arcanum etc doesn't mean it has the same quality as those games.
There are good isometric RPGs and shit ones.
There are good first and third person RPGs and shit ones.
Morrowind and Gothic are good ones. Oblivion is a shit one. Gothic 4 is an utterly abysmal one.

Why would people be restricted to liking only one type of game? I love RPGs, RTS, FPS, etc. Quake is as much fun to me as Temple of Elemental Evil. I'm not gonna rate Quake lower just because it plays differently to BG, PST, etc.

Morrowind is good. Skyrim is ok for what it is. Oblivion is shit that ruined the entire subgenre for years to come. And yes, you will find that many Codexers agree with the assessment that Skyrim is less shit than Oblivion. Why? Because Oblivion had worse level scaling, worse writing, etc.

It's all about quality, not about how similarly a game plays to another.
 

Kainan

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Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim play more similarly to each other than Morrowind does to other celebrated RPGs celebrated on Codex. The more logically consistent Codexers use this to claim, as thread OP did, that Morrowind is overrated.
There are other dynamics going on, in-group social politics is going to precipitate a selection bias for Morrowind fans while alienating Oblivion/Skyrim fans. But I think if you control for this you'll generally find that preference aligns with first game played.
You are just rationalizing...

I installed Oblivion as I don't want to start over Morrowind right away; I found Azura Star but it felt like cheating bc of the op armor.
Immediately some things in Oblivion are "better" (gfx and combat) but some are way worse ( rest and travel systems).
So first of all, an item/ability or combination thereof that completely trivializes game difficulty is like the hallmark of a classic RPG because most were simulationist first with balance being a secondary or nonexistent concern. Bethesda's jank is arguably one of the ways it remains most faithful to genre history.

And secondly, Morrowind plays more similarly to Oblivion and Skyrim than it does to many of the RPGs Codex celebrates. So it's just plain weird that Morrowind is rated as one of the greatest RPGs of all time while Oblivion and Skyrim are irredeemable trash. At least the Codexers who claim Morrowind is overrated, like the thread OP, are being logically consistent. For everyone else it just reads like Morrowind was a formative RPG for them, but they're so pissed off at the direction Bethesda took the series (reworking mechanics rather than expanding on them) that they've rebuked the company and its games altogether. It feels more politically motivated than an honest assessment.
Huh?
Morrowind is simply dope. I played Beth stuff like F3 and Oblivion before and never carred for them. But Morrowind is excelent.
 

ValeVelKal

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I played Oblivion before Morrowind, and prefered Morrowind a hundred time over. I don't hate Oblivion, but it is bland and flawed.
I don't share the usual RPGCodex doxa : I liked a lot Skyrim, I did not premfer FNV over F3, I even liked Ultima 8. But Morrowind better than any other TES game ? Yes. Morrowind is my favorite First Person RPG.
 

ValeVelKal

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no level scalling to enemies nor loot.
Morrowind actually does have slight level scaling, it’s just so minuscule that you wouldn’t really notice without looking under the hood. It really should be documented more thoroughly because everybody just assumes it doesn’t.
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Leveled_Lists
UESP doesn’t even have an article on Leveled Creatures in MW, I have to link to the fucking Elder Scrolls fandom wiki to prove myself.
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Leveled_Creatures_(Morrowind)
I think Morrowind has the best level scaling in the series, since you don’t notice it.
Yeah, the equipment scaling is invisible (for guards : from iron to steel - woot :)) ; the level scaling for creatures caps pretty low and makes sense in universe (you see an increasing number of diseased and then blighted creatures, but well, that's part of the Prophecy isn't it ?).
 

Robotigan

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Plays similarly to =/= has the same level of quality as.
I'm not sure what standard of quality is being applied here because Oblivion is certainly more polished than many celebrated RPGs.

Morrowind is good. Skyrim is ok for what it is. Oblivion is shit that ruined the entire subgenre for years to come. And yes, you will find that many Codexers agree with the assessment that Skyrim is less shit than Oblivion. Why? Because Oblivion had worse level scaling, worse writing, etc.
Oblivion didn't ruin the subgenre. If you're being looking for somewhere to place blame, Lord of the Rings ruined the subgenre. If you're being honest, video games are full of hack writers who copy whatever they last saw and for some reason 1995-2005 had a lot more interesting ideas circulating around pop culture. You could theorize that after the fall of the USSR, people lacked a clear target to scapegoat their anxiety and turned to darker media to compensate. But at any rate, while I agree Skyrim is better than Oblivion, it's a stretch to describe either as "shit". Level scaling is fucked for sure, but I don't think that ruins the entire game. Mechanically, the game is interesting.
 

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