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An assessment of Oblivion after having first played Skyrim, then Morrowind

FeelTheRads

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
13,716
The character in NV starts jogging, iirc, and the "alternative" movement speed is walking, which contributes to stealth.

The jogging speed is what I said is unbearable.

I can't imagine any sane human being would ever use the normal walking speed. It blows my mind that they implemented it as it is.
 

Eriador

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 18, 2014
Messages
423
Morrowind is an exploration game that has exploration mechanics to back it up. Shocking.

And yet that doesn't explain the slow speed. Or do you think that adds to the "immershun" of exploration?

Now, I haven't played Morronwind, but it sounds like the speed is slower than NV and that was already unbearable and would have killed any will to explore anything if it wasn't for a console command to bring it a speed suitable for humans, but probably not for the monkeys that Bethesda targets with their games.

Morrowind started with a pretty low walking/running speed if you play as something with low starting Speed attribute and Athletics. Also, running around drains Fatigue and Fatigue affects the hit rate and skill/spell success chance, so if you run around and then get attacked, you will miss a lot since your Fatigue is depleted, which quickly proves frustrating. Tbh, I think that jumping around with good acrobatics is faster then actually running, but that drains fatigue even faster. You could just start out with a character that had high Speed, Athletics as a major/minor skill and the Steed sign to reduce the time it took to get anywhere at start.

But as soon as you increase you Speed, Athletics and Acrobatics, it becomes much better. There are also items and spells that help you move around, Silt Striders, Boats, Mage Guild portal services, Mark and Recall spells (one feature I wish they kept in Oblivion), Levitation (which was awesome), Jump spells.

Also the broken alchemy and Fortify Skill spells. You could make potions increasing speed by 2000 for two hours... and if you break the game enough, you will end up flying across the world in nanoseconds.

Oblivion replaced all of that with fast travel.

Now I actually like the fact that you start out with a higher walking speed in Oblivion, but it also made horses (which weren't in Morrowind) kinda obsolete. It didn't take very long to become faster then a horse, unless you've played some mage type that never leveled speed. And even then, fast travel existed.

Ok, actually I now remember why you need horses. It's so you can use them to climb vertical slopes and mountains, a feature they've kept in Skyrim.
 

Gepeu

Savant
Patron
Joined
Oct 16, 2016
Messages
986
You mean... clicking until the thing decided to work?
Yeah... that's one way to do it I guess.
It didn't "decide" whether you succeed or not. If you were decent/good with lockpicking skill, all it took was one or a few clicks. If you were shit at lockpicking (~20), you were breaking lockpicks like crazy until you got lucky. Or decided to not make a fool out of yourself and do something else instead. Just like in the real world. It was fine.
 

Eriador

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 18, 2014
Messages
423
You mean... clicking until the thing decided to work?
Yeah... that's one way to do it I guess.
It didn't "decide" whether you succeed or not. If you were decent/good with lockpicking skill, all it took was one or a few clicks. If you were shit at lockpicking (~20), you were breaking lockpicks like crazy until you got lucky. Or decided to not make a fool out of yourself and do something else instead. Just like in the real world. It was fine.

You also had to make sure your fatigue was full. I'm pretty sure that most people didn't realize at first that green bar actually matters. I certainly didn't when I first played it.
 

Gepeu

Savant
Patron
Joined
Oct 16, 2016
Messages
986
I forgot about that. However, some years have passed since I played it.
 

Morkar Left

Guest
I hope you don't think that your impression does reflect the original game in the slightest when you use a mod for levelscaling. The game on its own is bad, especially after Morrowind, but the unmodded levelscaling is unparalelled in screwing up and ruins the game completely. Even if everything else of the game would be excellent gameplay, the levelscaling would still ruin Oblivion completely. You should play at least for 3 hours with levelscaling and see how horrible it affects gameplay to have something to compare to.
 

Eriador

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 18, 2014
Messages
423
Even without level scaling, I found Oblivion's damage sponge combat frustrating. Yes, in Morrowind you would miss a lot at start if you didn't watch you fatigue and had low Agility and weapon skill, but atleast every hit mattered. And as you got better, the number of misses decreased significantly.

In Oblivion, enemies will take forever to kill even if you have 100 in Strength and Blade with a daedric weapon. The scaling only made that worse, especially since even after level 20 where enemies were no longer replaced with stronger variants they still continued to gain additional health, so at a really high level, enemies would have 3 times as much hitpoints as you could ever get.

Also, fortifying Strength/Weapon Skill past 100 in Oblivion does not increase damage, so there's really no way to keep up.
 

abnaxus

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2010
Messages
10,889
Location
Fiernes
A mage with ridiculous weakness/damage spells could still kill everything easily on high levels, but why bother. I ran invisibile all the time or used the Wabbajack.
 

Eriador

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 18, 2014
Messages
423
A mage with ridiculous weakness/damage spells could still kill everything easily on high levels, but why bother. I ran invisibile all the time or used the Wabbajack.

Yeah, I guess. I've never actually played as a mage in Oblivion.
 

pippin

Guest
I did. The fondest memory I have is one of the Mage's Guild quests. There's one bitter fuck in one of those who sends you to look for a ring he had lost. He does not tell you the ring is underwater and is cursed, being extremely heavy, making it unable to move. You end up dying... unless you do some unmarked investigation and use some social skills to realize you can find a way to counteract the curse and swim normally back to the surface.
 

Eriador

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 18, 2014
Messages
423
I did. The fondest memory I have is one of the Mage's Guild quests. There's one bitter fuck in one of those who sends you to look for a ring he had lost. He does not tell you the ring is underwater and is cursed, being extremely heavy, making it unable to move. You end up dying... unless you do some unmarked investigation and use some social skills to realize you can find a way to counteract the curse and swim normally back to the surface.

Yeah, I remember that quest as a warrior and did not even notice that, since i had great carrying capacity.

Tbh, I think you can just drop that ring and come back later.

I do remember on mage quest, because it had the ugliest NPC in the game. He looked like an anime character...
 

Eriador

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 18, 2014
Messages
423
Morrowind started with a pretty low walking/running speed if you play as something with low starting Speed attribute and Athletics
there was also a factor of race height, which was global multiplier. Normal speed for most was 1. I think Bretons were the only ones that had it lower. Playing mage breton with low speed and athletics was huge pain...

It was also faster if you were walking diagonally.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
36,729
Oblivion is still more of an RPG than Skyrim.

Skyrim has actual role playing.

Also you didn't say anything about guilds, which were best part of the game IIRC

I only played the fighter's guild questline. It was okay I suppose. Even though I've heard much praise for the Dark Brotherhood, murdering innocent people is against my character concept or any character concept I'd be willing to play (playing an evil murderous character, sure, but not one who kills someone for no reason).

What's his definition of an RPG?

Any game featuring a lot of scripted and systemic reactivity to your character's actions (Oblvion has the latter, but so does Grand Theft Auto).

In Morrowind, your character walks, but his walking speed is tied to... uh, Speed, which in non-warrior classes tend to be p low. Make a Nord Warrior and make it so he has Speed bonuses. I made one which ended up with 70 speed from the start. Just do that and look at him go.

By the end of Morrowind, my speed was 86. Still incredibly slow.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
36,729
By the end of Morrowind, my speed was 86. Still incredibly slow.

What was your Athletics/Acrobatics skill?

Athletics 48 Acrobatics 76. I also made a mistake, my speed was 91.

I remember now, I did a ton of bunny hopping whenever I was in a town because it's so much faster than simply running (the same is still true for Oblivion, but it felt unnecessary to do so).
 

Eriador

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 18, 2014
Messages
423
By the end of Morrowind, my speed was 86. Still incredibly slow.

What was your Athletics/Acrobatics skill?

Athletics 48 Acrobatics 76. I also made a mistake, my speed was 91.

I remember now, I did a ton of bunny hopping whenever I was in a town because it's so much faster than simply running (the same is still true for Oblivion, but it felt unnecessary to do so).

Yeah, that's true, jumping around is much quicker then running, especially if you have higher acrobatics then athletics.

My character in Oblivion had 100 Speed and Athletics and about 30 Acrobatics, yet he was still jumping around like crazy... I've never used a horse apart from the one you get at the start of the game, which makes the idea of a horse armor DLC even more ridiculous.

It felt awesome though.

I could never tell whether closing Oblivion gates or killing dragons is more boring and mundane.

They should make a DLC, where you kill dragons inside Oblivion gates, that way we wouldn't have to choose.
 

Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,736
Morrowind needs, like, ONE mod to be great: BTB's Game Improvements. It doesn't even make the shitload of changes Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul does, which goes to show how bad Oblivion is when you need to rebuild the game from the ground up.

BTB simply rebalanced the game, nerfed or removed exploits (no matter what people say, some exploits are just retarded when you think about it for a second, like NPCs potentially breaking the economy on their own, but for some reason they don't), and overall made Morrowind a much more challenging and enjoyable RPG. Throw in Service Requirements (you must join factions to get services and you must advance in the ranks to unlock services from every member) and it plays like an entirely different game.

Any other criticism leveled at Morrowind is mostly because the game is simply too old or the engine just wouldn't allow it/no computer would have run the game.

EDIT:

What kind of faggot thinks New Vegas' movement speed was "slow"? You've been playing shit games with ridiculously unrealistic speeds or have never taken a walk outside.

Morrowind had great movement speed, and movement speed is one of the things I always mod in Bethesda games. The only issue is that there's no "acceleration" in these games: you go from 0 to 60 instantly, unlike GTA V (to make a comparison).
 

deuxhero

Arcane
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
11,980
Location
Flowery Land
I could never tell whether closing Oblivion gates or killing dragons is more boring and mundane.

Requiem+Spell Mods can make dragon slaying as a mage kind of entertaining (Stuff like bait it to the ground with summons and call a meteor swarm). I don't know of any mods for Oblivion that give a reason to not just tcl to the top of each tower.
 

Sykar

Arcane
Joined
Dec 2, 2014
Messages
11,297
Location
Turn right after Alpha Centauri
Lockpicks being breakable are not a problem, but the minigame was obnoxious as fuck. FO3 styled lockpicking was better imo... But lockpicking minigames have been shit since Hillsfar (oddly enough, Oblivion's lockpicking game is vaguely similar to Hillsfar's).

The minigame was fine since it emphasized character skill instead of player skill. Obliviturd reversed this and once you master the mini game character skill becomes as meaningless as that steaming pile of shit game.

Anyone who thinks that Oblividerp is better than Morrowind is a fucking retard and has shit taste.

https://sites.google.com/site/damicat/

This summarizes most problems Oblivitard has.

Morrowind needs, like, ONE mod to be great: BTB's Game Improvements. It doesn't even make the shitload of changes Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul does, which goes to show how bad Oblivion is when you need to rebuild the game from the ground up.

BTB simply rebalanced the game, nerfed or removed exploits (no matter what people say, some exploits are just retarded when you think about it for a second, like NPCs potentially breaking the economy on their own, but for some reason they don't), and overall made Morrowind a much more challenging and enjoyable RPG. Throw in Service Requirements (you must join factions to get services and you must advance in the ranks to unlock services from every member) and it plays like an entirely different game.

Any other criticism leveled at Morrowind is mostly because the game is simply too old or the engine just wouldn't allow it/no computer would have run the game.

EDIT:

What kind of faggot thinks New Vegas' movement speed was "slow"? You've been playing shit games with ridiculously unrealistic speeds or have never taken a walk outside.

Morrowind had great movement speed, and movement speed is one of the things I always mod in Bethesda games. The only issue is that there's no "acceleration" in these games: you go from 0 to 60 instantly, unlike GTA V (to make a comparison).

BTB is shit. Anything but BTB which castrates or removes some features outright.
 

Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,736
BTB is shit. Anything but BTB which castrates or removes some features outright.

Aside from being a fucking weird guy, his mod is fantastic. Some features were removed for the sake of consistency, others were nerfed for the sake of balance and logic: what is the logic behind the player being the only person in Morrowind to realize you can make infinite money through buying ingredients, making potions, and selling them back forever and ever?
 

Sykar

Arcane
Joined
Dec 2, 2014
Messages
11,297
Location
Turn right after Alpha Centauri
BTB is shit. Anything but BTB which castrates or removes some features outright.

Aside from being a fucking weird guy, his mod is fantastic. Some features were removed for the sake of consistency, others were nerfed for the sake of balance and logic: what is the logic behind the player being the only person in Morrowind to realize you can make infinite money through buying ingredients, making potions, and selling them back forever and ever?

One word: Restraint.
 

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