Anyone addicted to Morrowind?

[luj1]

What?

 

[luj1]

First of all, no core system is superficial by definition. Doesn't matter if it's well or poorly designed. It's connected with character stats, items, etc. so that's just a dumb thing to say

That's not why I rated you anyway. Lots of dumber things said in your post

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

First of all, no core system is superficial by definition. Doesn't matter if it's well or poorly designed. It's connected with character stats, items, etc. so that's just a dumb thing to say

That's not why I rated you anyway. Lots of dumber things said in your post

"No core system is superficial by definition" What is a core system(as opposed to what)? You mean combat and stat progression? It's not "superficial by definition. Doesn't matter if it's well or poorly designed", what does that even mean? I guess you mean every system is basically equivalent, it can just be implemented in good or bad ways. But that's not Morrowind's problem. Morrowind's melee combat(let's just narrow it down to that, there are a million other things) is superficial by definition as you can't do basically anything with it except button mashing. It's not just because you fight certain enemies, or in certain areas.... It's by definition! It's supposed to be that way.

"It's connected with character stats, items, etc." Wow, excellent! Why doesn't every game have 36 pieces of equipment and allow you to enchant any of them in any way you wish? Maybe because it's a mess and nearly impossible to balance, I guess that's one reason. Just don't call it superficial!

 

[luj1]

Why doesn't every game have 36 pieces of equipment and allow you to enchant any of them in any way you wish? Maybe because it's a mess and nearly impossible to balance

I disagree, I think Morrowind equipment system is great. Why don't other games have it? Don't know, don't care.

Everything is trash nowadays, original systems are very rare

 

[Late Bloomer]

The reason they dumbed down the Morrowind equipment system is to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

 

[NecroLord]

Morrowind had arguably the strongest artifacts in the series. Helm of Oreyn Bearclaw, Chrysamere, Lord's Mail, Dragonbone Cuirass, etc...
To say nothing about Enchanting and how insane it can get.
Alchemy as well.

 

[gabe1010]

So, perhaps it's kind a medieval fantasy government agent (ie a "Blade"), but with an open ended skillset, simulator...

I think the key is to integrate the systems that already exist into quest design (which I think is pretty much objectively a weak spot of all TES games).

The best example I can think of is in Oblivion. There's a quest...designed to be played one way. It's emblematic of their approach to games design in general - give the player a wealth of tools and let them loose in a wide open world, but then restrict their use of those tools and make it so that the world funnels them into a much more linear experience.

I'm struggling to think of ways to make MW's quests more versatile in part because the majority of them are very straightforward and strictly linear, but, similar to your suggestions on how to increase the liveliness of the world, there could be fairly simple mechanics that don't require a lot of extra work. There's a mod called Bonk! out already which makes the entire game viable for stealth characters...

Yeah I agree with this integration point. Sometimes, a Morrowind cave has an indirect approach where you can use swimming, levitation and/or lockpicking to steal the macguffin, or catch the high value target alone, or leave the offering at the shrine etc..., and then exfil with little fighting, but certainly not always, and if you can't always solve the quests with a non-combat approach (at least the main quest and a guild or two), then you have to fight sometimes, and so every class must also be a killer in addition to whatever else. This is a big problem with a lot of RPGS: if 90% of the time you can get through things as a Bard, but 10% of the time you just have to kill everyone, then you can't really RP a Bard (or "Bard" gets redefined as light swordsman + charisma buff), and when you do have to fight you are unprepared for it as you don't have a lot of fighting XP. This brings up XP issues, where often combat is the main source of XP, and non-combat approaches don't get enough XP dropping interactions to level up fast (this can be solved with tying XP to quest completion rather than actions/combat, but then people will complain that the advancement is not as diegetic or immersive, and some of the simulation stuff is gated behind formal quest lines). Probably, from a design and implementation perspective, it does make sense most of the time for all builds to still be somewhat combat capable, but it is less comprehensive of a sim that way.

Bethesda arbitrarily restricting tools might be a normie-friendly after the fact move for sales purposes, which could be part of why creating pretty comprehensive gameplay overhauls are relatively straightforward it would seem (at least there are a lot of them), as many of them are just un-removing or unrestricting things with simple script edits.

I think these issues are in part just a matter of scaling content production up, because making every quest split into 3+ means of solving them is perceived to just take too long, and even then involve superficial and uninteresting non-combat resolutions, and all to the benefit of the (small?) minority of people who want to play an RPG in a non-combat role, at least in the eyes of the devs (ie do we really want every dungeon to have some tunnel by the entrance for sneaking through it, or patrols setup you can always walk around, etc...I don't think that would be necessary, but I think that they think that). Maybe they are even concerned that a talking/charisma only build would finish a 30 hour campaign in 5 hours (it's the fastest way to finish age of decadence for example, which is a jank as hell indie rpg game, but does let you genuinely roleplay a non-combat build).

I'm struggling to think of ways to make MW's quests more versatile in part because the majority of them are very straightforward and strictly linear, but, similar to your suggestions on how to increase the liveliness of the world, there could be fairly simple mechanics that don't require a lot of extra work. There's a mod called Bonk! out already which makes the entire game viable for stealth characters, as you can now sneak up on people and knock NPCs out, and then "tie them up" (which causes the game to register them as dead and thus advances any quest that requires them to be killed). It's an unbalanced and jury-rigged solution obviously which still needs work, but it ends up being surprisingly elegant and opens up a whole new style of gameplay, making stealth/thief builds vastly more viable than they originally were, in a way that also really adds to the game's appealing LARP qualities. It's not just about avoiding or redefining combat, of course - there's a lot of ways the game could integrate magic and social skills into quests and general game mechanics. I think there's a mod that adds a day/night cycle too (which just locks shop doors and teleports people around, which is more than suitable for what it's trying to do).

yeah, I think you could basically do something like this as a simple solution to the LARP gaps currently existing in Morrowind. No need for radiant AI, "real" economy or dynamic, complex events, or totally reworked quests and level design, just some aesthetic variation on solutions to existing quests and dungeons. Basically, take the variety of ways to unlock something in Morrowind that I went over earlier, and just extrapolate that concept out to every interaction. IE, it sounds like all the new mechanics in Bonk! are just recycled existing mechanics, which is perfect for this sort of thing.

As for the other world sim aspects, there's a couple mods I can think of that add some interesting things. There's an old mod that lets you join the Twin Lamps, which requires you to learn the passphrase, which is done by freeing slaves around the map. It adds keys to all slaves in the game, makes slavers hostile if you free slaves while they're watching, and adds a new feature where you can escort freed slaves to a safehouse. So in one fell swoop, the mod adds some proper gameplay to previously-static locations, makes the NPCs reactive, gives quests with a broad goal (free slaves) that can be done in any way the player sees fit (charm/bribe the guards, steal the keys, kill everyone, etc) and also adds a tangible reason to go exploring, which is the kind of stuff I think vanilla MW lacks.

I think this is very nice. Simple implementation (no need for complex, dynamic systems, just a few new scripted interactions with existing NPCs in existing levels), great worldbuilding addition as slavery is a big political controversy in the empire but you don't really engage with it in vanilla much, and great roleplay as an abolitionist (might complement being a Pilgrim or Paladin or some such). You could imagine throwing just a few more things in like that for non-combat or limited combat RP. Maybe a merchant's guild that has you bring certain goods around to different merchants, or swing deals for tariffs, or escort caravans etc..., but mechanically it would just be nested into existing interactions with dialogue, inventory/encumbrance management, NPC following, and buying/selling stuff. There could be an Alchemist's guild offshoot of the mages guild that's kind of a biome exploration and collectathon questline, and maybe the reward for it is an infinite carry weight for alchemy ingredients only bag or whatever. That would also just lean into existing dialogue, looting and alchemy mechanics.

Reflecting on the "broken" alchemy of Morrowind, and how you can use it to be a totally OP, flying, invincible, invisible, water breathing demigod, I actually think that making non-combat RP ultra-powerful (but at the cost of not getting to play combat) might be the solution. IE, like in FNV where you can solve quests if your science/medicine/whatever knowledge is high enough, so you can often talk your way out of whatever, what if maxed charisma just let you talk through anything? If the player wants to see the whole main quest in 5 hours instead of 30 because all they did was walk and talk, then let them. It would be good ofc with a more complex suite of character driven dialogue options like in FNV though, which is basically the best example of that because it's so RP heavy, ie not just "charisma" or "speechcraft," but knowledge/trait matching quest appropriate traits like Speech, Barter, Medicine, Repair, Science (but their medieval/fantasy versions like Lore, Arcana, Restoration, Armorer, etc...) and, situationally, non-talky traits like Explosives, Guns, Lockpick, Sneak (but again the medieval version). IE, even if you are an Orc Warrior with two handed blunt weapons and heavy armor, say you meet another two-hander orc and strike up a convo and avoid fighting sometimes, that would be a nice touch and seemingly low impact on development (well it's a lot more dialogue).

invisibility is completely undetectable, it just turns off on any interaction: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Invisibility
I never really bothered with chameleon, but apparently at very high levels and/or with sneak skills you are basically undetectable and can still interact with stuff: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Chameleon

I guess my list would be something like, start with Morrowind as a base influence but add:
-Gothic style maps, NPC schedules and chapter system*
-FNV dialogue/trait interaction
-Daggerfall occasional limited timed quests, more fleshed out judicial system, day/night cycle, probably a few more things
-More versatile quest resolutions and world sim using recycled existing mechanics like in some mods as discussed (sneak, non-combat guilds, caravans)

and then I'm on the fence about whether improving the (melee) combat would actually be an improvement to the experience, or a kind of distraction. Part of me leans towards removing almost all player skill and leaning on character traits as much as possible, like blocking in Morrowind, but I think that might be too tedious and niche to have much of an audience. The other part of me wants to slap Mordhau into Tamriel, but that sort of very complex, quick reaction time melee combat with a full suite of directional attacks, parries, blocks, chambers, feints, ripostes, dodges, drags, etc...might be a bit much both from a dev and gameplay perspective. Maybe like mount and blade tier directional blocking could make it a bit less boring, or some kind of VATS or other slow-down system.

*The schedule system should not make quest giving NPCs hard to find. I found that aspect of Oblivion a retrograde change from Morrowind.

 

[Lemming42]

I actually think that making non-combat RP ultra-powerful (but at the cost of not getting to play combat) might be the solution. IE, like in FNV where you can solve quests if your science/medicine/whatever knowledge is high enough, so you can often talk your way out of whatever, what if maxed charisma just let you talk through anything? If the player wants to see the whole main quest in 5 hours instead of 30 because all they did was walk and talk, then let them.

There was a mod for Skyrim a while back that let you attempt to pacify enemies by speaking to them during combat and rolling your Speech skill (sort of like Fo4's weird charisma perks) and, when they were calmed, they had a dialogue option that said something like "Banish" which would remove them from the game. Similar to Bonk!'s knockout thing, it made the game consider them to be dead, advancing any quests involving them. Again it's a very patchy solution and obviously unbalanced* in that it makes boss fights into a joke, but it's an interesting start. You could bring a revised version of Daggerfall's pacifying speech skills back while also mixing it into MW's regular dialogue options, requiring 100 Disposition to "banish" quest NPCs, something like that.

*though this is already a problem in vanilla MW I guess, with powerful Calm enchantments and Admire-spam

In DF, enemies pacified by language skills would sometimes fight on the player's behalf, which was useful because you could rest with them watching over you, and sometimes even lure bosses/quest enemies to them. Might be another angle worth exploring; there was also an Oblivion mod that let the player recruit any NPC as a full-blown follower. Terribly unbalanced as usual with mods, but an interesting idea, and it seems to me like having universal actions like "Recruit" would go a long way in Morrowind, giving all those cookie-cutter wiki dialogue NPCs a purpose and letting the player interact with them according to consistent and universally-applied systems.

and then I'm on the fence about whether improving the (melee) combat would actually be an improvement to the experience, or a kind of distraction. Part of me leans towards removing almost all player skill and leaning on character traits as much as possible, like blocking in Morrowind, but I think that might be too tedious and niche to have much of an audience. The other part of me wants to slap Mordhau into Tamriel, but that sort of very complex, quick reaction time melee combat with a full suite of directional attacks, parries, blocks, chambers, feints, ripostes, dodges, drags, etc...might be a bit much both from a dev and gameplay perspective. Maybe like mount and blade tier directional blocking could make it a bit less boring, or some kind of VATS or other slow-down system.

Directional blocking is definitely a good idea, perhaps with the speed and % damage blocked determined by character skill. Bringing Arena and Daggerfall's directional swinging back too might work (I know MW doess have directional swinging but it's a bit weirdly implemented), where each swing direction applies different modifiers and penalties to the attack. It seems like a decent fusion of player skill and character skill; the player choosing the style of attack with a directional move of the mouse and the character carrying it out according to their capabilities.

 

[NecroLord]

I actually think that making non-combat RP ultra-powerful (but at the cost of not getting to play combat) might be the solution. IE, like in FNV where you can solve quests if your science/medicine/whatever knowledge is high enough, so you can often talk your way out of whatever, what if maxed charisma just let you talk through anything? If the player wants to see the whole main quest in 5 hours instead of 30 because all they did was walk and talk, then let them.

There was a mod for Skyrim a while back that let you attempt to pacify enemies by speaking to them during combat and rolling your Speech skill (sort of like Fo4's weird charisma perks) and, when they were calmed, they had a dialogue option that said something like "Banish" which would remove them from the game. Similar to Bonk!'s knockout thing, it made the game consider them to be dead, advancing any quests involving them. Again it's a very patchy solution and obviously unbalanced* in that it makes boss fights into a joke, but it's an interesting start. You could bring a revised version of Daggerfall's pacifying speech skills back while also mixing it into MW's regular dialogue options, requiring 100 Disposition to "banish" quest NPCs, something like that.

*though this is already a problem in vanilla MW I guess, with powerful Calm enchantments and Admire-spam

In DF, enemies pacified by language skills would sometimes fight on the player's behalf, which was useful because you could rest with them watching over you, and sometimes even lure bosses/quest enemies to them. Might be another angle worth exploring; there was also an Oblivion mod that let the player recruit any NPC as a full-blown follower. Terribly unbalanced as usual with mods, but an interesting idea, and it seems to me like having universal actions like "Recruit" would go a long way in Morrowind, giving all those cookie-cutter wiki dialogue NPCs a purpose and letting the player interact with them according to consistent and universally-applied systems.

and then I'm on the fence about whether improving the (melee) combat would actually be an improvement to the experience, or a kind of distraction. Part of me leans towards removing almost all player skill and leaning on character traits as much as possible, like blocking in Morrowind, but I think that might be too tedious and niche to have much of an audience. The other part of me wants to slap Mordhau into Tamriel, but that sort of very complex, quick reaction time melee combat with a full suite of directional attacks, parries, blocks, chambers, feints, ripostes, dodges, drags, etc...might be a bit much both from a dev and gameplay perspective. Maybe like mount and blade tier directional blocking could make it a bit less boring, or some kind of VATS or other slow-down system.

Directional blocking is definitely a good idea, perhaps with the speed and % damage blocked determined by character skill. Bringing Arena and Daggerfall's directional swinging back too might work (I know MW doess have directional swinging but it's a bit weirdly implemented), where each swing direction applies different modifiers and penalties to the attack. It seems like a decent fusion of player skill and character skill; the player choosing the style of attack with a directional move of the mouse and the character carrying it out according to their capabilities.

Never tried language skills in Daggerfall and never bothered training them.
Are they that useful? I thought they only made monsters non hostile if you successfully used the skill corresponding to the monster you faced.

 

[Lemming42]

They're pretty broken in the original Daggerfall, sadly - in the sense that they're almost useless.

Pacified enemies stay where they were pacified and you can rest near them safely since if you get attacked, they'll defend you. You can also lure enemies to them. I'm not sure if they do this specifically for you or if it's just regular monster infighting where one of the monsters happens to be on your side (though I think I remember making two Daedroths fight, which shouldn't happen under normal circumstances).

DF Unity rebalances them a bit to be more viable, at the highest levels you'll walk into a dungeon and pretty much every enemy will stand down. The real problem with them is that no guilds use them; the Fighter's Guild has Orcish and the Knightly Orders have Etiquette so you can use them to advance there, but otherwise they're pretty useless. There's a DF Unity mod called Archaeologist's Guild which adds a language-focused guild which is a lot of fun.

 

[NecroLord]

They're pretty broken in the original Daggerfall, sadly - in the sense that they're almost useless.

Pacified enemies stay where they were pacified and you can rest near them safely since if you get attacked, they'll defend you. You can also lure enemies to them. I'm not sure if they do this specifically for you or if it's just regular monster infighting where one of the monsters happens to be on your side (though I think I remember making two Daedroths fight, which shouldn't happen under normal circumstances).

DF Unity rebalances them a bit to be more viable. The real problem with them is that no guilds use them; the Fighter's Guild has Orcish and the Knightly Orders have Etiquette so you can use them to advance there, but otherwise they're pretty useless. There's a DF Unity mod called Archaeologist's Guild which adds a language-focused guild which is a lot of fun.

A-ha, so basically they even fight those who attack you?
Damn, maybe I ought to test this myself and see what happens.

 

[luj1]

Morrowind had arguably the strongest artifacts in the series. Helm of Oreyn Bearclaw, Chrysamere, Lord's Mail, Dragonbone Cuirass, etc...

That's not important though - that they are statistically strong

What is important is that the layered equipment system is fun, and even these items are well hidden and integrated into the world

 

[gabe1010]

You could solve the speech-builds-still-sometimes-having-to-fight issue if Charisma builds could recruit followers or hire mercenaries as you mentioned, the former being more speechcraft and the latter more mercantile, for those quests where there's just no other solution. Conjuration could play a role here as another RP/aesthetic variation on recruiting followers. Perhaps you could even hire assassins if you were really rich, and that could be like a gold-dump for mercantile builds. I also like the idea of having some assassin traits, one of which might be an in-conversation option to roll against yours and your opponents level, dexterity, assassin skill, whatever...and if you roll well you can kill them right there with a stab mid-sentence (thus starting a combat with anyone else in the room, or with the target if you fail the roll, of course, so you might pair this with drawing a target away from allies via speechcraft, and the roll will prevent you from just one-shotting the best NPCs unless you are a high level assassin). There could be a vampire version with a bite too, or a spell-blade version with a summoned blade etc...aesthetic variation for RP purposes. This way an Assassin class isn't just normal combat with short blades and more critical strikes, but like an actual assassination, and again it's a pretty simple variation on existing mechanics (I'm sure you could have a dialogue option play an animation, kill an NPC, and end the conversation all at once).

Splitting up speech skills into multiple languages (orcish, daedric, elvish, whatever) and types of speech (streetwise, formal etiquette, military jargon, whatever) would be some awesome roleplay as well, but might also dilute the speech skills in a way that's hard to balance? Maybe a charisma build would know all types of speech, an academic wizard might know all languages and such, but a knight might just have their race's language + etiquette, a thief streetwise, etc...so even a non-charisma knight can get along with fellow knights, or a low intelligence orc warrior can at least get along with other orcs, or a thief can navigate the criminal world (bonus to checks with fences or drug dealers and such). Lots of dialogue work there, but most of it could probably be slight variations on the same thing to give more the illusion of RP than anything else, which is basically fine for that sort of thing, it's more about who you can pass the check with and why, not massive amounts of filler text.

I'm remembering now from my Pilgrim playthrough a Temple quest with speech only type options where, if you can solve each of the three atronachs' riddles, you can get through to the shrine without having to fight:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Pilgrimage_to_Mount_Kand
I think the solution is just in a book, or you can try to figure it out yourself (they are not all that easy, they seem to be Morrowind-skinned classic logic puzzles. they are at least harder than something you'd find in most games now), but perhaps an option to automatically pass the check, or get a hint, could be introduced for those with higher speechcraft, arcana or elemental magic knowledge say. This way, you can roleplay as a pilgrim who finds the sacred text to learn the riddle, or you can use player knowledge to solve it yourself (or look it up on the internet...), or you can talk your way through as a charisma build, or use specialized mage knowledge if that is your build, or just fight them. In the fighting case in-game as is you'd have to guess the answer, get it wrong, fight them, then guess again after they respawn ad nauseam, but it could be changed to where you can just kill them, or maybe not, as maybe making it require multiple fights on each atronach for dumb fighters randomly guessing would make sense as you're supposed to be a Pilgrim or knowledge seeking mage at least. It all makes sense in-world, and is much more interesting and requires more player investment than just rolling on speech checks alone of just fighting alone. It's a very nice convergence of class build roleplay, worldbuilding, and game mechanics. I don't think it would be that hard to think up many dozens of quests like this, where the real challenge for the dev is in the writing, not programming. You could probably lean heavily on the use of class fables, short stories or books like The Canterbury Tales.

Part of making charisma builds and pacification spells work would involve encounter design as well. Going into a dungeon or bandit camp where 3-10 people just suicidally attack you all at once doesn't make sense, even for criminals or cultists, and is incompatible with no-combat playthroughs. They would at least ask what you are doing there, demand you leave, or maybe pause to make some threats first, not just mad-dog bum-rush you (exceptions being intentional ambushes, maybe evil spirits, or actual rabid animals, but normal animals should not be so rabid either). That interrupting dialogue sequence would be the talker's opportunity to speak their way out of trouble.

I agree that having well-integrated, world-building-promoting, unique, fixed level magical items and legendary weapons and other loot is an essential bit of immersion that later TES games mostly miss out on. Note: I mean legendary with a lower case L, ie not the LEGENDARY purple colored category of item rarity from a level-scaled looter-shooter, but an item that is actually a piece of an in-game legend. You read about some lore, or meet a unique one-off NPC, and it turns out that the magical macguffin or unique armor set or whatever from the story or dialogue actually exists in game. That's worldbuilding with passion...and yes, it has to be unscaled and OP (if that fits the lore, or underpowered if that fits) because that's the point; it's a part of the world, rather than catered to the player level. Having so many clothing, armor, and jewelry slots really enables this as well; it's not just arbitrary numbers of slots for its own sake; it lets you wear little keepsakes and worldbuilding items on your avatar, as well as customize enchantments and exact armor weights and types and aesthetic.

 

[Just Locus]

[Language skills are] pretty broken in the original Daggerfall, sadly - in the sense that they're almost useless.

That is why I'm always an advocate for Morrowind cutting them, all they did was add bloat, yes I'm aware they didn't just cut language skills, they cut skills like Swimming and Dodging etc, and most of the other skills were repurposed into something else that made it more useful.

 

[gabe1010]

[Language skills are] pretty broken in the original Daggerfall, sadly - in the sense that they're almost useless.

That is why I'm always an advocate for Morrowind cutting them, all they did was add bloat, yes I'm aware they didn't just cut language skills, they cut skills like Swimming and Dodging etc, and most of the other skills were repurposed into something else that made it more useful.

Maybe consolidating them into speaking one's racial language + linguist for all other languages could work, but I get that' it's basically bloat. It would probably just in effect be an extra opinion boost + the rare dialogue option with certain NPCs, but the simple same-race and same-faction bonuses already do that in Morrowind so it's basically redundant.

Swimming was probably too important for basic navigation in Morrowind to be a skill gated behind certain character selections, although it would be nice to dodge in morrowind and not just rely on speed and moving back and forth.

 

[None]

although it would be nice to dodge in morrowind and not just rely on speed and moving back and forth.

Agility governs dodging. Or at least it makes you harder to hit, which I'd just say is dodging. Unless you were talking about mechanical movement, like some sort of dodgeroll or sidestepping.

 

[Just Locus]

Maybe consolidating them into speaking one's racial language + linguist for all other languages could work [...]

I'd make it a skill that's governed by either Intelligence or Personality, my rationale being that you'd have to be pretty intelligent to understand and memorize an entire language. But, all those words would be meaningless if you have the personality of a basement dweller who's never interacted with anyone outside of their mother.

 

[gabe1010]

although it would be nice to dodge in morrowind and not just rely on speed and moving back and forth.

Agility governs dodging. Or at least it makes you harder to hit, which I'd just say is dodging. Unless you were talking about mechanical movement, like some sort of dodgeroll or sidestepping.

yeah like blocking it's an auto thing (but with even less visual feedback), but yeah I meant a mechanical input like in Mordhau, instead of just moving the character back and forth to dodge attacks altogether. Although, I'm not sure if the auto or the mechanical way is better, but it is strange how Morrowind mixes them.

 

[Lemming42]

In DF the monster language skills like Orcish are governed by INT while Etiquette/Streetwise is governed by Personality, which makes sense if you go with the rationale that Orcs, Centuars, Imps etc would be impressed by you simply being able to speak their language as an outsider to the point that they don't care whether you're doing it charismatically or not.

It could make sense to have Speechcraft be one skill but then have subcategories that can be used during persuasion. Like the current system MW uses, but "Orcish" (or whatever) sometimes appears as an option alongside the usual Admire/Taunt stuff and rolls both your Speechcraft skill and your Intelligence attribute. That way a highly charismatic character could still try to charm a monster through Admire, but an intelligent character would have another monster-specific option to try.

 

[deuxhero]

invisibility is completely undetectable, it just turns off on any interaction: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Invisibility
I never really bothered with chameleon, but apparently at very high levels and/or with sneak skills you are basically undetectable and can still interact with stuff: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Chameleon

This was actually removed in Bloodmoon because it proved more annoying than anything, it's just that due to how mods work loads of mods accidentally broke it again.
https://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/content/whos-there-not-knock-knock-joke-sadly

 

[NecroLord]

invisibility is completely undetectable, it just turns off on any interaction: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Invisibility
I never really bothered with chameleon, but apparently at very high levels and/or with sneak skills you are basically undetectable and can still interact with stuff: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Chameleon

This was actually removed in Bloodmoon because it proved more annoying than anything, it's just that due to how mods work loads of mods accidentally broke it again.
https://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/content/whos-there-not-knock-knock-joke-sadly

What do you mean?
There are only a few enemies in the game who can see right through invisibility. Off the top of my head, werewolves and the "bosses".
Chameleon is one of the strongest effects in the game with a magnitude of 80 and above.
The Amulet of Shadows provides 80 Chameleon. Crazy powerful. I only use this item in the most dire circumstances, or when I want to experiment.

 

[deuxhero]

Missed the "on" in "turns off on any interaction"

 

[Zanzoken]

Pretty sure at 100 Chameleon you are completely invisible. If you have some Sneak skill you can be practically so with much less.

Invisibility seems cool at first but is relatively useless compared to Chameleon.

 

[Funposter]

[Language skills are] pretty broken in the original Daggerfall, sadly - in the sense that they're almost useless.

That is why I'm always an advocate for Morrowind cutting them, all they did was add bloat, yes I'm aware they didn't just cut language skills, they cut skills like Swimming and Dodging etc, and most of the other skills were repurposed into something else that made it more useful.

My solution really would have been to only have one or two language skills, and then you can switch them up for every game depending on which province you're in. Morrowind deserves a 'Daedric' skill in order to converse with Daedra, as would a theoretical Oblivion that was actually developed to be a proper sequel. Skyrim would have had Giantish etc.