Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • 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.

Incline How to make Skyrim combat fun

Joined
Aug 27, 2021
Messages
698
Also, lol at morrowind's dynamic combat. Your nostalgia goggles have blinded you.
How many people on the Codex have nostalgia for Morrowind of all games?
At least one.

To be honest I also have nostalgia for Morrowind. It was a hell of a thing when it came out. But I'm not so deluded to claim the combat had a good sense of progression. Click real fast while not wearing uber enchanted gear vs click real fast while wearing uber enchanted gear. Oblivion and skyrim were attempts to make that better. I mean, I guess in skyrim you unlock special attacks, so that's another form of progression, in morrowind you clicked the "use best attack" option then clicked rapidly throughout the entire game.

Or you enchanted a ring with a spell that just kills everyone. That's the true greatness of morrowind, the way you can break the shit out of it.
 

Butter

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 1, 2018
Messages
7,525
Also, lol at morrowind's dynamic combat. Your nostalgia goggles have blinded you.
How many people on the Codex have nostalgia for Morrowind of all games?
At least one.

To be honest I also have nostalgia for Morrowind. It was a hell of a thing when it came out. But I'm not so deluded to claim the combat had a good sense of progression. Click real fast while not wearing uber enchanted gear vs click real fast while wearing uber enchanted gear. Oblivion and skyrim were attempts to make that better. I mean, I guess in skyrim you unlock special attacks, so that's another form of progression, in morrowind you clicked the "use best attack" option then clicked rapidly throughout the entire game.

Or you enchanted a ring with a spell that just kills everyone. That's the true greatness of morrowind, the way you can break the shit out of it.
You're outing yourself as not understanding Morrowind's combat btw. "Just spam attack, don't use power attacks my dude!" Literally retarded.
 
Joined
Aug 27, 2021
Messages
698
Power attacks? In morrowind?

You mean how you could hold the button down for a split second to get higher damage on non crossbow weapons? Yeah, it was still at a fast enough rate of speed you were spamming. Are you claiming you measured how long you held down the attack button each time?
 

Funposter

Arcane
Joined
Oct 19, 2018
Messages
1,773
Location
Australia
Power attacks? In morrowind?

You mean how you could hold the button down for a split second to get higher damage on non crossbow weapons? Yeah, it was still at a fast enough rate of speed you were spamming. Are you claiming you measured how long you held down the attack button each time?
Holding the attack button down until the swing is completely finished results in much higher damage and overall DPS, along with less overall Fatigue use, meaning you will hit more often. This only becomes more true as you get better weapons. A Daedric Battle-Axe is still only doing 1 damage if you just click and don't hold down the button at all, and those things swing quite slowly. The primary conceit of Short Blades is that they're the one class of weapon exempt from this, with high mimimum damage and overall small damage ranges, allowing things like the Fang of Haynekhtnamet or an enchanted Daedric Wakazashi to have massive DPS when you take enchantments into account.

It's not like Morrowind had an extraordinarily deep set of combat mechanics, but people who reduce it to "just spamming/clicking" are revealing their lack of understanding when it comes to the game's existing mechanics and the underlying formulae.
 

MWaser

Arbiter
Joined
Nov 22, 2015
Messages
607
Location
Where you won't find me
Power attacks? In morrowind?

You mean how you could hold the button down for a split second to get higher damage on non crossbow weapons? Yeah, it was still at a fast enough rate of speed you were spamming. Are you claiming you measured how long you held down the attack button each time?
Holding the attack button down until the swing is completely finished results in much higher damage and overall DPS, along with less overall Fatigue use, meaning you will hit more often. This only becomes more true as you get better weapons. A Daedric Battle-Axe is still only doing 1 damage if you just click and don't hold down the button at all, and those things swing quite slowly. The primary conceit of Short Blades is that they're the one class of weapon exempt from this, with high mimimum damage and overall small damage ranges, allowing things like the Fang of Haynekhtnamet or an enchanted Daedric Wakazashi to have massive DPS when you take enchantments into account.

It's not like Morrowind had an extraordinarily deep set of combat mechanics, but people who reduce it to "just spamming/clicking" are revealing their lack of understanding when it comes to the game's existing mechanics and the underlying formulae.
spamming/clicking through Morrowind would explain a lot of the other complaints about the general combat system in it.

Also lol @ the consistent "nostalgia goggles" argument. Knowing something from before doesn't block you from being able to ackowledge and understand the flaws and strong points of something. The only things it takes away is the aspect of something being "hard to understand" or "unintuitive" when you already have prior familiarity. But I don't think those are the primary complaints people make about Morrowind anyway.
 
Joined
Aug 27, 2021
Messages
698
I'd think not knowing about the "use best attack" checkbox would have turned more people off after they kept slapping people with a giant battleaxe. Lol, I tried to leave that unchecked but it was just stupid.

Yeah short blades were kind of the best weapons, not that it mattered much because everything died pretty fast regardless. But none of that has anything to do with progression or the combat changing as you progressed further.

Lol are you accusing me of not really playing morrowind or something? It's been a while, but my memory is not so bad that I think it was a deeply tactical affair.
 

deuxhero

Arcane
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
11,328
Location
Flowery Land
Once you get a feel for them, have enough skill to reliably hit and the speed to back peddle fast enough (easily acomplished by boots), spears can actually stunlock most enemies. Morrowind's combat is fine in most areas (all weapons feel different, character skill still matters, very few HP sponges) except for the fundamentals of accuracy (and AI). An OpenMW mod that made it so misses that connect still did 5-10% damage (rather than always make everything hit, which makes too much stuff pointless) would be enough to make things way better.
 

Funposter

Arcane
Joined
Oct 19, 2018
Messages
1,773
Location
Australia
I'd think not knowing about the "use best attack" checkbox would have turned more people off after they kept slapping people with a giant battleaxe. Lol, I tried to leave that unchecked but it was just stupid

It's fun in theory but being tied to movement instead of something else is the main issue, and it just compounds the problem of Long and Short Blade being the best weapon skills since they're well-rounded enough that landing any sort of attack will do decent damage. Spears for instance require you to move in a straight line at all times since it's impossible to Thrust if moving left-to-right, diagonally or even while standing still. It was obviously supposed to be similar to Daggerfall originally where you would attack while moving the mouse and that would influence the type of attack you did, meaning that you'd perform best while calm and level-headed and then do worse when you were panicking and just trying to use any attack to get away from something big and scary that was in your face. I wonder if it had to be changed to just clicking combined with movement direction because of the Xbox port.

Yeah short blades were kind of the best weapons, not that it mattered much because everything died pretty fast regardless. But none of that has anything to do with progression or the combat changing as you progressed further.
Things die quickly because the vanilla game is too easy, but the combat does obviously change a lot as you progress because you're not just doing more damage as a result of better gear and enchantments, but you're also hitting more often. This is a direct result of increasing your weapon skill and Agility, but also of increasing Strength, Willpower and Endurance which give you a bigger pool of Fatigue. With a bigger pool of Fatigue, you're more likely to hit since attacks are draining relatively less. Compare swinging a Battle-Axe in the early game to doing it with a Level 20 character. It's actually a huge difference. Oh, Strength also directly increases your damage output as well. Then you have all of the spell effects like Fortify Attribute, Skill, Attack and even Fortify Fatigue which make you more likely to hit things in combat.

Lol are you accusing me of not really playing morrowind or something? It's been a while, but my memory is not so bad that I think it was a deeply tactical affair.
As I pointed out, it's not supremely tactical and it doesn't have a lot of depth in the action game sense, but an understanding of the underlying formulae for all actions lets you know what's most effective and how many factors actually affect everything that you're doing. I think a lot of it also comes down to balancing issues. You could do things like casting Fortify Fatigue to make your character marginally more effective in combat, or you could just save that Magicka for blasting enemies in the face with a fireball. A high level Fortify spell that substantially affects combat for a decent amount of time costs the same amount of Magicka as a spell that does 300 damage and therefore nukes just about anything in the base game.


Once you get a feel for them, have enough skill to reliably hit and the speed to back peddle fast enough (easily acomplished by boots), spears can actually stunlock most enemies. Morrowind's combat is fine in most areas (all weapons feel different, character skill still matters, very few HP sponges) except for the fundamentals of accuracy (and AI). An OpenMW mod that made it so misses that connect still did 5-10% damage (rather than always make everything hit, which makes too much stuff pointless) would be enough to make things way better.
I finished a Spear playthrough just a week or two ago and they are definitely useful for stunlocking enemies, which actually is a diegetic reflection of their use on Vvardenfell. Spears are used to avoid diseases when fighting Blighted monsters, and since Blighted versions of creatures (and all Sixth House enemies) are so slow, you can very effectively use a Spear to kite and stunlock even really strong stuff. Highly recommended for a combined Redoran+Temple playthrough.
 

Nikanuur

Arbiter
Patron
Joined
Mar 1, 2021
Messages
1,489
Location
Ngranek
I've tried playing with this mod and it doesn't help to keep myself interested into the game. Skyrim still feels like a dull experience no matter the 1000s of mods you install.

This games biggest weakness is the open world itself, incl shit story. Can any mod entirely change the base game to something completely different in theme and storytelling?

I'd rather switch to other better RPGs.
I don't force on you to like Skyrim. Hey, man, play what you like :) Games are exactly for that.
 

Nikanuur

Arbiter
Patron
Joined
Mar 1, 2021
Messages
1,489
Location
Ngranek
Also, lol at morrowind's dynamic combat. Your nostalgia goggles have blinded you.
How many people on the Codex have nostalgia for Morrowind of all games?
Dude! I so remember acquiring the cape of +40 HP regen per second on the 2nd PC level in the cave with the Sleeper. I've stumbled across the cave somewhat near the start point on my third Morrowind run. The Sleeper on the second level! I've actually managed to kill it after pin-cushioning it with like 100 arrows or some such :D I was soon dissapointed with that marvelous loot. Nothing could kill me for hours :D All fun gone...
 
Last edited:

Nikanuur

Arbiter
Patron
Joined
Mar 1, 2021
Messages
1,489
Location
Ngranek
Concerning the AE update managing to screw over all of the modding scene for some time.
I've absolutely no idea this was going on. I've returned to the game after a year just a day or two before :D

Anyway, this downgrader seemed that this one worked for me. At least on the first glimpse of getting into the game, and playing it a bit. Phew, I've immediately gave the appmanifest_489830.acf file in the /steamapps/ directory READONLY and stopped Steam from automatically updating.

Skyrim SE AE ---> Skyrimn SE downgrader at Nexus
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/57618?tab=posts&BH=0
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom