Morrowind mods are a fucking jungle

[baturinsky]

Considering Dagoth UR living in 10 minutes from their shithole bog village...

Right, and it's a wonder why every peasant farmer doesn't learn the most powerful magic spells with just a few days of time spent training...

Yes, that's problem with TES setting: it falls apart if you asks questions like that.

 

[oscar]

I'd imagine the PC is, as is the case in most games, a very out-of-the-ordinary individual.

 

[DraQ]

I rate this page:
out of .

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Half the lore is devoted to pretty much exactly that. The PC is not a normal being in any sense at all. It all gets a bit meta, which might not be to everyone's taste, but it's there - Vivec specifically demonstrates for you that he knows how to quickload too, and if you kill him, he explains that he'll just log off for a bit then load a save up from before you did it.

It doesn't stop the surface-level problems being legitimate, though. Like, Skyrim's main quest should in theory be interesting - it's two halves of a mad, divided God warring for supremacy, one of which can warp reality with its presence and voice alone, and the other of which is a multidimensional horror that controls angels made of time - but all the cool lore in the world written by someone who wasn't otherwise involved in development doesn't stop the end product being about an OCD dude with Transcendent Tourette's whacking retarded dragons in the feet forever. Morrowind's problem isn't of such a severe scale, but it's still easy enough to pick apart at some points. I dunno, I find it easy enough to avoid thinking about it - what game can't be picked apart like that to some extent?

 

[DraQ]

Well, there is this little thing that from Morrowind onwards all TES games have been massively downscaled.

For example Balmora would actually look more along these lines if you were to visit "actual" Tamriel:

In-game it looks like this:

(Map used for clarity)

Durr not only doesn't dwell within 10 minutes from anyone, there would be much more than 10 minutes between DU and nearest Dwemer ruin inside the Ghostfence.

Seriously, reading this page makes your IQ drop:
"DURR CONTIENT OF TRAMIEL IS SMALLER THAN MY TOWN LOL"
"Y ISNT EVERYONE A MAEG?"
"I SWING A SORD AT SOEMOEN AND IT GOES THRU WTF ITS UNREALISTIC"

 

[IDtenT]

Help. Can't find Caius Cosades.

 

[Turisas]

Would people (as in, the general audience) even want a modern Daggerfall-style TES, even if it was technically feasible? At some point the procedural generation of content will no doubt get so close to hand-crafted stuff that the two will be virtually indistinguishable, but if you had cities with thousands of inhabitants and hundreds of dwellings, most of these console generation instant-gratification kids would just start bitching about it. Even with the magical quest compass.

 

[DraQ]

Would people (as in, the general audience) even want a modern Daggerfall-style TES, even if it was technically feasible? At some point the procedural generation of content will no doubt get so close to hand-crafted stuff that the two will be virtually indistinguishable, but if you had cities with thousands of inhabitants and hundreds of dwellings, most of these console generation instant-gratification kids would just start bitching about it. Even with the magical quest compass.

World would be a much better place if you could sell such people monitors/TVs with shaped charges instead of screens.

 

[IDtenT]

Well, do you really want to travel through New York on foot?

 

[Turisas]

Well, do you really want to travel through New York on foot?

If I have my boots of blinding speed and levitation, yes.

 

[DraQ]

If the game wasn't downscaled, there would be possibility of implementing fast travel without having player skip the potentially content that was retained in the process of downscaling. For example you might have random encounters handling both actual random encounters and points of interest you'd run into (you'd also need to be able to go to arbitrary points, to be able to search for points of interests you haven't ran into), you'd have actual cost involved in travel, even on your own feet or mount (supply mechanics) and so on.

In a downscaled world unrestricted fast travel is detrimental in that it bypasses whatever designers have already deemed worthy of keeping as part of the experience.

 

[sea]

Seriously, reading this page makes your IQ drop:
"DURR CONTIENT OF TRAMIEL IS SMALLER THAN MY TOWN LOL"
"Y ISNT EVERYONE A MAEG?"
"I SWING A SORD AT SOEMOEN AND IT GOES THRU WTF ITS UNREALISTIC"

Someone cannot into sarcasm/jokes.

In a downscaled world unrestricted fast travel is detrimental in that it bypasses whatever designers have already deemed worthy of keeping as part of the experience.

You mean like all the copy-pasted filler civilian NPCs who all say the exact same things about the exact same topics, the pointless houses that have nothing of value or interest in them, and endless empty wilderness with enemy spawn points placed every 50 feet?

 

[DraQ]

But isn't that more like real life? I doubt everyone you meet would talk to you if you try to initiate conversation with them let alone have something meaningful and worth while to say.

This. At best you can ask them for direction. Usually once.

 

[sea]

Someone cannot into sarcasm again.

Though that said I would love to play the ultra-realistic "Elder Scrolls: Ash Yam Farmer 2013". You would play a dirt-poor Dunmer farmer who operates a small plantation. Do you hire foreign slave labor to save money, or keep your business pure to better appeal to clients? Which Great House do you become indebted to in order to purchase your farming equipment, and how many decades will it take before you can pay them back? How will you survive the ash-winter when your harvest is raided by wild guars?

...

Shit, that actually sounds kinda fun.

 

[baturinsky]

Would people (as in, the general audience) even want a modern Daggerfall-style TES, even if it was technically feasible? At some point the procedural generation of content will no doubt get so close to hand-crafted stuff that the two will be virtually indistinguishable, but if you had cities with thousands of inhabitants and hundreds of dwellings, most of these console generation instant-gratification kids would just start bitching about it. Even with the magical quest compass.

I don't see a problem, if you don't make people walk kilometers by foot in real time at snail speed (uphill each way) regularly. They were OK with GTA cities.

 

[Gragt]

And then cliff racers attack your workers.

 

[baturinsky]

But isn't that more like real life? I doubt everyone you meet would talk to you if you try to initiate conversation with them let alone have something meaningful and worth while to say.

Not everyone, but most will probably give you an answer if you ask about location of something around. And Morrowind inhabitants are probably quite bored without Internet, so would be more inclined to speak with some new face.

And I'd pick this system any day over "hurr durr I know three sentences" NPCs they give us now.

 

[IDtenT]

Someone cannot into sarcasm again.

Though that said I would love to play the ultra-realistic "Elder Scrolls: Ash Yam Farmer 2013". You would play a dirt-poor Dunmer farmer who operates a small plantation. Do you hire foreign slave labor to save money, or keep your business pure to better appeal to clients? Which Great House do you become indebted to in order to purchase your farming equipment, and how many decades will it take before you can pay them back? How will you survive the ash-winter when your harvest is raided by wild guars?

...

Shit, that actually sounds kinda fun.

Pre-order the MMO.

 

[Borelli]

Someone cannot into sarcasm again.

Though that said I would love to play the ultra-realistic "Elder Scrolls: Ash Yam Farmer 2013". You would play a dirt-poor Dunmer farmer who operates a small plantation. Do you hire foreign slave labor to save money, or keep your business pure to better appeal to clients? Which Great House do you become indebted to in order to purchase your farming equipment, and how many decades will it take before you can pay them back? How will you survive the ash-winter when your harvest is raided by wild guars?

...

Shit, that actually sounds kinda fun.

Sell your cow bull netch and buy a sword! Go adventuring! The amount of money you can earn in one dungeon is a whole year's worth of farmer's paycheck. Get rich or die trying.

 

[Dreaad]

Someone cannot into sarcasm again.

Though that said I would love to play the ultra-realistic "Elder Scrolls: Ash Yam Farmer 2013". You would play a dirt-poor Dunmer farmer who operates a small plantation. Do you hire foreign slave labor to save money, or keep your business pure to better appeal to clients? Which Great House do you become indebted to in order to purchase your farming equipment, and how many decades will it take before you can pay them back? How will you survive the ash-winter when your harvest is raided by wild guars?

...

Shit, that actually sounds kinda fun.

There's already a game like that, Harvest Moon, you should totally mod that shit so everyone looks sounds like "What do you want mora?"

 

[sea]

Warning: wall of text.

So despite starting Morrowind several times before, I'd never actually played through it, or rather its main quest. I think I did do the majority of the Fighters Guild and House Hlaalu quests previously, and explored a good deal of the world, but the main quest I never managed to get through. Over the last week or two I've been playing with the sole intention of finishing the main quest, and I did so today.

I think the thing I appreciate more than anything else about Morrowind is the way that the story is steeped so heavily in lore. The backstory of the game world structures the story itself and, interestingly, the biggest "plot twists" come in the form of simply uncovering past events. It's very common to find games with a textbook worth of lore; it's another thing entirely to see a game where the two are so tightly woven together, to the point of being pretty much inseparable.

The high points of the game, for me, were the conversations with Vivec and Dagoth Ur, simply from a character standpoint. For demigods, both of them have a great deal of depth and humanity, with Vivec coming across as cold and detached, and Dagoth Ur reveling in more base human emotions - but without going too far to extreme ends or giving up the opposite qualities. There's a great dichotomy in them, the philosopher and pragmatist, and it's easy to see that their places as god and devil could be swapped if the situation itself was different. Sure, Dagoth Ur could have used a bit more fleshing out, as you only get to talk to him once and he's still pretty blatantly Evil(TM), but I could still easily sympathize with him.

I really appreciated that the game specifically highlights differing accounts of game-defining events (specifically what happened at Red Mountain), but I think Vivec's suggestion that his story was "the truth" while still encouraging the player to decide on his/her own was a stroke of subtle genius. When Vivec told me to read both accounts and decide for myself, I did - and leaving the decision open revealed a lot about his character. Why would Vivec say that his story was the truth, yet encourage you to read a false account? Is it because he's just such an open-minded guy? Or is it because he was able to literally change history to create his own truth, to hide his own sins? This really cast a shadow over Vivec's claims to godhood, and made me question his motives.

I also loved the idea of failed incarnates in the Nerevarine prophecy. It was a pretty clever subversion of the usual "chosen one" trope just for its own sake, and showing that you were one of possibly dozens of even hundreds of people who were all "destined" to defeat Dagoth Ur makes it much easier to buy the idea that you're a god-slayer. Are you that powerful, or did you just get lucky? Are you really a reincarnation, or is the prophecy simply self-fulfilling?

I haven't played an RPG in quite some time that also makes me feel like such a goddamn badass that worked my way up from nothing. You have to work and train to get better, but when you start to max out your offensive skills, are ranked high in a guild and non-combat functions are no longer a waste of time, it does make you notice how and appreciate far you've come. This also holds true for the general mastery of the world - understanding of lore and cultures, the locations of all the cities, towns and villages, the travel routes between them, and so on. Once you can super-jump, levitate and run at crazy speeds all over the world, you really feel like you're on the top of the food chain. The simple fact that the game lets you do such crazy stuff is great.

That said, there are some issues with Morrowind that actually make me better appreciate the newer Elder Scrolls games more. Combat in Morrowind blows chunks. Melee combat sucks due to poor feedback, animations, lack of real tactics in timing and directing your strikes, etc., and while in theory magical combat should be more interesting, in practice it kind of just turns into a clusterfuck. I found I either roflstomped people with custom-made spells or died immediately because it seems most high-level enemies have a 50% chance to reflect your spell back at you. And I have to admit that area design, such as Red Mountain, really was not great (goddamn cliff racers and nix hounds).

Most dungeons are very small and uninteresting. I was expecting massive, sprawling underground labyrinths, but surprisingly there aren't too many of those throughout the game. There are very few dungeons which contain any sort of story or quest material as well - one thing later Elder Scrolls games do well is give a sense of narrative to these locations with unique books and notes lying around, and I was surprised to see this mostly missing in Morrowind.

The game really could have benefited from a bit more unique dialogue too. What's there is excellent, but I wish I could have asked direct questions of various NPCs. The info-dump format to conversations robs a lot of personality from characters and makes it hard to ask a very specific question. The encyclopedic format means that you do get a ton of information, but it also means that if you have a question or topic it doesn't cover, you probably won't find an answer. I hate to say it, but I actually think I prefer having 1-3 topics of conversation with an NPC, and having those topics be unique to that particular NPC, to the encyclopedia system in Morrowind.

There's some wasted potential with factions. I think the execution and high-level quest design here was mostly good, and seeing events from different sides based on who you're working for is great, but the low-level quest design sucked. Become archmage of all Morrowind by picking flowers and finding some old books! Deliver enough warm meals to lepers and eventually become a saint! The lack of storylines for the factions, or progression in the quests, was a pretty noticeable weakness (only Telvanni seemed to have any sense of growth and progression to me). And, although you get a disposition hit or boost with people depending on your faction association, I would have liked to see greater consequences for siding with A over B, something that can't be solved with a bribe or sweet-talking.

Last, and I know this is in part because the game is dated, but technical issues dragged things down a lot. Follower AI is so fucking awful I can't understand why they ever decided escort missions were a good idea - for example, I failed a quest one time because the person I was escorting decided to charge a dremora in melee with his fists, and then slipped and fell into a small pool that he couldn't escape from, and drowned because he was too stupid to keep his head above the surface. I didn't have any serious issues, but the frequent crashes and ease at which you can get stuck on terrain were very common annoyances. Several book models and icons were also broken for me, and no matter what I tried I couldn't fix them (even multiple mod-free reinstalls).

Overall, a good game, extremely ambitious, and worth playing through fully, but not a great one in actual execution. I enjoyed the world, lore, history and story quite a bit, and the openness of the game mechanics and systems were excellent, but I'd be lying if I said that the core gameplay often wasn't boring and monotonous, and the combat was just tedious at best, and HP-bloated click-spamming at worst. Minute-to-minute, I find Skyrim and even Oblivion much more enjoyable, even if they are weaker games in some respects and overall not as good.

 

[Sceptic]

I really appreciated that the game specifically highlights differing accounts of game-defining events (specifically what happened at Red Mountain), but I think Vivec's suggestion that his story was "the truth" while still encouraging the player to decide on his/her own was a stroke of subtle genius. When Vivec told me to read both accounts and decide for myself, I did - and leaving the decision open revealed a lot about his character. Why would Vivec say that his story was the truth, yet encourage you to read a false account? Is it because he's just such an open-minded guy? Or is it because he was able to literally change history to create his own truth, to hide his own sins? This really cast a shadow over Vivec's claims to godhood, and made me question his motives.

There is a much less subtle reason to distrust Vivec: in the same conversation in which he tells you his story is the truth, he also openly admits to having lied about things, and specifically about past events. Of course you could play the "he admits to having lied therefore he's now coming clean" card, or you could simply realize you're being asked to trust a self-confessed liar.

Are you really a reincarnation, or is the prophecy simply self-fulfilling?

The game toys with this, but I think it ultimately veers towards the latter, especially if you're aware of the driving force behind the prophecy (Azura), and of the one being that the Tribunal managed to royally piss off (again, Azura). Of course, Azura is the GOOD daedra, she'd never stoop so low as to make a self-fulfilling prophecy purely out of spite, would she? Oh right, daedra...

Most dungeons are very small and uninteresting. I was expecting massive, sprawling underground labyrinths, but surprisingly there aren't too many of those throughout the game. There are very few dungeons which contain any sort of story or quest material as well - one thing later Elder Scrolls games do well is give a sense of narrative to these locations with unique books and notes lying around, and I was surprised to see this mostly missing in Morrowind.

Not sure I agree with this. The narrative is more subtle in Morrowind, but it's there. It's usually more of a case of show don't tell though - instead of having a note that infodumps what the dungeon is about, you can instead get a sense for it from its residents, their race, what some commoner may have had to say about the cave when you were in the nearby town, and so on. And in some cases (like the vampire clans) you wouldn't even know what the dungeon is unless you fulfill some very specific conditions.

I hate to say it, but I actually think I prefer having 1-3 topics of conversation with an NPC, and having those topics be unique to that particular NPC, to the encyclopedia system in Morrowind.

That I totally disagree with. I think the NPCs could've benefitted from more personalised lines and topics, but not to the point of turning this into 1-3 topics. And in any case the conversation system was a huge improvement over that of Daggerfall, so it never bothered me as much as most other people.

There's some wasted potential with factions. I think the execution and high-level quest design here was mostly good, and seeing events from different sides based on who you're working for is great, but the low-level quest design sucked. Become archmage of all Morrowind by picking flowers and finding some old books! Deliver enough warm meals to lepers and eventually become a saint! The lack of storylines for the factions, or progression in the quests, was a pretty noticeable weakness (only Telvanni seemed to have any sense of growth and progression to me).

I'm not sure how you missed so much of the faction progression. All of them have an underlying plotline going, and in any case you most certainly CANNOT become archmage by "picking some flowers" (you must be confusing with Oblivion) thanks to the skill requirements. The Cult questline is perhaps the weakest (well, there isn't one really; same with the Morag Tong), but the Fighters, Thieves and Hlaalu all have pretty good progression, particularly since they intertwine with each other and choices made with one of them may influence the outcome with the other.

I agree about technical issues, and with most of the rest of what you wrote. But then I got to this:

Minute-to-minute, I find Skyrim and even Oblivion much more enjoyable

 

[abnaxus]

Morrowind character is mentioned in the Elder Scrolls, so an obvious Chosen One, but not necessarily the Nerevarine.

 

[Regvard]

... I find Skyrim and even Oblivion much more enjoyable, even if they are weaker games in some respects and overall not as good.

I can understand maybe enjoying Skyrim as a so-so hike simulator/action game but Oblivion? Really? It was so STUPID I felt insulted every second of that game.

 

[sea]

That I totally disagree with. I think the NPCs could've benefitted from more personalised lines and topics, but not to the point of turning this into 1-3 topics. And in any case the conversation system was a huge improvement over that of Daggerfall, so it never bothered me as much as most other people.

Well yeah, I'm not saying that I wouldn't change the existing Morrowind system. I'm talking about more, if I have to pick between one or the other. Being able to speak to a jarl about the specific needs of his people, versus for the most part the same old copy-pasta about the same old topics you get in Morrowind gives the world a more focused feeling. The idea that you can also go around and interrogate people endlessly for huge amounts of text on everything, even lowly commoners, is also just weird. The game needed better differentiation in conversation topics and responses between different characters, especially for things like their social class etc.

I'm not sure how you missed so much of the faction progression. All of them have an underlying plotline going, and in any case you most certainly CANNOT become archmage by "picking some flowers" (you must be confusing with Oblivion) thanks to the skill requirements. The Cult questline is perhaps the weakest (well, there isn't one really; same with the Morag Tong), but the Fighters, Thieves and Hlaalu all have pretty good progression, particularly since they intertwine with each other and choices made with one of them may influence the outcome with the other.

Okay, that was me being a bit sarcastic. Still, I thought the Mages Guild quest line was kinda silly with the whole "oh by the way here's a letter that says the archmage has lost his job" at the end, and I found the Temple questline especially weak. Telvanni wasn't bad, though, and although I did not play the other guilds you mentioned this time around so maybe I've just forgotten.

I think the biggest problem is the compressed time-scale and the idea that you can often rank up for performing the most simplistic tasks. Having to hop between 3-4 different cities, who have quest givers that all have 2-5 quests, kinda hurts much of the narrative build-up because you tend to do the quests in one area all at once and then go back to picking flowers and delivering weapons to people immediately after you've quested for some holy relic. It's just weird to me that you can become the head of a guild in such a short span, and they often do not do the best job selling it in the guild story.

For lack of a better term, the "experience" of wandering around and exploring the world is simply more interesting in Skyrim and (to a much lesser degree) Oblivion. There is less combat in Morrowind, at least until the endgame, so it's not as big a problem as it could have been, but there's all sorts of little convenience tweaks that the newer games have (sprinting, faster harvesting of ingredients, better animations and camera) and more unique stuff to find while exploring that the hiking simulator element is much better.

Admittedly, Oblivion is crap. The goofy-looking NPCs and their fucking annoying voice acting, the shitty lore and completely fucking retarded story/writing, the idiotic and near-broken AI, the dumbed down skill and inventory stuff, the level scaling, I hate it all. I'm referring mostly to the presentation aspects (graphics, music) and feel of the combat, and in that respect Oblivion is more enjoyable simply by virtue of being a newer, more technically proficient game. Morrowind is still pretty damn clunky no matter how many mods you install.

Skyrim's combat is simple, but fun, and remains fun even after several hours. Morrowind's... isn't. Skyrim is also quite pretty even without mods, there are some cool locations to find, the world design is pretty varied, and so on and so forth. And I do appreciate stuff like the not-stupidly-fucking-slow movement speed in the early game, the ability to see more than 20 feet ahead of you, lack of annoying to get around locations like Vivec, etc. Interestingly, I find Skyrim's level scaling is less noticeable than Morrowind's too (i.e. no "suddenly there are frost atronachs at all the daedric ruins" stuff). So yeah, ultimately my reasons for liking the new games more to actually play mostly comes down to technical and presentation reasons, but in a game where the bulk of "gameplay" is spent hiking around and hitting stuff with a sword, those elements are important.