Morrowind was massive decline and should be considered as such

[Metro]

Individually designed > randomly generated. I don't get how people can praise the scope of a world when it's just randomized generic dungeons.

 

[Falksi]

oh jesus christ

 

[Lyric Suite]

Individually designed > randomly generated. I don't get how people can praise the scope of a world when it's just randomized generic dungeons.

Randomized or not, the dungeons are still huge, complex, and full of mystery and atmosphere. I think Daggerfall is one of those games where the primitive technical aspects of the game actually sort of give everything a feeling of mystique. There's nothing quite like coming out of a dungeon after three in game hours and popping out in the sun to this nice medieval tune.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Ah, yes... The best aspect of Daggerfall dungeons is coming out of them.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Damn you.

 

[JarlFrank]

Daggerfall's dungeons are certainly atmospheric.

Spoiler

Which is why everyone who thinks using HD texture mods for Daggerfall Unity is a good idea needs to be thrown in a bog

 

[vonAchdorf]

"Daggerfall is decline compared to Arena" when?

Now!

• It featured the entirety of Tamriel
• Single plane dungeons were labyrinthine enough without going antfarm
• Arguably less broken system
• Less bugs
• It didn't needlessly go bananas with the simulationist stuff
• More straightforward plot

• Sexy chick on the cover

Authoritative ranking: Daggerfall > Arena > Morrowind > Skyrim > Oblivion

 

[samuraigaiden]

Morrowind was too unbalanced. You couldn't even kill the enemies from the boat where the game starts you in.

 

[Scarlet Lilith]

Authoritative ranking: Daggerfall > Arena > Morrowind > Skyrim > Oblivion

Oh no no no no, I just know I will get bullied and downrated for this, but that isn't it at all! I'm so, so, sorry, but you're just wrong!

Battlespire (Top dungeon crawling) > Arena (Wholesomeness) > Morrowind (Art, writing and lore) > Daggerfall (Scope and ambition) > Redguard (Lore and adventure) > Power Gap > Dawnstar (Mini crawl) > Stormhold (Also mini crawl) > Power Gap > Oblivion (Generic and sad but still technically an RPG) > Skyrim (Sneaky warriormage archer sim, not an RPG) > Pineapple Pizza > TESO (Yuck)

That's just an objective fact... Of my taste.

 

[Lemming42]

If we're doing series rankings:

Daggerfall > Morrowind > Skyrim > Arena > Redguard > Oblivion

I never fully finished Battlespire because it ran jankily no matter how I installed it and no matter how I emulated it.

I really like all the TES games except Oblivion.

Arena and Redguard really are way underrated. Redguard's controls are pretty awful (especially the dogshit fencing mechanic) but the story and setting are great, even weirder than Morrowind in a lot of ways. Arena on the other hand has some of the best dungeons in the series. I even like the Valenwood staff piece dungeon where you're in a misty forest that's basically impossible to navigate unless you map it at all four corners and then start working your way inwards. Ingenious use of the short draw distance to create atmosphere and an extra challenge, you really feel like you're trying to plot a course through insanely deep fog.

 

[Scarlet Lilith]

Arena and Redguard really are way underrated. Redguard's controls are pretty awful (especially the dogshit fencing mechanic) but the story and setting are great, even weirder than Morrowind in a lot of ways. Arena on the other hand has some of the best dungeons in the series. I even like the Valenwood staff piece dungeon where you're in a misty forest that's basically impossible to navigate unless you map it at all four corners and then start working your way inwards. Ingenious use of the short draw distance to create atmosphere and an extra challenge, you really feel like you're trying to plot a course through insanely deep fog.

You very correctly say this but then rank Arena so low, why? It should be way higher! Best dungeons and it's almost at the bottom tier?!?

 

[Lemming42]

I like Daggerfall, Morrowind, Skyrim and Arena a lot, they're all pretty close to each other. I mean, to put it another way:

Daggerfall - 9/10
Morrowind - 8.5/10
Skyrim - 8/10
Arena - 7.5/10 (mostly just because it's janky, and because there's a few bad dungeons that let the game down - if the modding scene takes off and fixes some of the bugs and imbalance, it could end up being genuinely great)
Redguard - 6/10
Oblivion - Todd/10

 

[Scarlet Lilith]

Arena - 7.5/10 mostly just because it's janky

It's way less janky than Daggerfall, but if that's what you like then that's what you like I guess.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Skyrim - 8/10

You know that Loverslab mods don't count in a ranking.

 

[Lemming42]

Arena - 7.5/10 mostly just because it's janky

It's way less janky than Daggerfall, but if that's what you like then that's what you like I guess.

Well, yeah. I think you have to take all of these games for what they are, which is why I rate Skyrim so highly as an action adventure game, even though it gutted and "streamlined" virtually every RPG element of the Elder Scrolls series, and why Morrowind is still a great game despite completely discarding Arena and Daggerfall's vision and stripping down the RPG systems in the process.

Daggerfall and Arena both largely achieved what they set out to do, but Arena feels pretty barebones (especially in the non-dungeon gameplay), like it's laying the groundwork for something bigger and better.

Skyrim - 8/10

You know that Loverslab mods don't count in a ranking.

Don't worry, I know - that's why I only gave it 8/10 instead of 10/10.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

Morrowind should at least be given credit for not having dialogue wheels nor character-heavy voice. Plus you can build one of several houses, fly over mountains, explore ancient Dwemer strongholds, and talk to a crab.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Morrowind was NOT decline of any sort for a very simple reason: there was nothing to decline from.

TES series has always been completely overrated, and does not have a single game of high quality in it. Arena was probably the best, for the times, but even then, it was inspired by Ultima 7:TBG and UUW, and was not one half as good as either of those. It didn't have what made TBG great (a living world with NPC schedules, tons of objects and interactivity), and it didn't have what made UUW great (highly intelligent gameplay and interactivity), it was just a mediocre attempt to expand on them.

Then Daggerfall, sounds good on paper, a world size of Britain, procedural this and that, but in reality, a mostly empty world with extremely shallow procedurally generated content. Yeah, all the skills and mechanics were cool, but if could only apply them to cardboard cut-out NPCs and so on, who cares...

Morrowind actually made the world more interesting by going with developer created content, but everything else still sucked. Horrible combat, dungeons that still felt copy-pasted, wikipedia NPCs and dialogue, etc, etc.

And then of course, Oblivion and Skyrim, when they went mainstream.

Nothing of value was ever had, so nothing of value was lost.

 

[Scarlet Lilith]

which is why I rate Skyrim so highly as an action adventure game

I don't think we'll see eye to eye on this one, but I just have to say I wouldn't consider it good even as an action adventure game. You need to play more of them if you think that it qualifies as decent.

 

[V_K]

Morrowind should at least be given credit for not having dialogue wheels nor character-heavy voice.

Neither of those were a thing at the time it came out though.

 

[Lemming42]

which is why I rate Skyrim so highly as an action adventure game

I don't think we'll see eye to eye on this one, but I just have to say I wouldn't consider it good even as an action adventure game. You need to play more of them if you think that it qualifies as decent.

More specifically, first person open world action adventure games. If you can think of many better ones, go ahead and hook me up.

Bethesda's whole success has come from them basically cornering the market on a specific type of game - first person open world games focused mostly on exploration, combat and loot gathering, with some sidequests and town-based gameplay for flavour. Skyrim is the best expression of modern-day Bethesda's formula IMO, since the gameplay loop of "go to dungeon -> kill everyone -> get their stuff -> go to harder dungeon and use your new stuff to kill everyone there" is pretty much the entire focus and it works well. It's a bonus that the game takes place in a world that has a pretty decent depiction of the Elder Scrolls setting - far far far better than Oblivion, at the very least.

The combat is perfectly functional, the dungeons are mostly designed to be quick and action-packed, the game offers some flexibility in character build and how you approach combat encounters, and the game does its best to feed you a steady stream of increasingly powerful loot.

We already know from New Vegas that as soon as a competent (or even semi-competent in Obsidian's case) dev team tries the same formula, Bethesda is blown out of the water.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

The combat is perfectly functional...

Are you talking about Skyrim?

 

[Lemming42]

Yeah. It is perfectly functional, if not particularly exciting. It's better than Morrowind's combat in that plunging your sword directly into someone's face will definitely cause damage now (the obvious tradeoff being that you don't feel the tangible effects of stat increases like you do in Morrowind), and it's better than Oblivion's combat in that the level scale madness is significantly reduced so you don't end up spending three hours whittling down the 99999/99999 health bar of a bandit in glass armour.

The combat in Skyrim is mostly about stamina management, timed blocking, and applying magic debuffs to enemies. Unless you're a stealth archer, in which case the combat is one of the greatest works of farce ever created by mortal hands.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

As someone already mentioned, you really need to play some aRPGs if you think Skyrim combat is functional. It is the worst aRPG combat system of any major game I can think of, and it's objectively terrible in every regard.

There is no timed blocking in Skyrim, you just hold the shield/weapon up and enemies hit into them, because that's how Bethesda logic works. Yes, sometimes they will power attack or something, but most of the time you can just hold stuff up and go to sleep. And what stamina management? Even with mods that make that more important, I never had any issues with stamina. It's a terrible, spammy system devoid of any skill or depth.

In general, if you like Skyrim, you should play Breath of the Wild on an emulator, it's basically like a Skyrim but done by a non-retarded development team.

 

[Lemming42]

There is no timed blocking in Skyrim, you just hold the shield/weapon up and enemies hit into them, because that's how Bethesda logic works. Yes, sometimes they will power attack or something, but most of the time you can just hold stuff up and go to sleep. And what stamina management? Even with mods that make that more important, I never had any issues with stamina. It's a terrible, spammy system devoid of any skill or depth.

Don't blocked hits incur a stamina cost for the player? And doesn't performing a timed block stagger the opponent?

You're unlikely to have too much trouble even if your stamina runs out anyway because the game is designed to be pretty easy for mass appeal. But I don't think it's wrong to say that the combat is functional especially when compared with other Gamebryo combat monstrosities like Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and so on.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Don't blocked hits incur a stamina cost for the player? And doesn't performing a timed block stagger the opponent?

The stamina costs are minimal, so they don't really matter. As far as timed blocking, you are probably thinking of mods, some of which introduce this mechanic, except it doesn't really work, because Bethesda's animations for one-handed weapon attacks happen too fast. Essentially, as soon as the animation starts, the game already counts it as a hit, so even if theres a timed block mechanic, you d have no chance to actually use it against half the enemies.

I actually have a modding thread here, outlining how to actually mod Skyrim to have timed blocking (you have to install a bunch of different mods to replace one handed animations, introduce timed mechanics, etc), which kinda works, but even then is kinda shitty, since some attacks still happen too fast. And that's after a lot of modding.

You're unlikely to have too much trouble even if your stamina runs out anyway because the game is designed to be pretty easy for mass appeal. But I don't think it's wrong to say that the combat is functional especially when compared with other Gamebryo combat monstrosities like Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and so on.

Oblivion is pretty much the same combat as Skyrim. Morrowind was better in my opion (though also shit) because it didnt present itself as an action combat. At least you knew it was just about spamming. Skyrim/Oblivion act like they are action combats, while in reality they are just as spammy as Morrowind. And F3/NV were better because they are shooters, and shooting combat is a lot easier to implement than melee combat, so Bethesda's incompetence was less important there.