Morrowind was massive decline and should be considered as such

[Scarlet Lilith]

This is the same forum that praises choices and consequences in Planescape torment

Heh, that game also only had one ending.

 

[Lemming42]

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 sure there's no timed blocking in vanilla? I was almost certain that there was, but I'll defer to you on it. It's very possible I'm thinking of mods since like all sane people I've not played Skyrim vanilla for any significant length of time since 2011.

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.

I don't know about that - Fallout 3/NV combat is absolutely shocking without VATS, and somehow even worse with VATS. I like Skyrim combat over Morrowind because at least Skyrim is straightforwardly basic action rather than stuck in a nightmare middle ground between bad RPG combat and bad action combat. I remember Oblivion having far worse problems with level scaling and HP bloat, as well as the animations and lack of enemy feedback making everything feel extremely floaty and weightless - a problem it shares with Skyrim, but to a far greater extent IMO.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

F3/NV combat just needs 2 very simply modding fixes: nerf health for everyone, and theres a mod on Nexus that removes NPC dodging. With these 2 (and avoiding VATs), the combat is like a mediocre shooter, nothing to write home about, but enjoyable enough to play.

 

[V_K]

Later TES combat has always been designed for people who don't like action combat. Combat is just not the point of these games, it's merely something thrown in to pace exploration and make progression through the world feel earned. Which is why all the games that tried "upgrade" Bethesda's formula to include more actiony and involved combat (Amalur, Two Worlds) invariably turned up shit and/or missing the point. This style of game requires combat to be over very quickly, because at this gameworld size it's unfeasible to spend more than a couple of seconds on a given encounter, it would turn the game into a slog.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Later TES combat has always been designed for people who don't like action combat. Combat is just not the point of these games, it's merely something thrown in to pace exploration and make progression through the world feel earned. Which is why all the games that tried "upgrade" Bethesda's formula to include more actiony and involved combat (Amalur, Two Worlds) invariably turned up shit and/or missing the point. This style of game requires combat to be over very quickly, because at this gameworld size it's unfeasible to spend more than a couple of seconds on a given encounter, it would turn the game into a slog.

Sounds like the twisted logic inside Todd Howard's head. BotW had a very fun combat system, and it did not stop anyone from loving it. Same thing for KCD or even Witcha 3, whose combat is miles ahead of Skyrim. Stop enabling decline...

 

[V_K]

Later TES combat has always been designed for people who don't like action combat. Combat is just not the point of these games, it's merely something thrown in to pace exploration and make progression through the world feel earned. Which is why all the games that tried "upgrade" Bethesda's formula to include more actiony and involved combat (Amalur, Two Worlds) invariably turned up shit and/or missing the point. This style of game requires combat to be over very quickly, because at this gameworld size it's unfeasible to spend more than a couple of seconds on a given encounter, it would turn the game into a slog.

Sounds like the twisted logic inside Todd Howard's head. BotW had a very fun combat system, and it did not stop anyone from loving it. Same thing for KCD or even Witcha 3, whose combat is miles ahead of Skyrim. Stop enabling decline...

I haven't played BotW, but Twitcher is precisely an example of missing the point - it makes zero sense for that game to have an open world, it doesn't utilize it one bit. Both also barely qualify as RPGs.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

 

[samuraigaiden]

The definitive open-ended RPG epic

That is what a real video game critic said of Morrowind in this 2002 edition of CGW http://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/index.php?year=2002&pub=2&id=217

So y’all are clearly wrong.

 

[yooow0t]

It's probably already been said but I just wanted to point out how superior Morrowind's character creation is to Daggerfall. Now, Daggerfall's character creation is arguably more complex, but the consequences of your choices matter much less. Creating a character that feels unique to play requires a lot of messing around with special disadvantages and making poor choices when it comes to skills.

You have so much leeway with the number of skills you can preference that you'd be mad not to pick a melee skill at some point and unlike Morrowind, unless you purposely gimp your character, fighting with a melee weapon is always feasible. The advantages/disadvantages system is so flexible you'd be mad not to give yourself x3.0 INT magicka. So on and so forth.

Here's a list of skills missing from Daggerfall that are in Morrowind

• Armour Skills (Heavy, Light, Medium) -- Plate amour for your skinny mage!
• Spear -- The most ubiquitous weapon throughout history is missing
• Enchantment -- Once you've reached a certain rank in the mages guild you have someone do it for you
• Unarmoured -- Because why would you choose to wear a robe when you can have plate?
• Armourer -- Only magical items have durability in this game
• Alchemy -- Another mage guild service
• Conjuration -- a.k.a. one of the only standout features of the Elder Scrolls magic system
• Block -- Shields are just part of your armour

Here's a list of skills missing from Morrowind

• Languages Other Than English x 9 -- These give you a random chance to pacify enemies around you. Doesn't always work, mostly useless. If you want a similar, but better experience from Morrowind, just take Illusion as a major and learn a charm spell. I can already envisage an interesting INT+PER build. A guy that specialises in buying and selling alchemical wares, using conjured minions to fight for him and avoiding combat with illusion magic. A sort of magical con artist.
• Etiquette and Streetsmart -- Got merged into speechcraft. One is for rich people, the other is for poor people. IMHO, a needless bifrucation.
• Backstab, Critical Strike and Dodging -- More filler skills that barely alter the play experience. Wouldn't you learn to backstab as you learn to sneak? Wouldn't you learn critical strike and dodging as you learn to fight with your preferred weapon? These don't really make sense as separate skills.
• Climbing -- Mostly useless, nightmarish to implement with geometry that isn't just flat vertical surfaces
• Swimming and Running -- Merged into athletics, swimming is virtually useless and running is less important since you fast travel everywhere
• Thaumaturgy -- Makes Daggerfall's relatively small spell effect repertoire seem larger that it actually is. Along with the other non-traditional spell schools Illusion and Mysticism, Thaumaturgy's roster of spells is smaller in comparison to Destruction and Restoration. It's spells should have been redistributed since the less conventional spells are definitely the highlights of the Elder Scrolls magic system and this would make these options more attractive.

Morrowind succeeds in giving you a system to make characters that are completely unique, to make stat choices with real consequences. Daggerfall's system gives you the ability to either gimp yourself for roleplaying purposes or create slightly different variations of a Jack-of-all-trades type character. In this sense, while you could argue that Daggerfall's system is more realistic or some such nonsense, Morrowind's system is better for roleplaying since you don't have to work against it in order to create a unique character to roleplay as.

Now, you might say that you're fine with gimping yourself, to which I say, good luck! If you sufficiently fuck it up (and by that I mean achieve your goal of making a character that's unique to play), you'll be barely able to survive any of the many dungeons that quests will force you to dive into while keeping their time limits in mind. You'll be resting until healed like a madman, spending literal in game months sleeping in a dank hole. Also because Morrowind limits how you assign your attributes, you aren't encouraged to play the same sort of min-maxing game that you are with Daggerfall which I feel is probably a more matter of taste than some objective marker of quality.

I like Daggerfall as a sort of curiosity. I actually like the feeling of being lost for hours in a dank dungeon and see the appeal of what is essentially a fantasy life simulator. But I constantly hear people talk about the character creation in Daggerfall as if it represented a peak in the series when, quite frankly, it does not.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Backstab, Critical Strike and Dodging -- More filler skills that barely alter the play experience. Wouldn't you learn to backstab as you learn to sneak? Wouldn't you learn critical strike and dodging as you learn to fight with your preferred weapon? These don't really make sense as separate skills

If you have a point buy system, they make sense. What you demonstrated is an inherit nihilism of a learn by doing system.

 

[Harthwain]

If you have a point buy system, they make sense. What you demonstrated is an inherit nihilism of a learn by doing system.

Learn by doing system could be improved if major and minor skills were the only skills you'd be able to increase beyond a certain minimum, so you'd never be better outside of what your character is supposed to be specialized in. And - in order to preserve challenge - even your major and minor skills could be capped, so you can't go past the difficulty curve, ensuring some enemies would become easier to beat, but top level enemies wouldn't share the same fate.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

If you have a point buy system, they make sense. What you demonstrated is an inherit nihilism of a learn by doing system.

Learn by doing system could be improved if major and minor skills were the only skills you'd be able to increase beyond a certain minimum, so you'd never be better outside of what your character is supposed to be specialized in. And - in order to preserve challenge - even your major and minor skills could be capped, so you can't go past the difficulty curve, ensuring some enemies would become easier to beat, but top level enemies wouldn't share the same fate.

Let's take a system that not gives enough freedom in character building and restrict what little freedom it offers even further. Brilliant.

 

[jungl]

surprised this zoomer clout game they never played thread got so many posts. Daggerfall is complete shit game if it were released today on phones even with a facelift graphic upgrade it'll get 1/5 app reviews. Its a game where after you spend 40 minutes playing you seen everything it has to offer. All those language skills are useless.

Dungeon maker games on the psp reminds me a lot of daggerfall except you make the poorly generated dungeon yourself to hack and slash shit in.

 

[Harthwain]

Let's take a system that not gives enough freedom in character building and restrict what little freedom it offers even further. Brilliant.

Morrowind allows you to create your own class, which is ultimate freedom as far as character building is concerned, at least in my book. Being able to level up any skill to any level is too much as it effectively removes both the challenge and the personality (so to speak) from the character the player has initially created. In my opinion limitations (and working within said limitations) is what makes RPGs fun to play: you are free to create any character, but at the same time you are bound to what this character can do. Otherwise, why even bother picking up major and minor skills if they aren't supposed to mean something?

Or forget my previous proposition and make it so that unused skills degrade as time goes by, meaning you actually have to USE skills in order to "keep" them. This should limit the amount of high level skills you have to a reasonable degree. It'd make sense within the context of a system where you use skills in order to improve them.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Let's take a system that not gives enough freedom in character building and restrict what little freedom it offers even further. Brilliant.

Morrowind allows you to create your own class, which is ultimate freedom as far as character building is concerned, at least in my book. Being able to level up any skill to any level is too much as it effectively removes both the challenge and the personality (so to speak) from the character the player has initially created. In my opinion limitations (and working within said limitations) is what makes RPGs fun to play: you are free to create any character, but at the same time you are bound to what this character can do. Otherwise, why even bother picking up major and minor skills if they aren't supposed to mean something?

Or forget my previous proposition and make it so that unused skills degrade as time goes by, meaning you actually have to USE skills in order to "keep" them. This should limit the amount of high level skills you have to a reasonable degree. It'd make sense within the context of a system where you use skills in order to improve them.

Or maybe just limit what character can do by number of skills points available?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Let's take a system that not gives enough freedom in character building and restrict what little freedom it offers even further. Brilliant.

Morrowind allows you to create your own class, which is ultimate freedom as far as character building is concerned, at least in my book. Being able to level up any skill to any level is too much as it effectively removes both the challenge and the personality (so to speak) from the character the player has initially created. In my opinion limitations (and working within said limitations) is what makes RPGs fun to play: you are free to create any character, but at the same time you are bound to what this character can do. Otherwise, why even bother picking up major and minor skills if they aren't supposed to mean something?

Or forget my previous proposition and make it so that unused skills degrade as time goes by, meaning you actually have to USE skills in order to "keep" them. This should limit the amount of high level skills you have to a reasonable degree. It'd make sense within the context of a system where you use skills in order to improve them.

Or maybe just limit what character can do by number of skills points available?

Pretty unrealistic, I have infinite skillpoints irl

 

[Jigby]

All those language skills are useless.

Those skills gave us Grimith's linguist LP, that's sufficient enough. pre-Fallout rat daedra diplomacy

Stuff

Your analysis is nice and thorough, but you yourself point out the flaw of it, i.e. if you're willing to gimp yourself in Daggerfall and not sperg, the chargen offers enough meaningful variety. And you overstate the amount of pain you have to go through with a gimped char. The only truly painful combination I think is something where you completely disallow any magic\consumables so you have no access to levitate etc.

 

[MWaser]

Let's take a system that not gives enough freedom in character building and restrict what little freedom it offers even further. Brilliant.

Morrowind allows you to create your own class, which is ultimate freedom as far as character building is concerned, at least in my book. Being able to level up any skill to any level is too much as it effectively removes both the challenge and the personality (so to speak) from the character the player has initially created. In my opinion limitations (and working within said limitations) is what makes RPGs fun to play: you are free to create any character, but at the same time you are bound to what this character can do. Otherwise, why even bother picking up major and minor skills if they aren't supposed to mean something?

Or forget my previous proposition and make it so that unused skills degrade as time goes by, meaning you actually have to USE skills in order to "keep" them. This should limit the amount of high level skills you have to a reasonable degree. It'd make sense within the context of a system where you use skills in order to improve them.

Or maybe just limit what character can do by number of skills points available?

Pretty unrealistic, I have infinite skillpoints irl

But nobody offers the skill training irl so they're useless

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Let's take a system that not gives enough freedom in character building and restrict what little freedom it offers even further. Brilliant.

Morrowind allows you to create your own class, which is ultimate freedom as far as character building is concerned, at least in my book. Being able to level up any skill to any level is too much as it effectively removes both the challenge and the personality (so to speak) from the character the player has initially created. In my opinion limitations (and working within said limitations) is what makes RPGs fun to play: you are free to create any character, but at the same time you are bound to what this character can do. Otherwise, why even bother picking up major and minor skills if they aren't supposed to mean something?

Or forget my previous proposition and make it so that unused skills degrade as time goes by, meaning you actually have to USE skills in order to "keep" them. This should limit the amount of high level skills you have to a reasonable degree. It'd make sense within the context of a system where you use skills in order to improve them.

Or maybe just limit what character can do by number of skills points available?

Pretty unrealistic, I have infinite skillpoints irl

But nobody offers the skill training irl so they're useless

I don't need training

 

[roll-a-die]

Was it massive decline for the time? Yes, that's pretty indisputable. This game came out in the same year as just to name other semi-open world games, Wind Waker, Vice City, Postal 2. And to name other RPG's, it came out within a year of Arcanum, FF10, IWD2. Even amongst its peers, it was a big decline. It was however unique.

Is it a massive decline in quality in present times? And addenda to this question, how does it hold up versus Daggerfall? That's subjective. Very very subjective. To answer that, let's examine a few more questions.

Does Morrowind provide an interesting experience that you can't really replicate elsewhere? Kind of. I could go on about how it's combat and stat system led to a tactile feeling of progress, or otherwise speak about it's world being incredibly consistent across the board. With very economical touches to provide immersion. Maybe wax poetic about how the non-generic items felt somehow better than the non-generic items in other Bethesda games.

Does Daggerfall hold up better than Morrowind? In some places, yes, in most places, no. Daggerfall is truly arcane, ancient, and has a lot of problems holding it up as both an RPG and as an open world game. Those prevent it from shining in its good places better than Morrowind shines in its good places. You can RARARA and Grognard all you want, but the simple fact is that Morrowind reduced the illusion of depth within the systems of daggerfall, while increasing the scale of actual depth in the world. Daggerfall and Morrowind were both hugely ambitious failing projects. But Morrowind succeeded in its strengths where Daggerfall stumbled and became mired in its flaws. Daggerfalls strength comes in its imagined potential. Not in its actuality.

The question essentially becomes, do you prefer a world that feels consistent, or do you prefer imagining whatever world you want?

Consistency has it's value, but sometimes you want to get your head into the fantasy.

That all said, I do go back to daggerfall a lot more often than morrowind. Even if I never get very far. They are both exceptionally flawed gems. But Morrowind tends to hold up better, I've just experienced more of it than I have of daggerfall.

 

[Funposter]

And to name other RPG's, it came out within a year of Arcanum, FF10, IWD2. Even amongst its peers, it was a big decline.

 

[roll-a-die]

And to name other RPG's, it came out within a year of Arcanum, FF10, IWD2. Even amongst its peers, it was a big decline.

People always quote that line.

Arcanum was story and world design, FF10 was visual fidelity and wow factor, and IWD2 was mechanical complexity, encounter design and general gameplay. I probably should have explained the RPG's a bit better.

 

[yooow0t]

If you have a point buy system, they make sense. What you demonstrated is an inherit nihilism of a learn by doing system.

Honestly, I don't see the nihilism here. You just have to design your skill systems differently depending on how you progress. This means that skills that would usually be separate as part of a point buy system will be merged. I don't see this as a bad thing necessarily. You essentially have to design skills around the sorts of things you'd learn in real life.

Let's say I decide to start going to a shooting range to "level up" my shooting skills. I'm not going to individually improve at reloading, hitting targets and getting headshots; I'm going to improve at all three simultaneously (especially the last two). You might have certain people who have different strengths, but in general they are all going to improve in one skill, not three.

Of course you could "over optimise" by pairing skills down further and further until you're left with nothing but base attributes again, but the easy solution is just to draw a line in the sand based on taste, or create a system where certain skills are related to one another and raise slightly with their relatives. Personally, Dodging, Critical Strike and Backstab go against my tastes, but could be incorporated into a system where skills are related just fine.

Your analysis is nice and thorough, but you yourself point out the flaw of it, i.e. if you're willing to gimp yourself in Daggerfall and not sperg, the chargen offers enough meaningful variety.

You missed my whole point. It's completely possible to create a character that essentially can access all of what Daggerfall has to offer, at least skill wise. That alone makes replaying with a different focus less valuable. When you create a character in Morrowind you're forced to make tradeoffs, meaning that, unless you decide to do the whole fortify INT exploit later on, you're playing as a unique character from start to finish. This adds a lot of replay value since each character necessarily plays different to the last.

And you overstate the amount of pain you have to go through with a gimped char. The only truly painful combination I think is something where you completely disallow any magic\consumables so you have no access to levitate etc.

No, I don't think I am. I recently watched the early stages of a magic only let's play. The guy (w/ 20 years of Daggerfall experience mind you) had to take a bunch of padding skills just to fill out his character sheet. Then he forbid all weapons and armour and gave himself some bonuses. This build was too weak to even make it out of the starter dungeon so he enabled an option to turn it off.

Then he proceeded to the mages guild in Gothway Gardens. Thankfully he had a mod installed that let him choose from an array of different quests rather than playing the RNG game and hoping to get one he could actually do. So he kept taking quests to send people to sleep. He did this over and over in order to access some mages guild privilege or another. Had he been playing vanilla, he would have been given one of those "Find a Harpie's Pube at the Bottom of a Flooded Dungeon" quests only to die to the first rat he came across.

Contrast that to the early game of a squishy mage in Morrowind. You get off the boat at Seyda Neen explore, fight some wildlife, test out some spells, earn some money then on to Balmora. Here you can take up guild quests or tackle the first dungeon in the main quest both of which are hard but doable. You're already making money and working towards your next level up, you're already exploring and learning about the world. It doesn't matter how well you did in character creation, you'll survive and you'll have a unique experience.

Now I'm not saying that there isn't a way to create a semi-viable magic only build, just that I don't know how to do it. To contrast, someone picking up Morrowind for the first time can put together a wholly decent mage build without too much fuss and bother. It seems to me that Daggerfall requires you to have mastered it's systems already before you can really enjoy it. I have a certain amount of appreciation for such games, but I'm not sure if the reward Daggerfall presents is worth the time and effort that would take.

 

[Harthwain]

Or maybe just limit what character can do by number of skills points available?

Could you elaborate?

 

[thesheeep]

You missed my whole point. It's completely possible to create a character that essentially can access all of what Daggerfall has to offer, at least skill wise. That alone makes replaying with a different focus less valuable. When you create a character in Morrowind you're forced to make tradeoffs, meaning that, unless you decide to do the whole fortify INT exploit later on, you're playing as a unique character from start to finish. This adds a lot of replay value since each character necessarily plays different to the last.

This is really my biggest gripe with Daggerfall.

After just one character, you've basically seen what the entire game has to offer.
The only way to go from there is to gimp yourself with bollocks like not using any magic for a more, uh, unique experience.

You can theoretically do the same in Morrowind, but it really isn't necessary at all to finish the game in a natural way - very much in contrast to Daggerfall.

Or maybe just limit what character can do by number of skills points available?

Could you elaborate?

Not sure if that is what he meant, but the way I understood it (and I agree with that assumption) is that if you have a system based on skill points and you limit the number of skill points, you can make sure that no character can possibly learn everything.
E.g. say you have seven skill trees, but can only possibly max out three in a playthrough - and only if you really focus on only those three.
The viability of multiple playthroughs is obvious right there.

In an improve-by-use system, you will usually be able to maximize everything by just doing some optional quests, roaming the world, usually even without grinding, etc. E.g. I watched my GF play through Morrowind a few months ago, she basically did most quests and by the end of it, although she played as a mage, she had also become a master blacksmith, master sword, dagger and axe fighter, master...

However, there are ways to make an improve-by-use system that doesn't have this flaw - but they are IMO cumbersome, counter-intuitive and feel very punishing in their attempt to simulate reality.
Point buy is simply more elegant.