See, I think it's not entirely fair to claim that Elder Scrolls "stopped being Elder Scrolls" with Morrowind.
Not because the arguments for the differences are wrong, it's true that Morrowind abandoned many of the design principles that existed in Daggerfall, however I don't think the claim of "streamlining" and "casualization" explains the whole story.
Compactness, planning, and end goal are very important aspects of any project.
Daggerfall, when compared to Arena, is an endlessly better game. Arena is a really janky dungeon Crawler, technically shitty, with a world that is functionally unusable (just empty terrain and you can't actually get anywhere), while Daggerfall actually gives off a legitimate feel of the world somewhat existing in that large scope.
However, just how many of these aspects are vital here for the "essence" of the Elder Scrolls? As far as I can tell, the major design principle change between Daggerfall and Morrowind made it so that Morrowind no longer tried to include a gigantic world that tried to simulate some kind of ongoing nation reality, and instead went on to create an intentionally more static and thus more easily managable contained game world.
I can understand, for the hardcore role-playing autists, that there is some nerd potential in expanding upon that aspect of extremely detailed intertwining faction politics with coded in dynamics that would influence the game world or events. Thing is, in Daggerfall, none of the factions allying/warring, their dynamics, nothing mattered. And to be fair, it would have taken countless more years and likely better technology to try and make it actually more meaningful. Think Star Citizen tier of extreme complexity, maybe not to the absurd degree, but it's an insane amount to ask for, an essential fantasy reality simulation - I think the best currently existing example of such attempt existing would be Dwarf Fortress, which actually does have its own generated history, with factions being created, falling, warring, expanding, and legends being made. That, in proper RPG form, could be truly admirable, but also an extremely ambitious project - the "dream", to speak of. And I don't think it's fair to equate them with the "essence of Elder Scrolls" that the abandoning thereof made the series not the same. It's the essence of something, some ambitious project, but it's pretty wild to claim that one's particular expectations with it were the entire series goal, since not just a single person worked on the massive project that was Daggerfall to begin with.
But let's actually look at the OP for a second, shall we?
Yes you read it right, i mean every words.
This game was the first game in the elder scrolls that got rid of features and stuff.Instead of improving daggerfall and adding stuff, this game threw everything out of the window.
In total, Morrowind got rid of:
- Skills:Orcish,Harpy,Deadric,Medecine,swimming,climbing,critical strike,Backstab,Centaurian,streetwise,SprigganThaumaturgy,Nymph,Orcish,Dragonish,dodging, Giantish,etiquette,Impish. A total of 19 skills removed in Morrowind only .3x times more skills removed between Daggerfall and Morrowind than Morrowind and Oblivion.
- Main quest: Choices and consequences removed in Morrowind
- NPC: No longer sleep, no longer answer you if they accept you in their houses. You can no longer ask for work.
- Factions: 18 factions removed from Daggerfall, Temple factions gone, Knightly orders gone. Factions can no longer dismiss you and factions can no longer refuse you if you have a bad reputation.Faction reputation
- Dungeons: hidden doors, traps, complexity.
- Wereboar
- Daggerfall 9 vampire Bloodlines-> 3 vampire bloodlines Morrowind
- Witch covens
- Court: debate or lie
- Political entities
- Cities can no longer ban you
- 20 shrines in Daggerfall -> 11 Shrines in morrowind
- Music that changes considering the mood
- In daggerfall 2 hours OST -> 50 minutes in Morrowind
- Banks, ship, letters of credit, carriage,horse,Bracers,and other items.
- Character creation, edit reputations, deep background, you can no longer edit advantages and disadvantages.
The only things that morrowind has upon daggerfall are alien setting and everything hand-crafted.
2 steps forward 16 steps backward, and it goes downhill since morrowind.
I won't bother mentioning every single point separately (I believe someone in this thread already did it, but memory fails me), but note that a bunch of points mentioned are pretty arbitrary, and more generally tied to game design. Only some of them are directly tied to this aforementioned "dream" of the Elder Scroll series that was supposedly lost with Morrowind.
Now, let's look at OP's some more modern posts in this same thread:
Some of the members on codex misunderstood my point because of the clickbaiting title, my point was:
Morrowind is a good game obviously , better than Daggerfall, it's universally admit by everyone, i'm not trying to shit on morrowind because it's an excellent game , that wasn't my goal.
I'm trying to say with this thread that Morrowind lost the Design philosophy of what makes An Elder scrolls game, well, an elder scrolls game. Morrowind transformed The elder Scrolls into Ultima but in 1rst /3rd person instead of Isometric. This isn't the elder scrolls, this is an other franchise that Morrowind set up from the ground. And thus, The elder scrolls franchise become something else of what it was really. Oblivion was the one step further into turning The Elder Scrolls into a banal RPG clone that morrowind started .
The "clickbaity title" doesn't even half answer the actual contents of the original post nor the level of the vitriol with which the OP originally responded.
In essence, what I am trying to say is that one of the mods should award George Duroy his long-desired Shitposter title at this point. Because he certainly deserves it.
Sad. I wish I could gofund you guys to make myself feel better.
