Imagine how I feel, I thought even Morrowind was decline.
I'm saying this as someone who's put hundreds of hours into Morrowind and buzzed about it on the Codex endlessly, even putting it in my top games list years ago:
I'd actually agree with you on most points. Morrowind lacked interest as a RPG. Mechanics were poor, gameplay was stale. At least the systems were easy enough to break. It had one redeeming features as a RPG that was, the hand-placed loot which encouraged exploration.
Morrowind's world is way more immersive (cities actually being big, writing is great, art style is great, no essential NPC's) and the level scaling is way less offensive than Oblivion's. Dice roll combat was not a problem as long as you mained a weapon class + had enough Fatigue (though of course it wasn't the best kind of combat and I really wished for a better implementation of the Blocking skill). Besides that, Morrowind actually handles the open world exploration aspect far better than Oblivion and many many other RPGs because it doesn't give you quest markers, so there actually was a reason to go exploring and turning every stone inside out in a specific area.
Morrowind is worse and better then Daggerfall in many ways and in reality they are quite different games.
This is nonsense, Oblivion is infamous due its level scaling precisely because all enemies scale in such way that even goblins at high level get such hp bloat they are chore to kill even with best possible gear.
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Not even close, Morrowind dungeons might be short but they have hand placed enemies, hand placed loot and occasional secrets and pieces of enviromental storytelling. Oblivion dungeons feel like a places that a randomly assembled from same few blocks, with leveled loot.
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I do, the more skills the better.
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I replayed Morrowind dozen times and never had issue with it being "static". In Oblivion everything is bland and pointless, there is little variety in the world design, there is little to find outside dungeons and all loot is scaled removing the joy of exploration. Especially in end game where bandits wear full Deadric armors making completely pointless deep diving in dungeons. Morrowind has lots of smaller dungeons which purpose is to provide bits of lore and enviromental storytelling to build up on the world. There are many hidden things and quests to find in the open world to provide some rewards for player exploration. World itself is designed in such a way that you need to plan your travel and be aware of your surroundings and finding ways that ease your travel is satisfying. Only issue seems to me is that NPC dont do much in cities which I personally find more immersive then watching Oblivion NPCs often talking about nonsense and behaving in nonsensical way which just destroys my immersion.
Similar to Battlespire which is a great game thats hated for not being like Daggerfall, people reacted angrly on obvious differences with Morrowind. Less skills, smaller world, tiny dungeons were things that put off many players. Some continue playing and came to appreciate Morrowind and all the good things it did better then Daggerfall.
I don't agree. The landscape is littered with countless copy/pasted Ancestral Tombs and generic smuggler caves with no real environmental storytelling to speak of. Dungeons are also typically very short and restrictive, no less so than Oblivion. In terms of their structure as dungeons, there's not much to recommend them over Oblivion's similarly dull Ayleid ruins.
Really? I don't have the same experience at all; the static nature of the world means that you're often repeatedly walking over the same empty roads over and over again. Going from, say, Seyda Neen to Balmora by foot is the same every time and there's never anything new to watch out for on the roads.
That's essentially what I said, though:
People often posture that Morrowind is some kind of deeply complex RPG that stands head and shoulders above the other TES games as an RPG, when it really isn't. Same for people who try to pretend like New Vegas is mechanically much less of a shitshow than Fo3. I think games like NV and Morrowind demonstrate the value of "storyfag" elements and the joy of getting lost in a detailed fictional world, because I'd argue they succeed despite weak gameplay and dull dungeon design, and Oblivion/Fo3 show us how bad these same styles of game are like when stripped of their interesting worldbuilding.
You people throw out the word "decline" far too easily. You also overrated Daggerfall a lot.
I'd level many of these same criticisms at Daggerfall, to be clear. I prefer Daggerfall (as a game, ie. in terms of mechanics and level design) to Morrowind because I find the possibility of building a much greater range of characters to be hugely exciting, I prefer the vast dungeons to Morrowind's tiny ones (even though when you learn the layout of each "block" in Daggerfall, the game essentially ends because you've seen everything) and I think the scope of the game is really cool even if it doesn't always translate into engaging content for the player.
I agree to some extent but some level of streamlining isn't bad - there wasn't any logical reason for Thaumaturgy to exist in Daggerfall, for example, when it could be so easily blended into other Magic skills, hence why Morrowind did away with it. Fusing Short Blade and Long Blade into "Blade" makes sense to me in the same way it made sense for New Vegas to merge Big Guns and Small Guns into "Guns". With the awkward quasi-FPS way these games work, a lot of these skills don't feel different in the way they might in a more abstracted, turn-based game.
I didn't play Daggerfall until after Oblivon, it was EQ that spoilt me. But it's really so far ahead it's ridiculous.
Over a dozen named NPCs become dreamers over time and go from threatening you to outright assaulting you as they deteriorate. You also get attacked by them in your sleep, and if you mention this to Caius he'll advise you to sleep outside of cities. Any dreamers you don't kill will thank you after you free them and tell others how you helped, boosting your reputation in the province.
True, but that has nothing to do with the Nerevarine. Which is weird, considering how earlier in the game they told you that the cult of the Nerevarine is brutally persecuted and claimants of the title are hunted down and executed. You'd think the Ordinators, the military branch of the Temple, would carry out such orders.
That literally has not happened to me.
