Yet Another Morrowind Thread

[Turjan]

What is wrong with the basic journal?

Nothing. Gamers cannot into actual journal structure.

Actual journal structure written outside of your control, writing down every quest interaction whether you want it or not, accumulating pages for you to scroll through in your hunt for what you're actually after.

You don't have to scroll through. The journal is searchable. Not that many players would notice.

 

[Lemming42]

What is wrong with the basic journal?

Nothing. Gamers cannot into actual journal structure.

Actual journal structure written outside of your control, writing down every quest interaction whether you want it or not, accumulating pages for you to scroll through in your hunt for what you're actually after.

You don't have to scroll through. The journal is searchable. Not that many players would notice.

Was it searchable before Tribunal?

 

[Broseph]

The base game's journal was excellent. Having the option to sort by quest is nice, but Morrowind's journal system was one of the things that made it feel organic. It feels nice to leaf through a journal searching for information, rather than opening a menu that says "THESE ARE YOUR QUESTS. DO THIS SHIT."

 

[Lemming42]

It's nice in theory, but in my experience the game turns the journal into a dispassionate log of every single event that has ever occurred during the game, filling about 80 pages with descriptions of shit some guy on the street said or the names of people you'll probably never meet or even hear about again with the actual quest thing you're looking for being a small footnote at the bottom of a page otherwise filled with descriptions of being molested by Crassius Curio or whatever.

 

[Turjan]

You don't have to scroll through. The journal is searchable. Not that many players would notice.

Was it searchable before Tribunal?

I'm trying to remember how it exactly worked. It's been a while that I had only the base game installed. It either had an index or some other way to sort the stuff. It just wasn't documented and not many people discovered it. You definitely didn't have to scroll through everything.

 

[DraQ]

I don't remember if it was searchable by topic before TR, but if it was it was pretty good already and far better than pretty much anything that came before.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

It was supposed to feel like a "real" journal that an adventurer would maintain, but given the codeword system and the metric fuckton of quests, I'd take improved functionality over immershun any day.

The most notable aspect of Tribunal is the modification of Morrowind's journal system. In the original game, a player's journal can become extremely lengthy and cumbersome. Tribunal allows a player to sort their journal by quest (instead of chronologically sorted) in order to determine what is required for a specific quest.

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My favorite part of that last pic I posted is how it was taken in the middle of the imperial City's market. You can almost see the passing Imperial Guard blankly staring at this guy as he poses to no one in particular.

 

[Cadmus]

So what's so retarded about the Tribunal main quest? I don't remember shit.

I remember playing with the normal journal for a long time and getting used to it but when I got the improved one I was happy. It's about the basic functionality, you can still search the journal as before but searching by quest in a game that writes down every conversation topic for you is preferable, imo.

 

[hakuroshi]

So what's so retarded about the Tribunal main quest? I don't remember shit..

Mostly the protagonist taken for a complete fool and can't do anything about it if he wants to complete the story. It was probably supposed to produce an atmosphere of deep and complicated intrigues where you trust no one, but you have no option but trust everyone or quit. Story itself does not seem particularly retarded to me as TES stories go, but there are a lot of mindless fights of no relevance. Personally I also disliked, that it seems at first you can chose a side, but it turned to be of no consequence.

 

[Turjan]

Indeed. If this were a real situation, any human being with half a brain and normal emotions wouldn't lift a finger for those quest givers. They are both insufferable jerks from the get-go, and their tasks make this even more obvious.

Before you say that this is the same in the main game, I want to point out that the situation is different. If your quest giver in a guild is a jerk, you know that you probably have to suffer through this for the pay-off, which is advancing in the guild. Unfortunately, such a motivation is absent in Tribunal.

 

[Stokowski]

Helseth:
Yes, I commissioned those Dark Brotherhood attacks because reports of false Nerevarines are so disruptive to Morrowind politics. Oh, you're the real Nerevarine? Even better. Here's some errands for you to run. Hahahaha.

Almalexia:
Here's a quest to forge a great weapon that is strong against Tribunal members so in the end it will be easier for you to kill me ... I mean kill Sotha Sil! He's the bad guy, not me. Why would I help you to obtain a weapon with which you could more easily kill me? That would be stupid. Hahahaha.

 

[DalekFlay]

Even in Morrowind proper the plot was kind of just there. It was the lore that was great and interesting.

 

[Cadmus]

Helseth:
Yes, I commissioned those Dark Brotherhood attacks because reports of false Nerevarines are so disruptive to Morrowind politics. Oh, you're the real Nerevarine? Even better. Here's some errands for you to run. Hahahaha.

Almalexia:
Here's a quest to forge a great weapon that is strong against Tribunal members so in the end it will be easier for you to kill me ... I mean kill Sotha Sil! He's the bad guy, not me. Why would I help you to obtain a weapon with which you could more easily kill me? That would be stupid. Hahahaha.

More like "why does your sword project a flame that's aiming elsewhere than the rest of the blade?"

So I gather I wasn't the only one who didn't even get to fight Dagoth Ur because he promptly committed suicide in the lava? ha ha

 

[IDtenT]

Even in Morrowind proper the plot was kind of just there. It was the lore that was great and interesting.

Morrowind is really just a snapshot of a living world. As soon as you enter it everything just goes frozen. Best way I can explain Morrowind. It's almost like a simulation ran, up to the point where you enter it and somebody deleted all that code.

 

[abnaxus]

"Mournhold. City of Light. City of Magic."

 

[Stokowski]

Even in Morrowind proper the plot was kind of just there. It was the lore that was great and interesting.

Arguably the plot and the lore - or rather a fair portion of both - inhabited the same material. The plot, at its most basic, is the investigation of a 3500 year-old murder (your own). CSI Vvardenfell.

 

[DalekFlay]

Arguably the plot and the lore - or rather a fair portion of both - inhabited the same material. The plot, at its most basic, is the investigation of a 3500 year-old murder (your own). CSI Vvardenfell.

Right, I'm just saying without the lore the plot would have been boring. It was the world they created and the religion/political dynamics they set up that made the whole thing good.

 

[IDtenT]

The Silmarillion is a better book than LotR.

 

[Stokowski]

Right, I'm just saying without the lore the plot would have been boring. It was the world they created and the religion/political dynamics they set up that made the whole thing good.

Oh, yeah, I agree. Including the way in which nearly(?) every invested faction lied to you to some extent. But lied for credible political reasons, not Tribunal's LOLWATs.

 

[Turjan]

Right, I'm just saying without the lore the plot would have been boring. It was the world they created and the religion/political dynamics they set up that made the whole thing good.

Oh, yeah, I agree. Including the way in which nearly(?) every invested faction lied to you to some extent. But lied for credible political reasons, not Tribunal's LOLWATs.

It was also one of the best villains I ever met in a video game. He had to be stopped as he was completely crazy, but you couldn't say that he held a grudge for no reason. I like villains that command some respect.

 

[DalekFlay]

It was also one of the best villains I ever met in a video game. He had to be stopped as he was completely crazy, but you couldn't say that he held a grudge for no reason. I like villains that command some respect.

I remember watching gung-ho Americana movie 'Air Force One' as a teenager and thinking... wait, doesn't Gary Oldman's evil terrorist character have a pretty good point?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Almalexia:
Here's a quest to forge a great weapon that is strong against Tribunal members so in the end it will be easier for you to kill me ... I mean kill Sotha Sil! He's the bad guy, not me. Why would I help you to obtain a weapon with which you could more easily kill me? That would be stupid. Hahahaha.

Though the reason is that she wants the two swords and she can't exactly go around questing for the missing one herself. She thought she could easily kill you later, since Sotha is a super badass wizard and he wasn't a problem.

 

[octavius]

I've definitely done "no creeper" runs of the game, and it does make leveling a lot harder. Still I would say the main way to level is at least partially through training. Morrowind's skills level-up much slower than Oblivion and Skyrim's and unless you're willing to level at a snail's pace training is a large part of the game. Which actually makes sense to me, I don't see it as a problem.

That's totally not my experience. In my first game I had Athletics, Blocking and Sword as main skills, and quickly went to level 20 mainly from running and fending off cliff racers. Definitely the most broken character system in any game I've played; only by totally nerfing (by not majoring in skills you actually use) your character can you get a slower leveling and more challenging game.
Morrowind is such a broken game, but is salvaged mainly by an open world to explore in a unique setting.

 

[RK47]

yup. If you took unarmed skill as primary, the amount of blows needed to just take anything down would power level you so quick.

 

[abnaxus]

Trueflame wasn't exactly powerful against Almalexia, she was immune to fire damage.