Am i spoiled by Skyrim and Oblivion?
 

Just tried Morrowind and ive gotta say i hated it.

I didnt like the design, the inventory screens, the slowness of the character, the combat… I felt like i played an alpha version of Oblivion.



But still many people consider it a very good game. Do you think that because ive played more polished RPGs i became "spoiled"? That my "game taste" for design (its not the graphics, but the design that puts me off) is too high because of what i played?


I dont say its a bad game. Im just saying that i cant bring myself to play it, even though iv been able to do so with much earlier RPGs like PS:T, and SoulBringer.

Install the MSGO mod. Morrowind hasn't aged well visually, and MSGO makes a HUGE difference.

Not sure how you could possibly dislike the inventory screen unless you're simply used to consoles. Morrowind's UI is a lot more PC-like, and imo vastly superior, compared to the consolish UIs of Oblivion and Skyrim.

The combat is obviously a lot different being that it's stat-based. I can understand how someone who played the later games first wouldn't like it. You can change it dramatically with mods though.

For character slowness, you need your speed and agility stat over 50. Unlike Oblivion (where it was normalized) and Skyrim (where it doesn't exist anymore), those stats impacted your character movement speed a lot.

I wouldn't blame you if the horrendous combat turned you away, but I'd give it some more time. For most people, the setting and exploration usually pulls them in. There is always a sense of mystery, and surviving a long journey and returning to a friendly town actually feels like an accomplishment. There's a lot of neat secrets to find, and the fact these can't be found with a compass leading you straight to them is a rewarding feeling.

While I played as a melee combat character on one of my playthroughs, I recommend playing as a mage. Being creative with your spell choices (and especially creating your own) is much more enjoyable than the awfully bland melee combat.

I feel the same way about Skyrim and Oblivion. Apart from (obviously) graphics and combat in Oblivion, Morrowind is, in my humble opinion, vastly superior to both its successors. Especially when it comes to exploration, quests and atmosphere.

I've always played Morrowind vanilla out of nostalgia - even though there are elements that drive me nuts, the clunkiness and the awful combat is strangely part of the game's charm.

That being said, I think I am ready to try out some gameplay and combat related mods. What do you recommend that, in your experience, enhances the combat to make it more tactical and/or enjoyable?

one does not simply "try" Morrowind. It's not the type of game that's going to wow you right out of the gate.

It's a game that needs to be played a while, it demands a some time and immersion before it clicks. The world, culture,exploration, and yes even the combat. I like the combat, ive never had a problem with it.

Need to get fast travel figured out, need to level stuff up, need to keep your encumbrance low, and most of all - you need to consult a beginners guide and FAQ.

I went back and fired up vanilla, no mods, and yeah - its ugly by todays standards. I love it, but will not play vanilla. Theres a ton of mod packs out there that make it more than suitable, thankfully

I could deal with the combat in Morrowind but the thing that ultimately keeps turning me off is the conversation system. It drives me nuts having to talk to someone that had the same 20 topics as everyone else in town, and having to scroll through them all looking for one topic that that npc might have, that the last 15 npc's didn't have. I'm not sure of I explained that well, but I think you get my drift.

Aren't the new topics a different color?

They should be, they are hyperlinks and work just like it (i.e used = different color).

Yeah they are links but what I'm taking about is walking up to someone in a tavern, speaking with them and having to scroll through 20 topics, then realize they are the same topics as the last 10 people you talked to, then going to the next person, and repeat. Do that 25 times until you finally notice someone that has a new topic buried in their list that the others did not.

Would you rather have them repeat the same inane things like in Skyrim?I find that much more annoying.

I dont particularly like either way, but the still standing wiki clones annoyed me more. With the verbal conversations you can tell pretty quickly who is just going to repeat the same stuff, and click out of it. In Morrowind that one different piece of information might be the 17th topic in a list that needs to be scanned through

It wasn't nearly as fast for me. But my eyes have aged since then. :)

I vastly prefer that over the majority of RPGs where an NPC simply has 2 or 3 lines of fixed dialogue to choose from.


*Edit* Didn't see this reply earlier…

I've never used one myself. I just know there are several out there from taking part in discussions such as this. I'm sure they're not hard to find though. I know there's at least one mod that completely does away with the stat-based hit %.

I don't share the opinion that the combat is awful. Though I agree that it could be better. The only mods I use are MGSO and a mod that delays the Dark Brotherhood assassins from attacking you in relation to the Tribunal expansion plot.

I feel the opposite when I venture into Skyrim or Oblivion nowadays. But I agree, Morrowind is not easy to love at first. The NPC:s struck me as shallow and when you are a low level character things move very slowly. Give it time, install a mod to make it amazingly beautiful, and you'll soon see which game offers the most wonderful sandbox rpg experience :)

I see, I'm not quite looking for something that does away with the chance to hit entirely. Although I mentioned in the other thread that I'm not a fan of such a system, the whole combat would need to be overhauled from the ground up to replace it - and that isn't really possible within Morrowind's engine.

I do think the vanilla system could work much better. I was hoping that there was something that took advantage of the fact that there are different attacks in melee. In vanilla, this is useless because you can select the "choose best attack" option, rendering the different attacks pointless. I guess my dream combat mod would implement the different attacks in such a way that the player could choose which one would be best for a particular situation, rather than just clicking mindlessly.

At any rate, thanks for the reply JDR. I will start searching on my own to see if there is anything that keeps the spirit of the vanilla combat but just makes it more engaging/involving, if such a thing exists.

I you are not in a hurry you can wait for the Skywind mod. If it ever gets done, it will run Morrowind in Skyrim's engine. I feel the same about the game, but I think the slowness of everything - character develpment above all - is what kills the thing right away. I can't play 100 hours of a game just to start getting the hang of it. I can play a game that much time, if it means finishing it…

Morrowind certainly isn't a quick gratification game. Put in a few hours and take your time, read the lore and get used to the crafting system. If you invest in Morrowind it will pay big dividends after several hours.

I love all the games. The obvious improvements in combat and animations in the later games came with huge compromises as the games were dumbed down compared to Morrowind. In the end the only thing I still cringe about in Morrowind are all the damn Cliff Racers. Other than that I loved it. Loved the Blight, loved the exploration and the sense of real dread as things can actually kill you in Morrowind. Risk reward? Imagine that! Once I was more powerful I loved the combat and crafting items to support it.

But yes you must install the MSGO mod. It is impactful to bring the game forward with resolutions and textures. Excellent mods.

I've never been fond of Morrowind.

Arguably the setting is one of its high points for fans - and it didn't do anything for me. I'm fine with the bland, high fantasy setting of Daggerfall, but ash fields and luminescent mushrooms don't do it for me (and it doesn't even have the cool claustrophobic aspect of Avernum).

I never cared much for the Dark Elves/ Imperials political aspect, either.

For me, Elder Scrolls game are about jumping in and living the life of a lovingly created character. To me, it's RPG fast food - which explains why I never cared much for everything that came after Daggerfall. The character progression has always been atrocious from ES III onwards IMO. It's not "you become what you do", but "you do what you need to do to become what you want to be".

Regardless, I've bought the game numerous times over the years. ;)

most people tend to dislike the Cliffracer Phenomenon, its a big complaint by players. It's understandable, they can be annoying. Me personally, i love it.

No matter what class im playing, i always have some sort of ranged combat at the ready. Every cliffracer is target practice. It's experience. Drop into an area, clear them out. Enter a new location, scan for the bastards in the distance. Firing a long, arcing shot and seeing a distant one suddenly wilt, slowly drifting to the ground is very satisfying. Miss or merely graze one, and its an opportunity to practice your moving target shots. Adapt to the environment.

It's an example of one of MW's little quirks that you either need to adapt to, or go mad and ragequit.

There is of course mods that take care of the cliff racers if that isn't to your liking. Me I used those mods at first but eventually the cliff racers become something uniquely Morrowind that I started to..not enjoy.. but it felt wrong to remove them.

Yeah, the cliffracers are a great example of what I mean when I say that some of the aspects of Morrowind that make it clunky, frustrating, or downright annoying are somehow part of its charm. Not many games get away with this sort of thing, and this is a testament to how unique Morrowind is.

It's also why I've never used mods for Morrowind, although I'm strongly considering looking into it now. Even the graphics I have a hard time pushing myself to change. The enhancements are obviously wonderful, but the vanilla graphics - while it obviously hasn't aged well, like all 3d games over time - are still strangely beautiful to me.

Morrowind is amazing. Tribunal was actually my favourite bit but unfortunately Bloodmoon wasn't out at the time I played so I never got to try that out. That is part of the reason I wait so long to play new games these days.

For me, the question is more like, "Am I spoiled by Morrowind?". And the answer would be, most likely, YES, I am.

That's not to say I don't enjoy the other Elder Scrolls games, but none of them quite had the impact on me yet that Morrowind did and continues to still have. It's not only a setting and atmosphere thing, it's also the game design decisions behind the curtain. Hand-placed loot for the most part, minimal level-scaling, large amounts of stats and abilities, which in turn ties into a metric ton of character customization, as well as the alien world and atmosphere. All these things are what make it a masterpiece to me, and one that we likely won't see a true successor to for awhile, unless someone on Kickstarter decides to make it.

Morrowind was a playground, one that you could experiment in to your heart's content. The further games neutered this aspect a bit, in favor of a more streamlined, accessible approach. They're all good games, but Morrowind remains my favorite.

I played the ES games and addons in the order they came out (Battlespire and Redguard included), and Morrowind still is my favorite ES game. The setting, the ambience, the weirdness … wonderful. I wasn't too happy with the levelling enemies of Tribunal, but, hey, most games have their shortcomings.

Ok….Ok…..I have reinstalled once again and will give it another try. I don't think Ive played the game on this newer PC I have, so I can take advantage of more mods this time around also, which might help. Ill try to get used to the conversation aspects. I know there is a game for me here since exploration is without a doubt my favorite part of games

Well, I don't know if Skyrim spoiled you.

I felt mostly the same about Morrowind back upon release, though the scenery impressed the hell out of me for a few days.

I do prefer the interface of Morrowind, though - even if it was always kinda slow and clunky - much like the rest of the game. But it was more flexible and much more tuned to the mouse/keyboard experience.

The robot-like movement of the camera when walking around in MW makes me fall asleep, and I most definitely prefer the much more lifelike experience of exploring in Skyrim. That game feels alive - and MW feels like a painting.

I always hated the combat with a passion - and the archery/stealth is infinitely inferior to Skyrim. That's a big problem for me, because I always go for stealth and archery :) Also, there's a lot of combat in the game - so bad combat becomes an issue.

I also didn't like the cardboard NPCs with that awful wikipedia style dialogue. Talking to people really did feel like surfing the web - which is not my cup of tea.

The quality of animation is a joke, frankly. It always was - but these days is looks absurd. Oblivion was a big improvement and Skyrim even more so.

Dungeons are cookie cutter jigsaw style even more so than Oblivion (which is BAD) - but at least the items are handplaced. To get that in Skyrim - you would have to use "Morrowloot" or a similar mod. That's a big one - and I always hated the random loot in both Oblivion and Skyrim (apart from the artifacts).

It was also the first cell based "streaming" engine from Bethesda - and it's really bad in terms of popup and stuttering when walking around.

There are no mounts.

The character system is dreary and boring - and it has nothing like the perks in Skyrim.

The magic system is a very subjective thing. I do like the concept of Spellcrafting - but I found the variety went largely unused for my part, but then again - I never go heavy on magic.

I prefer Skyrim's premade spells in theory, but I also have to say a lot of them aren't too exciting.

I guess magic just isn't that well done in any TES game, as far as I'm concerned.

The exploration, to me, is completely inferior in Morrowind - mostly because of how similar the dungeons feel/look and the fact that very few of them have unique story content - which is completely unlike Skyrim. That's my favorite feature of Skyrim - but I know that a lot of people STILL consider Skyrim extremely samey - and many of those think Morrowind is better. That's something that will never cease to confuse me - and I often think I must have been dreaming when I originally played Morrowind, because beyond the towns themselves, it was the very definition of repetition when it comes to exploration.

I guess I could go on, but this topic has been covered so many times by now :)

But, as I said, I felt more or less the same as you about Morrowind when it was released - so it wasn't Skyrim that spoiled me. But it certainly has now :)

I can't play Morrowind anymore. I've tried. It's down to the combat system, that awkward combo of character skill + player skill determining hits. I prefer either player skill (Gothic, Skyrim etc) or character skill (Baldur's Gate etc, just tell the character what to do and his/her skill determines success).

The combination just doesn't work for me. I can't get past it either these days, which is a shame, as I like the setting.

If you are spoiled by Skyrim or Oblivion you sure have low standards! :) Ok ok, I'll stay out of the thread, I just couldn't resist.

I was just about to say the same thing…
I'm not sure how you can get spoiled by Oblivion? ;)

Heh, I almost gave you a thumbs-up for that one, the self-irony in it. But since I really disagree with you, and here's no 50% thumbs-up here, I can't.

pibbur who enjoys Skyrim tremendously, but is not blind to it's flaws, the main one being, of course, there seems to be no way to turn on permanent rain as easy as in MW (he knows console commands for it, and there's that mod with that extra spell in it, but they only last for a short time, so he has to repeat it).

EDIT: I think ES3..5 are the games which polarize the watch the most. To some of us they/some of them are very good, even of GOTY/GOTD quality, to others they/some of them are really, really bad, almost the ultimate examples of everything that is wrong with modern so-called RPGs. We even disagree on concrete issues like how buggy the games (especially Skyrim) are. And nobody understands the other side. It's quite interesting.

EDIT: Now I actually gave GG a thumbs up.

There are those who love Skyrim and those who are wrong. Two groups :)

Oblivion and, more so, Skyrim provide the player with an incredible degree of personalisation to their game (and hence immersion into this personal experience) so that it is easy to overlook their flaws as rpgs.

I'm more spoiled by Gothic 2, now that I've played it for awhile, than any other game at the moment. The hand-crafted, loving attention to detail in G2 is astounding. By far one of the best open-world experiences, up there with Morrowind.

Very likely :D

I don't think there are many who would consider combat itself a strong point in Morrowind, I don't think that was good even in it's day.

Though I have to take strong issue with the rest of what you said. I would say there's almost no player skill in Skyrim, you face-tank things popping into a menu to eat 50 cheese rolls to keep your health up, what I just described is even a long running joke about it.

Almost all combat in Skyrim has 0% player skill as a factor in fights, you have infinite breathing space to go through menus changing gear taking potions selecting spells etc then return to the face-tanking until it dies or you leave to recharge because you ate all your cheese (potions/mana/whatever).

Though hitting a moving target with slow arching arrows involves skill, for how much of the combat does that account for. Sure almost all will use a bow at some point, though I'm willing to bet if you counted up the combat by all players in Skyrim bow combat would amount for less than 1%. That's before even considering that shooting at stationary targets requires 0 skill, which is probably the case for a lot of the bow combat.

I would compare saying, Skyrim requires player skill, akin to saying Dark Souls 1 does not require any player skill.

First time I run into Skyrim with the intent of playing it I killed everything that got in the way, only time I got killed was if something could 1 shot me (like a Giant stomping brand new me) even then it only took a few tries to kill it and none managed to ever kill me again. Low level me running around a ledge as an obstacle to stupid AI while shooting off all my arrows before resorting to melee combat while avoiding a single hit that may as well be mailed via post requires as much or less skill than mundane daily activities, like not choking on a toothbrush.

That isn't to say Morrowind is high on the skill demand but it can push you hard. Unlike Skyrim if you simply run out into the world, rather than you killing everything you'll end up a scared bunny dashing between the pan and the fire trying to get back to a safe area without getting murdered (and that's excluding the Cliff Racers spotting you). Despite that a lot of those things that will outright murder you if you try facing them toe to toe, many can be killed if you're patient, persistent and good enough.

I still remember getting into a structure/dungeon with things that could slap me to death, most of the time hiding and running for my life picking each fight carefully and bugging out if one of their buddies showed up, sometimes into an unknown section feeling pretty lost. Eventually my gear was all shot and I couldn't repair it so had to make it out half naked and defenseless if I wanted to keep all the nice loot. (suddenly the repair skill seemed priceless to me lol)

So while Morrowinds combat isn't skill heavy, situations like that require skill (and sometime luck) to survive. Whereas in Skyrim one may as well be a Terminator or some kind of death machine fueled by cheese and potions, like playing a hack and slash from a different perspective. Not to say all hack and slash games don't require skill as some can but compared to Skyrim even things like Sonic, Mario, or even Pacman require more skill.

Also I don't mean to imply skill is purely about hand/eye coordination, reflexes and timing, there are different fields if you will, such as tactics, though Skyrim requires non, of any kind, to a point worth mentioning. It's the kind of game that gives you a prize just for showing up and mashing a button until a deathcam happens.

I happen to like combat in Morrowind, simply because it relies heavily on stats. That, for me, is a plus.

Give me Morrowind's combat over Skyrim's any day. Even better, I wish Morrowind had a pause feature to select different spells. A first-person, real-time-with-pause combat system in Morrowind would have been amazing.

As it stands, it's my favorite combat out of the entire series because it relies on pen-and-paper style stats to do most of the damage. The rolls and determining factors in Morrowind's combat are very complex, and the more complex in this case, the better. =)

Could you elaborate on this complexity? I was under the impression that the formula involved in determing hit/damage was quite simple.

Sorry, DArt, I'm not sure where the article was, but I remember reading that Morrowind made a ton of under-the-hood dice-roll checks, especially compared to the relatively simple formula of Skyrim. Someone much more technical than I am wrote an article about it and gave examples, and the complexity was quite high. Good luck finding that article now, though.

Edit - Actually, it was a YouTube video made about Morrowind, discussing why the author felt it was still worthwhile in 201x. There was a segment about the determining dice-roll factors of combat and it was quite impressive. I'll continue looking for the exact video and see if I can find it.

Edit #2 - Here you go, I found it and this link should take you exactly to 9:00, which is when the segment starts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf0jiOpD-AQ