Discussing the flaws of Morrowind.

[pikmonwolf]

I gave up. The settings keep resetting and paired with crashing it was insufferable constantly having to reset the graphical options and keybindings. If I ever manage to get that fixed I'll beat it.
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I already know what the responses to this will be. I'l surely get a "You're just a filthy casual who can't handle a real RPG." or maybe "Stupid Skyrim fanboys." perhaps even the good old "Must be a troll." but this game is incredibly overrated.

Let me tell you about a little thing called nostalgia, the dictionary definition is "pleasure and sadness that is caused by remembering something from the past and wishing that you could experience it again" this is why so many people like this game. I am pretty sure that most of the playerbase got this when they were young, and it reminds them of a happier time. They are the ones who go around blindly yelling how good it is. I will try to show you my counters

The combat in this game is god awful and if you don't see any flaws in it then you need to realize how much of a fanboy you are. The random chance makes no sense and takes all strategy out of combat. I have never held a sledge hammer in my life, but I guarentee you I could hit a guy with it. It is not "realistic" to miss people as much as your character does, I am willing to bet your character would lose in a fist fight with you. It is more realistic for your damage to go up, since you would get better at using your weapon and therefor better at hitting hard. The random chance doesn't allow strategy since there is literally nothing you can do to make it better without leveling up many times. Look at a game like XCOM, it's combat is done with a random chance, but there are factors to it. Your chance of hitting somebody goes up the closer you are to them. Keep in mind that in Morrowinfd you still have to hit the people you are fighting, you have to make contact with your weapon and once you have done so, the game decides if you made contact. There is no method to it, you can't try to avoid there attacks then hit them when the moment is right, just click and load your last save until the world decides that win your fight.

Characters are non-existant. Give the personality of any NPC who is not part of a quest-line, you can't can you. The lack of voice acting could be forgiven, but there is no personality, they are all just lore vending machines with copy-pasted dialogue. Skyrim may not have any realy memorable characters either, but at least they have personalities!

The journal is god awful. I will agree that it is annoying that the only way to know where to go in Skyrim is by the quest markers, since the journal isn't useful. The thing is, Morrowind's journal is hardly any better. The lack of organization and really bad directions, it is terrible. What is worse, following a marker that tells you where to go or constantly opening the journal trying to decipher directions and searching the same area for an hour trying to find the path. Some missions have completely wrong directions, it's a nightmare.

I don't blame people for liking it, even the aspects I have listed. People who do are only huge Morrowind fans. Don't use these in arguements against Skyrim. This game has the fan base it does because of fond memories, not because it still holds up. Feel free to like it and refuse to see the flaws in it, but please don't go posting that you are right in the most smug way possible. (I get that it is kind of ironic, but I am countering some of the main points used to say Morrowind>Skyrim, I have seen all of these used to call Skyrim casual like it is the worst thing a game can be.) I'm sure some people will play Morrowind for the first time now and like it, but those people make up a fraction of it's player base.

I am sick of people like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JweTAhyR4o0

[Coalheart]

I honestly hadn't considered the economies of scale. I did merchandising for big box stores ( Home depot, Lowe's Wal-Mart etc).

I suppose the realities would be different. Not sure how Gamestop ranks. Certainly larger than a 3 store operation, but then again, I can't see them as really in the big leagues either.

Not really sure though.

Ok, my next post will be on what I perceive to be flaws in Morrowind. ( yep, even my fanboy ass dislikes some aspects of Morrowind).

[Coalheart]

Flaws ( IMHO) of Morrowind

() Controls.
Morrowind just feels "clunky". Not sure why, maybe the camera is attached to a node on the poorly animated player model? At any rate. It feels awkward and unnatural. When I walk across a field and look around in Skyrim, it just feels "right".

() Animations.
These are terrible. The model movements look ridiculous. Throw in the lack of "dodge" animations when the game decides your stats Vs the Mob's = you miss and it becomes rather comical.

() Time Sink.
If you just want to play a quick 15~20 minute game, you're probably better off not even loading Morrowind. Everything seems to take forever. If you have the time to invest, it's awesome, but if not, the game is almost worthless.

() Depth.
This is a double edged sword. It's certainly one of the aspects that puts Morrowind head and shoulders above most other games, but if you don't have the time and dedication to really invest in this game, you're not going to get much out of it.

() Stigma.
If Morrowind just happens to be your favorite game, then there are those that feel it must just be nostalgia or that you're some sort of old Skool elitist. It couldn't possibly be that you just happen to enjoy it.

[Dutchgamer1982]

Here if you want to buy a pc game, you will go to a specialised gameshop, or a media shop (also selling CD and DVD) and there really are only a few national chains of that, no international chains, of such stores, and a lot more game stores that are independant stores.
(though I do notice that an ever increasing chunk of shelspace is eaten up by console games, used to be 90% store space PC=games, 1 little corner for all consoles, now it's the reversed, not liking that.
-(not liking a concept like wallmarkt either, lucky we have nothing here on that scale)

now I was asked about flaws in morrowind, well many of what other here call flaws (including the former poster) I would have to call strong points.

And having modded my game so much, it is hard to forget the flaws that are there (I never said I gave morrowind a 10.0/10.0, But I do give it a 9.0/10.0, where oblivion may recieve even at it's best day a 6.5/10, and skyrim even lower.

but the flaws that are in the basic game (spoken from a fan)

1 scripting errors, and they never fixed them.
-there are quite a number of lines of dialog messing up quests, or lines that never were added mission journal entries, and such the unofficial morrowind patch project is specificly aimed on fixing those bugs, so they nowdays can be modded out, but still bad there never was an OFFICIAL release of such a bugfix.

2 the moving to the north flaw
-for some reason all the NPC's slowly move to the north. as such as playtime progreses some get stuck in walls, people offering transport falling of their platforms.. and such, while theire is a console command to reset them once in a while.. it still is not a nice thing to have.

3 The teleporting NPC bug
-if the npc's moved far enough into a wall or otherwise get stuck, they may all respawn at location 0,0 of the map (happens to be a deadric ruin inside the ghostfence) again, console command resets them, but still, bad bad BAD!

4 really, REALLY broken economics.
At first a game starts out fine, but once you progress beyong a certain point and start getting deadric and ebony drops all the time, it really makes no sence what so ever, no traders carring that much money, and nothing to spend it on.
(in fact most of my primary modding has addres to fix this and improve)

5 The lack of proper storage facility's
: I quite like collecting all the pieces of armor, and such.. but finding a place for all your loot can be hardpressed.
While I added much needed labeled containers, manequens, Display chests. dynamic bookshelves and housing mods, the base game is lacking in this regard.

6 The strange thing that if you ever stole 1 item of a type, ALL items of that type forever would be listed as stolen.

7 the other strange thing that if you placed items that were lawfully yours inside a container or house that was owned by some NPC, and than took those items back out... they would be marked as stolen.

8 mobs becoming to easy after a while (for the first 20-30 levels orso all is fine, the game is chalenging, you fight for your life, may die, may live, but once you get strong enough nothing poses a chalenge any longer. I do not like the later games leveled mobs one bit, but I was forced to add mods to morrowind that when you level make even stronger mobs to pop up, and also beef up townguards and temple guards so even at level 80, you will not want to be caught by them. But for the base game, after so many hours of gaming ending like that, is just a big anticlimax, being a god just aint no fun.

9 exploits
There were just a few to much exploits in the game (one being the brew a potions of fortify intelligance and wisdom, drink it, brew an even stonger one, and so on, but there are many more like it) I have no problem with being able to enchant clothing to get 700 unarmoured skill (and have 3 times the armor rating of deadric, minus the weight) but enless exploits are just no fun.
(a lot of the mods I added, including the unofficial patch project, patch those exploits)

10 collision glitches
It happens more than once in morrowind, one get stuck in a wall, a rope, a plant or anything and have to reload or enter a console command to get free.
It also happens quite a lot that one falls though the floor of a room one's in, sometimes resetting itself, but also sometimes resulting in either your instant death, or just ending up in a big nothingness, in both cases forcing you to reload.
While a lot of this has been modded to occur less often, it still is an inexcusable bug.

11 not enough carrying capacity.
I get weight, I get inventory, but when looting just a random cave, certainly if that has some of the more heavy items in it, you are bound to need to either drink lots of potions, cast certains spells over and over, get feather enchanted gear, or more likley, mark and recall a thousand times over.
Limits are fine, but things are just a little out of balance, in fact I have many mods changing the weight of items, increasing how much you can carry, and more important, massively increase the effect and durantion (and lowerting the spellcost/enchantcost) of feather spells/enchants. but in basic, it just aint no fun.

12 "forced" leveling.
Oh don;t get me wrong, I LOVE the morrowind leveling system, far better than that of later games. But what I don;t like so much, is that whenever you go to sleep (to restore health and mana) you are FORCED to level up.
That effectively forces me to not sleep untill I have found the money and trainers to pay to get that +5 +5 +1 luck effect, nullefieing an element of the game that would better be alowed in.
a button to pass up on that promotion for now, would be better, in facts thats just what I modded in.

So yes there IS room for a morrowind 2.0 to be even better than morrowind.. but as far we went now, it only degererated sadly.

[Seanobi.old]

Yeah, there's a flaw in Morrowind: Disposition resetting after bartering, and leaving and coming back to the NPC immediately

[BotZero]

the only elder scrolls game i could get into was oblivion for xbox. I think its because oblivion is really casual compared to morrowind and there are few games of its kind and I was 12 years old at the time.

Im sure I might of enjoyed Skyrim too if i was still 12 or 13 but Im not. When Skyrim came out i was 19 and I found it simple and boring. For me a true Rpg has dialogue choices with consequences usually a middleground choice, a good choice and an evil choice. Elder scrolls doesnt have this it only has do the quest or dont.

You can only decide if you want to kill innocent people and steal or do not. At least morrowwind had consequences and you could kill quest characters which would result in severence from ever completing it.

In oblivion the only case I can think of you can do such a thing is kill lucien lachance at first meeting him which severs your connection to the dark brotherhood. Skyrim also features this you can take a whack at the Yarl and not only will he forgive you but he wont even act mad that you attacked him.


I also feel that a true RPG you need special active abilities even if your a warrior or a rogue and in elderscrolls rpgs if you do not use magic it restricts you to attack block and dodge and using a bow and that is all. I was disapointed they nerfed stealth so much in skyrim, in oblivion if your stealth was expert or greater you could sneak right in front of someone and they wouldnt notice, this is overpowered but it was well deserved and surprise its a game after all.

The highlight of elder scrolls is that they are unique and feature massive worlds to explore. I cannot think of any other games that accomplish this besides maybe MMOs which feel even more lifeless, people dont follow scheduels they stand in the same spot and you cannot kill the friendly Npcs or steal from them.

just my oppinion but games like Dragon Age are superior to Elder scrolls but they may have less replay value.

[Coffee?]

Originally posted by Spence:

the only elder scrolls game i could get into was oblivion for xbox. I think its because oblivion is really casual compared to morrowind and there are few games of its kind and I was 12 years old at the time.

Im sure I might of enjoyed Skyrim too if i was still 12 or 13 but Im not. When Skyrim came out i was 19 and I found it simple and boring. For me a true Rpg has dialogue choices with consequences usually a middleground choice, a good choice and an evil choice. Elder scrolls doesnt have this it only has do the quest or dont.

You can only decide if you want to kill innocent people and steal or do not. At least morrowwind had consequences and you could kill quest characters which would result in severence from ever completing it.

In oblivion the only case I can think of you can do such a thing is kill lucien lachance at first meeting him which severs your connection to the dark brotherhood. Skyrim also features this you can take a whack at the Yarl and not only will he forgive you but he wont even act mad that you attacked him.


I also feel that a true RPG you need special active abilities even if your a warrior or a rogue and in elderscrolls rpgs if you do not use magic it restricts you to attack block and dodge and using a bow and that is all. I was disapointed they nerfed stealth so much in skyrim, in oblivion if your stealth was expert or greater you could sneak right in front of someone and they wouldnt notice, this is overpowered but it was well deserved and surprise its a game after all.

The highlight of elder scrolls is that they are unique and feature massive worlds to explore. I cannot think of any other games that accomplish this besides maybe MMOs which feel even more lifeless, people dont follow scheduels they stand in the same spot and you cannot kill the friendly Npcs or steal from them.

just my oppinion but games like Dragon Age are superior to Elder scrolls but they may have less replay value.

I am going to say this once...you are very lucky I am saying this...I will tell you 3 words....PLAY PLANESCAPE TORMENT!

[Dutchgamer1982]

also have 2 suggestions to spence :

1 burn that xbox and any other console in your house and buy a pc, if you didn't already.
(after all like you said, your no longer 12)

2 besides morrowind,I would advise you to try the RPG neverwinter nights.
*it has the classic RPG good-neutral-evil, lawfull-neutral-chaotic sliders, as well as both races and halve races.
*your standing is NOT fixed but changes a little with every action you do.
*other races responce to you depening on what you are (some races refurse to talk to people of other races, or at the least make it VERY difficult
*this standing as well as your race AND the quests you did before, determine what othe quests are locked or opened to you, and what npc will want to talk to you or not
*speciffic gear that only can be worn by you if you are from a speciffi standing (no shiny knight armor or armor of doom, if you are not lawfull gooid or chaotic evil, and such;))
it may lack on other terrains compared to morrowind... but just try it, in a way it is even more a "classic" d&d rpg than morrowind is.

[Coffee?]

does neverwinter have an Advanced ad&D system like Baldurs Gate? (Sad to say I couldn't understand baldurs mechanics)

[Seanobi.old]

Originally posted by X-9:

does neverwinter have an Advanced ad&D system like Baldurs Gate? (Sad to say I couldn't understand baldurs mechanics)

Neverwinter Nights: Diamond Edition (which is easily THE BEST one in my eyes, especially online RP servers)...

It uses D&D 3.5 rules.

[UbiquitousSteve]

I seriously like Morrowind because of the culture of the factions and the main questline. (Hate the bad directions....I seriously use COC commands all the time, because I don't go into immersion so far as to experience what being lost is like.)

[Coffee?]

Can i get a brief synosis of 3.5?

[Clover]

I love that going by the OP if you think Morrowind is the best TES game you MUST have nostalgia. It's simply not true. I've played Morrowind after playing both Skyrim and Oblivion (went Oblivion -> Skyrim -> Morrowind) and neither games, Oblivion or Skyrim, even comes CLOSE to reaching Morrowind. Why can't I call you a Skyrim fanboy for having over 1000hrs in the game and making a super obvious bait thread? You don't even have TEN HOURS!!!! in morrowind, and you think you can form a reasonable argument against people who have played, beat, and enjoyed both Skyrim and Morrowind?

WAIT WAIT up a second. So everyone who prefers Morrowind has to be a fanboy? WTF? I know you said not to say "must be a troll", but honestly : troll thread? Troll thread.

[Coffee?]

agreed

[BrigadierBill]

Originally posted by X-9:

I am going to say this once...you are very lucky I am saying this...I will tell you 3 words....PLAY PLANESCAPE TORMENT!

Of course that game is a ridiculous time sink. I got lost so many times trying to get out of the early levels of that game. Absolutely amazing story though, I've only scratched the surface of that game and it already crushes the depth of any other game I've touched.

I always love the idea that nostalgia is the reason people love old games. I can name a lot of games where I preferred the original to the sequel. Neverwinter Nights, Homeworld, Star Trek Armada...Medal of Honor Allied Assault beat every expansion or sequel they ever even tried to make (since they didn't realize the ridiculousness of the game was part of the fun), and of course Skyrim versus Oblivion. Rome Total War, Company of Heroes, Civ III versus Civ IV and Civ IV versus Civ V (and I still like Civ V), Europa Universalis 2 versus Europa Universalis 3, Dawn of War versus all three expansions and the sequel (although Dark Crusade was good)...

There are always games that are better than their successors, and it's usually because a game company didn't understand what made their game great and changed it, or just plain didn't make the same kind of game. I love Skyrim as well as Morrowind (and Oblivion is at least a good game, but I don't hold it quite as high), but there are a lot of reasons I liked Morrowind better than Skyrim.
1.) More skills. Skyrim let you just switch between interchangeable weapons as if nothing mattered, whereas it actually caused issues for you if you didn't train to use a particular weapon that you later found a magic variant of; spears had an edge in reach no other weapons matched, even though the others were typically more powerful. With regards to magic, having the extra schools doesn't necessarily add to the complexity so much since you can master just as many spells with fewer magic skills; however, it offers more of a demand to vary the types of magic up so that one is encouraged to study something unusual like mysticism.
2.) Magic. Morrowind had a spectacular variety of magic options, whether for enchanting or for spellcasting. It actually mattered what you enchanted a spell onto; armored breastplates wouldn't take a spell as well as a robe or ring would. You could make spells to cast on strike, cast as spell, or even constant effects (where using the editor you could have all sorts of fun with cursed weapons and the like). It was completely nonlinear, and you could take a huge variety of routes towards just combat spells alone (to say nothing of the noncombat applications of restoration, alteration, and mysticism). And jumping 15 feet into the air while walking on water was always a blast compared to slowly swimming past the slaughterfish hordes or running beneath the cliffracer flocks. Of course the comparison in skyrim is particularly frustrating, where you have a set of tiers of magical power that you slowly ascend and upgrade your spell from something like flames to firebolt to fireball to incinerate to firestorm...compared even to the ridiculous nature in morrowind of being able to buy spells like candy, that was a turnoff.
3.) The life within the world. Skyrim had a lot of things you could spot in the wilderness, it had characters that had their own stories, and no shortage of quests specific to a particular part of the world and influenced by the lore there. But Morrowind had all manner of different stories you could learn about, whether it was trying to continue in the Fighters Guild after learning they were actively fighting your other membership the Thieves Guild, or solving a deliberately unsolvable quest by an idiot archmage. When you ran into stuff like Vampires in Morrowind (particularly the first time, at low level), it startled you (okay, first time I heard a Vampire scream at me I jumped). The stuff isn't even the personal sort of quests and lore you'd find throughout Skyrim, but typically it's feuding between greater organizations, whether that was the Fighters Guild against the Thieves Guild or the Telvanni against the Mages Guild. Lore is presented in such a way that the true answers are sometimes never revealed, and you are left with a mystery and a bunch of contradictory clues. I could go on endlessly (and admittedly it's hard to outright explain this one, it's more of a feel issue) on this point.
4.) No hand holding. You walk into a Dwemer ruin, open a trapped container, and drink about 5 health potions to keep from dying. When the poison finally wears off, you rest and are startled awake by a Steam Centurion attacking you, a low-level character with a pitiful steel sparksword, and you bravely run away. My personal favorite was walking into an ebony mine with a plain iron longsword and getting mauled by a fire atronach I couldn't harm. If you accept a quest, it's no easier just because you accepted it; my first fighters guild quest outside of Balmora lead me against a necromancer lair in the north. It was an escort mission, but I ran into a hiccup when 5 seconds after entering, my companion died. Somehow I shot everyone on my way through, cleared the place out, then got bitten by a blighted rat and lost too much strength to move. Reloading, I was killed by a dremora who charged me, and my character relied too heavily on archery to stand a change. Eventually I escaped (3rd or 4th try), the quest already failed because the companion died 5 seconds in. Of course that was after I fled towards a daedric shrine, then realizing my error used an icarian flight scroll and jumped halfway across the coast, before clambering onto a rock and taking a nap. Once again interrupted, this time by my first encounter with a hunger (I thought it was a sea creature at the time). I was particularly alarmed that my iron arrows did no damage to it, fortunately I had saved up about 30 or so acid arrows that killed it. NOTHING like this ever happens in skyrim, except maybe your first run against an ancient dragon or one time I went into a tomb and encountered a lich that was basically impervious to everything I did.
5.) Nonlinear progression. You can break the questline by killing critical characters. You can finish the main quest having already broken it, if you're creative and lucky. This can be frustrating, but it's also a pretty awesome aspect of Morrowind.

Morrowind still has its issues of course. Combat is terrible, coming from someone who enjoys older stuff like Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, and Planescape Torment. Graphics and animation are pretty unimpressive, and still look awkward with mods that improve them. Fatigue and speed limitations are particularly frustrating while trying to walk across the island, enough that I effectively always become an Alteration spellcaster to compensate with water walking, jump, levitate, and mark/recall spells. I've gotten lost quite a few times following map instructions, and the journal can be quite overwhelming. However, the huge quality of the game (not to mention how old it is) lets me overlook these issues, and fundamentally (other than walking through canyons hiding from cliffracers with 0 fatigue left) they really don't amount to much compared to the game's strengths. Of course that's just my opinion, I played Baldur's Gate and felt it was too overwhelming to really enjoy it, and I'm worried that amounts to heresy in the RPG community.

[Clover]

Very good post BrigadierBill, I couldn't agree more.