am i just bad at it?

[Loyalist George W. Burns]

The combat makes no sense to me, i am clearly stabbing the rat with the halberd, yet nothing is happening.....and from what i can see blocking is completley random.....

[Logorouge]

Alright, first thing first: The devs didn't bother making a dodge animation, so your only feedback is the "woosh" sound it makes when you miss (and the lack of dead rat in front of you).

How to hit with an halberd: Have 30+ spear skill and a nearly full fatigue bar. That should do the trick. Hold the attack button to charge up your attack for extra damage.

Blocking: It's fully automatic and dependent on your Block skill and the direction you're looking at. That's it. It's hard to raise at the beginning, so I suggest paying a trainer for a few lessons when you have so spare money.

Edit: To answer the actual title: No, you're not bad, you just need to gain the knowledge. Because knowing is half the battle. (GI-Jooooe)

[Rastrelly]

Morrowind is not Skyrim or Oblivion. It's actually an RPG with roleplaying system seriously affecting gameplay. If your skill is low, you will often miss or fail at this activity. As logorouge said, you have to improve your skills either by using them, or by paying trainers. Almost all combat skills can be improved with Fighter's Guild trainers. Also, there is damage system in action, which allows you to differ the damage by movement. You can disable it by chaecking "always best hit" in options, then weapon will always hit by best attack. Otherwise you will attack differently when standing, moving forward or moving sideways. And, as it was said, holding left mouse button will charge your weapon attack.

[Brandybuck]

The point is not the RPG-ness of the game. There's no more or less RPG-ness in this game than any other title in the series. The point is that you are clearly and unequivocally hitting the rat, the halberd is definitely penetrating the hitbox, and yet you miss. That sh*t works in a turn based isometric game, but it doesn't pass muster in a real time 3D game.

p.s. Not that I'm declaring Morrowind to be crap, just that it's not the immaculately pure game so many people pretend it is. Combat in the game sucked.

[Loyalist George W. Burns]

Originally posted by Brandybuck:

The point is not the RPG-ness of the game. There's no more or less RPG-ness in this game than any other title in the series. The point is that you are clearly and unequivocally hitting the rat, the halberd is definitely penetrating the hitbox, and yet you miss. That sh*t works in a turn based isometric game, but it doesn't pass muster in a real time 3D game.

p.s. Not that I'm declaring Morrowind to be crap, just that it's not the immaculately pure game so many people pretend it is. Combat in the game sucked.

yea ive given up on it, the combat is so unruly and clunky.....

[Rastrelly]

Originally posted by Brandybuck:

The point is not the RPG-ness of the game. There's no more or less RPG-ness in this game than any other title in the series. The point is that you are clearly and unequivocally hitting the rat, the halberd is definitely penetrating the hitbox, and yet you miss. That sh*t works in a turn based isometric game, but it doesn't pass muster in a real time 3D game.

p.s. Not that I'm declaring Morrowind to be crap, just that it's not the immaculately pure game so many people pretend it is. Combat in the game sucked.

The best combat in the series for me. Why do people nowadays are SO unable to understand that in proper RPG you interact with a system, not the world itself? YOU don't hit a rat, a CHARACTER does. You order him to hit a rat by hitting rat's hitbox, and then the system checks if he managed to do that, or the rat dodged.

Bah, I'm wasting time. Go play your AWESOME!!!!! Skyrim or any other "RPG" of your choice. And thanks for being part of ruining my fovourite genre.

[Big Daddy]

Originally posted by Gerorge W. Burns:

yea ive given up on it, the combat is so unruly and clunky.....

That is a real shame, I was fortunate enough to enjoy Morrowind when it first came out and as a long time pen and paper RPG fan I really enjoyed how the mechanics worked, from the combat system to the lore rich world.

The only thing i could suggest to a new player coming to the game from an era of more modern game mechanics that is frustrated by the combat system among other things is to perhaps look at some of the mods available to you that overhaul the game to have a more modern feel.

MGSO can be found here:
http://www.ornitocopter.net/morrowind-overhaul/
It contains a host of fixes and patches designed to improve the reliability of the base game as well as improving the graphics and sound quality.

If the combat mechanics really don't tick the boxes for you there is always:
http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/23746/?
Basically a mod designed so you hit 100% of the time. ***USE WITH CAUTION*** Instead of learning how the game mechanics work you will basically cruise through all combat due to there being no dependencies on character progression.

I hope you do at the very least try MGSO and give morrowind a solid chance, think of it more of a story rich world where combat is a side element (old school RPG), as opposed to an action rich game where story is a side element (the newer class of RPG).

Regards.

[Brandybuck]

Originally posted by Rastrelly:

The best combat in the series for me. Why do people nowadays are SO unable to understand that in proper RPG you interact with a system, not the world itself? YOU don't hit a rat, a CHARACTER does. You order him to hit a rat by hitting rat's hitbox, and then the system checks if he managed to do that, or the rat dodged.

Okay, let me rephrase: YOUR CHARACTER swings his halberd through the rat and the rat's hitbox, the rat does not visibly dodge, but YOUR CHARACTER still misses.

The point is that turned based mechanics don't work with realtime games. Saying it is about the visuals sounds trite, but it's true. The WHOLE POINT of real time 3D games is the immersive effects of the visuals. In a turn based game you typically just have sprites with simple animations, but with Morrowind you have a three dimensional halberd moving through three dimensional space and striking a three dimensional rat. Yet you miss...

It's not that Bethesda couldn't animate a miss, after all they animate marksman misses. Miss with a bow and your bow clearly and visibly jerks out of the way. Why couldn't they do the same with halberds? Was the halberd animation guy asleep that day?

[Brandybuck]

Originally posted by Gerorge W. Burns:

yea ive given up on it, the combat is so unruly and clunky.....

Don't give up! Just because the combat sucks, it improves greatly once you improve your skills. There's also a thousand and one other things in the game besides combat.

[Strolok]

This isn't an action game, it's an rpg. If you want to hit something, raise your stats.

[Randall]

there's a mod that "fixes" the combat, search the nexus, the nexus is your friend

[Strolok]

Originally posted by Randall_Linux:

there's a mod that "fixes" the combat, search the nexus, the nexus is your friend

If you mean the "attacks never miss" mod, it'll mess up your playthrough. The game was built around percentages to hit, so you'll quickly be overpowered with it as you do more damage.

[Rocket]

wasnt a problem when the game came out. doesnt take too much to accept the whoosh sound as a miss and the splush sound as a hit. its a game use yer imagination.

[Brandybuck]

Originally posted by Dr. Luvnak:

wasnt a problem when the game came out.

But it was a problem! I was told at the time by those who played it that the combat sucked. Baldur's Gate and other isometric games of the same time period were okay because they were TURN BASED. But Morrowind is not turn based.

There really weren't all that many 3D realtime RPGs in 2003. Can you name any that had the same RNG style combat? I can't think of any at all.

[EgoMaster]

Originally posted by Brandybuck:

Can you name any that had the same RNG style combat? I can't think of any at all.

I can, but I won't because all of those games had better implementation. They had dodge animation. One of them even had an info window that explained whatever happened on screen in RPG "language". Last but not least, they had isometric or 3rd person view, so they were better "equipped" to handle real time RNG style combat.

[DerFinneAT]

Originally posted by Brandybuck:

The point is that turned based mechanics don't work with realtime games.

It's not like it can't work.
It's just that no one ever took the effort to make it work it any game.


I find it easy to forgive MW for this flaw (look at the release data, think about the budget constraint of back then)


But I am unable to forgive Oblivion and Skyrim and the FO3s, for 'bypassing' the problem, by removing the actual stat-based combat and replacing it with the ill dumbed-down system they have.


The 'only' thing that would be needed to make MWs system work, would be visual feedback.

Proper dodge, proper block, and even a visual forced-missed independent, whether your mouse-aim would suggest to have a clear hit.


However: You are free to dump the game for the poor combat-feedback it has - it's your decission. But then you will miss out one of the better ES games we ever had.