Why is Morrowind so good compared to future titles?

Risewild said:
Daggerfall already used these dice roll system and also in First Person, and people never complained. Hell, people never complained much about the Morrowind combat as it is until many years after the game was released, because players changed. Morrowind "flaws" are only increasing because games technology and players mindset are always changing over the years. Does that means that to make a good game today you have to think what players will be like in 10 years from now, or just make the games you know players like today?
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I'm not condoning Daggerfall's use of it either, and I'm also not shitting on Morrowind as a whole. I haven't played enough of the game to talk about most of it's other aspects. Now I'm probably going to go play it for more than 5 hours, to see if what y'all are saying about the combat feeling better is true.
 
Ninja said:
I'm not condoning Daggerfall's use of it either, and I'm also not shitting on Morrowind as a whole. I haven't played enough of the game to talk about most of it's other aspects. Now I'm probably going to go play it for more than 5 hours, to see if what y'all are saying about the combat feeling better is true.
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It does get to a point where it feels natural. I'd say about 10 hours in. Its one of those games where, while playing, you overlook all the bullshit because the good greatly outweighs the bad.
 
Another thing to consider about the dice rolls is that back then there was no RPG that didn't have dice rolls. Dice rolls were one of the fundamental part of what being a RPG was. No other RPG game even dreamed of not having those, and this includes any kind of RPG (P&P RPG, jRPG, cRPG, Action RPG, Tactical RPG, Real time RPG, Turn Based RPG, etc) because that was what a RPG was all about.
I said it before but I will say it again. RPGs back in the days weren't about choice and consequence, they weren't about good writing and good stories, they weren't about realism or anything like that, those things are what makes a good or bad RPG for the players (and people have varied tastes).

RPGs since the first (Dungeons and Dragons) were all about the characters and their attributes and skills, how their strengths and weaknesses would allow them to overcome the challenges that the Dungeon Master (or programmers in case of video games) would throw at the players. The way the characters skills and abilities would be used to overcome these challenges were all based on how good they were at that and depending on the dice rolls, it even had a crude way of making sure that something or someone would still have a chance of lose or win because of the dice rolls no matter how good of bad they were at something (although very hard to happen depending on how good or bad their skills were), critical success and critical failure (IIRC Advanced D&D even had tables saying what would happen if the dice rolled a 1 or 20, and then another dice would be rolled to see what consequence it would happen from that table).
Dice rolls were to RPGs what meat is to meatballs. If you remove it you just get the balls.

TL;DR: RPGs back in the "old days" (well since they appeared in 1970's until early 2000's) were all about dice rolls, there wasn't any RPG game back then that didn't have these because dice rolls was the main system of a RPG. It would have been impossible to make any RPG back in the day without those.

Not trying to bash on anyone's opinions or anything, just pointing out that for a bit more than 30 years since RPGs existed it was impossible to have a game like that without the dice rolls. It was just inconceivable :nod:.
 
R.Graves said:
I'm not against dice rolls. I'm against pairing dice rolls with real time first person gameplay.
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Fair enough, but in its defense they were using gamebryo in its infantile stages. I doubt the Netimmerse engine could even handle the sort of elegant/dynamic combat they wanted the player to experience.

Maybe TES VI Bethesda will actually have competent melee/ranged combat...not that I'm holding my breath for anything like that.
 
BigGuyCIA said:
Fair enough, but in its defense they were using gamebryo in its infantile stages. I doubt the Netimmerse engine could even handle the sort of elegant/dynamic combat they wanted the player to experience.

Maybe TES VI Bethesda will actually have competent melee/ranged combat...not that I'm holding my breath for anything like that.
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Judging by the TES V Skyrim that teleports enemies when they are about to get hit by an arrow/crossbow bolt even when they are unaware of said attack... I have my doubts.

But to answer the OP question: Morrowind is so good compared to future titles because it was the game where Bethesda said "Fuck it! We are bankrupt and this will be the last game we will make. Let's make the game we want to make and players want to play. What is there left to lose?" or at least that was what Toddy boy said in many interviews.
Todd Howard said:
"There were six of us at the time, right? The studio had gotten that small, and I was in charge of Morrowind, but by that time, once you get to that point, there was this element of no fear. What's the worst that's gonna happen? We could go out of business. Well, let's go all in. This is the game. Let's put all our chips on the table. This is the game people want from us, this is the game we wanna do.

"You know, a lot of times when you make a game you're kind of... maybe you're afraid how people are gonna like this, let's only do this, maybe it'll make money, but we were... 'Alright. We're gonna do it all.'
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Ahem, if you are going to use a dice rolled system that relies heavily on player skill (Good, that's something I want in RPGs) then it's better to be in an isometric game where the combat system not only fits perfectly but is also fun and logical. However, when you place it in a first person view it ruins the immersion and seems illogical. One can wave it away as simulating character skill (which it does) but the problem is that it's not presented like that and there's no attempt to do so. There's no fumbles, there's no easy parries against your clumsy hits. Visually, you attack just as well as a expert when on level 1. It's pretty jarring, also no it's not fucking hard. Anyone with a little bit of mathematical knowledge can ace it easy, especially when it equates to just standing there spamming the left mouse button.

Also, the dialogue SYSTEM was absolute dogshit. It conveyed a lot of information, and the dialogue itself was well written but it suffered from being repetitive, boring and without player intervention. Playing a persuasive character was un-rewarding because you rarely used your skill at smooth talking, rarely turning down encounters with words. Dialogue just lacked the oomph and fun other games did, especially because there's almost NO choices you can make.

Spell making, no real OP cap (you can end up as a flying god), transport systems, no map markers, directions and much more made Morrowind for me. But not the combat and dialogue.
 
Dr Fallout said:
when you place it in a first person view it ruins the immersion and seems illogical.
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You forgot to place there that it breaks immersion for you. It never broke it for me for example. Like I said, when the game came out (and in other games like Arena and Daggerfall) it never broke the immersion of the players back then.
Basically the immersion breaking only seems to happen mostly to newer players that never played the older games (and I mean older RPGs from the 80's and 90's for example) when they came out.
Like I said before, it breaks immersion only many years after it came out. Because players change and today they are used to games being "realistic" and if it is not realistic it breaks their immersion. It seems perfectly good for the older gamers. That is what I realized from this thread.
 
Risewild said:
You forgot to place there that it breaks immersion for you. It never broke it for me for example. Like I said, when the game came out (and in other games like Arena and Daggerfall) it never broke the immersion of the players back then.
Basically the immersion breaking only seems to happen mostly to newer players that never played the older games (and I mean older RPGs from the 80's and 90's for example) when they came out.
Like I said before, it breaks immersion only many years after it came out. Because players change and today they are used to games being "realistic" and if it is not realistic it breaks their immersion. It seems perfectly good for the older gamers. That is what I realized from this thread.
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Did I also say how the RPG system of Morrowind is boring and pretty lame? :razz:

But seriously, it's pretty good but not very unique or interesting because it's just math and matching up races, classes and birthsigns. Talking about birthsigns, they were really good and added interesting choice with cool abilities, kind of like traits. I'd love to see a DnD style RPG system where you get abilities as you level up (possibly choosing out of several) making each of the classes more unique and levelling up more interesting. Getting a bonus of 20 to a skill is... alright but could be better.

Sometimes I sit and wonder, wondering about a Morrowind with a Mount and Blade like combat system, with more emphasis on stats (if you have a low skill with a weapon you swing slower, your parries leave you open for other people's attacks and so on) but unfortunately the tech wasn't up to it. The two reasons why I don't mind Morrowind's combat is that you get used to it and that the tech was less impressive.

However, the single biggest flaw of Morrowind was the dialogue system.
 
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To answer the original question, Bethesda wanted desperately to get mainstream success so Obsidian was designed to be about as generic a fantasy game as humanly possible. Cyrodiil became a stereotypical fantasy kingdom, the enemy was the Devil (Mehrunes Dagon! What have they done to you!?), and the most original thing about the game was the fact you were Martin's sidekick.

Skyrim basically stuck with this but they moved SLIGHTLY away from it.

Weirdly, the same thing happened with Dragon Age: Origins despite it started fairly close to generic fantay, only with a more George R.R. Martin twist.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is PAINFULLY generic versus the occasional subversions of the original game. It also felt far less adult.
 
I think skyrim is a far superior game to Morrowind and i hate skyrim so imagine how loathesome i find Morrowind.

I really dont see how anyone can enjoy it as i find it to be awful in pretty much every single way.
 
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