Anyone else find Morrowind massively over rated?

[ImpulsE69]

I played a lot of Daggerfall and MW, but only played maybe an hour of Oblivion. I pretty much disliked it right away. I've tried a few times to get into it and just never could. I liked Skyrim and played quite a bit, but ended up spending more time modding it than actually playing it. It was at that point I realized I am not a huge fan of open world games any more.

 

[Rebel_L]

There wasn't a need to import that aspect of D&D into hit mechanics. Even a game older than Morrowind, Crusaders of Might and Magic (which wasn't well received and had it's own share of flaws, but I liked it) had proper hit mechanics for a 3D PC RPG (albeit a 3rd person, over-the-shoulder one).

I'm not saying one can't appreciate Morrowind's combat system for what it is, but I understand the frustration, and you can't argue someone into liking it via logic. It is what it is.

Oblivion and Skyrim took steps back in terms of story, dialogue, reading content, and original soundtrack (they ended up recycling a few tracks from Morrowind, too) but the combat system did get far better.

I have always found it really interesting to see how people react different games, I am going to move away from morrowind here for a bit since there doesnt really seem to be anything to say other than different people like different game mechanics.

I have been gaming since the early dos days and back then getting a new game also meant learning a new keyboard layout since there was no custom keys for most games. I always did enjoy the learning phase of a new game though, learning how the system works, learning the AI's weak strong/weak points and finding a way to overcome whatever challenges the game had to offer. I had a few friends who were not what you would call gamers but ended up getting convinced into trying WoW when it came out. They ended up rather enjoying the game and still play it to some degree or another. During that time I have left and come back a few times as I have gotten bored with the game, and even my friends have certainly had times where they were bored with the game and didnt play much over the last however many years its been. One friend in particular I did manage to convince to try a few other mmorpgs over the years yet he never seems to enjoy any other game. The particular dislike of trying any other game is always related in some way to game mechanics. I have never been able to understand how someone who enjoys trying to overcome in game obstacles in one game (especially a game where the mechanics are changing over time to begin with) can be so instantly turned off by a different game just because some things work a little different.

UglyDuckling seems to be having this same kind of reaction to morrowind and for the life of me I dont understand how getting stuck in morrowind makes him want to quit the game rather than find a way to overcome vs another game where he has the patience to keep going. To me its one thing if you were to quit for say the story/setting of the game, or something more genre related like a fast reaction time game vs one where you have time to plan and and execute at your leisure but I dont understand what can make a person balk at a particular and often minor detail in a combat system.

 

[BFG10K]

I tried playing Morrowind for the first time a few years ago but couldn’t get into it. Within an hour I uninstalled the game:

-constant stamina drain when running.
-no quest markers.
-no real fast travel.

An open world game with such flaws is an epic fail for me, because that’s not fun.

If the game wants to provide a hard mode that requires elite gameplay with no niceties, that’s absolutely fine. But easy/casual difficulty should fully support the player.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I tried playing Morrowind for the first time a few years ago but couldn’t get into it. Within an hour I uninstalled the game:

-constant stamina drain when running.
-no quest markers.
-no real fast travel.

An open world game with such flaws is an epic fail for me, because that’s not fun.

If the game wants to provide a hard mode that requires elite gameplay with no niceties, that’s absolutely fine. But easy/casual difficulty should fully support the player.

You have to keep in mind, this game came out when open world games didn't exist. This WAS the open world game, and it was epic for the time. Fast travel didn't come until the next game. This game came out before gaming was mainstream and watered down. Most people these days don't have the patience to play a game like that today...I know I don't

 

[tamz_msc]

I tried playing Morrowind for the first time a few years ago but couldn’t get into it. Within an hour I uninstalled the game:

-constant stamina drain when running.
-no quest markers.
-no real fast travel.

An open world game with such flaws is an epic fail for me, because that’s not fun.

If the game wants to provide a hard mode that requires elite gameplay with no niceties, that’s absolutely fine. But easy/casual difficulty should fully support the player.

-Athleticism was a skill that you could reliably practice to offset slow movement speed. Skyrim had a default movement speed that was more akin to jogging than walking and you never needed to hold down the sprint button in the first place. That's why you don't notice the stamina drain.

-Quest markers are the bane of modern open world game design. Turn off quest markers in Skyrim and see how fun it is. Go to this shrine on the top of the mountain - which mountain? Nobody friggin' knows. Quest markers can break immersion in the very best of open-world games. It is a completely different experience if you turn off the minimap in Witcher 3, but it is nigh impossible to Witcher-sense investigate and explore caves without it.

-Skyrim is a great looking game - but you have no scope of taking in the sights if all you do is fast travel between quest locations and hub areas. At least Witcher 3 tried to solve this problem. Lack of fast travel meant that you had to pay attention to the game world in order to navigate it.

 

[Crono]

The world is different since Morrowind came out. We all have ADHD now. There aren't many games that involve immersive exploration, and the ones that do get panned for being boring. The work you had to do to find something (location, object, person) in Morrowind was higher, but the satisfaction was higher, too.

Also I'm sure the walkthrough business must have tanked because of quest markers and hand holding in modern games.

 

[UglyDuckling]

The world is different since Morrowind came out. We all have ADHD now. There aren't many games that involve immersive exploration, and the ones that do get panned for being boring. The work you had to do to find something (location, object, person) in Morrowind was higher, but the satisfaction was higher, too.

Also I'm sure the walkthrough business must have tanked because of quest markers and hand holding in modern games.

I only dislike it's combat but it's annoying enough for me to say GTFO.... lol

I love a game with good combat... i know...

 

[Crono]

I only dislike it's combat but it's annoying enough for me to say GTFO.... lol

I love a game with good combat... i know...

Most people do, it's one reason mass appeal went up with the subsequent TES games.

Neither you nor tamz_msc were wrong in your opinions, by the way, it's just that Morrowind sits awkwardly between genres and eras of gaming. Arena and Daggerfall were classic early 3D RPGs, very much steeped in lore and D&D-style magic and combat. Oblivion and Skyrim, on the other hand, are better tuned for hack-and-slash: they focused more on the action, the 3D visuals, and simplifying the interface and combat for consoles.

In between was Morrowind. It's a product of it's era, and because of that it isn't going to hold up well for everyone. Even when it was released it didn't appeal to everyone, and now that the graphics and gameplay have aged, it's no surprise not everyone can get into it, even (or maybe especially) for fans of the later TES games.

 

[Sonikku]

I played it a ton on Xbox but never finished. I got along in the story but kept losing interest and went on homicidal killing sprees with absurdly overpowered spells created by the spell creation system. A lack of attention span coupled with some innovative ingenuity can be a deadly thing.

 

[Stg-Flame]

I remember when Oblivion was announced. I immediately told my buddy "If they have cliff racers, I won't buy it".

 

[Mandres]

Morrowind was the first rpg that I ever really loved. I remember being amazed at the level of freedom, I had never played anything else like it. I would set off across the landscape getting lost in the game and just exploring for hours, and there was almost always something interesting to find that made it worthwhile. I had never had that experience in gaming before. When Fallout, Balour's Gate, Planescape, etc came out I was too young and didn't have my own PC.

I've never gone back and played it again - I don't imagine it's possible to recapture that feeling of amazement at what they had accomplished with that game. To really understand why it's one of the best c-rpg's of all time you have to understand what a huge leap forward it was compared to anything else of its time.

 

[Smoblikat]

I tried playing Morrowind for the first time a few years ago but couldn’t get into it. Within an hour I uninstalled the game:

-constant stamina drain when running.
-no quest markers.
-no real fast travel.

An open world game with such flaws is an epic fail for me, because that’s not fun.

If the game wants to provide a hard mode that requires elite gameplay with no niceties, that’s absolutely fine. But easy/casual difficulty should fully support the player.

The entire game is supposed to be "hard mode". Ive put hundreds of hours in MW, literally at least 5000 into oblivion, and many hundred in skyrim, and the best game is by far MW. I only really played it on the xbox too, so I wasnt modding it or doing anything crazy, I loved it vanilla. The best gameplay is definitely oblivion though, and skyrim kinda sucks even though it is pretty fun. I think they went backwards with the series, but now that I own all 3 on the PC its easy to modernize MW to the point where its playable again (it really shows its age in stock form). Fallout 3 is also my favorite from that series, with NV and 4 both fighting it out for worst in the series, theyre both terrible compared to FO3, but im not sure which is worse.
.

I remember when Oblivion was announced. I immediately told my buddy "If they have cliff racers, I won't buy it".

Lol, the cliff racers and clanfear were merciless. I dont know if youve played skyrim, but the dawnguard DLC adds some extremely satisfying backstory about the cliff racers in morrowind, and another character you briefly encounter in the game too.

Also, not to get too off topic, but why are your RAM timings so high? A 1600mhz kit shouldnt be running 11's, that should be able to do 9's at least.............even a 9-10-9-24 @1.5v, bonus points for running it at 1T.

 

[Crono]

I pour one out for Jiub every Saint Jiub's day. Truly did the Divine's work, that guy.

The thing I didn't like about Skyrim (and possibly Oblivion, but it's been a while since I played it) is just how much destruction got nerfed since the days of Morrowind, at least on max difficulty. Especially someone like me who usually plays as a Breton Spellsword.

 

[UglyDuckling]

I play as Dark Elf..

Funny thing.. you don't need to invest in block skill at all if you combine destruction with a single handed sword or axe.

Deadric weapon + Destruction = GG.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

My 2cp.

Morrowind as a game was frustrating, but amazing at the time. They created a learning/leveling curve partly by intentionally making you a garbage fire at low levels. If anyone tried being a 'monk' character (unarmed exclusively) at low levels would have witnessed this upon spending the better part of an hour in epic combat with a mudcrab. In addition, the leveling multiplier system was an abomination that for some reason they carried forward to Oblivion as well. As others brought up, the journal was absolute crap, though the UI was better than Skyrim's just because it was designed for a PC (even if it was a pc @ 800x600). This doesn't even get started on the bugs that were in until it was patched/repatched by the community.

Having said that, there were a few things that made MW as popular/famous as it was, for one the game world was huge, absolutely ginormous for its time. Now, Daggerfall was bigger but it was all that random pseudo-dynamically generated content rather than actually crafted. For comparison, Vice City (2002) had a landmass size of roughly 5.7 Sq Mi (much of which was water), morrowind was around 9.3 Sq Mi. Now, landmass does not a game make, but there was tons to do in it and it was a true 'exploration' game, which we hadn't really had much of up to that point. It was a borderline single-player MMO (I remember it being described as such at the time) and had a pretty solid diversity of environments to reflect that, like swamp regions, underground caverns, derelict fortresses, wizard towers, etc. It was like a more robust version of Ultima IX (1999) with far more customization, a (while arguably weaker) less linear story, and far more choice with what to do with your character.

In 2002, other top-of-the-line games were Warcraft 3 (no FT), Neverwinter Nights, Metroid Prime, Dungeon Siege, Zelda:WindWaker, Kingdom Hearts, Jedi Outcast, and a handful of other relatively forgettable titles. A lot of these can still carry their weight to an extent, mostly thanks to modding (same as Morrowind), but the capabilities of the title need to be kept in perspective with the time period that it was released. True effort into things like location-based hit detection (Max Payne, 2001), extensive modding (aforementioned WC3, far outpaced Starcraft), open world non-procedurally generated worlds (GTA3, 2001), reasonable open-world AI (Morrowind arguably, with faction-based AI combat and scheduling.. might throw Black and White, 2001, in there) were very new. In addition, they tried a whole slew of relatively untested new things, like spell creation (personally saw a gimped version of that in Betrayal in Antara first, 1997), item enchantments, aforementioned AI systems, and a *very* wide design scope for a single player game (much of the stuff they did was normally relegated to MMOs), much of which was completely unheard of at this timeframe.

 

[bystander36]

I rarely replay games 5 years or older. I haven't played Morrowind in a long time, but when it was released, it was pretty amazing to me. The graphics were stunning for it's time. It was the first game that I ever saw with water that looked real (probably not so great today). I do remember that you had to be careful at the start, but I don't remember it being that difficult either. After playing through the game once, I setup scripts that would level up Athleticism, Speed and a few necessary things. I'd just setup the script and go watch a movie, come back and the character was ready to play.

After playing the game, making the most powerful characters I could, I later found that the most rewarding way to play was to create a character with a limited skill set, and stick with his play style. I've come to realize that this really is what sandbox games are about. They give you a living world that allows you to make what every character you can dream up, and it's up to you to enforce balancing rules. While the game seems unfinished, easily exploitable, and very unbalanced, it's only that way because they want to give you the freedom to make any character you can dream up. It's up to you to not exploit the system, and have self control to play it in an entertaining way. They also give you a slider for difficulty, which for some character types, it'll be low, but you can set it high for powerful ones. It's not so much of a challenge slider, but a balance slider to allow you to play a lot of different character types, which may be weak or strong.

Anyway, I thought Morrowind was the best of the Elder Scrolls, and Oblivion was a big step back to me. Arena was awesome in its day too, Daggerfall was just too buggy for me, that I really didn't get too far into it until a few years after release, when most the bugs were fixed.

 

[Ormada]

I understand nostalgia and rose tinted glasses and being blinded by memories.. but holy crap.. the only thing great about it is the music, music is phenominal, and it seems to have a lot of depth.. not played much because every attempt i just don't want to bother after 30 or so minutes.

The combat in this game destroys it all... hitting an enemy with any weapon is a bigger task than trying to climb MT Everest naked whilst being an amputee with 1 leg.

It's that bad.

Of course an opinion.

I do like Skyrim, i like Oblivion, i wanted to love Morrowind with all the hype.. it's bad and has aged really badly too.

I modded my game with a huge visual upgrade along with sound upgrades.. i gave this game a larger chance than i would most titles i don't like.


Opinions?

I can't stand how terrible the AI and character animation is. That alone makes me go through the game once for the so-so story and never play again. The fact that a character can be screaming but still acts like they would be when talking is not a convincing act.
I think they could learn something from RockStar and their animation styles.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I can't stand how terrible the AI and character animation is. That alone makes me go through the game once for the so-so story and never play again. The fact that a character can be screaming but still acts like they would be when talking is not a convincing act.
I think they could learn something from RockStar and their animation styles.

In 2002 everyone's AI and character animations were terrible. RockStar especially, even San Andreas (2004) was terrible from that respect, much less GTA:VC (2002). The bar was much lower at that time.

 

[BFG10K]

The entire game is supposed to be "hard mode".

1. not hard or difficult; requiring no great labor or effort:
2. free from pain, discomfort, worry, or care:
3. providing or conducive to ease or comfort; comfortable:
4. fond of or given to ease; easygoing:
5. not harsh or strict; lenient:
6. not burdensome or oppressive:
7. not difficult to influence or overcome; compliant:

If a game implements an easy option like Morrowind it needs to ease or remove burdensome mechanics to make it straightforward to play.

The things I listed add serious difficulty to the gameplay and they're still present when you use that setting. That's why I have a problem with them.

 

[bystander36]

If a game implements an easy option like Morrowind it needs to ease or remove burdensome mechanics to make it straightforward to play.

The things I listed add serious difficulty to the gameplay and they're still present when you use that setting. That's why I have a problem with them.

I'm not sure that the setting for difficulty is what he meant by easy or hard mode. That difficulty only applies to combat, while you still have to pick your encounters wisely (no auto leveling mobs), and you still have to figure out where to go with all the quests.

I always used that slider to balance character designs. Given the game is a sandbox games with a very open ended character design system, it's very difficult to balance all creations. That slider allows characters which are inherently weak a chance to exist, while over powered characters can be challenged.

 

[Mandres]

I wouldn't recommend really playing Morrowind now, except as a study in the birth of the open world single player rpg. I completely understand new players hating the mechanics and not enjoying it. But calling it "overrated" or a "bad" game is absurd.

Just like Battlefield 1942, EverQuest, or GTA:3, there isn't much of a reason to play them now. But these were all brilliant, genre-defining experiences in their time. So far ahead of everything else available that it blew minds. That's the context that you have evaluate the game within.

and yes, the water effect was jaw dropping. I remember being completely mesmerized by it.

 

[Smoblikat]

If a game implements an easy option like Morrowind it needs to ease or remove burdensome mechanics to make it straightforward to play.

The things I listed add serious difficulty to the gameplay and they're still present when you use that setting. That's why I have a problem with them.

No it doesnt.......it just means somthing like minesweper is more your speed, which is fine. That setting doesnt affect gameplay mechanics, it only affects your damage and the damage of enemies. On a scale of 1/6th to 6X I believe, where easy means you do 6X damage and enemies do 1/6th.

 

[dogen1]

Morrowind is pretty great. The real time dice roll combat is weird at first, but you just have to work with it, not against it. So, while you're new at least, focus on one or two weapon skills and use them. Once you've built up enough money (which doesn't take long) you can just pay to train whatever skills you want.

 

[Achilles97]

Morrowind was extremely immersive imo when I played it upon release. At the time I hadn't played anything at that level of freedom with such a rich environment. I played the heck out of Daggerfall but there was only so much my imagination could do to enrich the bland repetitive world. Morrowind was just so alive. I spend the first several hours of game play just exploring the first port village. My character ended up being a scavenger/treasure hunter. I collected as many different items as possible and set up a museum in a Balmoral house.

As someone mentioned above, the game could quickly become godmode if you tap into the full potential of constant effect enchanting. You could wear multiple layers of clothing that had no function beyond being an enchant holder. You could offset any fatigue, become basically immune to types of damage, etc.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Well you have to compare it to 2002 standards for graphics and gameplay. In 2002 there were very few open world games, and probably none that looked as good as Morrowind. It looked gorgeous at the time with the water and lighting etc and since it now looks ugly, you already lose some of the appeal of the game. Plus the gameplay is somewhat dated by modern standards but I greatly enjoyed it at release. I tried to play in a few years ago though and found it tedious.

Then again, I'm starting to get a bit "over" open world games. At least ones by Bethesda. Fallout 4 was quite boring imo.