Sylvanus said:
People just keep saying DF is better than MW because MW was a let down of their expectations as the innovator of all RPG's (not all, just most). I don't care whether you were let down or not, I just want to know simply:
DF as is vs. MW as is, which is better based purely on good points, bad points.
You just have to play Daggerfall long enough and do enough quests to realize why Df is a more role-playing game. All those "useless" features, skills and complex char gen are part of what makes Df a superior role-playing game. As it is Morrowind is nothing better than Diablo or Dungeon Siege. I sugest you try to play Daggerfall thieves guild again with a thief character and also try the witches, commoners and merchants quests and those quests that are less simple or don't involve going into a dungeon. You will need to have at least one weapon skill even if you play as a thief to do the main quest dungeons so choose long blade and you are ready.
A friend of mine once told me he hated the dungeon crawling part so he just activated the cheat to jump to the right locations in huge dungeons. Except for the main quests you don't have to do dungeon crawl quests unless you want to. You can refuse and ignore quests you don't want to do with a minimal reputation penality.
Here's some Morrowind dumb downs just to clarify things:
> Biography in Daggerfall did have an influence in many things in the game. You can even receive more gold than normal in loots if you choose certain answers.
In Morrowind there is no biography generation.
> You can roll and adjust all your stats at chargen. Plus you can edit all your skill primary/major/minor skills, redistribute skill points and balance your char advantages / disadvantages when creating a custom class.
In Morrowind you can only choose your major/minor skills. They have powers which is a dumbed down replacement for lack of biography generation and lack of a/ds.
> In Daggerfall you have reputation per faction and per kingdom. If your rep gets bad with the law of a certain kingdom it doens't change in neutral kingdoms and can even imporove to enemies of that kingdom. There were about 100 different factions in Daggerfall which had a indirect influence in the game. Some guilds are hidden and inaccessible until you do the right thing.
Morrowind law system was just surreal. You just pay money and solve your problems. Another Tod Howard thing where commiting crimes is just a joke. Plus everyone knows where the thieves guild or the assassins guild are. People even point directions to it.
> There are tons of exotic skills important to non combat classes and to non-magic users that were removed: etiquete, streetwise, climbing, swimming, languages. Most of these are social skills. A lot of skills were mixed. Some i agree like having less weapon skills. Others like mixing pickpocket into and lockpick into security is a bit dumb.
Some skills were added to Morrowind but most offer more options to combat. Spliting heavy and light armor and providing a shield skill was a good addition however. Alchemy was also a nice addition.
There are a lot of other features that if they were continued in future Tes games it would make the series really something to play.
The Daggerfall world was huge and with a much more rich political map than Morrowind. There were more than a douzen of kingdoms in the Illiac each one having more than a thousand cities, dungeons, small towns, farms, homes, ruined castles, cemiteries, temples, witch coves, bandit camps, etc
The world was suposed to be dynamic with kingdoms breaking alliances and going into war. Vampire clans would ravage entire cities and bring the plague everywhere. See for example mount&blade with its dynamic world, war parties ravaging the land, and kingdoms fighting against each other. This is an example how good gameplay and originality can pay off.
Classes like Acrobat, Healer, Ranger, the survival skill, Thief, Bard were suposed to provide a different life-style. Something different than just hack-and-slash. A bard for example could get some money in taverns and get more dialog clues with his superior social skills. Thief almost did it but some abilities like hide in shadows were bugged. But still there are plenty of quests were being a thief alone pays off and you can keep picking those quests. They will change slightly every time you pick them and it's not just the place and names that change. Sometime the offender and crime motivation also changes. It's all part of the template system created for Daggerfall. The decision to have the player dungeon crawl all main quests was just a VERY bad decision.
So instead of improving on this they decided to take a step backwards. Morrowind was not much better than Dungeon Siege or Diablo for an rpg. Oblivion will be not much better than Arena. Maybe one day they will get some ambition and try to make a game like Daggerfall was suposed to be. But i doubt because of what people think of what sells these days is to have hack-and-salsh gameplay and fluf classes focused only on combat. The world must be static and stories must be linear not to "frustrate" the player too much and make storytelling more linear and "intense" acording to the opinion of some people who never wrote a book. The problem is that all this goes against what makes a good rpg. So instead they just do adventure games and call them rpgs because you can dress-up in a lot different ways, choose your face and attributes for a different combat style. Man even adventure games in the old days were inteligent than this.