Morrowind vs Skyrim objectively

[DalekFlay]

Skyrim has objectively better archery.

That's all I got.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Archery is fun in Skyrim.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

Archery is fun in Dragons Dogma. In Skyrim its dogshit like the rest of combat. Aim for head , well no fucking shit

 

[naossano]

Just seen this on Facebook.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Utility magic in Morrowind is pointless and insipid.

Actually utility magic is quite useful. Water breathing, water walking, levitating, teleporting, all very useful spells.

It's the fireball spells that are complete ass shit.

 

[Crevice tab]

Enjoy your sleep simulator. Morrowind's mage is unplayable.

PS: spells may be diverse but 95% of them are useless anyway. Utility magic in Morrowind is pointless and insipid.

Only if you don't know how to play mage. If you go all fireball throwing and no brains then yes you'll lose badly. Understand how the magic system works and using spells in clever combinations and you'll easily get to unbeatable demigod levels.

 

[Pipeweed]

there's natural magicka regen it's called resting.
the most annoying thing is, as you go up in skill custom spells' mana cost doesnt decrease unlike daggerfall so you prepare new ones.
also no need to bother with a custom class, go balls deep high elf - mage - apprentice!

 

[DragoFireheart]

Good job mentioning the 5%. What about the

Ok.

higher jump,

Sometimes you'll want to jump but don't want to levitate since the levitate controls can be awkward/annoying.

feather

Cast Feather when you are near encumbered? Though it's more useful as an enchantment.

lock (really? Have you ever needed to lock something in Morrowind?),

Ok this one is useless.

better swim speed,

I believe mana wise it's cheaper than fortify speed increase.

almost all the bound spells are stupid and you never use them (bound boots? Helm? I doubt you ever used it),

Aren't all of the weapon bound spells useful? And the weapons can hit enemies that are immune to normal weapons IIRC.

drain attribute is much worse than damage and much much worse than absorb,

You can exploit the drain Intelligence attribute to regain all of your mana.

weaknesses are a waste of your precious magicka,

They can let you do much more damage with offensive spells. The issue isn't their use but the mana cost.

the detection spells are shit and so are the sound ones.

Yeah these are shit too IIRC.

And water breathing is pointless, walking is better pretty much all the time, even when you need to actually dive. You just walk through the water surface until you get to the place you want to enter the water and then do it.

Waterbreathing is not pointless for long dives. I have found it extremely useful.

 

[Talby]

Choose the Atronach sign, learn to summon an Ancestral Ghost and attack it. Free magicka.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Choose the Atronach sign, learn to summon an Ancestral Ghost and attack it. Free magicka.

That's an annoying way to regain magicka. I prefer drain 100 int on self for 1 second.

 

[DalekFlay]

Pure mages are viable and are the most interesting way to play the game.

Please die in a fire. Morrowind is the absolute king of all the mage player's deceivers, it tricks you into thinking that a mage will be fun because it has good spell diversity but it fails beyond terribly in all aspects because the gameplay itself is shit, plus no natural magicka regen and its pots are the most rare in the game, this is definitely not a case of "bring pots you fucker".

Enjoy your sleep simulator. Morrowind's mage is unplayable.

PS: spells may be diverse but 95% of them are useless anyway. Utility magic in Morrowind is pointless and insipid.

There are people like Draq who will tell you endlessly how amazing a pure mage in Morrowind can be, but in my experience you're spot-on. They definitely didn't plan for pure mages in that game, it's obviously built for support/secondary attacks.

 

[abnaxus]

Have fun beating Gaynor in Tribunal as a pure mage.

Or the superhero Bloodmoon derpwolves.

 

[Johannes]

So is there a hypeless consensus formed yet?

 

[DragoFireheart]

That's something that I haven't mentioned because usually in RPGs I don't enjoy summoner's gameplay other than Necromancers with a mini army of undeads. I don't like one~two summons that feel like a "pet" of sorts, so I've never really used the MW ones except for that little Imp. He was pretty good to distract and tank stuff. I don't remember ever summoning other monsters other than him so I don't even know if they're good.

I prefer my mages Baldur's Gate 2 style: overpowered and ridiculously immune to 90% of things.

So is there a hypeless consensus formed yet?

Sure.

Pure fireball and illusion using mages suck. A Fighter/Mage with levitate to shoot enemies and Alchemy boosting his strength to over 9,000 and breaking his sword on every swing is fine.

 

[Delterius]

It's infinitely more rewarding to play some kind of fighter

Really? Melee in Morrowind is 'infinitely rewarding'? That's a real sleeping simulator.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

I think when we ask which is objectively better, we should rather ask what does each objectively offer - that the other doesn't - which might be considered something some players will prefer over the other? This is of course subjective, but it does give us data. The most important thing to get right are the data in favor of each: they must be accurate. So if you say Skyrim has more lines of non-procedural UNIQUE conversation then you must be correct; it cannot be debatable. So the data must not be opinion, only the fact the data might be preferred by some players is opinion.

Here's some data (all is subject to later scrutiny by others here at codex) which might make players favor Morrowind:
1. You can levitate/jump very high to skip or creatively travel which tends to make travel more non-linear
2. Conversation is more flexible via keywords and numerous, as most of it's text-based, although a lot of it's generic and repeated from one npc to another - if you use imagination then no npc just says a couple lines of text
3. There're no automatic map markers or compass headings for quests/locations
4. More factions (10 vs 6) and gaining rank is more picky (stat/skill req)
5. A deeper enchantment system (for items) and spellcraft system (nonexistent in skyrim) for spells
6. It's harder early in the game
7. The graphics and creature names are more unique
8. (i'd like to say something about stat/skills, but I can't speak objectively so... I won't)

note - On point 7 I want to clarify that the creature names in Morrowind are very unique and thus their models also tend to be unique. It's less about Deer or Dragon or Bear and more about Siltstrider or Guar or Netch.

Could someone speak objectively on the number and type of quests? For example, I've heard people state there're more faction quests in Morrowind, but where's the proof? Number of unique quests should be easy to determine. Granted, it won't tell us the quality of those quests or the content of them - for example most conversation in Skyrim is voiced.

And what of books? In Daggerfall books are everywhere. You even start the game with a couple. There're book stores and libraries. The guilds have bookcases where you can read books for free. I know there're boks in Morowind. But if you count the total words written in all books in Morrowind and compare to Skyrim, what's the result? (btw, I know there're books in Skyrim)

 

[belowmecoldhands]

One other factual data, although this one being considered something some people might like is PURELY opinion:
1. Less and less equipment slots from each game to the next

The slot counts below do not include weapons.

Daggerfall. There're 24 (*) (23 if you don't use a shield):
head
left upper arm
right upper arm
chest
gloves
greaves
boots
shield
2x amulets
2x bracelet
2x ring (artifiact rings/amulets can be worn with the others simultaneously??)
2x bracer
2x marks
2x crystal
pants
shirt
cape
robe/cloak
* - (there're additional wearables.. like straps/skirts/sashes etc.. they're weakly enchantable)

Morrowind. There're 18 (17 if you don't use a shield):
head
left upper arm
right upper arm
left bracer
right bracer
left gaunlet
right gauntlet
cuirass
greaves
boots
shield
x2 rings
amulet
robe
belt
pants
shirt

Oblivion. There're 9 equipment slots in oblivion (8 if you don't use a shield?)
head
chest
bracers
greaves
feet
amulet
2x ring
shield

Skyrim. There're 8 equipment slots (6/7 if you don't use shield and/or don't wear a mask?).
head (in some rare cases you can also wear a mask)
chest
bracers
feet
amulet
ring
shield

 

[JarlFrank]

Yeah, reducing the amount of wearable item slots is one of the worst design decisions they made with Oblivion.

 

[Lhynn]

Yeah, reducing the amount of wearable item slots is one of the worst design decisions they made with Oblivion.

I remember reading it was to improve loading times. Sounded like bullshit to me at the time and it still does.

 

[JarlFrank]

Heh, I remember they claimed it was for balance reasons because players used to wear ten enchanted items and then be overpowered. So they radically lowered the amount of equipment slots (and, if I remember correctly, they removed the enchantment skill, too).

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

Heh, I remember they claimed it was for balance reasons because players used to wear ten enchanted items and then be overpowered. So they radically lowered the amount of equipment slots (and, if I remember correctly, they removed the enchantment skill, too).

Yep, you remember it correctly.

 

[Xenich]

Well to be fair Oblivion could've still been a pretty entertaining game even with much less content and equipment slots than MW, it was a matter of doing the rest right. That unbelievable level scaling is what nails the coffin for me, it's much more inexcusable than lack of enchantments or spears. Dialogue was pretty shit too.

Actually I barely remember Oblivion, I think I played it back in 2007 or something. Thought it was a mildly fun game with a terrible scaling system. I should play it again one of these days I remember enjoying Shivering Isles quite a lot despite the game's shortcomings.

While it still pales in comparison to Morrowind (in my humble opinion), you can mod the living hell out of Oblivion repairing, eliminating, re-balancing, etc... the game to a point that... well... I would play it any day over Skyrim. Do a search for FCOM mod for Oblivion. The game looks amazing as well as getting rid off scaling, repairing the stupid questing, and adding a ton of really cool things. Be warned, properly modding Oblivion with FCOM is quite a task, but honestly... I think well worth it. If you aren't going to, then I wouldn't bother vanilla Oblivion is one of the worst games I have played.

 

[Crevice tab]

While it still pales in comparison to Morrowind (in my humble opinion), you can mod the living hell out of Oblivion repairing, eliminating, re-balancing, etc... the game to a point that... well... I would play it any day over Skyrim. Do a search for FCOM mod for Oblivion. The game looks amazing as well as getting rid off scaling, repairing the stupid questing, and adding a ton of really cool things. Be warned, properly modding Oblivion with FCOM is quite a task, but honestly... I think well worth it. If you aren't going to, then I wouldn't bother vanilla Oblivion is one of the worst games I have played.

So if Oblivion wasn't Oblivion it would be a great game?

I sort of agree with the feeling but if you change the quests, landscape, dungeons, graphics and leveling then you won't have much of Oblivion left (which does wonders for playability). Just give Skyrim a few years and it will have better mods than Oblivion does.

 

[DragoFireheart]

I should play it again one of these days

Why would you do that to yourself?

Just replay Morrowind.

 

[Xenich]

While it still pales in comparison to Morrowind (in my humble opinion), you can mod the living hell out of Oblivion repairing, eliminating, re-balancing, etc... the game to a point that... well... I would play it any day over Skyrim. Do a search for FCOM mod for Oblivion. The game looks amazing as well as getting rid off scaling, repairing the stupid questing, and adding a ton of really cool things. Be warned, properly modding Oblivion with FCOM is quite a task, but honestly... I think well worth it. If you aren't going to, then I wouldn't bother vanilla Oblivion is one of the worst games I have played.

So if Oblivion wasn't Oblivion it would be a great game?

I sort of agree with the feeling but if you change the quests, landscape, dungeons, graphics and leveling then you won't have much of Oblivion left (which does wonders for playability). Just give Skyrim a few years and it will have better mods than Oblivion does.

I doesn't change the quests completely, just removes all the stupidity in them (hand holding, etc...). Also adds a ton more (traveling merchants and quest NPCs throughout the world with entire story lines of interaction).

As for Skyrim, the engine is limited in terms of game mechanics. Sure, you can make the game look photo realistic, amazing in all kinds of visuals, but you can't for instance insert Oblivion or Morrowind mechanics into the game. The engine is what it is and it constrains you, so no matter how many mods they make, you will always end up with that basic engine limitation.