Yet Another Morrowind Thread

[Curious_Tongue]

I might be weird but 24 hour shops never break my immersion. I've never gone in an armor shop at 3AM and been like "OMG this should not be open!"

It never bothered me either.

Probably because I don't roleplay.

 

[Lemming42]

I dunno how people could say Oblivion feels more like Daggerfall. Daggerfall was a generic fantasy setting but at least an original one (and with a slight alien twist that would be brought to the forefront with Morrowind) and most of the fun in Daggerfall's dungeons was using your skills/spells to try and overcome the unfair situations and mazes the game threw at you, whereas in Oblivion the fun in dungeons was... fighting beggars wearing Ebony armour.

 

[DraQ]

Schedules should have some meaning in the game beside immersion to be worthwhile.

This. Apart from a handful of quests (that could've just used scripting instead), there was no point to generalized schedules in OB. You couldn't steal anything worthwhile, there was no point to murdering NPCs in their sleep and so on.

Since in Morrowind diurnal cycle affected only vampirism and visibility (outside of two spots in the MQ and one vampire quest), there would be little point to added schedules, although they could've been of use for thievery and there were more quests where you had to kill someone who wasn't just some kamikaze derpwad in the wilderness.

Daggerfall had "VEENGEAANCE!!!".

Some shops in Oblivion have unique items to steal. I recall waterwalking shock-resistant boots in the general shop at Anvil. (but yeah, pretty shitty quality)

I don't recall unique stealable items in shops. Some shops did have unique items that could only be acquired by buying with high mercantile, but not stolen.

I dunno how people could say Oblivion feels more like Daggerfall. Daggerfall was a generic fantasy setting but at least an original one (and with a slight alien twist that would be brought to the forefront with Morrowind) and most of the fun in Daggerfall's dungeons was using your skills/spells to try and overcome the unfair situations and mazes the game threw at you, whereas in Oblivion the fun in dungeons was... fighting beggars wearing Ebony armour.

It's like the entire Cyrodiil was infested by Gaenor clones.

 

[hakuroshi]

And if it couldn't, you were left with signposts sculpted in barely humanoid forms for NPCs.

Better then retarded asylum inmates of later TES. No power of imagination can help you here.

It's like the entire Cyrodiil was infested by Gaenor clones.

I kinda like this mod idea - replace every Oblivion NPC with Gaenor clones. And replace all sounds with cliffracer cries as earlier in this thread.

 

[DraQ]

And if it couldn't, you were left with signposts sculpted in barely humanoid forms for NPCs.

Better then retarded asylum inmates of later TES. No power of imagination can help you here.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

You can imagine Sheogorath's influence is slipping into Cyrodiil.

 

[hakuroshi]

Sheogorath made Daggerfall, actually. He is Ted Peterson, after all.

 

[Carrion]

Schedules start to feel a bit more important when you get a quest where you have to steal an object that is right in front of a character, and the said character, never, ever moves. Or when the object is in an empty room where no one ever comes to. I've been replaying the Thieves Guild quests in MW and they're worse than I remembered when it comes to gameplay, mostly because of the lack of NPC schedules and movement. At best you may get a single guard that slowly walks around a house, otherwise it's either impossible to fail or the whole thing becomes a cheesefest. The first time I played the game I also really wanted to clean out the Balmora Council Club by killing my targets one by one in their beds, which kind of seemed like the only solution that made sense for a level 3-or-something character, but the game never offered that option. 24-hour shops never really bothered me either, so a lot of this probably could've been done by scripting, but I kind of dislike the idea that the behaviour of an NPC changes radically based on what quests you happen to have active.

The most fun I had in Oblivion (OOO, to be specific) was robbing the Ayleid artifact collector's house in the Imperial City. There were a number of guards with different schedules (one of them could be bribed IIRC), you could case the joint during daytime and break in at night, you could wake up the residents if you were clumsy... It was not exactly Thief, it was positively LARPy, and at that point I was desperately trying to get something out of the game, but it at least somewhat resembled being an actual thief and offered gameplay that was more interesting than standing still and clicking on an object when the sneak icon becomes visible, and it wasn't even an actual quest but just me fucking around. The shortcomings of the game undermined the good things with astonishing efficiency, but I thought that this was one of the few areas where Oblivion genuinely improved on Morrowind.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Hmmm, that customer is looking around, maybe I should ask him if he's looking for something in particular...or not, he seems to have settled in that corner where I can't see him very well. Guess he wants to be left alone, then...hmm, I didn't know my wares were enchanted, they all seem to be floating towards that corner. I hope they don't bother that weird guy...oh, he's leaving. I guess I should do something about those floating wares, I can't afford to lose customers like this. Why does it look like his pockets are much heavier than before he walked in, though? Bah, must be my imagination.

 

[DalekFlay]

I think the whole thing is a trade-off really. Schedules and "radiant AI" have just as many annoyances as a guard never moving from under the pimp sword you want to steal. In a 50/50 tie I guess going the more IMMERSHUN route is best, but Morrowind is probably one of the most immersive games of all time and it doesn't have NPC schedules.

 

[hakuroshi]

Morrowind is probably one of the most immersive games of all time and it doesn't have NPC schedules.

That's subjective, really. Lack of schedules is but a part of a generally static nature of the game. Its effects on immersion depends on personal preferences.

 

[Cadmus]

I remember there being some good stealable stuff on display in shops.

Stealable - yes.
Good - not so much.

You basically only had some worst or second worst tier stuff lying about so that the player wouldn't be wondering if they actually entered the right door. But since you generally found this kind of stuff in the starter dungeon... well, yeah.

Speaking of immersion, I get so bored with the nice display boxes all over the world locked on 100 with a steel dagger in them. Why would anyone put the worst weapons available on display behind the best lock. There should be stuff like soul gems with good souls or unique powerful weapons.

 

[DalekFlay]

Morrowind is probably one of the most immersive games of all time and it doesn't have NPC schedules.

That's subjective, really. Lack of schedules is but a part of a generally static nature of the game. Its effects on immersion depends on personal preferences.

The perfect world building, lore and visual design makes Morrowind one of the most immersive RPG lands ever. The fact the NPCs don't move much is outweighed by the other immersive aspects of the game tenfold. Yes of course that's subjective opinion but people who love Morrowind don't love it for the combat, they love it because of the world Bethesda built.

 

[Cadmus]

Morrowind is probably one of the most immersive games of all time and it doesn't have NPC schedules.

That's subjective, really. Lack of schedules is but a part of a generally static nature of the game. Its effects on immersion depends on personal preferences.

The perfect world building, lore and visual design makes Morrowind one of the most immersive RPG lands ever. The fact the NPCs don't move much is outweighed by the other immersive aspects of the game tenfold. Yes of course that's subjective opinion but people who love Morrowind don't love it for the combat, they love it because of the world Bethesda built.

Funny thing is, I remember I found it comforting to go back to that NPC who would stand in one spot for eternity. It felt like returning to an old friend. I don't know what is it, maybe the brain just finds a way around it to make the game work.

 

[DalekFlay]

Funny thing is, I remember I found it comforting to go back to that NPC who would stand in one spot for eternity. It felt like returning to an old friend. I don't know what is it, maybe the brain just finds a way around it to make the game work.

You subconsciously assume those people live regular lives when you're not there, I think. You go into the armor store and your favorite little wood elf is running the counter as always, but you never actually think he's standing there 24 hours. Maybe once you leave he starts cleaning upstairs, or he closes for lunch and walks down to Eight Plates, who knows. The world is so well built you aren't consciously walking around looking for flaws, you're immersed in the game world full time.

In contrast Oblivion's shop keepers might close and actually walk down to the pub, but they do it in robo-fasion and repeat the same dumb conversation lines and because the world is less interesting you're fully aware they're weird automatons following their set route.

 

[hakuroshi]

The perfect world building, lore and visual design makes Morrowind one of the most immersive RPG lands ever. The fact the NPCs don't move much is outweighed by the other immersive aspects of the game tenfold. Yes of course that's subjective opinion but people who love Morrowind don't love it for the combat, they love it because of the world Bethesda built.

Morrowind has an excellent and unique setting which you can explore in-game. But, I think, we differ a bit in what "immersion" in a game, rpg, TES specifically, is. For me it's a feeling that I, or, actually my character, live in that game world and interact with it in a meaningful manner. You can immerse in a good book, but you can't play a book. I have a great time exploring MW and its lore, but actual gameplay not really helping such immersion. When I play Morrowind I often feel that I play not a character who is living in MW, but character who is LARPing beign a character in MW.

 

[DalekFlay]

The perfect world building, lore and visual design makes Morrowind one of the most immersive RPG lands ever. The fact the NPCs don't move much is outweighed by the other immersive aspects of the game tenfold. Yes of course that's subjective opinion but people who love Morrowind don't love it for the combat, they love it because of the world Bethesda built.

Morrowind has an excellent and unique setting which you can explore in-game. But, I think, we differ a bit in what "immersion" in a game, rpg, TES specifically, is. For me it's a feeling that I, or, actually my character, live in that game world and interact with it in a meaningful manner. You can immerse in a good book, but you can't play a book. I have a great time exploring MW and its lore, but actual gameplay not really helping such immersion. When I play Morrowind I often feel that I play not a character who is living in MW, but character who is LARPing beign a character in MW.

I know what fucking immershun means. I just disagree with you.

 

[Commissar Draco]

There's plenty thing to do in Morrowind without turning into psudo MMO filled with characters possessing the warm room IQ; and to be honest all those NPC schedules have some sense only if you're still unknown muder-hobo with no penny; the Moment you climb up the social ladder by guild work and/or feast of Epic Bravery and/or guile the NPCs should adapt their schedules for you; Do you believe some commoner shopkeeper would let the General of Legion, Head of Dunmer House, Guild Master or Neverarine Hortator waiting only cause he wants to close his shop and go to in in order to derp about mudcrabs?

 

[Xbalanque]

Funny thing is, I remember I found it comforting to go back to that NPC who would stand in one spot for eternity. It felt like returning to an old friend. I don't know what is it, maybe the brain just finds a way around it to make the game work.

You subconsciously assume those people live regular lives when you're not there, I think. You go into the armor store and your favorite little wood elf is running the counter as always, but you never actually think he's standing there 24 hours. Maybe once you leave he starts cleaning upstairs, or he closes for lunch and walks down to Eight Plates, who knows. The world is so well built you aren't consciously walking around looking for flaws, you're immersed in the game world full time.

In contrast Oblivion's shop keepers might close and actually walk down to the pub, but they do it in robo-fasion and repeat the same dumb conversation lines and because the world is less interesting you're fully aware they're weird automatons following their set route.

I don't really agree that Morrowind is so immersive. For me the whole dialogue system broke it - I felt as if I was consulting the encyclopedia not talking to anybody. Anyway, Oblivion felt somewhat artificial in it's creation of the living gameworld, there was that something that made the Morrowind world better to be at.

But if we come to the definition, I think the most immersive game was Gothic II were I actually felt that I was a subject to the same laws as NPC's. I couldn't kill anybody in front of the whole town just by jumping on a roof which nobody would have been able to climb and everyone seemed to be doing something and it felt real.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

NPCs in Gothic can into roof jumping, though. Learned that the hard way.

 

[Lemming42]

NPC schedules actually have kind of a huge effect on a game like Morrowind. It was kind of fun (if a little LARPy) in Skyrim, Fo3 and FNV to study what people did at what times of the day and plan a theft on their house or an assassination or whatever accordingly.

Morrowind didn't need schedules, but I imagine the IMMERSHUN aspect of the game would have been improved quite a lot with them, or at least something resembling them.

 

[Akratus]

A proper version of OpenMW can't get here fast enough.

 

[Somberlain]

NPCs in Gothic can into roof jumping, though. Learned that the hard way.

Gothic 2 AI stlill sometimes amazes me with NPCs following you on roofs and looting corpses etc. Meanwhile in Skyrim, giants get stuck behind a small rock you can just walk over.

 

[Lemming42]

This is kind of unrelated but I dunno where else to put it:
I bought that Elder Scrolls Anthology pack thing today. While I got it just for the maps (which are fantastic) I decided to try and install Arena and Daggerfall because I was curious about how Bethesda would handle them.

Rather than just using the fully functional free download versions they have on their site, they seem to have bizarrely included different, less functional versions that run on an old version of DOSBox (making Arena unplayable because you can't increase the cycles enough to have it run at anything near normal speed) and Daggerfall's fullscreen mode is a smaller resolution than it's windowed mode. Oh, and they put one of those smoothing filters on Arena which make everything look like a psychedelic nightmare.

Overall, 10/10

EDIT: What the flying fuck, I just noticed that every single Elder Scrolls game has an age rating of 18. Shouldn't they be like 12 or 15 or something? I guess Daggerfall could push 18 under a really really strict rating system, but the others?

 

[Delterius]

People tend to overlook different things and are also jaded in different ways. Therefore, Immersion is subjective. What Morrowind had was atmosphere, wether or not you're immersed in it is up to you. Some can't get into a game because they have an actual european castle next to their home and games' generally look kinda shitty. Others just can't get over their pet peeves, really, most people just have got to relax.

I don't really agree that Morrowind is so immersive. For me the whole dialogue system broke it - I felt as if I was consulting the encyclopedia not talking to anybody.

It took me 100 hours to get this feeling because of a really simple reason, I played Morrowind right after playing Skyrim and the ability to ask people about general things (and most importantly, quest details) was just great. To this day I don't really care that the dialogue is mostly generic.