Morrowind was massive decline and should be considered as such

[skaraher]

Morrowind was the last good Bethesda game and masterpiece compared to Shitfield.

Sure but it was still decline when compared to Daggerfall and contemporary games like Gothic. The Toddler hadn't assumed complete control of Bethesda so there were still some redeeming factors.

The Toddler was a random game tester back. He was never smart enough to code at a decent level but he was a ladder climber type of dude. That type that's is always with his tongue up his superior's ass hunting for the next promotion.
His biggest advantage is the fact that he looks like an harmless and honest midget(this fools a lot of casuals and stans) but in reality he is a greedy lying piece of shit.

He did design on Morrowind and even wrote the Imperial Legion questline (which is not really good tbh)

 

[luj1]

Morrowind was the last good Bethesda game and masterpiece compared to Shitfield.

Sure but it was still decline when compared to Daggerfall

Nah u are just a toothless idiot

Morrowind and Daggerfall are completely different approaches (proc gen vs. handcrafted) so point is moot

 

[Modron]

You know you're right when someone just goes straight to insults.

 

[NecroLord]

Morrowind was the last good Bethesda game and masterpiece compared to Shitfield.

Sure but it was still decline when compared to Daggerfall and contemporary games like Gothic. The Toddler hadn't assumed complete control of Bethesda so there were still some redeeming factors.

The Toddler was a random game tester back. He was never smart enough to code at a decent level but he was a ladder climber type of dude. That type that's is always with his tongue up his superior's ass hunting for the next promotion.
His biggest advantage is the fact that he looks like an harmless and honest midget(this fools a lot of casuals and stans) but in reality he is a greedy lying piece of shit.

Yeah, tricky Todd, master of the Chess Club.
However, to his credit, I think Todd understands how to take advantage of opportunities and how this rotten modern triple A industry works.
Personally, I always valued Daggerfall more than Morrowind and any other game in the series.
But Morrowind is still great.

 

[luj1]

You know you're agressively dumb when someone just goes straight to insults.

 

[Modron]

I am sorry I insulted your favorite shitty game.

 

[skaraher]

Morrowind was the last good Bethesda game and masterpiece compared to Shitfield.

Sure but it was still decline when compared to Daggerfall and contemporary games like Gothic. The Toddler hadn't assumed complete control of Bethesda so there were still some redeeming factors.

The Toddler was a random game tester back. He was never smart enough to code at a decent level but he was a ladder climber type of dude. That type that's is always with his tongue up his superior's ass hunting for the next promotion.
His biggest advantage is the fact that he looks like an harmless and honest midget(this fools a lot of casuals and stans) but in reality he is a greedy lying piece of shit.

Yeah, tricky Todd, master of the Chess Club.
However, to his credit, I think Todd understands how to take advantage of opportunities and how this rotten modern triple A industry works.
Personally, I always valued Daggerfall more than Morrowind and any other game in the series.
But Morrowind is still great.

Well Todd rose to prominence at a time where Bethesda nearly bankrupted itself with under performing projects and was pretty much running with a skeleton crew of less than a dozen employees. The situation was bad and Morrowind saved the studio and allowed it to expand to a whole other level. From a business standpoint Todd's decisions make sense.

 

[luj1]

reminder that artistically Todd was 1000% against making Morrowind "too weird"

but thankfully Rolston and MK found a way

 

[luj1]

skaraher all very well documented u bum

 

[ERYFKRAD]

too weird

An achievement of no significance.
Great fucking setting? Nice! Politicking and false histories/ multiple interpretations of historic events? Bloody brilliant!
What do you do with it? Fuck all, you just grab some safety gear and break some lunatic's phylactery.

 

[luj1]

It is of no significance to you, because you are a small minded dumb barbarian

 

[ERYFKRAD]

It is of no significance to you, because you are a small minded dumb barbarian

Who gives a shit about the background of a world if it does nothing but serve as window dressing to a linear plot.

 

[Lemming42]

Morrowind and Daggerfall are completely different approaches (proc gen vs. handcrafted) so point is moot

It's still an installment in the series that bills itself as a sequel, people are right to compare the two.

I don't think most people even argue that Morrowind should have fully retained all Daggerfall's roguelike elements or massive procgen'd world or anything, just that it's a pity the series fell as far as it did as fast as it did, and that the MW devs were content with reducing the scope and ambition of the series so dramatically.

There's no reason that things like Daggerfall's crime system couldn't have been kept or expanded upon, and there's no reason that MW couldn't have had very rudimentary NPC day/night schedules like Daggerfall did (stores, palaces and guilds closing at night, etc, which is absolutely critical to thief gameplay). There's no reason they couldn't have had a more robust reputation system, as DF did. There's no reason why DF's language skills couldn't have been reconsidered (something that, bizarrely enough, Starfield is trying to bring back).

It's not criticised for not being a carbon copy of Daggerfall, it's criticised for taking steps back in almost every area, and almost entirely discarding the world sim aspects. It's doubly annoying because, even taken on its own terms, Morrowind is packed with ultra-linear quests, bad AI, no reactivity or C&C, barebones combat that becomes far too easy far too quick, etc. They didn't boil Daggerfall down to its essentials to offer a tighter and more handcrafted experience; they just threw out most of what made Daggerfall interesting and produced a single-player MMO with mostly awful quests and combat mechanics.

 

[luj1]

It is of no significance to you, because you are a small minded dumb barbarian

Who gives a shit about the background of a world if it does nothing but serve as window dressing to a linear plot.

Because a well designed world can tell its own story

this is something beyond your understanding however

 

[luj1]

I don't think most people even argue that Morrowind should have fully retained all Daggerfall's roguelike elements

absolutely not

It's not criticised for not being a carbon copy of Daggerfall, it's criticised for taking steps back in almost every area

this is nonsense

 

[Lemming42]

this is nonsense

- Skill system enormously reduced. Language skills reduced to "Speechcraft", Thaumaturgy lost, etc. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as "more" obviously doesn't equal "better", but:

- Massively reduced number of viable playstyles. In Daggerfall, you can reasonably succeed as a warrior, a thief, a pacifist, a healer, a ranger, etc. You can go for hours at a time without combat or dungeons, especially if you join the Thieves' Guild or a Temple, or simply do quests for merchants and tavern patrons (which are some of the most interesting in the game). MW, on the other hand, sets out the template Bethesda have used for all their games since - a comparatively small overworld you travel over while people and animals occasionally pop out to attack you, full of dungeons occupied by people who are waiting to kill you on sight, and quests that virtually always culminate in a fight. Combined with the reduced number of skills available, this further limits the amount of viable characters you can make; you'll never succeed as a Sneak/Speechcraft character in MW because the game doesn't give a shit about either skill, as it's a dungeon crawler where, in Douglas Goodall's words, Todd wanted you to smash things with a huge axe.

- NPC schedules removed, store opening and closing times removed. This is really bad. Storekeepers stand totally still at their counters 24 hours a day, every day. Again, this is because the game is a combat-focused dungeon crawler that doesn't give a shit about any other playstyle, as Daggerfall did. Burgling a store in Daggerfall wasn't super complex, but at least it had some gameplay involved - you had to wait until night, pick or break the store's lock without being caught, and get inside. In Morrowind, you have to walk upstairs in broad daylight, as nobody is able to follow you.

- Obvious one: the dungeons are nothing compared to Daggerfall's. Yes, Daggerfall's might have been too excessive, but Morrowind's pivot to very small, samey caves and ruins is not progress. Daggerfall offers a true dungeoneering experience where you'll have to make sure you're prepared in advance and even load yourself up with mark/recall shit to avoid becoming trapped forever. Morrowind offers a couple of rooms you can walk to the end of while fighting dipshit enemies who get stuck on rocks.

- Crime system comically gutted. In Daggerfall, you go to court for crimes, where you must pass skill checks to defend yourself or plead guilty to face a penalty. Even if you succeed in your own defence, your reputation in the local area will diminish. If your reputation becomes too low, there are material gameplay consequences - guards will arrest you for "Criminal Conspiracy" even when you've done nothing wrong, and you may even face banishment as a punishment, which really fucks up your plans. In Morrowind, you can go on a killing spree and then pay a bit of gold to a guard (who you'll likely have to approach yourself since the AI is so pitiful that they'll never apprehend you on their own unless you do it right in front of them), after which point it'll be like nothing ever happened.

- No faction reputations. Would have been very easy to keep this. They deliberately removed it, I assume.

- Total loss of timed quests. In Daggerfall, you were often up against the clock, and had to plan your travel accordingly. In Morrowind, nobody in the world other than you ever does anything, and quest situations are totally static until you choose to interact with them.

- Severely reduced number of NPC interactions, which removes detective/investigation elements from quests. In Daggerfall, you would often have to approach random NPCs for info, with your county reputation, class reputation, and etiquette/streetwise skills all determining your success. NPCs belonged to social classes, who would have opinions about you. Morrowind retains the same cookie-cutter NPCs with copypasted dialogue, but drastically reduces the interactions the player can have with them down to a handful of keywords, which are not typically used in quests. Speechcraft only comes up in specific instances where an NPC needs to be spammed with Admire until their dialogue changes.

- Linear questlines. Like the reduced number of skills, this is not bad in and of itself. What is bad is that the questlines are boring as fuck and almost every quest in the game is painfully linear and restrictive. In Daggerfall, you could choose to reject quests and you were given guild quests from a pool of ones suitable for someone of your rank. In Morrowind, you must follow each guild's storyline, which are almost all dogshit.

- Miscellanious lost mechanics - banking (and money having carry weight), being able to own property, different modes of transportation that affect both fast travel and overworld travel, the ability to climb walls, etc

And so on and so forth.

tl;dr: the world sim aspects are gone, playstyles other than combat are made unviable, the game's focus shifts to being a dungeon crawler rather than Daggerfall's more ambitious goals, several key systems are removed or enormously diminished for no good reason other than that the devs just didn't have the ambition to deal with them, and the quests suck nuts.

And the big joke of course is that, despite being so combat-focused, the combat in Morrowind is terrible, and becomes a non-consideration by about level 6 if you play your cards right.

 

[ind33d]

this is nonsense

- Total loss of timed quests. In Daggerfall, you were often up against the clock, and had to plan your travel accordingly. In Morrowind, nobody in the world other than you ever does anything, and quest situations are totally static until you choose to interact with them.

This is probably the most important omission. Even Numenera and Disco Elysium still had timed quests/fail states. A time limit is the most obvious way to implement CnC. There's a great moment in Disco by the church where Shivers will start talking to you about what you sense in each cardinal direction, and I was actually concerned I was wasting too much time listening to it and wanted to get back to the case. Morrowind never feels like that

 

[skaraher]

skaraher all very well documented u bum

You do realize the narrative of heroic writers working behind the back of ebil project lead is most of the time total bullshit ?

 

[luj1]

idk what ure talking about

Todd didnt like the weirdness but Rolston and MK convinced him (and it turned out great)

However when they made Oblivion this centrally authored content by 2-3 educated leads turned into 1000 voices and thats why Oblivion turned out trash

all this is well documented

 

[Funposter]

Morrowind was the last good Bethesda game and masterpiece compared to Shitfield.

Sure but it was still decline when compared to Daggerfall and contemporary games like Gothic. The Toddler hadn't assumed complete control of Bethesda so there were still some redeeming factors.

The Toddler was a random game tester back. He was never smart enough to code at a decent level but he was a ladder climber type of dude. That type that's is always with his tongue up his superior's ass hunting for the next promotion.
His biggest advantage is the fact that he looks like an harmless and honest midget(this fools a lot of casuals and stans) but in reality he is a greedy lying piece of shit.

He did design on Morrowind and even wrote the Imperial Legion questline (which is not really good tbh)

He didn't so much design it as much as take it over after Goodall left. It's clearly rushed, which is why it has so many spelling, grammatical and lore/worldbuilding errors. Wouldn't be surprised if he "finished" it in like two weeks.

skaraher all very well documented u bum

You do realize the narrative of heroic writers working behind the back of ebil project lead is most of the time total bullshit ?

MK and Rolston have both commented on this. Kirkbride would draw two designs, one that he wanted and a REALLY weird one. He'd show Todd the weird one, be told to scale it back, go fuck around in his office for an hour and then show Todd the (already drawn) concept that he actually liked, and Todd would OK it. Rolston was really the lead on Morrowind, writing and designing the main quest, and it wasn't until Oblivion that Todd took over. Rolston stated that Oblivion was a case of "Todd gets what he wants", so he'd argue for certain things, but Todd had the final word on all matters of design.

 

[Funposter]

- Skill system enormously reduced. Language skills reduced to "Speechcraft", Thaumaturgy lost, etc. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as "more" obviously doesn't equal "better", but:

Morrowind and Daggerfall basically have the same amount of skills when you consider that Language skills were all essentially pointless, and Thaumaturgy effects were rolled into other schools and it was replaced by Conjuration, which actually allows for entirely new character archetypes due to how unique it is as a school of Magic, impossible to replicate in Daggerfall. The combination of Running and Swimming into Athletics, is technically unfortunate, but represents a level of granularity which doesn't add anything to character building, imo. Climbing is a genuine loss, especially since the game is still designed to offer a certain level of verticality for Levitation spells to be useful. Etiquette and Streetwise combining into Speechcraft is unfortunate for roleplaying purposes, but functionally doesn't really matter that much. Armour skills were a welcome addition that are slightly different to the armour-based disadvantages in Daggerfall, especially since NO custom classes were actually restricting themselves from picking plate armour due to what a disadvantage it was, except maybe hardcore roleplayers.

- Massively reduced number of viable playstyles. In Daggerfall, you can reasonably succeed as a warrior, a thief, a pacifist, a healer, a ranger, etc. You can go for hours at a time without combat or dungeons, especially if you join the Thieves' Guild or a Temple, or simply do quests for merchants and tavern patrons (which are some of the most interesting in the game). MW, on the other hand, sets out the template Bethesda have used for all their games since - a comparatively small overworld you travel over while people and animals occasionally pop out to attack you, full of dungeons occupied by people who are waiting to kill you on sight, and quests that virtually always culminate in a fight. Combined with the reduced number of skills available, this further limits the amount of viable characters you can make; you'll never succeed as a Sneak/Speechcraft character in MW because the game doesn't give a shit about either skill, as it's a dungeon crawler where, in Douglas Goodall's words, Todd wanted you to smash things with a huge axe.

I'm sorry, but the entire point of Daggerfall is to crawl massive dungeons. It may have some fantasy LARP elements, but the actual gameplay is more dungeon-heavy than Morrowind. Morrowind's short dungeons mean that the bulk of time is actually spent navigating the overworld, primarily travelling from towns to quest objectives. Apart from the ability to break into stores and steal all of their goods, thief playstyles don't lose anything from Daggerfall to Morrowind. Speech is useful only for the crime system (which you detail below), otherwise Morrowind is actually more speech-heavy due to the amount of quests which rely on high NPC disposition. Unfortunately, the balance on those is messed up due to the ease of accruing money and the option to bribe NPCs for permanent disposition boosts. Global reputation also boosts NPC disposition, making all of this even easier as the game progresses. A pacifist playstyle is actually possible in Morrowind due to the intricacy of its spell effects, and there are lots of cool interactions with NPCs if you dig hard enough and are willing to not just bash things with your sword. For instance, you can use the Calm spell effect on an NPC and then open dialogue, Intimidate them in order to lower their 'Fight' variable, and then actually have them be permanently pacified. This is important, because many skill trainers (including the Master trainer for Enchant) are actually hostile by default.

- NPC schedules removed, store opening and closing times removed. This is really bad. Storekeepers stand totally still at their counters 24 hours a day, every day. Again, this is because the game is a combat-focused dungeon crawler that doesn't give a shit about any other playstyle, as Daggerfall did. Burgling a store in Daggerfall wasn't super complex, but at least it had some gameplay involved - you had to wait until night, pick or break the store's lock without being caught, and get inside. In Morrowind, you have to walk upstairs in broad daylight, as nobody is able to follow you.

Agreed. My only guess is that the engine itself somehow made it too difficult to do this, because trying to mod it into the game using the original MWScript is super hacky and doesn't work well. They obviously improved this massively in Oblivion, one of the few genuine improvements.

- Obvious one: the dungeons are nothing compared to Daggerfall's. Yes, Daggerfall's might have been too excessive, but Morrowind's pivot to very small, samey caves and ruins is not progress. Daggerfall offers a true dungeoneering experience where you'll have to make sure you're prepared in advance and even load yourself up with mark/recall shit to avoid becoming trapped forever. Morrowind offers a couple of rooms you can walk to the end of while fighting dipshit enemies who get stuck on rocks.

Agreed that Morrowind's dungeons are too small, but again the appeal of the game is more in the overworld. I do think that Morrowind (and all modern Bethesda games) would benefit from having half as many dungeons that are twice the length. That would strike a good balance. One thing to consider about Morrowind's dungeons, however, is that they are realistic. When you enter an ancestral tomb, it's about the size of a tomb that people would actually make a pilgrimage to once a year or so in order to pay respect. Daedric Shrines are...about the size of their Velothi/Tribunal counterparts that sit inside towns. Old Dunmer strongholds are about the same size as the various Legion forts that dot the landscape. The big disappointments in terms of dungeon crawling really come from the Dwemer ruins inside Red Mountain, which are very small for what are supposed to be endgame challenges. Dagoth Ur, in particular, is significantly shorter than Illunibi or Koguruhn.

- Crime system comically gutted. In Daggerfall, you go to court for crimes, where you must pass skill checks to defend yourself or plead guilty to face a penalty. Even if you succeed in your own defence, your reputation in the local area will diminish. If your reputation becomes too low, there are material gameplay consequences - guards will arrest you for "Criminal Conspiracy" even when you've done nothing wrong, and you may even face banishment as a punishment, which really fucks up your plans. In Morrowind, you can go on a killing spree and then pay a bit of gold to a guard (who you'll likely have to approach yourself since the AI is so pitiful that they'll never apprehend you on their own unless you do it right in front of them), after which point it'll be like nothing ever happened.

Agreed.

- No faction reputations. Would have been very easy to keep this. They deliberately removed it, I assume.

This is just flat-out incorrect. Faction reputation exists to keep track of how many quests you have completed for factions, and the factions all like and dislike one another to varying degrees. An Associate in the Mages Guild will be disliked by Telvanni characters, but the Archmage will be hated by them. Like the issues with disposition in general, this is somewhat negated by how much of a disposition boost you receive from global Reputation, but it certainly exists and has an effect on gameplay, especially at low levels.

- Total loss of timed quests. In Daggerfall, you were often up against the clock, and had to plan your travel accordingly. In Morrowind, nobody in the world other than you ever does anything, and quest situations are totally static until you choose to interact with them.

Agreed, although they do try to justify it in-universe with advice from NPCs. Not all quests need to be timed, imo, but there are definitely some where it would amp up the feeling of urgency.

- Severely reduced number of NPC interactions, which removes detective/investigation elements from quests. In Daggerfall, you would often have to approach random NPCs for info, with your county reputation, class reputation, and etiquette/streetwise skills all determining your success. NPCs belonged to social classes, who would have opinions about you. Morrowind retains the same cookie-cutter NPCs with copypasted dialogue, but drastically reduces the interactions the player can have with them down to a handful of keywords, which are not typically used in quests. Speechcraft only comes up in specific instances where an NPC needs to be spammed with Admire until their dialogue changes.

Given that faction reputation exists (which you clearly didn't realise due to a lack of understanding about the game's mechanics) your only real complaint here is that Morrowind lacks social class distinctions (fair enough) and that you can brute force your way through a lot of dialogue with the Bribe option.

- Linear questlines. Like the reduced number of skills, this is not bad in and of itself. What is bad is that the questlines are boring as fuck and almost every quest in the game is painfully linear and restrictive. In Daggerfall, you could choose to reject quests and you were given guild quests from a pool of ones suitable for someone of your rank. In Morrowind, you must follow each guild's storyline, which are almost all dogshit.

Difference in design philosophy, but Morrowind is actually superior in terms of "linearity" here. Not all faction quests need to be completed in order to finish a questline, because you'll always have enough faction reputation to get the top rank without doing certain things. If you think that Ranis Athrys is a conniving bitch, you can just stick to doing academic work with Edwinna Elbert and Skink-in-Tree's-Shade and still become the Archmage. The Fighter's Guild has two distinct lines that the player can go down, and its interaction with the Thieves Guild means that you can't complete some quests without being kicked out of that faction. Many of the factions (mainly Great Houses) also dovetail into the Main Quest.

- Miscellanious lost mechanics - banking (and money having carry weight), being able to own property, different modes of transportation that affect both fast travel and overworld travel, the ability to climb walls, etc

Morrowind has more modes of transportation than Daggerfall and learning how to best navigate the fast travel network is arguably more interesting than Daggerfall's point-and-click fast travel, whose only real mechanical consideration is whether you might need to travel recklessly to make it back to a quest giver on time.

 

[Lemming42]

I'm sorry, but the entire point of Daggerfall is to crawl massive dungeons. It may have some fantasy LARP elements, but the actual gameplay is more dungeon-heavy than Morrowind. Morrowind's short dungeons mean that the bulk of time is actually spent navigating the overworld, primarily travelling from towns to quest objectives.

I don't agree - you can spend a vast amount of time on the overworld in DF, depending on how you choose to play, and there are a huge number of quests that do not require dungeon crawling. Many of the tavern, merchant and noble quests take place within the city you're currently in, which can equate to a lot of gameplay spent simply roaming city streets looking for specific people or buildings and quizzing the locals. A number of guild quests are also overworld-only, especially for temples who'll ask you to go to people's houses to heal them or whatever.

Apart from the ability to break into stores and steal all of their goods, thief playstyles don't lose anything from Daggerfall to Morrowind

This is a pretty major thing to lose. Morrowind's stealth system is worthless (as is DF's, in fairness), and stealth is not generally a viable solution to quests (and, like in all TES games going back to Arena, you can just turn invisible and effortlessly ghost everything if you really want to). In MW, being a thief is a matter of walking into somewhere, making the stationary NPC look away from you, then taking everything. Or just going upstairs where you can't be followed by 90% of NPCs (and the ones who can follow you tend to move randomly). I think the only good thing MW does for thieves is add probes in addition to lockpicks, but they're both governed by the same skill so it's functionally a waste of time.

The crime system, which we both agree is lost in MW, is another obvious blow to thief gameplay. Fun thief gameplay surely requires an element of risk and tangible consequences for failure, which MW completely lacks, beyond paying a fine to a guard.

Might as well throw in the mention here that Morrowind removed lock bashing, which has always annoyed me because there's no reason for it. Maybe for balance reasons or something, but again, thieves are completely fucked in Morrowind, so they could at least have thrown us a fucking bone.

A pacifist playstyle is actually possible in Morrowind due to the intricacy of its spell effects, and there are lots of cool interactions with NPCs if you dig hard enough and are willing to not just bash things with your sword. For instance, you can use the Calm spell effect on an NPC and then open dialogue, Intimidate them in order to lower their 'Fight' variable, and then actually have them be permanently pacified.

Yep, that's cool. I don't hate Morrowind, despite how it might sound - I like the whole series, with even Oblivion (my least favourite) having some appeal. I just think it's a tragic step back from DF in the majority of ways, and I do think it largely fails to meet its potential on its own terms.

My point was that you'll still be roleplaying someone who walks across the same bit of overworld and dives into random dungeons, only instead of smashing things with an axe (as the good Todd intended), you'll be casting Calm on them. This is fun, and forms most of the appeal of Todd-era games (I've done a complete all-dungeons-explored pacifist run of both Skyrim and Fo3 and I absolutely loved both experiences), but the game is still very much combat-focused - which, again, DF is far less so.

Speech is useful only for the crime system

This isn't true; there's an enemy pacification chance with each language skill, including Etiquette and Streetwise (which is based on enemy class - Knights and such go for Etiquette, Rogues and such go for Streetwise). Etiquette and Streetwise also play a big part in NPC dialogue, meaning you'll get more use out of the Polite/Blunt options when applied to the correct social class.

I'm not clear on whether or not you meant this in the context of thief gameplay or in general. But all that I just mentioned is useful for thief gameplay anyway, especially since if you're playing as a dedicated thief, your major skills might all be non-combat (eg stealth, streetwise, lockpicking) and so talking an enemy down via streetwise will be more viable an option to you than trying to fight them. Remember that pacified enemies may also fight on your behalf and protect you from enemies who you failed to talk down, another useful mechanic for a thief whose skills do not lie primarily in combat.

One thing to consider about Morrowind's dungeons, however, is that they are realistic.

Which doesn't translate into enjoyable gameplay, most of the time. I don't have any problem with smaller, tighter dungeons - I liked quite a lot of Skyrim's, which are often even smaller and more linear than MW's - but MW's dungeons are typically so generic and dull that they may as well have been procgen'd (which I've heard they sometimes are, though I've never properly looked into that).

I think the issue - which again, is replicated in Oblivion and Skyrim - is that dungeons in MW almost never actually allow you to use your non-combat skills in any meaningful way, nor do they offer any other form of gameplay. In Daggerfall, your language sklills automatically roll when you're in range of an enemy, as does your stealth skill. Navigating vertically means you'll have to use either your climbing skill or some form of magic (and if you don't have these, you might simply fail the dungeon). Underwater passages mean that not only will you require a solid Swimming skill, but you also might have to reduce your carry weight to avoid sinking - which means, for heavy armour characters, that you might have to go in naked, with all the risks that entails (and if you wind up getting teleported away, you'll now be naked in the middle of a new location with no idea where your armour went). Your core attributes play a part in all of this, of course - Strength (or Speed? I forget, it's STR in Arena) plays a role in how far you can jump, Agility plays a role in most of the athletic skills, and I'm sure one of them determines how long you can hold your breath underwater, though don't ask me which.

At all times in a Daggerfall dungeon, you feel your characters' skills coming into play, and some characters simply aren't capable of completing some dungeons - this is a very good thing, IMO.

In addition to all this stats-based gameplay, the player is also constantly engaged in not only finding their way through the labyrinth and having their sense of direction tested, but also keeping an eye out for secret passages, some of which will hide the quest target behind them. There is, of course, also the very real chance of becoming actually lost - or worse, trapped at the bottom of some form of pit which you lack the skill to climb out of, or teleported into an area which you cannot escape in any immediately obvious way. This means that preparation also plays a key role - a mark/recall spell or enchantment is ideal, but you may also need levitation gear or potions and other things to help you navigate hazards which your character's skills may not be suitable against.

Morrowind, meanwhile, plays exactly like every other Todd-era Bethesda game - dungeons are small, combat-focused romps to the finish line, with the occasional detour or two into a side area. I remember one or two dungeons having levitation areas and gaps that could be better cleared by characters with high acrobatics, but for the most part it's all just the same shit.

This is just flat-out incorrect. Faction reputation exists to keep track of how many quests you have completed for factions, and the factions all like and dislike one another to varying degrees. An Associate in the Mages Guild will be disliked by Telvanni characters, but the Archmage will be hated by them. Like the issues with disposition in general, this is somewhat negated by how much of a disposition boost you receive from global Reputation, but it certainly exists and has an effect on gameplay, especially at low levels.

I'm aware of the internal system which determines advancement. I didn't know that it ever affected disposition of other NPCs outside the guild in question, especially because MW seems to very rarely have real consequences for low disposition (whereas in DF, people from guilds/social classes you'd alienated would outright refuse to interact with you at times, and you could be refused service). Are there any examples other than the one of the Mages' Guild and Telvanni?

Either way:

(which you clearly didn't realise due to a lack of understanding about the game's mechanics)

Give it a rest. I never noticed the effects of this mechanic while playing the game. Which perhaps isn't surprising if, as you suggest, it's rather isolated and inconsequential. Daggerfall makes it hard to miss the consequences of reputation (faction, class, and crime), given that they continually have material effects on the way you play the game, the obstacles you'll face, and the options available to you.

I'll revise it from "there's no faction reputation" to "there's no faction reputation that I know of outside the Mages' Guild vs Telvanni one that I've just been told about", if you like. If there's other examples I missed, I'll gladly hear about them.

Given that faction reputation exists (which you clearly didn't realise due to a lack of understanding about the game's mechanics) your only real complaint here is that Morrowind lacks social class distinctions (fair enough) and that you can brute force your way through a lot of dialogue with the Bribe option.

The complaint is far more than that, and far more than just Etiquette/Streetwise being boiled down into "Speechcraft" (which is bad in itself). Instead of being able to ask about literally any topic, person or location and receive directions, you can only ask about a handful of keywords with each NPC. DF's NPCs had copy/pasted dialogue (based on their class and such), but you could ask them just about anything you wanted, and get directions to any establishment in a city or any quest target, as well as ask for information about people and places pertinent to your current quest. And, crucially, you were rolling skill checks the whole time. In Morrowind, you can't do any of that.

Like with many things in MW, it's twice as annoying because it's a squandered opportunity. The tradeoff with MW is meant to be "yes, it's smaller and has less systems, but it's handcrafted!!!". In that case, you'd hope NPCs, given that there's comparatively so few of them, would be relatively unique, and have unique dialogue and personalities (even Oblivion set out to attempt this by giving everyone one or two dumb unique lines when you asked about the city you're currently in - "I'm Cockius Suckius, and I run the local store here").

MW NPCs instead retain the lack of character of DF townspeople, but with a mere fraction of the interactiveness and options for the player. They're not even useful in the context of MW's much smaller worldspace and settlements - you can't even ask for directions to a specific person or place, you just have to rely on the broad keywords like "services" and "specific person" without being able to specify the person or place you want.

It's hard to overstate how much the keyword system sucks. The worst of both worlds - it's got the genericness you might expect from a roguelike, but lacks the wealth of options. The Camonna Tong supposedly revile me, yet they'll politely tell me about the history of Balmora with the exact same boring wiki dialogue that the nice old lady outside had.

Morrowind has more modes of transportation than Daggerfall and learning how to best navigate the fast travel network is arguably more interesting than Daggerfall's point-and-click fast travel, whose only real mechanical consideration is whether you might need to travel recklessly to make it back to a quest giver on time.

The DF travel mechanic has quite a bit going on - travelling recklessly means you don't heal and your health conditions worsen. So if you've been poisoned or are diseased, you've got to start making tough choices about how to get to your target without killing yourself, and might have to make a detour to a temple at "Cautious" speed in order to heal (costing you a day or two). If you're already wounded and travelling into danger, Reckless could again get you killed by making you arrive with low health in a hostile location. Ships also get you places fast, but cost money. Also, remember DF has actual controllable modes of transport - you can board your own ship, you can ride a horse or a wagon through town, etc. Morrowind's are all just a menu that teleports you to a new location.

MW's fast travel network is cool on a purely geographical level in that you can see how the boats move along the coastlines and how the Silt Strider networks are laid out. But again, because the world is utterly static, the fast travel systems become a way to cut out endless boredom, rather than a mechanic all of their own. Your reward for learning the fast travel system is that you reduce the amount of empty, already-cleared overworld you have to travel, as you learn where ports, docks, and Mages' Guild teleporters are.

If the world was not completely motionless, the fast travel system might be more interesting - if travelling entailed some kind of risk, or there was a day/night cycle that actually affected anything, or if any quests or world events were timed, or if there were regional holidays and special occasions on certain days of the week or dates in the calendar (as Arena and DF had), or if there was just anything or anyone in the world other than the player character who actually did anything at all, then taking a boat or a silt strider would be a wise choice. As it is, though, the only risks from travelling in Morrowind are slipping into a coma as you walk from Seyda Neen to Pelagiad for the fiftieth time.

 

[Artyoan]

Morrowind has a lot of issues but I prefer it to Daggerfall in every way. Both have a large number of broken, awkward, or feather-weight systems but Morrowind has a far better sense of exploration and a more realized setting/culture to it. I enjoyed exploring Morrowind for quite some time, especially right at the start in the swamp. It keeps some interest with just roaming about even as each system starts to break. I enjoyed the first dungeon of Daggerfall and found a steep dropoff not long after.

Personally, traversing a more realized world had far more weight to it. Add in the stellar music, bizarre setting, it sticks with me. Just wish it wasn't so ludicrously broken.

 

[Beastro]

I think something missed is that TES' design philosophy is fundamentally flawed. Both DF and MWs issues come from the same demands placed upon them, that the TES scope is too broad to properly be filled out.

Both had to focus on certain things and thus can't be all they should be.

Arguing about which is better is like arguing which half of a broken cup is better than the other when they have so much missing in each that they're almost incomparable.

MW tried to preserve that original spirit of TES but attempted to restrain it. Oblivion and Skyrim kept up the pragmatic restrictions and abandoned that spirit while keeping the restricted design philosophy resulting in ever increasing bad and less and less good.

 

[Lemming42]

MW tried to preserve that original spirit of TES but attempted to restrain it.

Mmm, but MW doesn't even make the most of the change of direction they took it in. It's a shame that the roguelike elements were removed and the world sim aspects were scrapped and almost everything was shrunk or watered down in some way, but it could still have succeeded at replicating the TES feel in a smaller, more vividly designed worldspace, even without those aspects.

Instead, they made a single player MMO with combat that somehow manages to be even worse than DF's, a crippling lack of C&C at every turn (both narratively and mechanically), a totally unreactive world, and some of the worst AI going. They shrunk TES down into a combat-focused dungeon crawler, and then fucked up both combat mechanics and dungeon design, the two most important ingredients. Six years later, Bethesda would repeat the same trick again by trying to turn Fallout into an FPS featuring some of the worst FPS mechanics of any game ever created.

It's funny because they did the same thing previously as well - trying to turn TES into a Tomb Raider ripoff with Redguard, and completely botching the most basic third person platforming mechanics. Like Morrowind, Redguard is still a lot of fun (Redguard's actually one of my favourite games), but I think they're both carried by the setting. Nobody would be talking about MW today if it weren't for the unusualness of Vvardenfell, or the game being part of the TES franchise.