Editorial Morrowind Revisited by RPGWatch

VentilatorOfDoom · Aug 18, 2010

Tags: Bethesda Softworks; Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

RPGWatch put up an editorial which is part retrospective, part love-letter. <a href="http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/article?articleid=158&ref=0&id=182" target="_blank">Learn how mods made Morrowind awesome.</a> Eh, I mean... even more awesome than it already was. It was awesome, I presume?
<blockquote>
But this ain't your father's Morrowind anymore Thanks to mods, Morrowind today is far better than when Bethesda delivered it to us back in 2002.  Modders have taken on just about every aspect of the game. Remember those ugly characters that looked like they were ready for embalming?  No more!  Remember soloing impossible battles against a roomful of baddies?  Now take a companion along.   Want to see something new?  Take on any of the dozens of new islands, fortresses, adventures, etc.  Unhappy with some of the balance issues or lack of weapons?  Just pick through all the mods that address almost every aspect of game play.  Fed up with NPCs blocking your path and nowhere to go?  Add a command to ask them to move. With Morrowind and mods, everything is the same, and yet everything is delightfully different.
</blockquote>
And the conclusions can be applied to other games too:
<blockquote>
Mods!
Dragon Age will have a far longer shelf life and sell far more copies for more years (at a higher price!) than will Mass Effect.  Do I have some great crystal ball?  No.  But I know the power of mods.  Dragon Age mods have already added greatly to my fun of the game.  One in particular, called "Advanced Tactics" is so close to how I like to play a party-based RPG that it is one of the best mods for any game I have ever seen.  Perhaps it is useless to someone else based on their play style -- but that is the point.  (I will avoid the temptation to discuss other DA mods -- that is for another time, perhaps.)  The bottom line for Bioware is that someone named "Anakin" wrote a mod that was so close to what I seek in a "perfect" RPG that he/she doubled my satisfaction with Bioware's game.
</blockquote>
Anakin, eh? Probably a lightsaber mod. Ok that would have doubled my satisfaction too, I've always been a big friend of lightsabers.
 
Spotted at: <a href="http://www.rpgwatch.com/#15545">RPGWatch</a>

commie · Aug 18, 2010

Where's the 'No trash mobs' mod?

Naturaliensammler · Aug 18, 2010

DA needs a complete remake to be considered a good game.

Starting with the classes, the spells, the quests, the NPCs...

Overweight Manatee · Aug 18, 2010

commie said:
Where's the 'No trash mobs' mod?

That's already out, its just oddly named. Look for something called 'Youtube'. It doesn't even require the original DA to work!

Malachi · Aug 18, 2010

To be fair, the "Advanced Tactics" mod is a very good one. It doesn't make the endless filler combat go away, but it does make the Tactics options more sensible.

Now, naming himself "Anakin"? The guy totally deserves to be ripped on because of that.

markec · Aug 18, 2010

VentilatorOfDoom said:
Remember soloing impossible battles against a roomful of baddies?

Honestly no, Morrowind is the easiest game made by Bethesda, even Daggerfall was more difficult, still a good game.

JagreenLern · Aug 18, 2010

markec said:
VentilatorOfDoom said:

Remember soloing impossible battles against a roomful of baddies?

Click to expand...

Honestly no, Morrowind is the easiest game made by Bethesda, even Daggerfall was more difficult, still a good game.

Morrowind the easiest Beth game? You kidding man? Oblivion was easy as hell once you learned to metagame (which the shitty character developement pretty much forced you to do). And FO3 had a fucking magical "WIN" button, and a possibly even shittier character development system that made it simple to max out all combat skills. Morrowind had similarly bad character development compared to Oblivion, but the lack of level scaling meant you would a occasionally run into something which would kick your ass.

markec · Aug 18, 2010

JagreenLern said:
markec said:

VentilatorOfDoom said:

Remember soloing impossible battles against a roomful of baddies?

Click to expand...

Honestly no, Morrowind is the easiest game made by Bethesda, even Daggerfall was more difficult, still a good game.

Click to expand...

Morrowind the easiest Beth game? You kidding man? Oblivion was easy as hell once you learned to metagame (which the shitty character developement pretty much forced you to do). And FO3 had a fucking magical "WIN" button, and a possibly even shittier character development system that made it simple to max out all combat skills. Morrowind had similarly bad character development compared to Oblivion, but the lack of level scaling meant you would a occasionally run into something which would kick your ass.

If you put Oblivion on max difficulty the game actually becomes a pain when, ironically, you get 10+ levels. Fallout 3 can also occasionally be challenging when playing on very hard and ignoring vats. Morrowind is difficult only until you get some level 10 and find a good weapon after that all challenge cease to exist.

Overweight Manatee · Aug 18, 2010

And don't forget to hug a modder today!

JagreenLern · Aug 18, 2010

markec said:
JagreenLern said:

markec said:

VentilatorOfDoom said:

Remember soloing impossible battles against a roomful of baddies?

Click to expand...

Honestly no, Morrowind is the easiest game made by Bethesda, even Daggerfall was more difficult, still a good game.

Click to expand...

Morrowind the easiest Beth game? You kidding man? Oblivion was easy as hell once you learned to metagame (which the shitty character developement pretty much forced you to do). And FO3 had a fucking magical "WIN" button, and a possibly even shittier character development system that made it simple to max out all combat skills. Morrowind had similarly bad character development compared to Oblivion, but the lack of level scaling meant you would a occasionally run into something which would kick your ass.

Click to expand...

If you put Oblivion on max difficulty the game actually becomes a pain when, ironically, you get 10+ levels. Fallout 3 can also occasionally be challenging when playing on very hard and ignoring vats. Morrowind is difficult only until you get some level 10 and find a good weapon after that all challenge cease to exist.

The Tribunal expansion areas where a lot harder. Those fucking goblin sewers were a bitch. I never played Oblivion on full difficulty, but overall I never found the game to be challenging as much as just tedious. And I can't imagine playing FO3 without VATS because the actual FPS combat was just so fucking awful. I really hope New Vegas brings it up to the level of even a decent FPS. Iron sights sound promising, but I can't say my hopes are very high.

markec · Aug 18, 2010

JagreenLern said:
The Tribunal expansion areas where a lot harder. Those fucking goblin sewers were a bitch. I never played Oblivion on full difficulty, but overall I never found the game to be challenging as much as just tedious. And I can't imagine playing FO3 without VATS because the actual FPS combat was just so fucking awful. I really hope New Vegas brings it up to the level of even a decent FPS. Iron sights sound promising, but I can't say my hopes are very high.

I played Morrowind as a assassin so with sneak attack you could pretty much kill everyone with a few attacks, but I agree Tribunal was more difficult then Morrowind. Warewolfs in Bloodmoon was also a challenge in the labyrinth part in the end but they could be avoided by invisibility spell.

I remember when playing Oblivion on higher levels I preferred using invisibility to fighting since enemies would get crazy hp boosts so fights were more tedious then fun.

I cant imagine anyone playing F3 with VATS since to me it become boring before I even left the opening vault. The core combat mechanic is clunky (an understatement) so the game actually becomes a bit more difficult since you dont have "I win" button.

poocolator · Aug 18, 2010

Malachi said:
To be fair, the "Advanced Tactics" mod is a very good one. It doesn't make the endless filler combat go away, but it does make the Tactics options more sensible.

Now, naming himself "Anakin"? The guy totally deserves to be ripped on because of that.

He wanted to call himself "Anal Kin" but they'd have nothing of it. Don't hate the player. Hate the game, boy.

Zeus · Aug 18, 2010

I have a theory that people who download 40 mods to make a game better spend more time playing with the mods than the game.

Has anyone Totally Converted a game like Morrowind and actually beat the sucker? Or do you just load it up, go 'Ooh pretty' and wander off to play something else?

commie · Aug 18, 2010

Zeus said:
I have a theory that people who download 40 mods to make a game better spend more time playing with the mods than the game.

Has anyone Totally Converted a game like Morrowind and actually beat the sucker? Or do you just load it up, go 'Ooh pretty' and wander off to play something else?

I loaded it up, went 'Ooh pretty' then went and played something else. :smug:

dr. one · Aug 18, 2010

Zeus said:
I have a theory that people who download 40 mods to make a game better spend more time playing with the mods than the game.

Has anyone Totally Converted a game like Morrowind and actually beat the sucker? Or do you just load it up, go 'Ooh pretty' and wander off to play something else?

i have. ´twas solid fun, often in a b-movie kind of way.

Metro · Aug 18, 2010

markec said:
I cant imagine anyone playing F3 with VATS since to me it become boring before I even left the opening vault. The core combat mechanic is clunky (an understatement) so the game actually becomes a bit more difficult since you dont have "I win" button.

Difficult, perhaps, but not more enjoyable. If I recall right the only thing raising the difficulty in FO3 did was make the enemies take ten times the amount of damage to kill so you're basically just pumping out 500 rounds of ammo to kill one thing which gets tedious fast.

Mastermind · Aug 18, 2010

JagreenLern said:
Morrowind the easiest Beth game? You kidding man? Oblivion was easy as hell once you learned to metagame (which the shitty character developement pretty much forced you to do).

Umm, what?

Morrowind had:

* intelligence abuse for potions which let you make potions that added tens of thousands to your stats
* a hideously broken enchant system that, once you had enchant to a respectable level, allowed you to build and wield a life stealing rocket launcher ring that did massive damage over a wide area in a ridiculously short amount of time (using spells from items did not have cast animations, they were cast instantly). Recharging the items was trivial too, you just had to wait.
* the ability to train all your skills to 100 for free. Due to the method (draining skills and training them while you were at 0) you didn't even have to look for a master at higher levels
* glitch that made spell effects permanent. beth outright refused to patch it because it had become such a huge part of the game. Not that I mind LARPing a necromancer invasion of Ald Ruhn with dozens of undead and atronach, but it was a pretty ridiculous endorsement of a glitch in an already ridiculously easy game.

Nothing in Oblivion is as broken as the shit that was in morrowind.

racofer · Aug 18, 2010

Mang SC2 was just so easy on max difficulty with terribleterribledamage and some other stuff.

Malachi · Aug 19, 2010

poocolator said:
He wanted to call himself "Anal Kin" but they'd have nothing of it. Don't hate the player. Hate the game, boy.

It's been a very long time since I was a "boy". That aside, it doesn't really matter *why* he chose a name evocative of Star Wars fandom -- the name has a single common meaning, and one can only inwardly groan upon seeing someone use it as an alias. It was just as bad when, immediately after the Peter Jackson movies, you saw "Legolazz666" or some variant thereof in every corner of the interweb.

Nonetheless, I thank you for the information.

Hobo Elf · Aug 19, 2010

Mastermind said:
JagreenLern said:

Morrowind the easiest Beth game? You kidding man? Oblivion was easy as hell once you learned to metagame (which the shitty character developement pretty much forced you to do).

Click to expand...

Umm, what?

Morrowind had:

* intelligence abuse for potions which let you make potions that added tens of thousands to your stats
* a hideously broken enchant system that, once you had enchant to a respectable level, allowed you to build and wield a life stealing rocket launcher ring that did massive damage over a wide area in a ridiculously short amount of time (using spells from items did not have cast animations, they were cast instantly). Recharging the items was trivial too, you just had to wait.
* the ability to train all your skills to 100 for free. Due to the method (draining skills and training them while you were at 0) you didn't even have to look for a master at higher levels
* glitch that made spell effects permanent. beth outright refused to patch it because it had become such a huge part of the game. Not that I mind LARPing a necromancer invasion of Ald Ruhn with dozens of undead and atronach, but it was a pretty ridiculous endorsement of a glitch in an already ridiculously easy game.

Nothing in Oblivion is as broken as the shit that was in morrowind.

Yeah but unless you read about that stuff online you'd have to have semi-deep knowledge on the workings of the game to exploit the game in such ways. If you manage to find out those things on your own then you deserve to use the exploits.

Whereas in Oblivion I noticed pretty quickly that as my level grew my enemies kept getting stronger and stronger so I just stopped leveling period. That alone kept the game on baby's first action game level.

poocolator · Aug 19, 2010

Malachi said:
poocolator said:

He wanted to call himself "Anal Kin" but they'd have nothing of it. Don't hate the player. Hate the game, boy.

Click to expand...

It's been a very long time since I was a "boy". That aside, it doesn't really matter *why* he chose a name evocative of Star Wars fandom -- the name has a single common meaning, and one can only inwardly groan upon seeing someone use it as an alias. It was just as bad when, immediately after the Peter Jackson movies, you saw "Legolazz666" or some variant thereof in every corner of the interweb.

Nonetheless, I thank you for the information.

!!

markec · Aug 19, 2010

Metro said:
Difficult, perhaps, but not more enjoyable. If I recall right the only thing raising the difficulty in FO3 did was make the enemies take ten times the amount of damage to kill so you're basically just pumping out 500 rounds of ammo to kill one thing which gets tedious fast.

To me difficult = fun, it is stupid to shoot dozen times in supermutants head from point blank with combat shotgun to kill him, but it still was not as nearly broken as Oblivions level scaling.

Azrael the cat · Aug 19, 2010

Mastermind said:
JagreenLern said:

Morrowind the easiest Beth game? You kidding man? Oblivion was easy as hell once you learned to metagame (which the shitty character developement pretty much forced you to do).

Click to expand...

Umm, what?

Morrowind had:

* intelligence abuse for potions which let you make potions that added tens of thousands to your stats
* a hideously broken enchant system that, once you had enchant to a respectable level, allowed you to build and wield a life stealing rocket launcher ring that did massive damage over a wide area in a ridiculously short amount of time (using spells from items did not have cast animations, they were cast instantly). Recharging the items was trivial too, you just had to wait.
* the ability to train all your skills to 100 for free. Due to the method (draining skills and training them while you were at 0) you didn't even have to look for a master at higher levels
* glitch that made spell effects permanent. beth outright refused to patch it because it had become such a huge part of the game. Not that I mind LARPing a necromancer invasion of Ald Ruhn with dozens of undead and atronach, but it was a pretty ridiculous endorsement of a glitch in an already ridiculously easy game.

Nothing in Oblivion is as broken as the shit that was in morrowind.

Don't forget making a set of enchanted fine cloth that gives you permanent 100% chameleon, or 100% sanctuary. No metagaming knowledge there either - I built them because it was the natural extension of enchanting. I just figured I'd enchant the most chameleon I could onto fine cloth, to buff my sneaking. I wasn't fucking expecting to end up with a character than can calmly walk up and attack anything until its dead, with nothing in the game doing anything to escape or dispell or see through invis. It's a very intuitive thing to do, not exploiting any bugs, and it very quickly breaks the game.

Bizarre that they didn't think of it.

hakuroshi · Aug 19, 2010

Azrael the cat said:
Mastermind said:

Nothing in Oblivion is as broken as the shit that was in morrowind.

Click to expand...

Don't forget making a set of enchanted fine cloth that gives you permanent 100% chameleon, or 100% sanctuary. No metagaming knowledge there either - I built them because it was the natural extension of enchanting. I just figured I'd enchant the most chameleon I could onto fine cloth, to buff my sneaking. I wasn't fucking expecting to end up with a character than can calmly walk up and attack anything until its dead, with nothing in the game doing anything to escape or dispell or see through invis. It's a very intuitive thing to do, not exploiting any bugs, and it very quickly breaks the game.

Bizarre that they didn't think of it.

It sounds like oblivion to me. In morrowind attacked NPCs usually try to run away from invisible attacker if they survive the strike. But their comrades never give a damn, true for both games. I've never enchanted with chameleon in MW, only in Oblivion, but the charged amulet with 80% chameleon can be obtaned from one stupid ambush.
Also I have no proofs, but it feels as multiply chameleons in MW do not stuck, but counted separately to determine if you are seen by NPC. At least, I sometimes was discovered while using 80% from amulet and 20% spell togather. In Oblivion 30+30+30+10 was pure invisibility.

Saying all this, it's no denying that Morrowing had a lot of hopelessly broken stuff.

JarlFrank · Aug 19, 2010

markec said:
VentilatorOfDoom said:

Remember soloing impossible battles against a roomful of baddies?

Click to expand...

Honestly no, Morrowind is the easiest game made by Bethesda, even Daggerfall was more difficult, still a good game.

I do remember that, but that was probably due to some mod that added hard-as-fuck enemies.

Editorial Morrowind Revisited by RPGWatch

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