Something you hated about Morrowind? (bizzare, right?)

[LongLiveTheEmpire]

For a Morrowind thread, anything passed a page is good. That and the posts per page got increased in the forum update.

On topic: Wait, were we supposed to debate against you or agree? I'm all confused

Whichever you choose! I'd be happy to strike up a friendly argument/conversation with anyone its just that the amount of posts are getting overwhelming xD. If you wish to start a so-called convo just quote me and we can talk about Morrowind's flaws. Staying on topic of course.

EDIT: I'm not going to double-post. But I forgot to mention. Has anyone ever actually leveled their Enchanting to a decent level? I mean seriously, that skill is impossible to train. Unless you dont mind enchanting 2000 some odd swords.

[svknight]

EDIT: I'm not going to double-post. But I forgot to mention. Has anyone ever actually leveled their Enchanting to a decent level? I mean seriously, that skill is impossible to train. Unless you dont mind enchanting 2000 some odd swords.

Trainers. LOL
Also, I dunno if it's true but apparently, using enchanted items(cast on use) can increase your Enchant skill too.

[Quirinius]

Re leveling your Enchant skill. I've leveled Enchant fairly well not by enchanting items but by recharging them. What else would you use all those soul gems you've been filling for. Oh yeah, and like svknight said, Enchant goes up by using cast on use enchanted items, but it levels very, very slowly.

As for something I don't like about Morrowind ... this is sort of Cliff Racer related but I really don't like the fact that in Third-Person View I can't look up in the sky properly. It would really be nice as I'm traveling along to be able to hold down Tab (I'm on PC) and scan the sky for Cliff Racers rather then having to stop and scan in First-Person View. I can see a little of the sky, but I can't seem to look straight up in Third-Person View.

Q

[OblivionDuruza]

Yeah, I normally don't bother with Enchanting, it's such a difficult skill to level, and in need of balancing, IMO. I just pay for the service.

As for the levelled system, I save before entering any cave for that exact reason, it's become ingrained into me as a habit.

[svknight]

I save before entering any cave for that exact reason, it's become ingrained into me as a habit.

Hahaha. The most important thing Morrowind taught me: Save every freaking time. LOL
Even in other games, I always save every minute or so. It became a problem when I saved TOO MUCH that my HDD's space is almost zero. >_<

[OblivionDuruza]

Even Bethesda advocates the use of Quicksave, I'm pretty sure it's a tip on loading screens in Skyrim and Oblivion, iiirc. Saving is always the best policy, something I'd love to have seen is, in addition to the three autosave slots of Skyrim, as opposed to Morrowind and Oblivion's one (a change to combat people getting their autosaves saved over post-bug or mistake, etc., and not realising there's a back-up autosave), is multiple Quicksave/load slots, maybe two sets. I know that not only would it be handy, it'd be great for people who share machines with someone else.

[Xibir]

I really don't have too many complaints with the game. Yeah, there's bugs and what not, but any game that is still enjoyable after 10 years did something right. The only thing that has really ever bothered me with Morrowind was the odd relation of skill/governing attribute. Such as Security/Intelligence. I figured it would deal more with the dexterity of hand movements (although graphically one merely stabs the chest/door with a strip of metal).

[Dean]

EDIT: I'm not going to double-post. But I forgot to mention. Has anyone ever actually leveled their Enchanting to a decent level? I mean seriously, that skill is impossible to train. Unless you dont mind enchanting 2000 some odd swords.

Trainers. LOL
Also, I dunno if it's true but apparently, using enchanted items(cast on use) can increase your Enchant skill too.

This is true, although it doesn't raise your skill that fast. I've never had a problem leveling it up by using soul gems when my enchantments are at low power however... Mysticism's Soul trap makes it fairly easy to raise it, I mean you get the same increase by recharging as you do making a new item.

In response to LongLiveTheEmpire and his dislike for chance: I think it all comes down to preference at the end of the day, so it's impossible to keep going on about it without doing circles. You rather love it, or you hate it, and I understand your side of it but it's not my personal view.

The whole 'fatigue loss is realistic but jumping over a castle wall isn't' thing I actually have a rebutal to. Acrobatics in a fantasy game would not be the same as that on Earth, and it's much more enjoyable being able to jump over lakes and stuff. Hell, there are people that can jump off the top of high buildings and not even hurt themselves in real life, so it's not 'that' crazy.
However, the people of Tamriel still eat and sleep, so they obviously do get knackered, and running around a huge island in a suit of armour would not be possible without needing a breather once in a while. As the game progresses and you raise your strength, endurance, willpower and agility you no longer have to worry too much about it anyway... there is also Athletics which is a REALLY useful skill, it stops fatigue draining so quickly.

[MARS]

Jumping. It just doesn't work without an ehnancing spell or very high Acrobatics.

[OblivionDuruza]

there is also Athletics which is a REALLY useful skill, it stops fatigue draining so quickly.

Which relates back to my earlier point, in Morrowind, there was actually reason to choose Athletics as a skill, but due to Oblivion's dealing with complaints about Fatigue, the need for Athletics as a Major skill evaporated, until it was so unnecessary they cut it in Skyrim, to the dismay of some. Fix one problem and you cause another, we fanboys must just be difficult to satisfy or something .

[Dean]

To right Duruza, you can't please everybody.
The character customisation in Morrowind is absolutely fantastic, I mean sure 'graphically' it has less then the later games(such as the ability to customise the face and hair with sliders, which is awesome in it's own right), but when it comes to the actual skills etc. it is much more impressive in my eyes despite being the earlier game.

Morrowind is a hardcore game if you ask me, it takes a lot of awareness to not be slaughtered continuously. I think this actually helps the immersion, as you are not simply running from A to B(which makes me completely zone out) without giving a crap about the land around you... instead you move slower and more cautiously, and have to stay alert.

[OblivionDuruza]

I couldn't agree more with everything you've just said. Morrowind is a real gem of a a game, but you need to work at it at first before you can fully appreciate it.

A lot of its apparent flaws can turn into real strengths upon reflection and consideration. For example, the graphics may be old and shabby, but they actually suit the art direction and the flavour of the world graphically. Morrowind was criticised by some critics as being too brown, but I actually think that really suits the art direction, what with the use of earthy colour throughout the Dunmeri culture (architecture, the House colours, etc.). Oblivion had more modern, and 'better' graphics, but the colour and vibrancy almost gave the world a playground or fairytale sort of feeling, and a lot of graphics mods have today made it darker and more grave. Not to say that Oblivion's graphics and art direction aren't good for what it is, but for anyone who's played Morroblivion, the Oblivion graphics look fairly terrible on Vvardenfell, and you really do need some of those Mods like OBGE to make the world look truer to the original Morrowind.

[LongLiveTheEmpire]

but for anyone who's played Morroblivion, the Oblivion graphics look fairly terrible on Vvardenfell, and you really do need some of those Mods like OBGSE to make the world look truer to the original Morrowind.

I want to disagree with you but I'm not really sure I can unless I know what it does xD What exactly is OBGSE and how does it make Morroblivion more true to Morrowind because I would be interested in such a mod.

[OblivionDuruza]

The Oblivion Graphics Extender (that S wasn't meant to be there ) is an Oblivion Script Extender plugin that manipulates Oblivion's graphics and can be used to seriously alter the look of vanilla Oblivion. A number of the options make Oblivion much less technicolour vibrant and more dark, as in Skyrim and by extension, Morrowind.

[LongLiveTheEmpire]

The Oblivion Graphics Extender (that S wasn't meant to be there ) is an Oblivion Script Extender plugin that manipulates Oblivion's graphics and can be used to seriously alter the look of vanilla Oblivion. A number of the options make Oblivion much less technicolour vibrant and more dark, as in Skyrim and by extension, Morrowind.

Ahh that explains why I couldn't find it Do you mind answering your PM? lol I think I will download Oblivion graphics extender right now

[Sacred Nym]

I may as well voice my own complaints with the game here. I know it's been weeks since there was a post here but... eh.

1. The lack of scaling. Something I never thought I'd say. It's not exactly because of the difficulty. Really the problem is that what I ultimately liked about Oblivion and Skyrim was that I had the freedom to do what I want, when I want, within certain reason of course. In Morrowind, I feel the lack of level scaling is railroading me and that there's really only a very small handful of possible paths through the game. After the latter two games I find this to be really crippling Morrowind.

2. The Accuracy mechanic. Honestly not so much that it exists, but the fact that there's literally no feedback when you miss due to the mechanic. How do I know I'm even close enough to hit the guy half the time. It's really annoying when it comes to ranged attackers who are constantly running away from me.

3. The incredibly slow movement coupled with the incredible discouragement of running. I don't think this needs any explanation. The existence of my fatigue bar has been the deciding factor in battles. Often. But maintaining my fatigue bar means walking, not running. And the running was slow enough already.

4. The nerfs applied to the beast races. My first characters in both Oblivion and Skyrim were Argonians. I wanted to continue that tradition in Morrowind. I played for a while and eventually got sick and tired of the slow movement speed, found out about the boots of the Blinding Speed. Prepared a resistance spell for the side effect. Did the quest, that long drawn out walk to Gnaar Mok. Tried to equip the boots, and... well I'm sure you all know how that went. I was [&@%!] beyond belief. Worst part is, the beast races don't really have anything to make up for their handicap. I honestly want to call them the cripples of Morrowind. I wound up starting over with a new character.

5. The uselessness of skills at low levels. There may as well be a giant sign saying "You must have 50 Alchemy before you may make potions". Seriously what the hell? It's a catch-22 pretty much. You can't practice the skill until a certain point, but you can't get to that point without practice... ugh. It's not just Alchemy either. Enchanting... SPEECHCRAFT oh god speechcraft. I've probably thrown away about 3000 gold already in bribes because I needed to bring up people's disposition. It's... ugh...

Those are my biggest complaints so far. I'm still managing to enjoy the game... somehow, but I can't ignore these.

[Ragnarok]

read through a few of the initial posts and skipped over the rest so sorry, but honestly, the main point I want to address is the criticisms of the magic system in TES3. personally, that's one of it's strong pointrs for me and the selling point t of the game. I loved the magic system, mainly for its utility and versatility. I don't know what kind of mage you managed to mangle, but mine hardly ever failed spell casting. another point is to play a mage successfully, you have to actually roleplay and use your brians to implement strategies. if you try to go toe to toe as a mage, you deserve to get your face eaten. simple as that. mages have incredible strengths offset by incredible weaknesses. you have to know your character inside and out and have a full appreciation and understanding of both their strong points and handicaps. like you have to know that willpower affects all spellcasting percntages. that's why spellcaster races have higher starting intelligence and willpower. if you start with a willpower of 30 instead of 60, you're going to suck. same with skill levels. if you don't specialize and start with magic skills at 30 instead of 40-45, you're going to suck. commit bnoth of these heinous transgressions and your going to suck bad AND get your face eaten. the main thing that affected my spellchucker was fatigue, which I constantly had to monitor and keep full. I've played a "dual-class" where I took magic as secondary backup to complement other primary abilities, but I also knoew I was going to be limited to the low cost "starter" spells for a while and I wasn't going to summoning anything much more than a ghost, skeleton or scamp to back me up and help out in a fight. getting my spellcasting magic skills and attributes up to the level where I could summon daedra, etc. was going to take some work on my part.

don't get me wrong. there's plenty I can gripe about Morrowind, but sorry, I just don't get the magic system being one of them. it was much more reliable early on than melee or ranged combat. if I got the spell off, it would fly straight and true and hit stationary or directly advancing targets every single time without fail.

[Lazy Waysef]

Here are a few gripes I have. Morrowind is pretty much my favorite game of all time though so obviously they don't bother me all that much. Some of these problems were made better by the unofficial patch but I'm talking about the original game. The list is a bit long. For the record, I don't understand fatigue related complaints, fatigue refilling spells, items, and potions are so plentiful you can make it not even a thing.

The regular magic items could have been more numerous. Coming off of Diablo 2, I have to say that the items in morrowind are very basic and some of them strike me as pretty useless. My real issue though is that there aren't very many of them for any given item type. Having enchanting helps sure, but I still wanted more naturally occurring ones.

Dialogue could have been more interactive, it takes a bit too much imagination to figure out what my character is saying to people. Whenever choices are available, there are rarely more than three. Also, sometimes its unpredictable how the person will react because you don't know what you're saying. For example, if I find Fargoth's gold and talk to Hrisskar about his hiding place, I automatically give him the gold (unless I have insufficient gold). Maybe I would like to taunt him about it for a while or something. Also, certain people who were plot central could have been fully voice acted, such as Caius, Mehra Milo or Divayth, but this has never bothered me much at all since I think voice acting is causing games to have less and less dialogue, not to mention they do voice act a lot of people such as Dagoth Ur, Almalexia, Hircine, etc.

Magic is not very user friendly. I thought it was useless for years. Requires too much game know how to even get started with it. It is great though

Many regular items are 100% useless unless you RP that your character needs to get them or can't get better items. The following items are examples of this:

- Any chitin weapon is useful solely for training a weapon skill and not killing the enemy too fast. They are all worse and not much cheaper than their metal counterparts
- Iron weapons are largely useless beyond Seyda Neen, since silver and steel are quite affordable. Even they get outclassed since stuff like Icicle or Stormblade cost largely the same and have elemental enchantments.
- Nordic Fur, Netch Leather, Cloth, Iron, and Boiled Netch Leather armor are all useless because they cost as much as steel and chitin. Even steel gets outclassed by imperial steel. Chitin is useless if you have tribunal and manage to kill your assailant (essentially you have to pretend the guy wasn't wearing incredibly good light armor that either fixes your defense or money needs forever)
- Bound stuff is too easily available and outclasses many weapons and armor in the game, you will only not know about it the first time you play the game.
- Common clothes vs Exquisite. Why isn't everyone in Morrowind wearing the latest styles? Also the variability on fancy clothes is a bit lacking.
Essentially my gripe here is that you're basically never as poor as 90% of the citizens of Morrowind unless you try to be...

Pickpocketing and enchanting are essentially impossible to do. Pickpocketing is super fun and now that I have the unofficial patch, I am having much fun with it. I disagree with the previous post about alchemy, I think its one of the easiest ones to raise, even without increasing vendor supplies. To do it 100% legit even RPwise, you just go to every store that sells food items and buy them all up, then go to your lab and make restore health and fatigue potions. Yes true, you probably won't be able to create better potions until level 50 but thats the way its supposed to be. I used to do chemistry and frequently I would screw up and get a tiny yield and fail the assignment. Some might say they should have made it skill based, but I disagree because then once you got the hang of it, you would never fail to make one regardless of your character's skill as an alchemist.

Inventory organization. Wish you could change it around, especially certain silly things, like my scrolls separating all my books with titles starting with letters prior to SCR and the ones after.

Skill balance has some issues, some are really good, some are really bad. Here's a rundown of all of them with my opinion. Factor in that this doesn't include challenges such as limiting yourself on breaking the game.
*Long Blade - Amazing, best weapon, almost objectively.
*Blunt Weapon - Solid, not a whole lot of endgame choices, Skull Crusher is a really sweet idea though and fun enough to compensate.
*Short Blade - Amazing, also one of the funnest, cool idea carrying around a bunch of daggers with different effects. Damage a bit lacking though for endgame considerations.
*Axe - Suffers much from a lack of good items and the rarity of it as a favored skill for a faction. I love axes in games but can never get myself to pick it as a skill in Morrowind.
*Spear - Great, has its uses, decent uniques
*Marksman - Solid, it may not be too too practical because of the presence of magic, enchanted rings, and ammo weight but its got an unreplicable hunter/sniper feel.
*Armorer - Eh, for flavor its fine, but I've never not been able to repair something incredibly expensive by just throwing hammers at the problem, so while repairing is a good feature, armorer as a skill suffers a tad. Also repair prongs don't make any sense, they should have aided in the repairing process, not been treated like hammers. Oblivion did a good job with armorer.
*Athletics/Acrobatics - Amazing.
*Block - Solid, gives you ~50% chance to block around skill level 50 (with max fatigue of course) could have been active but I like it better this way myself. It'd be better but its a pain to raise (slaughterfish swarm anyone?)
*Heavy Armor/Light Armor - Amazing. Both have their ups and downs, like armor choices in games should.
*Medium Armor - Guh. If medium armor didn't look really cool, no one would ever get it as a skill pre expansions. Even after the expansion, they're pretty annoying to get... Still a skill I pick all the time though
*Alchemy - Overpowered
*Alteration - Amazing. Not a gamebreaker, not too mana intensive, very creative effects, some outclassed by restoration stuff though such as swift swim.
*Conjuration - Love it, except for turn undead, I still don't even know what thats supposed to do if it DID work.
*Destruction - Amazing, no real comments on it. Damage health is a bit silly and damage strength is a bit broken.
*Enchant - All too necessary if you want to use cast on strike enchantments with any regularity but makes me very angry.
*Illusion - Great, potentially overpowered (frenzy, charm, chameleon) certain ones like light vs night eye, and sound are things I'd never get but maybe they aren't bad?
*Mysticism - Great, Destruction and Restoration at the same time.
*Restoration - Amazing, cure paralyzation spells confuse me though, why not call it paralysis immunity?
*Unarmored - Only good RP wise, outclassed by every other armor type completely. Sure you don't have to carry armor, but how heavy is light armor honestly? There's a reason there's so many mods to fix unarmored.
*Hand to Hand - I love hand to hand but its terrible. Its best use was in the original morrowind and the patched morrowind where you can pickpocket people for free while they're on the ground. It is super slow and outclassed by every other weapon.
*Mercantile - Great as an idea, but glitched in the original game so that better mercantile got you worse deals. Also you can trick merchants into buying high and selling low too easily...sometimes with the same item many times in a row... Reminds me of that south park episode with Scott Tenorman.
*Security - Another just for flavor one, since in the original pre unofficial patch game, you could detect all traps and all of security could thus be outclassed by open spells/ekash's locksplitters and a single 1 mana telekinesis spell.
*Sneak - Amazing, even borderline overpowered. By using magic from a distance while sneaking, even a character with sneak level 5 can score sneak attacks all day.
*Speechcraft - Can be entirely outclassed by charm and frenzy which never fail.

Some of the birthsigns are completely useless if you ask me. I only ever actually use Lady and Atronach, with the occasional Lover for a right off the boat thief. Warrior and Thief have their uses since they still increase to hit and dodge even after you hit 100 in all stats. Steed, Mage, and Apprentice are straight average and arguments could be made for choosing them I can imagine (with mage being less understandable for me). The ones I can't comprehend in descending order are Ritual, Tower, Shadow, Lord and Serpent.

Not having travel together as a universal dialogue option for all companions...

To sum it all up, Morrowind comes off as this game where you can make a lot of choices as to how to do quests (which in some arcs such as FG or TG, or House Hlaalu, you still can) and build your character but many of them are not ones you would ever pick. Wish the game were more balanced.

[Lazy Waysef]

Forgot a huuuuuuuuuuuuge one. Resting is sooooo annoying if you have an enemy anywhere near you, but its not as bad as Neverwinter Nights or anything. This is the only one that actually makes me mad sometimes.

[11Justin93]

The only things that I HATED in Morrowind were:

1. The unorganized quest log - since journal entries just stack up one after the other without being organized into seperate quests I would end up having to sort through 50+ pages to find out where I needed to be or what I needed to do

2. Cliff-Racers - F*** Cliff-Racers

3. Impossible to find a matching set of armor - I like to look good when I save the world

[Mattbott]

The only things that I HATED in Morrowind were:

1. The unorganized quest log - since journal entries just stack up one after the other without being organized into seperate quests I would end up having to sort through 50+ pages to find out where I needed to be or what I needed to do

2. Cliff-Racers - F*** Cliff-Racers

this

i remember having dozens of notes with scribbled names and locations, the ashlander names were especially annoying cos i found them impossible to remember due to their strangeness..

Spoiler:

"take this wocket to shamalamata hashpilillapat in chermonininom camp somewhere vaguely near the grasslands" aaaargh

also, my low level characters stomping around in crappy armour and having to jump along the road going out of Seyda Neen desperately trying to gain a few skill points so the next worm i meet doesnt destroy me.. of course, you are totally fatigued if you do meet anything. So just stay off the roads until you're 5th level was my advice to new players - the excitement of a new world to explore tempered by the deadliness of everything you meet in it lol

and i wasn't too keen on the fact that straight after i defeated satan himself and staggered, blinking into the brilliant sunlight of a world freed from the tyranny of its past sins - there was an ash storm (but of course the important thing was that it wasn't an ash blight storm )

the game allowed me to develop good coping mechanisms for most these things tho, which is a tribute to its quality

[dzio]

I suppose the journal doesn't bother me that much because I'm used to oldschool games where you either wrote it down with a pen and paper, or had to remember it, because the log never included everything you needed.

[AddictedtoMorrowind]

Almost all of the faults in Morrowind can be attributed to the time it was made, 2002. Like how the character creation faces and stuff... ergh.

[Sacred Nym]

2. Cliff-Racers - F*** Cliff-Racers

Amusingly I haven't had this problem. When I get attacked by one it goes down in like, 3 hits. Been that way since I was level 2. Not even an annoyance anymore. Maybe I've just grown immune to that kind of tedium after the random Dragons in Skyrim.

I'll echo that complaint about the armor though. Seriously what is the sense in selling sleeves/pauldrons separate? I don't get that at all.

[AddictedtoMorrowind]

2. Scribs - F*** Scribs.