Can't play Morrowind or Oblivion any more

[shirow]

Oblivion without mods sucks. It's almost unplayable. It's mind numbingly boring.

 

Well I did like Oblivion even without mod (at first I did discover the elderscroll series with this game actually ), now with no mod yeah it's quite boring.

But mods make the game way better ^^

 

 

Better off just sticking to FNV/TTW till FO4 comes out. IMHO

 

 

Well FNV is a good game also. Unmodded I do prefer the fallout serie actually. But with mods I do like both series equally

Can't wait to hear an official release for Fallout 4 (if they do... I hope, really hope ^^).

[Killing Joke]

I always got lost in Morrowind and ended up forgetting all of the quests and just finding random stuff to do. Couldn't do that with oblivion since quest locks and Skyrim doesn't reward you for it. Morrowind was just fun cause you adventure was always different than other peoples when you talked about it.

 

This, a thousand times. I love how you launched Morro thinking "I'm gonna do this today", read the indications of that particular quest in your journal, but finally took a wrong turn, leading you to new people, places, stuff. After several hours, you close the game and realize you did none of the things you planned but didn't feel it as a failure or a waste of time, quite the opposite actually.

 

Never lived that with Oblivion or Skyrim, the feeling of being lost and lonely in a hostile world where everything could happen and your exploration was always rewarded in a way or another.

[cornbreadtm]

 

I always got lost in Morrowind and ended up forgetting all of the quests and just finding random stuff to do. Couldn't do that with oblivion since quest locks and Skyrim doesn't reward you for it. Morrowind was just fun cause you adventure was always different than other peoples when you talked about it.

 

This, a thousand times. I love how you launched Morro thinking "I'm gonna do this today", read the indications of that particular quest in your journal, but finally took a wrong turn, leading you to new people, places, stuff. After several hours, you close the game and realize you did none of the things you planned but didn't feel it as a failure or a waste of time, quite the opposite actually.

 

Never lived that with Oblivion or Skyrim, the feeling of being lost and lonely in a hostile world where everything could happen and your exploration was always rewarded in a way or another.

 

Well, quest markers and fast travel ruin it for you. Along with the quest locking. Skyrim did it better than Oblivion by not giving the location till the quest stage is reached usually, by placing a rock in front of the entrance. But it limits you to half of the locations available instead of having everything available like with Morrowind.

 

It was always fun finding a new quest in Morrowind and having them ask you for an item that you already had in your bag. Didn't have the same impact in Oblivion and Skyrim since in Morrowind you just saved yourself a walk, in Skyrim you just saved yourself a map click...

 

I like fast travel, it just should be restricted to major cities only.

 

[Content Consumer]

 

It was always fun finding a new quest in Morrowind and having them ask you for an item that you already had in your bag. Didn't have the same impact in Oblivion and Skyrim since in Morrowind you just saved yourself a walk, in Skyrim you just saved yourself a map click...

 

 

That is an excellent point. The solution to almost any quest in Skyrim is a click away.

When I first started playing, and even now, the most satisfying quests I get are those that require some exploration. I mean, now I know where everything is, but when I first started, finding Septimus Signus was great. Having to work my way around to the nord ruin for the bard quest was great. And so on.

 

Don't get me wrong - I love the fast travel system. That was one of my major reliefs when Oblivion came out... I wouldn't have to walk across the whole damn map to get to where I needed to go. In Morrowind, some of the first things I did were finding the proplyon indexes, just to have one more fast travel option. And trying to follow directions to get to a dungeon (without a location marker) and the directions amounted to "go east for half a day and turn left at the big rock" made me grit my teeth, especially when it turned out (by visiting the wiki) that the developers had confused their east and west.

 

And yet, it did lose something, now that I come to think about it... No longer do I look at my quest journal and say "that one's too far away, I'll do this one first and work my way over there" but instead I just teleport around.

 

There has to be a good middle ground. Fast travel only between cities is a good idea, but there are still times when I really just want to get there RIGHT NOW and avoid the hassle of walking.

 

Daggerfall had an interesting mechanic where you could fast travel anywhere, but it would cost money to do so (for verisimilitude - you'd have to pay for carriage rides, ship transportation, staying at inns, etc). I wonder if that could be expanded upon...

 

EDIT: Now that I'm thinking about it, I guess my favorite fast travel system was the one used by Fallout 2. (caveat: I never played Fallout 1 much... about five minutes worth. I played Fallout 2 all the way through, everything, including various incarnations of the RP, maybe ten, fifteen times). You'd fast travel over the map in sped-up real time (if that statement makes any sense), seeing where you were going, and random encounters would happen to you while you traveled.

[Content Consumer]

 

I always got lost in Morrowind and ended up forgetting all of the quests and just finding random stuff to do. Couldn't do that with oblivion since quest locks and Skyrim doesn't reward you for it. Morrowind was just fun cause you adventure was always different than other peoples when you talked about it.

 

This, a thousand times. I love how you launched Morro thinking "I'm gonna do this today", read the indications of that particular quest in your journal, but finally took a wrong turn, leading you to new people, places, stuff. After several hours, you close the game and realize you did none of the things you planned but didn't feel it as a failure or a waste of time, quite the opposite actually.

 

Never lived that with Oblivion or Skyrim, the feeling of being lost and lonely in a hostile world where everything could happen and your exploration was always rewarded in a way or another.

 

In Oblivion and Skyrim, I've frequently felt the urge to try to 100% it. Join every guild, complete every quest, explore every dungeon, etc.

But in Morrowind, I never had that urge at all.

Maybe it was because that was much more difficult - lack of fast travel, no map markers for easy navigation, etc.

But maybe it was, at least in part, because the world felt like a complete place. You were a part of the world, not it's center. The world had existed before you arrived and would continue to exist after you were gone. In Oblivion/Skyrim, you were the center of existence, and nothing happens without you being there to direct events, or at least participate in them.

In Oblivion and Skyrim, each dungeon, ruin, fort, etc. has a location marker that tells you exactly where it is, whether or not you've been there, and whether or not you've already "completed" it (cleared it - i.e. killed everything inside and looted what you wanted). In Morrowind, exploration was actually exploration.

 

Morrowind: Dear Diary, today I found another egg mine. This one was not infested with blight disease, thank gods. Harvested a lot of eggs and found a guy who wants me to track down his missing sister. I'm pretty close to a city, I think... I saw it in the distance this morning, anyway. I'm going to head there, sell these eggs, and maybe (if the city has a mage's guild) I can teleport back to Balmora and pick up my next contract with the Fighter's Guild. Tomorrow I'll see if I can find that guy's sister... he said she's somewhere north of here.

 

Oblivion/Skyrim: Dear Diary, today I finished Quest #47. Two dungeons cleared, total loot value $8,403. Beginning Quest #48 now.

[Angrybird]

Those diary entries you wrote are the reason some people like Morrowind over the console games, you seem to get it and you simply aren't one of those people.

 

And who needs fast travel when you can zigzag you way across the land with potions simulating heavy usage of cocaine?

[jubbs]

Morrowind is spoken of highly for the same reasons Baldur's Gate 2, Half Life, and the original Everquest are fondly remembered. They were great games for their time, but do not hold up well if you've played more modern games. They're all still fun and exciting, but it's honestly the nostalgia carrying the lofty opinions of them at times. I am guilty of it myself... I was REALLY stoked to play BG2 again when it was released on Steam... I made it about 10 minutes.

 

Graphics don't make a game fun, but in a game like Skyrim or Fallout/NV it does really help the immersion.

 

TL; DR - I like some older games still but I don't really play them any more.

[Brigade]

You're saying a game like morrowind doesn't hold up to watered up shit like CoD, or skyrim?

[cornbreadtm]

Boots of blinding speed = Fast travel >_> IMHO

[jonas_opines]

Boots of blinding speed = Fast travel >_> IMHO

60-80 point jump spell > boots of blinding speed.  

 

/wheeeeeee!

[Kind9]

Morrowind has fast travel:

 

silt striders

boats

mages guild

mark + recall

almsivi intervention

divine intervention

propylon chambers

 

and I can't remember if it's a mod or one of the expansions that adds teleporters in all the telvanni wizard towers.

[Content Consumer]

I don't remember any teleporters in the telvanni towers... must be a mod.

There were a lot of opportunities for fast travel in Morrowind: (from uesp):

And they were very very helpful. But I found myself dreading getting a quest involving these areas:

Maybe not Solstheim or the Grazelands quite as much, but the other places, absolutely.

Especially regions in Molag Amur and the Ashlands, where I would always either get lost or just not be able to find the quest target location.

And ESPECIALLY if it was an escort quest, where you had to wait while the NPCs walked S.L.O.W.L.Y. after you, and gods help you if you forgot and jumped, or levitated, or teleported... they would then try to track your Z position and head off across the world. One time I accidentally hit the recall spell and spent the next two days tracking down where I left the bastard.

 

I eventually ended up crafting a fortify speed+water walking+shield+resistances spell simply to use on NPCs whom I was escorting. It helped, but not enough.

 

I guess it would all have been much easier with one of the following:

Quest pointers

Map icons for all dungeons/locations

Better directions than "go north for a while and turn right at the dead tree"

 

Skyrim/Oblivion's decision to add in both quest pointers and map icons is a bit much, but one or the other would have been supremely helpful.

[snelss0]

I just wish they made elves good looking from the start. They look like their faces are dried prunes that got beat with sticks and have certain parts of their faces swollen. Skyrim is no better

[Content Consumer]

I just wish they made elves good looking from the start. They look like their faces are dried prunes that got beat with sticks and have certain parts of their faces swollen. Skyrim is no better

Heh...

The first character I ever played in Daggerfall (my first ES game) was a Dunmer warrior, Jase the Slayer. The tradition continued through Morrowind and Oblivion too.

When I first got Skyrim and started it up, I recoiled in horror at the visage of my once-beautiful dark elf. The first character I actually played in Skyrim was a Nord (also named Jase the Slayer for tradition's sake).

I fully agree that elves in vanilla Skyrim look like wrinkled, pointy ass. Mods are the way to go.

[Kind9]

Sure the quest directions are sometimes vague, but come on, that's half the fun of questing in Morrowind. It's more than just "go here, retrieve this, return for reward" where the first and last steps involve nothing more than clicking icons on an interactive map

[gvman3670]

The reason why morrowind is so good?

 

Because back then we had only the pc, which allowed devs to focus on content even more rather than worrying about making the game possible on the variety of game consoles.

 

Fact: Any exclusive game is going to be better than games that were ported to every single platform.

 

Except I, and a pile of others as well, played Morrowind and the expansions on a console and not only on PC. The original XBox had it and it played it better than most PCs at that time could.

[blabba]

 

The reason why morrowind is so good?

 

Because back then we had only the pc, which allowed devs to focus on content even more rather than worrying about making the game possible on the variety of game consoles.

 

Fact: Any exclusive game is going to be better than games that were ported to every single platform.

 

Except I, and a pile of others as well, played Morrowind and the expansions on a console and not only on PC. The original XBox had it and it played it better than most PCs at that time could.

 

 

Right, forgot that it did come out for the Xbox, but I can't imagine the UI controls were all that good.

 

Since the point was back then games came out for PC first before they came out for Xbox, or that the established companies at the time were developing with the PC primarily.

[jfraser]

That's one thing I still dislike about Skyrim - even on a PC the controls are set as if playing with a controller. I want to be able to pick stuff up with the mouse, not hover over things and pray I have the right thing targeted.

 

Controllers suck.

[Content Consumer]

Aah! The controls on the Xbox were AWFUL!

I remember several times getting shaky muscles because I was straining my arms and hands so tight just trying to INCH the stick just far enough to pick up the object I wanted from the floor.

I actually ragequit once because I couldn't pick up some pieces of gold from a barrow in Solstheim... here's me with hundreds of thousands of gold, trying to pick up 10 more, and I'd move the controller one nanometer and the cursor would move to the other side of the thing I was trying to pick up... after about ten minutes (no hyperbole) trying to pick up that single, idiotic stack of coins, I just threw down the controller and walked away. Ten lousy gold caused me to quit the goddamn game because the controls were shit.

Even now, just thinking about it makes my right bicep tense and my thumb feel creased.

 

The controls for Morrowind were absolute hell.

When I finally got it on PC, and discovered the joys of the mouse... It really turned me off to playing the xbox version again.