I'm still trying to figure out the exact arguement here. People are talking about how it's nearly impossible to fix a gimped character without grinding yet... You can get training? Training isn't expensive if you're a low level, like what? 46 gold+ whatever for additional levels? If you don't have money, then what have you been doing for the first half of the game?

Sorry, but talking about how Morrowind is SOOO unforgiving and how you can't fix your "gimped" character in the beginning and then complaining that everything isn't spoon fed to you (Yes, that IS what you're crying about) just defeats the purpose of the "Be who you want" aspect of the game. They don't WANT to tell you this and that, for one they, have a manual for that, second, they don't want to dictate what you do in the game. They give you class options, not force them on you, you can make your own class, or answer questions on your play style.

Skyrim it's impossible to truly fix a gimped character since the perks dictate everything in the game and you can't go back, Oblivion would require some grinding in the traditional way since training it limited. Morrowind actually handled this the best. If you think Morrowind is so unforgiving or too hard, then either get better, get a new game, or turn your difficulty down, but don't act like the game is bad because you think it doesn't cater to your needs enough.

As for the game "not aging well", people are still playing it after 10 years and still hold it to be one of the best and sometimes the best TES game, I don't call that bad aging.Tharana hasn't aged well, not Morrowind.

As usual, you seem to have either missed or intentionally ignored the point. In Morrowind, the strong but clumsy Barbarian can deal just as much damage over time as the quick and agile fencer, but will do it in one or two hits, with a variable number of misses in between. The fencer will deliver more hits, but for less damage each. Over time, with more experience and increasing skill in their chosen weapons, the Barbarian will hit more often, and would soon outstrip the Blademaster in damage per second if it weren't for the Blademaster hitting more frequently and therefore increasing in skill a bit faster. As the characters begin to approach "max", the Barbarian will hit often enough that the lower agility won't even be a significant factor, and the Blademaster's strength will probably have increased by other means to keep pace, although it's very possible that the Barbarian could come out ahead slightly, unless the Blademaster expands into "related" Blocking skills, Armorer techniques to raise Strength, or exotic weapon enchantments to maintain parity or pull ahead. Agility is powerful, especially at low levels, but not "All Powerful", and I wouldn't consider a character with high Strength and standard Agility to be "gimped" in combat, unless they're trying to use a weapon that they're not proficient with (such as a Mage with low Agiliy and low weapon skill, who should either not be in melee combat or should be using some sort of enhancements to deal with the limitations).

As for hitpoints, neither will gain hitpoints except by level increases, and neither's weapon skill is going to increase Endurance to speed the process, unless their armor they use and the number of hits they take provide more armor skill increases to raise Endurance. Typically, the Barbarian is going to take a few more hits due to lower Agility, and will therefore tend to raise Armor skills and Endurance attributes more quickly.

I consider the game to be VERY well balaced in those particular respects, although it suffers the traditional TES imbalances in many others (SR is no exception). You seem to like pointing out Morrowind's STRONG points as its flaws, while ignoring the REAL issues (many of which still exist in OB and SR).

Does a game really need to hold your hand that much? Besides, optimal success really? If every character was optimal the game would be pretty boring. Besides, I got my characters right from the beggining. Just use some common sense.

I played through the entire main quest on a character that had no combat abilities as major or minor.

Alchemy, Mercantile, Speechcraft, Athletics, Acrobatics
Security, Sneak, Enchant, Armorer, Illusion.

As stated above, if you want to start attacking things effectively, you need to learn how to fight. You know like in real life. I used my abilities to get money and buy training in short blade.

That actually looks like a very playable Morrowind build, to me. As you say, weapon training would be needed. But the high Speechcraft, Alchemy, and Athletics would be very helpful. (Especially the high Speechcraft, which is actually a valuable skill in Morrowind.) That build has all of the necessary "support skills" in place, so your cost to actually train up a novice melee skill would be quite low.

Well of course it did, but as far as the actual games are concerned talking about D&D and other RPG's don't really add anything to the discussion at all.

Yeah it actually worked out really well. You can make a decent bit of money without any combat abilities at all.(I did need to use calm spells a few times though when doing a few early guild quests)

If a problem spans an entire genre, it really needs to be reviewed whether it's actualyl needed or not.

Well, you're seeing a problem where other people are seeing game play opportunities. How do you suppose that anybody figured out that Charisma is useless (not really true, but never mind that)? They figured it out by playing different characters. They probably had fun in the process (it's a game; you play it to have fun!) Then they told somebody else, and pretty soon nobody is role playing a high charisma character any more, because the power gamers said not to.

A lot of the "problems" you're pointing out here are really inconveniences to the player who wants to get into a game quick and easy. Some people want to save time and get right into the game, and they want the rewards to come along quickly, without the frustration of a learning curve or significant problem-solving. Hack, slash, collect the loot; rinse and repeat. Fast Food Gaming.

Some people want a little more depth than that, a little more personal responsibility for choices made, and more consequences for choosing unwisely. I happen to think you should fail if you play a game badly. It's not a problem with the game if people don't read the manual, don't follow the advice that's given to them, and then go out and fail!

I could be snarky, but I'll instead encourage you to finish reading the thread...

Telling new players what they'll need to make a good starting character is hand-holding? Yet it's not hand-holding for Caius to tell you to get stronger before continuing the MQ?

Providing tips for good character builds doesn't force every character to be "optimal". But it does allow new players to get into the game and see what it has to offer beyond the first encounter with a rat.

Just because you didn't run into a problem doesn't mean there isn't one.

A thought I had is that instead of instead of the current system where difficulties just arbitrarily increase and decrease the damage you deal and take, why couldn't they also act as sliders for how heavily enemies scale down to your level? On the easiest difficulty just about nothing would ever higher level than you. On the hardest, there'd be no downwards adjustment and if you go to the wrong places then you'll get slaughtered.

You're free to take his advice or not. You're also free to decide how you're going to get stronger. There's no hand-holding here, just a quest-giver gently telling you that you're not ready. There are also level requirements, before you get very far with the main quest line.


Yes, and that's why Morrowind gives you two character-building methods that create pre-made classes. Are those classes perfect? -- No, but they are adequate; they all result in a character build that is playable.


And just because you run into a problem, it doesn't mean that it's a fault in the game. Operator error, failure to read the manual, and player impatience are also the source of "problems."

Yeah, I don't think character creation was really that difficult. If a new player makes a bad class then it was kinda their own fault for using what amounted to the "advanced character creation" option. Common sense should say that if you don't know what you're doing then you should use one of the options that offers you some help rather than granting you free reign.

The only areas that I could see being legitimate traps for new players were if they picked Altmer for their race or The Lord as their bithsign, and that's more because of an unbalance than because there was a lack of information being provided.

I swear, people will find ANY little thing to try and throw at morrowind and call it "an inbalance" in the game or a "Failure in game mechanics" or something. Really, it's like little kids constantly pointing at anyone else to shift the blame for their own inability to make good choices.

I'm starting a new game as I'm writing this post, let's see how character creations flaws are and how much of a lack of information they have. Oh and I named my character Megaman for luls.

So in choicing a race, I get a nice little picture of ALL the races and oh look, it even gives me a description on skills bonuses or their specialities. Dark Elves are good at some stuff, High elves are good at some stuff. most of the High Elves stuff is in magic, hey, he even gets extra magicka! Hmmmm, I sure hope they don't assume that I'm going to READ these bonuses, I'll just pick a high elve cause he has magic stuff and I like magic stuff.

So now we follow the guy down the dock and talk to the monk. uhhh, I'll just pick a class so I can save time. Hmmm, I totally wanna be a Spellsword, that way I can shoot magic and use Swords!

Birthsign? Hmmm, I'll totally be a warrior, I like +10 attack!

So there, now I have a high elf spellsword with the warrior sign. Not a necessarily "good" build, but functionable. Of course, this is bypassing all the things where common sense is needed in like.. ya know, picking your skills to match your birth skills and such. Too bad the game doens't just jump out and like "MEGAMAN, MEGAMAN! HIGH ELVES AREN"T GOOD IN MELEE! USE A DARK ELF!" Yeah, cause i love when that happens and stuff and I totally didn't read ANYTHING really when I was going through my selection. This of course counting how I didn't bother to check everything either before leaving to make sure it was all up to snuff.

Yeah, the game sure doesn't give you enough information to make a reasonably sound character who's balanced. know what else it doesn't give you? Any long ass pointless turtorial that slams the whole [censored] games story in your face completely negating any potential suspense that COULD have been added later n the game.

As for Huleed's post about me not reading the thread is just silly. My lack of keeping track of every point made on this thread has nothing to do with you quoting one small portion of my post and than ignoring the part that actually answered the point you made on the part you quoted. Besides, really? NOW you complain that they don't have "DANGER! Don't go this way, there are monsters and bandits up that root so don't go there if you're not high level." don't blame the game because you got distracted walking somewhere and took a wrong turn at alberkurky(I spell that right? Prob not) and ended up getting mauled on by an axe wielding, skeleton summong, bald man.

Now ignoring all the trolling for the sake of comedy, there's an inside joke up there and also a point to be made. I'm sorry that morrowind didn't meet your criteria for making a game easy for it's new beginners, but if all games were as easy as you seem to want them, they'd simply be time killers, rather than time passers.

If you perceive a problem with an entire genre, but plenty of other people seem to consider those "problems" to be strong points, then perhaps you need to re-evaluate what you're doing here and find a genre that you like, rather than bashing this one because it's what they like.

I swear, people will find ANY little reason to throw a fit whenever someone has a differing opinion than them, especially regarding a game they seem to prize. Really, it's like old men constantly have this pretentious mindset in which they believe that games were hard because they had no "hand holding", while it was mostly because they had terrible game mechanics in an age when game development was about as polished as a rusty nail.

I'm sorry but this way of thinking just makes me laugh (I could go into my shtick about racism, and such but I won't). I'm glad games have hand holding now, because running around doing tedious crap is boring. Grinding to level in 60 svcked in vanilla, and most people didn't even see higher level content because raiding was very difficult. Allowing luck to play a huge role in your game can be annoying, and frustrating.

I could go on but crap changes because people find a better way to do things.

STILL has terrible mechanics, two games later.

Bethesda pretty much never fixes ANYTHING, they just gut it.

STILL running around grinding [censored] to high levels. The missions are STILL the same tedious [censored], and the primary way of making money second to crafting. I also happen to have money out the [censored], but if I actually spent it on training, like you used to, it would just artificially inflate my level and break the game with auto-leveling enemies.

But hey, I can buy houses! And get 'married'! [censored] yeah TES VI: I can't believe it's not Fable! Bring on the idiot-proof 'game' 'mechanics'.

Hand-holding? The only "hand holding" is the fact that there are no options when leveling your character. Magika is even MORE broken that it used to be, and cost reductions render +magika moot. Stamina potions aren't exactly rare or hard to make, +stamina is moot. Can you make a broken character? Yeah. You can STILL make a broken character in Skyrim if you don't dump everything into +HP and NEVER raise skills you wont use regularly to avoid inflating your level. You can thank Bethesda for being lazy and using auto-leveling rather than actually making more high-level content.

Or they just gut and re-do everything as often as websites change layouts for [censored]-and-giggles without ever actually fixing anything. I swear Bethesda has never play tested their own TES games.

Haha, I can appreciate the humor and I DO appreciate different opinions. What I don't appreciate is deliberate ignorance stating that a game mechanic is "broken" because it isn't perfect or because it's not on par with games of a later generation. So yes, I'm glad that logic makes you laugh, that was the reason the post was trollish, but it was also there to specify a particular reoccuring theme with the arguements against and game and then to show WHY those arguements are demonstrably false, of course, you didn't read all that did you?

You stated it yourself, you like games that hand-hold, but Morrowind isn't a hand-holdy kind of game, so that's not the games fault, it's not you cup of tea as Lorca would say. So yeah, why not try to stop accusing a game for being poorly designed when in fact it's really all about your own personal preference. Oh and seriously, appeals to nostalgia? Really? Has it finally gone that far? Come on now.

This is nice an all, but has nothing to do with the imbalance I was talking about. The marginal magicka boost and disease resistance doesn't nearly make up for the vulnerabilities Altmer are stuck with, same with the heal given by The Lord compared to the fire vulnerabilities. Especially for a new player who will have no idea where to find the resources necessary to counteract such a crippling weakness, and in the meantime will be at the mercy to anything that does fire damage at least.

Like I said, the issue in this case isn't information, the advantages and disadvantages are clearly mentioned. But new players typically go into games with the impression that the pluses and minuses would be roughly equivilant, and in this case they aren't. Hence calling it a trap for new players. Picking Altemer as your race is basictally turning on hard mode in Morrowind, the boosts you get don't make up for the penalties you get. Even as a mage character. Which, personally, I think is a shame, because I feel Altmer is the most fitting race for the Nevarine. But that's neither here or now.

And this is from someone who'd still say they prefer playing Morrowind over any other Elder Scrolls game. Got to love it when people throw out the "oh, you're just a kid who wants everything handed to them" defence when someone criticises something about a game they like.

First TES game I played was Oblivion, and I loved it. I've actually gone and re purchased it because I want to go through all 3 games with the same character... and I hate it. There is no weight to your character he/she floats when they jump, they control like they're on a slip and slide, and enemies move at light speed. The colors are overly saturated, character creation is a joke in which your character can have flaming red hair, and Oblivion gates are still annoying.

Shadow of the Colossus my favorite game of all time suffer from terrible controls and combat. Was, and still is my favorite game of all time but hasn't aged well. I still think it's the best looking, best sounding, and most atmospheric game I've ever played, but mechanics were bad when released, and are even worse as of now.

Why am I saying this? Because I look at games through the lens of modern gaming. I enjoy having color codes in the game to tell me if I'm stealing, I enjoy not being able to sleep in someone elses bed. I enjoy not having tedious quests that add another 5-10 hours to the game. I enjoy not having all my actions be dependent on dice rolls.

I'm not saying that the game is terrible, in fact I really enjoy it. A lot of the time I seem come off as though I hate the game, which I don't. I wouldn't put myself through 30+ hours of a game because I hate it. There are actually a lot of things in Morrowind that I wish were in Skyrim, and vise versa. However, there are still some fundamental problems with Morrowind that can make it inherently frustrating at times. As I play the game more those slowly go away, but I never had to make more than 1 character in Oblivion or Skyrim before I understood the dynamics (it would have been 0 in Skyrim had I not wanted to make a 2h warrior which I never play). In Morrowind I had to make 4 characters before I got one I enjoyed playing.

I don't remember myself saying people enjoy Morrowind because of "nostalgia", because for me nostalgia doesn't make me gloss over the flaws of a 10 year old game. I'm just saying that there are some fundamental mechanics in Morrowind that are broken, like any other game. However given the difficult nature of Morrowind these flaws become amplified.

Tedious is such a meaningless buzzword nowadays. Especially when thrown around by people who try to make Morrowind look like it has more wrong with it then it actually does.

What does Morrowind do right?
Good ambiance.
Good in depth class system.
Good interplay between factions.
Interesting factions with differing ideologies.
A speech system that makes me feel like this person likes me (through dialogue and reduced prices).
Repercussions if I piss someone off.
An allowance for multiple ways of completion (in some aspects but not all) that're not spelled out, or implied.

Morrowind does a lot of things right, however it also does a lot of things wrong. Does that mean that the game can't have flaws, or be overly tedious? No, because it does! I don't hate the game, I just play devils advocate A LOT. If I hated the game I wouldn't invest 30+ hours and sit hear arguing with people on a forum. I would have just thrown up a troll thread, stocked the fire then left.

Much that can be construed as being done "wrong" usually have much to do with user error, the fact that the game came out during what was still a virtual stone age as far as game graphics go (afterall, it wasn't that long before Morrowind came out that we switched to 3D environments), or from issues that had nothing to do with the actual mechanic or aspect being talked about but some other problem that likely could have been easily hammered out.

There's also the fallacy in comparing a game made in 2002 (with 2002 limitations) to a game made in 2011 or even 2006 for that matter. Graphics for one can't be compared based on this, period. Gameplay can't necessarily be compared because of limitations back then. Whats possible to do now likely wasn't possible then for Bethesda. If Beth could have done combat like they've done for Skyrim in Morrowind, they would have. But for the time dice roll combat was perfectly adequate, and its just a shame it wasn't fully animated. Beyond that as far as combat goes all that needed to be done was some rebalancing (so that creatures that shouldn't reasonably be able to dodge your weapon regardless of your stats always get hit for instance) and back then that likely wasn't much of a concern for anybody back then, developer or gamer.

And also working on knowledge that you need to stack your bonuses. Let's try again as a new player:

Starting a new game and get off the boat. Race? Hmm, okay. Khajiit looks cool, and stealth/security could be handy in some situations. Okay. Class? Well, I really like magic and want to use that as my main offensive tactics, so Sorcerer looks good. Okay. Wait, Birthsign? ...hmm, well, The Lover has a Paralyze 60sec ability, which could be really useful. Okay.

Now play. Everything looks good. Got some money from Fargoth's Ring, got some spells, and a nice robe.. Look, a mudcrab! Get my spell ready and... wait, why aren't my spells working? I can't hit it! I'm out of magicka! Ack, it keeps staggering me, can't run away! *die*

The game doesn't tell you in any way that you need to stack skill bonuses to stand a chance.

Funny enough, I watched the same thing you're referencing, and was going to use it to support my position of games teaching you how to play while you play. Note the way it mentions enemy placements so that you can see their attack pattern before you engage them. Note how it telegraphs traps so that you can be ready for them by the time they become a real danger. Note how it pushes you to learn and get accustomed to using skills before putting you in a life-and-death situation that relies on it. This is how a game is supposed to talk to you about learning what you need to know.

The point in the video isn't that games should push you out of a tree to learn to fly, it's about not being obtuse and insulting to the player's intelligence when it needs to teach you something.

You shouldn't need a tutorial because the game is the tutorial. Oblivion and Skyrim, though not perfect, did better to integrate the "tutorial" into gameplay than its predecessors... Skyrim being less overt about it due to the lack of popups that pause the game. Escaping the initial attack taught you how to move and jump, the first encounter taught you about melee combat, the kitchen encounter taught you about looking for loot, the torture room taught you about lockpicking, books, and tomes, the under-area taught you about ranged enemies (and oil slicks, if you're using fire), the bear taught you about stealth or archery. You also had a follower with you who could help protect you while you learn.

Also, by making the starting stats of characters similar (due to the removal of class and birthsign starting bonuses), Skyrim didn't put you into a position where you become forced to use skills that you selected before knowing how anything worked. You weren't in danger of dying while you're learning... though after the "tutorial", things become a lot more deadly, but luckily you still have a follower to hang with if you choose to (completely optional), who takes you along a relatively safe path, again if you choose to. And overall, you find out what you need as you play since you'll naturally specialize due to the leveling mechanics.

Just like you'd be free to take the game's advice on creating an "optimal" character or not. You're free to design your character how you want, but new players would get the help they need to understand how to make a playable character.

That would be fine if classes were the only thing that mattered, but they aren't. What matters is harmonizing your race, class, and birthsign to stack your starting bonuses to be effective with certain skills. And further, a new player isn't going to have experience with using these skills, so they don't know if the skills they're selecting are going to mesh with their play style.