The swampy area around Seyda Neen, where you leave the boat and step off onto the island of Vvardenfell in Morrowind, is "safe" enough for most starting characters, regardless of how badly you've made them. So you wander off, fight a Mudcrab, and are getting pummelled to death two or three hitpoints at a time. Its attacks are slow enough, and its "weapons" light enough, that staggering you is an unlikely occurrance. You can simply run away (or simply walk backwards if you aren't heavily encumbered) far faster than the Mudcrab.

There are "less safe" places, even there around Seyda Neen, including a bandit cave and tombs where you can get your posterior handed to you on a plate if you're not ready for combat. It doesn't take a lot of dying and reloading to realize that your character isn't properly geared for fighting, which may be what you intended to do with the character, and so you've "wasted" all of an hour or two to reach that understanding. Booo-hoo, end of the world, and I hate the game because I lost an hour of precious time that I could have spent looking at insipid messages on Facebook. OK, so you have to make a second character, and this one is better prepared to fight. Now, you can probably play the game well enough to finish at least several of the major questlines, since the difficulty is largely dependent on how actively you explore the more dangerous regions and ruins (as you are warned repeatedly by the locals), versus how much you stick to the towns and do less dangerous work. Unlike the later games, you can tackle Morrowind at your own pace, since the far less aggressive levelling and almost non-existent scaling weren't the huge problem there that they were in OB. Considering that the problems with "pacing" in Oblivion won't even start to show up until your character hits about Level 6-10 or later, you would have sunk a lot more time and effort into a dead-end game in Oblivion than you would have in Morrowind.

I've run several Imperial characters in MW, a few Argonians, and several Dunmer, with "assorted" skills from various classes (rather than making another boring "Fighter", "Mage", or "Thief"), and often try to avoid "stacking" race and birthsign bonuses, especially if it's in something the character is going to use a lot, because I find the game too easy if you do so. I've even hunted Mudcrabs and Rats around Seyda Neen with a weapon at 5 skill with more than one character, just to see how difficult it is, and still managed to avoid death at the jaws of a Mudcrab in every case (although in that case, as a "total buffoon waving a sharp object", you DO miss far too often for my liking). Saying that the game is hard if you don't stack those benefits makes me wonder what you're trying to accomplish, because it's not that difficult to compensate down the road for a "bad" build. Of course, if you're adding all sorts of "difficulty enhancer" mods, then it's a different story, and it can be downright brutal, but don't blame the game for the mods.

Yeah, I really don't think he got the point that video was trying to make.

The point isn't about losing time, since these games will often take hundred or thousands of hours of your life, so a few extra hours isn't going to mean anything. The point is about the game communicating to you how to play properly. Morrowind did not do this (very well), and required you to die time and again for no reason other than because it often failed to provide you with necessary information.

Constantly losing because of the lack of help on how to play is frustrating, and it's something that's easily overlooked or brushed off by veterans who have intimate knowledge of how to play.. it's very easy to forget a lot of "obvious" choices you instinctively make aren't so obvious to someone new. Throwing them out of the tree and yelling "Good luck!" may not be the best way to handle it.

Once you know how to play, sure, you can purposely make "weak" builds to either challenge yourself or to do non-combat-focused RPing. I'm talking about new players, who don't know what they'll need to make a good starting character or have a good grasp yet on how to compensate for the character's shortcomings.

You're making a mountain out of a molehill. In 2002, people were expected to "read the fine manual." Right on page 2 of the Morrowind manual, under "Introduction to Morrowind," it says "We don't believe a good role-playing game should restrict you from making choices, even if they're bad ones." That's the philosophy behind Morrowind.

There are no "bad" character builds in Morrowind, but some builds are going to be much harder to play than others. Your example above of somebody wasting twenty minutes of their life on an ill-conceived Khajiit is actually an opportunity to learn something.

Quite frankly, if you need your hand held through the character-building phase of this role-playing game, you have no experience with role-playing games, because character creation choices in other such games have just as much of an effect on how game play will go. "Low Intelligence" and "Magic" do not go together in any of these games, and you'd almost have to be intentionally gimping a character to build one that way.

This was intentional. Even the game's "tutorial" just teaches you the basic controls and how conversations and attacking works, then it literally says "you're on your own now." It resulted in newer players being lost, but that was also intentional. They wanted us to get lost, to explore, to wonder what X thing was, to fail, and to be afraid of certain things until we progress to the point that they we could take them on. It was what made the game feel so huge, dangerous, and unknown.


And, in the end, if a player feels that they "messed up" their character in some way then there's still a difficulty slider.

Yes, and that "difficulty slider" in TES games is really a "combat balance slider." The amusing thing is that if somebody complains about being killed in Morrowind, and you tell him "turn the slider down until your skills improve," they get all indignant, as if you called them a Wimp or something.

If you don't have the common sense to notice that picking up an axe when your skilled in shortswords only (or that your axe skill is only at 10 whereas that nice Blunt weapon skill you have is at 40) is going to turn out bad for you then you shouldn't be playing the game.

And even disregarding common sense, reading the manual will tell you how the game works. If you can't derive "I should be using things that I'm skilled with" from the manual then you shouldn't be playing the game.

In-game tutorials are cute but a manual serves the same purpose and saves the player having to sit through redundant and non-skippable tutorials that only serve to reinforce the obvious for the oblivious who should know better.

Yes! I miss that slider bar! In Skyrim right now I want something between the hardest and second hardest difficulties, but can't fine tune it.

And yes, that slider bar is THE answer to "WTF I hate this game a mudcrab killed me right at the start why is my character incompetent this is dumb". It takes less effort to drop the combat difficulty for undeveloped combat skills than it does to complain about it.

This wasn't actually meant for you, I do believe there are SOME inbalances in Morrowind, but the same is with Oblivion and Skyrim really, it can't be helped having a few short-comings with a game that has such a significant number skills, styles, and equipment. So my post wasn't exactly to address your particular but the reoccuring theme of those that do complain about lack of information.

Also I don't say people just want things handed to them, I don't like that there is hand-holding, but I don't assume others want that. It would be the same as saying someone is appealing to nostalgia because they like a game.

Also remember he was talking about games back in 80's and 90's as well. He even mentioned that back in those days, the GAME needed to teach you how to play. Morrowind wasn't AS forgiving or AS well crafted in the sense of tutorial for players. Honestly, a mudcrab kills you though? Jeez, you're acting like the very thing that he said modern game Devs THINK kids are, morons who don't know what's going on (They dun know Obama!). Also, your character creation is completely flawed. Mainly because you just randomly picked things that were like "Oh that's looks useful" OBVIOUSLY it's gonna be imbalanced if you pick a bunch of random crap and try and get a little of EVERYTHING in your character. At least mine followed a relatively logical pathway connecting A to B to C. Gamers aren't that dumb ya know. Not to mention saying that your spell failed has something to do with how your character was created is just nonsense.

Another thing about Egoraptors video, he said it's ok to make those mistakes, ya know, dying and getting your ass kicked, "I gotta a lot of health so that's cool, unless I fall off a pit- [censored] IT! Oh ok so I got a lot of lifes too so no biggy!"

So yeah, get your ass kicked by a mudcrab (Completely exaggerating the inefficiency in my opinion, if you get beat by a mudcrab I don't care how bad your character is, it's my belief that you just svck at this game). Ultimately, it's no biggy because the game has something called tough love, if you wanna learn you gotta do it the hard way. Maybe that's not your thing, but don't say that Oblivion and Skyrim did it like Megaman did it, they did it with a tutorial, not a starting level and they sure as hell don't tell you everything you'll encounter in the game. Morrowind does push you out of the tree, but technically, so does Megaman.

Ok. Thanks for the clarification

I think this is an interesting point, and one that I'd like to explore. In many ways human error is the cause for all inconsistencies. As many times it's not the game itself that mucks up (and when it does the reaction is normally short lived... such as a crash or graphical glitches), but rather the human that mucks up. Machines are after all incredibly accurate and do not have bias, emotions, or perspectives to warp their decisions.

My problem with this form of argument is that a huge piece of the design philosophy is to account for human error, similarly people try to account for machine error. In many ways it's an oversight for a company to not understand that a person could easily ruin a quest, or faction relation by accidentally stealing, or sleeping in someones bed. The same goes for ruining the main quests via killing a important person (which may not have even occurred by their own hand) or selling an important item.

I understand that there needs to be a level of accountability to the player. If I killed Caius because he never wears a shirt I should have to live with my consequences. However the game doesn't always spell out what's off limits, which can lead to a lot of human error. There needs to be a mutual meeting between the developer and the player. Both sides need to take precautions towards preventing human error and for there to be little precautions on the part of Bethesda makes me look at this as an oversight.

I enjoy games that are back breaking, I enjoy games that make me frustrated and pissed off... if I'm in that type of mood. However I enjoy games in which I know for sure that I died, or screwed up because of me, and not because of some dice roll, or a lack of safe guards. I like games like Devil May Cry, or Demon Souls that can be difficult, and that somewhat taunt the player. However, what those games have that Morrowind doesn't is a level of player skill that makes me take credibility for my actions, rather than chalking it up to a dice roll.


If there was indeed a fallacy in comparing ideas, technology, or philosophies from different eras then we'd stand nothing to learn, nor could we judge those that partook in discrimination, or witch burnings. If you want to only apply this fallacy to comparing games, or media from different eras then the fallacy would have an internal bias and would in itself be somewhat of a fallacy. I'm judging the Morrowind combat based upon growing up playing turn based RPGs. I understand that at the time there was a certain dice roll mechanic that had to be incorporated, I also understand that as a developer grows and matures they produce more polished, and lean features.

In many ways I think you're misunderstanding my point. I'm not judging Morrowind based upon playing Skyrim, as Skyrim has a lot of problems as well. I'm judging it based upon playing two games that came out before Morrowind. Those being Final Fantasy 9 and Final Fantasy Tactics. I can go back and play those games and still enjoy the combat because to me it worked very well. There was a dice roll mechanic present, however it never felt like inhibited the game in any way. It felt clean, and well done because I knew when a character missed, or when they hit and I knew how much damage they did. The dice roll felt smoother, less inconsistent and it didn't penetrate different areas like alchemy, or magic to make those routes more tedious. It was there and you knew it was there, but never felt like it took control of the game. It felt like a tactic you could use to help win battles.

I understand that a Final Fantasy system may not work because your characters are locked into place, however I'd argue WoW (which came out 2 years later and even Diablo before had a similar combat system) had a turn based, but allowed for full control of a character, that worked very well. Is it perfect? No, in a lot of ways you're the sum of your gear in WoW, however the combat is based upon dice rolls, and again it never takes over the game.

For some the idea that if their character is only good with maces he shouldn't hit a standing still target with a sword makes sense. However I'd argue that there are some inherent different between a sword and a mace, but that shouldn't make you miss 4-5 times in a row. Similarly there are different between a greatsword and a short sword, yet my character can wield both effectively (which is why I like the Skyrim system better).

A lot of it for me is preference, and I understand that. However I don't see time as an excuse for underdeveloped mechanics.

This is why we have that wonderful feature they came out with called saving and reloading. If you aren't maintaining a decent list of saves (or least a couple recent saves) then thats your own fault, especially in a game like this where decisions made in the beginning can and do affect the ending. Prevention will just soil the game (as we've seen) so ultimately the ability to roll back is the best option.

However, thats only the best option presuming Beth doesn't introduce multiple pathways to completing any particular quest (or at least, the most important quests. Hell, even Morrowind has multiple pathways for its Main Quest, which Oblivion and Skyrim lack. Sure, it might just be one pathway thats not that obvious (though it has the benefit of being extremely hard for someone who doesn't have a clue to close off) but its better than a total lack of) which is the ideal solution for this problem as far as quests are concerned. And besides, its not that important to complete a quest anyway. Its very easy to just shrug it off and go about your business. There is no such thing as 100% completion after all so one failed quest isn't even a remote issue.

As far as other mechanics are concerned, the game already does enough to make it quite obvious what you have to do if you want to be immediately viable in combat. There is zero reason to hammer it in for the oblivious (to the detriment of those who know better) who apparently can't be bothered to read simple descriptions or for that matter the manual.


There's a difference between player skill and character skill. Morrowind puts emphasis on the latter, not the former. That doesn't make the game flawed. Don't presume that just because you prefer games that emphasize player skill that games that emphasize character skill are not as good in their mechanics.


Judging Morrowind's combat based on two games that didn't even have similar combat (the presence of dice rolls do not make the two systems similar) to Morrowind (and hell, they only just barely had similar combat to each other) is quite dumb.

And again, if Morrowind was fully animated (and balanced properly so that size was actually taken into account in determining the power of a particular creature. IE, no more squibs that can dodge a battleaxe) combat would be far better. Just sit there and imagine it. You swing your weapon and dice rolls determine your effectiveness, and lets say you miss. But instead of the sword just clipping through the target and doing no damage, the sword animation would complete but at the same time the target would display an appropriate dodge, block, or parry animation. And this would go both ways. If your skills were appropriate to dodge X attack, then you would display the appropriate response if you were able to successfully dodge that attack.

Virtually every game that uses dice rolls (or similar systems) animates misses, blocked attacks, dodges, etc etc. Dragon Age Origin's did this, and combat in that game looked and felt fine. Truly, the lack of animations is the ONLY problem with Morrowind's combat (beyond silly imbalances that I've already addressed). Because the only difference between the combat in DAO and Morrowind (for the most part) is that Morrowind it uses FPS-esque controls and a (primarily) first person view as opposed to point and click and third person, and at that point its just a matter of aesthetics that determines the difference, not actual mechanics.

And the thing you have to realize about a game like Morrowind is that you are not controlling your character's body. Just his mind. Thats how character skill emphasis works. You tell your character what to do and he does it. You don't take control of his limbs. You tell him to move and he moves. If he isn't skilled enough to successfully do X action, then he will fail. Its not a fault of the player, its a fault of the character. And while that of course circles back to the player, there's already more than enough support for the player to deal with that issue.


Have you ever tried to swing a weapon at someone who was more skilled than you? You will miss a LOT. And I know so because I've been into Western Martial Arts myself and the first thing I had to do with my instructor was pick a weapon and try to hit him. Naturally I missed virtually every time.

Now, you might bring up me coming to be more skilled in X weapon (as I've come to be with sword and shield) and you might think that Y weapon thats similar to X would be just as easy to use. Except that isn't the case at all. I've recently been getting into using axes and while you generally do swing the two weapons in the same way, there is no guarantee that you're going to hit nor hit for that much of an effect for that matter. An opponent that I could easily defeat with my sword has now come to be on par with me because I'm using not only a weapon that is unfamiliar but also works in a different way.

And distance and the non-movement of your opponent don't even matter much if you're still not skilled with whatever weapon you're using. You won't know how to utilize that distance for the maximum effect and if you're not completely used to that weapon you won't be able to maneuver it at such a short distance to make a proper hit. And even presuming you could maneuver in such a way, if you don't know the optimal striking force needed to land a blow then your opponent is going to take the advantage and dodge, block, or parry your attacks.

But all of that doesn't even matter because Morrowind's combat isn't at all realistic (nor have any games done realistic combat. Only Mount and Blade has gotten close and thats not saying much considering how far from realistic it actually is) nor was it ever intended to be. So at best all of that translates into giving a bonus to attack based on distance. But such a thing is such a trivial feature that the lack of it isn't that big of a deal and trying to put it on Beth for not bothering to include it when they had much better things to worry about (combat wasn't really the main focus of Morrowind) is just stupid.

From a brief stint with SCA combat (where it became obvious that my aging reflexes were no longer sufficient to keep pace with a younger generation), I quicky learned how difficult it is to land a hit on someone while they're trying to hit you back. A large part of your attention is on preventing yourself from being hit (particularly when your life is at stake), and the timing and movements to either press the attack or wait for the right moment for an effective counter-attack are a matter of experience and training. While learning one type of weapon should give you some basic capabilities and understandings with others (represented at least in part by the effects of Attributes in Morrowind), you won't be all that effective with one that's not familiar.

Morrowind's "character based" design is functionally no worse from a "realism" standpoint than the later games, it just lacks the animations to show it. In all cases, the concept of trading blows until somebody runs out of hitpoints is totally unrealistic. Generally in real combat, whoever manages to land the first even remotely solid hit wins, plain and simple. Real life uses "locational damage", and extreme penalties for "shock" and "blood loss", above and beyond the obvious damage to whatever location that gets hit. If you're comparing the games for "realistism", that's like comparing Sponge Bob with Mickey Mouse.

But at the same time I think the current categorization of weapons is better as before there was no difference between a two handed long sword, and a one handed long sword. I've never swung a sword before but understanding the way our bodies works there would be a bigger learning curve when using a 1h sword and 2h sword than a 1h sword and a dagger.


And that was exactly what i harped on the most in my OP.

Ultimately it would be better to have a separate 2H sword skill. The thing is though is putting in enough variety of 2H swords to justify it and making it different enough so that it doesn't appear as redundant on paper.

That last bit could be argued for why spears and medium armor were removed. Anyways, it's more that this argument that "My character shouldn't be as good with a dagger as he is a long blade" needs to be extended to 2h weapons as well. I don't know the numbers but I'd imagine Spears, and 2h swords are pretty close to each other in diversity.

While I wouldn't say that Spears and 2h Swords are the same but I'm all for the idea that we add realism in the difference between how weapons are handled.

Well using the logic of redundancy all we need is a shield and a stick and those are our armor and weapons respectively. All else is "redundant".

The slippery slope isn't logical at all.

Trying to categorize a host of dissimilar weapons into 2 or 3 neat categories will always be "iffy" at best. Whether you attempt to use "long blades" and "short blades", or 1-handed and 2-handed swords to divide the three major blade types (daggers, longswords, and claymores) into an awkward 2, one of the types is going to get put in with something that it doesn't resemble. Adding in Axes, Maces, Staves, Spears, Polearms, and various and sundry other devices for causing bodily harm just further complicates the issue, and either requires more categories or else a farther "stretch of the imagination" bordering on sillyness to combine them.

I don't have a problem with 1-hand versus 2-hand, as long as there are other mechanisms to distinguish between the sub-categories within each (such as Shortswords versus Maces). Perks included a misguided attempt to do so, but were very badly implemented.

[ Contrary to what "FailedToOpen" imagines, Spears and 2-handed swords are used in totally different ways. Most 2-handers are wielded in a manner closer to that of an Axe or some forms of polearms (halberds, bardiches), and stabbing with most of them is relatively unusual (halberds being an exception). Chopping with Spears (or other polearms like partisans) obviously isn't the preferred method of using them. ]

Yes, but sitting there and calling one weapon or armor type redundant only because it doesn't have enough variety within what it governs or because there's other skills that go towards the same goal isn't logical either, and that was the point I was making with what I said.

Just because you have swords, axes, and maces doesn't mean you can't have spears, crossbows, and throwing weapons.

Read below as I'm not really arguing for a total segregation of weapons, but really just bringing up a counter point to other arguments that cater towards why the combat is the way it is.

My point was, and has been that the argument for why my character can be skilled in swords, but weak with maces, needs to be applied to 1h vs 2h as well. As the general reasoning for this argument seems to be that they're two totally different weapons and would require different schooling, however the same could be applied to 1h vs 2h because the concept of how the weapon works isn't the issue, it's the grip, balance, and motion that requires schooling.

Like I've said I've never swung a sword before. But I've played sports and the drums long enough to understand how much weight, size, and balance can affect your ability to perform. The example I'm thinking of is the difference between a normal stick, and a hot rod. A hot rod (also called thunder rod or lightning rod depending on size) doesn't have the rebound of a normal stick, nor does it have the same level of balance. Meaning that things like rolls are difficult with a hot rob because of the difference in weight, and balance.


You're misunderstanding my use of diversity. I'm speaking in terms of how many different weapons there are in the game. Spears and 2handers are extensively different from the range of motion to their points of balance. Spears (as you mentioned) were mainly used for stabbing, or thrusting, which is they were used against cavalry. Outside of stabbing spears are almost useless, which is where there are halberds.

Every weapon is different in some way, and require a totally different technique.

Yes, and some weapons have several different techniques. Two-handed Longswords can be used as heavy slashing weapons, but they can also be used for precise thrusting, they can be used with a reversed grip, etc.

Dual-wielding is usually represented wrong in these games. The second weapon is likely to be a short parrying blade, used for blocking, and some parrying weapons were more like forks or tridents, designed to trap the opponent's blade.

The idea that a single "skill" can cover both bladed weapons and blunts is just plain silly. There's almost no similarity between a mace and a dagger, in use. It's stupid to link them together as one skill. (I'm visualizing somebody trying to club a helmeted opponent over the head with a dagger. Yeah, "stupid" is the right word.)

Things are represented incorrectly for balance, and enjoyment. But I'm not arguing for a total segregation of weapons, just as a counter point to previous arguments made about the combat.