Morrowind combat is not as different from Oblivion and Skyrim combat as people like to believe. Morrowind combat feels radically different only when the weapon skill level is below 50. Above 50, Morrowind combat feels and plays remarkably like the later games (i.e. attacks begin to hit more frequently). By the time we have reached weapon skill 70 Morrowind combat is almost indistinguishable from Oblivion or Skyrim combat.

Combat-wise, every one of the Elder Scrolls games have been hybrid action/roleplaying games. All of the Elder Scrolls games involve a combination of player skill and character skill. Morrowind is no different in this respect than Skyrim or Oblivion.

And even if it were indeed a "lack" to you, it is not necessarily a "lack" to those who have played roleplaying games for years. Character skill is a traditional roleplaying game mechanic. You may choose to view character skill as "lacking" but there are many players who would characterize the series' increasing emphasis on adrenaline-fueled, rock 'em-sock 'em, first-person-shooter-style player skill as "lacking."

Yes, and I'll bet that a lot of the people who give up on the game as having "bad combat" have never tried building a Redguard fighter with long blade and armor skills. Ten minutes into the game, an enchanted sword literally falls out of the sky for you. What do people want, anyway, handholding? ...Oh, wait...

It comes with the most stylish helm in the game and three useful scrolls, as well!

However, the combat is bad, even when you do hit reliably. It relies WAY too much on stunlock.

No such thing in Morrowind. You either create a character thats going to survive in combat, or you don't. If you pick the latter, you're doing so because you don't plan on going into combat.


What??? This makes zero sense.


Except you do not. At all. I have several characters that have proven that.

It's no worse than any of the other TES games. You don't swing a hammer the same way you swing an axe, and you certainly don't use an arming sword the same way you use a katana. The animations are a little better in the later games, but they take away the ability to do thrusting attacks or overhead chops. At least in Morrowind, a dagger is held correctly for thrusting. In Oblivion, it looks like somebody trying to pummel an enemy with a ruler.

You swing ALL weapons exactly the same in Morrowind. You stab with a mace as you would a dagger. You chop with a Dagger as you would an axe... You swing a Spear like you would a Greathammer.

Mind you, you generally svck with your weapon if you try doing any of that, but the point still stands - Morrowind had way too few animation variations.

Does it matter? Animations were bad, yeah. That doesn't make combat bad. Just makes it look bad. Which is very very different.

What makes it bad is the love of stunlock instead of the tighter "rhythm" of combat in previous and later TES games.

But it's not true! I just tested this. I set the option to "best attack" to eliminate player interferance, and I equipped a Steel Broadsword. When you press attack, that weapon makes a slashing animation, which corresponds to its best attack rating. I then equipped a Glass Longsword, and attacking with it produces a thrusting animation.

Weapons in Morrowind will act like this if you set the option to "best attack." If you don't set it, you have control over whether the weapon thrusts, chops or slashes, based on your movement when attacking (this is similar to the way Daggerfall worked.) In no event is the animation always the same!

Edit: I don't think you know how to play the game.

By "Always the same" I mean every slash is the same as every slash. Every chop is the same as every chop. Every Thrust is the same as every thrust.

Beth's animation department has been notorious for producing rather bad animations and a general lack of them. Especially back then.

Are you talking about the animation? Because that's also not true, at least for the combat mechanics. In Morrowind you have control over the force of the slash. You simply hold down the attack button to "charge" the strike.

So let's review: In Morrowind, you have a choice of Slash, Thrust, or Chop, and you have control over the force of the blow. In addition, in Morrowind, your fighting ability is significantly affected by how fatigued you are.

So how is this "worse" combat than the later games, which don't give you this level of "reality"?

Because it's clunky as hell and doesn't flow.

I wonder why they abandoned that concept. It would, of course, make combat much more difficult when facing some of the curiously difficult enemies in Skyrim (bandits that take 5+ power attacks with a greatsword), but then again, such difficult enemies wouldn't be needed in order to challenge the player. I BELIEVE THAT A MOD IS IN ORDER!!!

Yeah, so your complaint is all about the outdated animation, and has nothing to do with the actual game mechanics, or the player control, etc.

Morrowind actually gives the player MORE control over combat than the later games do, and more weapon versatility, but it doesn't look as good because the animations are simplified.

The combat itself (Not the animations) are what don't flow and are as clunky as hell. Mount+Blade has just as painful a combat system.

"Clunky" isn't really very descriptive. Your complaint can't be about player control, as we determined above. Maybe you're talking about the AI movement, which is less sophisticated. Certainly the combat animations of creatures like mudcrabs and cliff racers could be improved. Still, considering the age of the game, the AI combat isn't bad; try fighting hand-to-hand against one of the local Dunmer.

And I still think it all comes back to the animation, which I agree is over-simplified.

It is about player control. Yes, you can control more, but it's ALL superfluous. The clunkiness comes from the reliance on character movement to determine the attack used. They boil down to "Fast" and "Slow" attacks anyway in Morrowind, and there's no reason not to "Use Best Attack" because there's no difference between the attack types other than damage for any given weapon.

Meanwhile, in Oblivion and Skyrim, you can make a fast attack, or you can use any of the four slower attacks, which all have different effects based on what your doing, and they are intuitive. A Standing power attack immobilizes you and deals more damage than a moving power attack. Backward power attacks give you more space. Forward power attacks keep you moving forward, and hold momentum for devastating but hard-to-aim attacks. Sideways attacks allow you to riposte while stepping out of the way of an attack.

Yeah, and all of this while behind the scenes, in the game engine, the weapon itself is being nerfed if your character's skill with it is low.

This is a bit of a biased opinion here. Taking spellcasting for example, I really don't see what's wrong with Oblvion's system. Yes, if you know a spell, have enough magicka and a high enough skill to cast it then you can cast it successfully 100% of the time, but there's still a vast swathe of powerful spells you can't even get near casting until you improve your skills a lot. Even if you improve your magicka pool through levelling, and reduce the magicka cost to something you can afford by increasing your skill, you still won't ever be able to cast the highest level spells at all until you get your skill level high enough. Same with potion making really. Enchanting only relies on soul gems and cash yes, but in order to even get access to that ability you have to do lots of work for the Mage's Guild, so you still have to earn it, it's not just given to you on a plate. The whole repairing system is a bit screwy as a whole really, but even that is something that has definite benefits as you improve it.

I think you're just judging really selectively if you think these things are just laid out on a plate for you from game start with Oblivion.

The latter part is still gimping your character which contradicts your statement that you cannot gimp your character. You can gimp your character in any game, there are tiers in competitive games and picking a lower tier will always put you at an uneven playing field. You're right that in many ways people gimp themselves on purpose to make the game more difficult. But that comes with knowledge, and understanding of the game mechanics which is something you don't have when you first play, or even after multiple playthroughs.

Except its not because gimping your character implies that that character is going to take on the challenges that another character (that isn't by this definition "gimped") would. If you create a non-combat character, its because you intend on not engaging in combat.

And yes doing this intentionally does require you to learn about the game. But why wouldn't it? Unless you're asking that the game be easy as pie and have no learning curve, and as such be incredibly and stupidly simple, you're really not making any sense.

Only in Oblivion.

In Skyrim, your weapon damage is being boosted because you know how to use it more effectively. Someone who tries to wildly hack at someone with a sword is not going to inflict as grevious injuries as someone who knows how to control their blade to hit vital organs. A hack to the outer arm or against a rib doesn't do nearly as much damage as someone who can cut a major artery in the arm, or slide the blade between the ribs.

Weapon skill also directy correlates to the strength in which you can swing your weapon. (Strength was MERGED with Weapon skill, not cut entirely), so someone who can swing a mace or axe harder hurts a lot more than someone who doesn't even know how to hold it properly.

It amounts to the same thing. Weapon damage is assigned a number, based upon your present skill with that weapon type.

In Morrowind, weapon skill and fatigue affected your chance to hit, and the damage caused by a hit was rolled from that weapon's range of damage, and your striking force.

I'm not suggesting that one system is better than the other. What I'm suggesting is that it's wrong to say that one system is bad and the other is good, since clearly many of us have found the opposite to be the case. I happen to prefer a system where character skill overrules player skill, since that's a purer roleplay system. It's a matter of playing style.

Interestingly, though, I can enjoy both. These days, I play a heavily modded Oblivion more than any other game. Maybe, in time, Skyrim will reach that level of replayability, too.

In Morrowind, weapon skill, Agility, and fatigue affected your chance to hit. A more Agile character was more likely to hit, regardless of skill (Agility may actually be the most important combat stat in the early parts of the game). Damage was affected by the weapon's damage for the the "force" you used, and your character's Strength. There was no "random" element to the damage, other than for a chance at critical strikes and stuns/knockdowns (the latter pair depending on the opponent's Agility and the weight of your weapon and Strength behind it). Each weapon had a minimum and a maximum damage for each attack, and the length of time simply determined where along that damage scale the number was.

Skyrim's merging of Strength with Skill takes away the distinction betwen a "fencer" versus a "brute" fighter, since both automatically become "stronger" as they gain skill. The same selection of perks in SR is available to both. In MW, one would have higher Agility and be able to hit more accurately and frequently, while the other would do more damge per strike and be more capable of knocking opponents down for an easy kill, even with identical Skill. So much for Perks defining a character, or Attributes serving no purpose.