Yes, Agility is The One Stat To Rule Them All. That's part of the reason why the system had to go.

WHOOOSH

You can just hear the point going way over your head.

Saying the combat IS bad as if it is a fact when it's really only your opinion is ignorance, but aside from that. i want to tell you a story, about a guy who has Duel wielding in Destruction and the impact perk unlocked. As he was traversing the frozen wastes of Skyrim, he was assaulted by an Elder Dragon who landed just in front of him, reacting quickly, he shot a firebolt spell at the dragon, the dragon shrank back, stunned by the blow, he then proceeded to shoot again and again and with every other firebolt fired, the dragon shrank back, stunned yet again. So after about 25 minutes of this slow process, the dragon finally died, never making a single motion to attack.

So tell me, what's the difference here? Cause in Morrowind you could train agility and stop the stun, and enemies had higher agility as well as you fought the harder ones. Oh wait, Agility isn't in Skyrim, well, svcks to be them.

As for someone saying about how over-powered Alchemy was in Morrowind, please get up to date on Skyrim. I'll quote a guy who abused the Alchemy, Enchant and smithing exploits to an extreme in Skyrim and created a bow with...Well... "I bet if I fired this at the ground it would destroy the planet."

You tell me how much damage that bow was capable of doing. Need I mention another thing about our brave warrior who cookie cutted a dragon to death, he was also wearing armor that reduced the cost of his Destruction magic to 0. Just saying.

What is success to you? What would succeeding in Morrowind be? To me it means progressing through the game via quests. A gimped character has difficulty progressing because he lacks the ability to succeed in a given situation. Morrowind isn't a dating simulator, you're going to need to be competent in combat in order to succeed.

Your last point is basically what I'm getting at. My point has been all along that you can gimp your character in Morrowind and due to the very unforgiving nature of the combat it's easy to handicap your character and never progress. You're forced into combat, there is very little alternative. People do indeed make character that are in a way gimped in order to make a change of pace. However you need to stop looking at it as someone with this knowledge and look at it as someone who has never played before.

Wait a minute! Why should a game be designed to be totally accessible for someone who has never played it before? Is there something wrong with having to learn to play a game, before you can play it well?

In fact, your definition of "success" is very narrow, and fails to take into account the wide-open sandbox nature of these games. If you're playing a role-playing game just to do the quests, you're barely touching upon the actual role playing at all.

It's quite true that experienced players often make gimped characters. The reason we do it is to create difficulty; TES games typically have no way to control difficulty other than the stupid damage-level "difficulty slider," which really does nothing but make battles longer and more tedious.

As for being "forced into combat," your comment is more true of the later games than it is of Morrowind. In Morrowind, it's quite possible to join several factions whose quest lines are quite non-violent. You can rise through the Mages Guild ranks peacefully for the most part, and the combat necessary will be no problem since you'll have developed the skills as a requirement of your advancement. The same is true of the two religious factions. The point is that except for some leveled creatures you encounter along the roads, Morrowind never throws you into combat that you're not ready for. Even the Main Quest, which is violent, strongly encourages you to train your skills before jumping in.

The game should teach you how to play while you play. It's very poor design if it drops choices on you without giving you the information needed to make proper decisions (then require starting over when you realize you've made bad choices).

Doesn't mean it needs to be easy, but it shouldn't require failure for you to learn and improve.

Morrowind doesn't drop choices on you lol. As soon as you get to Caius Cossades, he tells you to go out and season up a bit and come back when you're better, even gives ya money for it. Then sends you on 2 little errands.

How many people created a bad character the first time they played? How many people ran up to, then promptly get slaughtered by, a Kagouti or Daedra? How many people died on that bridge between the Imperial Fort and Dwemer Ruin?

Yes, the game drops choices on you (character creation options, quests that send you off to places with new enemies, etc) without properly informing you of the consequences (the viability of the build, enemy difficulty, etc) and telling you what you'll need to survive.

No, the game doesn't force you into creating a problem character. There are three different ways of building a character in Morrowind, and two of them lead to "canned" classes. There's nothing superior about Morrowind's default classes, but they are all balanced well enough to be functional for a beginner. A Redguard or Imperial with the default Warrior class and the Warrior birthsign -- obvious choices for a beginner -- is a perfectly suitable beginner's build.

Edit: Oh, and the beginner doesn't really have any business being on that bridge. There are two quest lines that send you there. In the Main Quest, you've been told to go train before proceeding. And in the Mages Guild, Ajira has already suggested that you not take quests from Ranis in Balmora.

As the other guy said, you are not forced into combat. Particularly in earlier games. And even in later games, you still are not forced into combat (though with Oblivion that is generally all you have to do. Skyrim and Morrowind have much more else to do besides that, MW more than Skyrim) if you don't want to be.

And besides, a successful character doesn't need to complete any quests that require combat nor even get into combat at all. You're missing the point of the game entirely by acting as if the game is something to be "beaten".


So what you're saying is that when you created your first character, you couldn't read? Because the game (and the manual) tells you how the game works. Yes, Morrowind and DF were unforgiving. Nothing about the games should have indicated otherwise however, so stupidly running up to that giant triceratops looking creature with your rusty dagger (when meanwhile you decided to be skilled in axes) fresh off the boat and promptly dying were purely your own fault.

It should also be noted that you do learn by playing. Creating a new character (even though you never had to unless you wanted to change from combat to non-combat or vice versa, or choose a different Great House. And even then) is still playing the game. These games were never one-character games, so treating them like they are misses the point, and actually gimps you out of a lot of enjoyment you could have had.

Yeah, so in Oblivion we got a lengthy tutorial, and by the time you had the mechanics figured out, you were tossed into the world at large where your choices largely were irrelevant, and failure wasn't even possible in many respects. In Skyrim, apparently the tutorial is only slightly longer, and then the game is over.

Also, as Scow2 puts it: "Yes, Agility is The One Stat To Rule Them All. That's part of the reason why the system had to go." So, if 1-handed weapons are The One Skill to Rule Them All in Skyrim, does that mean they need to be removed? In Morrowind, you could play a brutish fighter with low agility and high Strength, and rely on doing massive damage when you did hit, or play a lithe and Agile blademaster who could make the blade work miracles, slicing an opponent apart one piece at a time. Either way was viable....or you could make a stealth-based character that really didn't do a lot of fighting, and do most of the quests that way.

You can "gimp" a character in any of the games, but Morrowind allowed you to continue and "fix" a bad build over time. The levelling and scaling in OB left you far behind if you levelled up the "wrong" skills, with no easy way to recover. More importantly, the regional difficulty of MW allowed you to tackle the game at whatever pace you felt capable of, which allowed you to take on that guy on the bridge at Level 1 if you felt ready, or wait unitl about Level 12 when even a mainly non-combat character should have no real problem, just due to sheer hitpoint gain.

The guy on the bridge, whose name is Snowy Granius, isn't really all that tough anyway. He's a level 3 Imperial battlemage. If you ignore his summon and run him down, as you would any other summoner, he's pretty easy to take out. A long-blade skilled player with Tarhiel's sword should be able to take him out with four or five hits. ...Even better, with the Sword of White Woe (you do have that, right? )

Actually, I understand the point you're trying to make. However, there needs to be some kind of balance between "common" character builds. If the mechanics of a game dictate that the Agile Swordsman deals more damage and can "take" more hits all around than the Tough Warrior (who's supposed to specialize in dishing out hurt and taking blows like a boss), then the system has failed.

The biggest problem with the first Fallout game was the obsolescence of any character that put points into anything outside of Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. Those who invested in Endurance, Charisma, and more than 6 points into Strength for any purpose on the mistaken belief that such a build could do anything better than a High INT, High Agility, High Luck character deserve pity.

Yes, it should be possible to make characters that are utterly incompetant, but when popular and/or intuitive character archetypes are terrible, then the game system needs reworking or removal.

Furthermore, the problems with Attribute system are so consistant (Agility/Dexterity is where EVERYTHING goes unless you're a mage, when everything but Intelligence is a waste of points: Charisma being absolutely useless, Strength being ineffective compared to Agility/dexterity, etc), that it becomes clear that the system of Attributes is flawed to the core.

I'm not saying it should. I'm just arguing that your character can be gimped, and be totally handicapped throughout the whole game due to the unforgiving combat system. You can overcome that handicap however it only creates more frustration.

Success is subjective, however a general consensus of success is completion. You could argue that there is success is finding references, subliminal messages, or any other deeper dynamic to a story, but you generally play to complete the game, and completion of a game is generally defined as successfully completing the story. Otherwise you have a game like minecraft which success is totally subjective because there is no predetermined point of completion.


I understand that, as someone who gets bored of games really easily I make gimped characters, set limits and restrictions, or use an inferior gun/race, in order to increase difficult, and create a fresher game.

In Skyrim you can go non violent as well, yet a lot of the game will be off limits to you. My point above was that you can overcome handicaps, I'm not arguing that if you create an inferior character you'll be unable to overcome it. I'm arguing that you can indeed create an gimped character and because the user input in Morrowind is so low you'll have a hard time overcoming your handicap without grinding.

Sure, if you include "paid training" as part of your definition of "grinding." Morrowind's MQ presents paid training as a recommendation; your boss gives you the names of Blades trainers, and tells you to go learn how to fight.

Edit: I meant to comment on your standard of "success." I disagree with the "completion" idea. It's actually impossible, because of faction interplay, to complete all the quest lines in Morrowind with one character. It make no sense to do so in most other role playing games, since not all quest lines appeal to all character types.

Thats the thing, the archetypes were never wrong. Understanding that high health isn't the only way to cope with damage will help you understand that. Even in Oblivion this was still the case, despite the horrid level scaling.


Have you ever played Morrowind? Or Daggerfall for that matter? Oblivion? Because out of all those games only Oblivion has a truly (IE, no matter what kind of character) useless Personality attribute. Everything else you mentioned isn't the case at all.

For instance (and lets use Morrowind as an example as that's the easiest example), Agility only really needed to be raised to 50 before you could start pouring all of your points into Strength and endurance for the brutish fighter (and often times unless you went with an unorthodox race for such a character (like an Altmer) you usually had 50 agility anyway). Wasting any more points on agility besides that ruins the point of such a character.

Intelligence is overrated. Using creative spellmaking, one can create a viable mage that will never, ever have to put a point into intelligence.


Misses the point of the games entirely. There is no such thing as "completion" in TES.


Well duh. If you create a non-combat character (and do note that calling these characters "gimped" is completely biased) and then try and convert it to a combat character of course you're going to have a hard time. You shouldn't have an easy time doing so.

I didn't say it forces you to make bad characters. I said it gives you the options for making a character, but isn't at all clear on what you need to make a viable character. It will fully let you make a bad character without warning or providing tips for Optimal Success, and leave you to discover the mistake on your own when you get killed by a mudcrab.

How is it obvious that you need to do that to survive as a new player without experience with the game? How is it obvious that you must stack all bonuses into a few select skills if you want to have a fair shake as a new player? How is it obvious that new players should avoid playing a mage like the plague?

Given TES's "be who you want"/"you get better at what you do" style, it's hardly conducive to force a new player to make a character and set up starting skills without knowing anything about the game, and to make said character very dependent on those pre-selected skills with no real option to change beyond starting over.

Ranis won't actually give you a quest if you're not of a certain rank (which itself requires sufficient skill levels to get; Radiant Story had great potential to do stuff like this well, and it's sad Skyrim didn't manage to do it).

As for the bridge, what about exploration? Do you need a quest to go some place? You're pointed to Fort Moonmoth pretty early, and the path to the bridge is not very concealed. If you get curious and explore up that way, it's essentially a "Surprise, you're dead!" trap. Exploration in general tends to be very bad to a new character's well-being, which kinda works against the whole idea of finding interesting things through exploration. New players will often find unavoidable death from exploration, which is a strong disincentive to continue doing it.

Though that's only possible when you know the game beforehand. You have no idea how easy it will be to handle that guy on the bridge when you first meet him (in fact, a number of people who meet him for the first time don't even know he's an enemy and will walk up to him to try to talk), only to find him go aggro, summon a skeleton, and throw magic everywhere, taking inexperienced players down in seconds.

To a new player, when you accidentally create a gimped character, it's not likely they'll stick with it long enough to grind up skills to useable levels, and will just restart instead. If you picked a bad class, you will need to start over anyway since you won't level up properly with the wrong major skills.

And how does one go about paying for training? They'd have to have money correct? I imagine a very logical way to get money would be to complete quests? Or grind out alchemy? However quests from money could very lead you into combat, or could ask you to do something you're not able to do. Money from alchemy is hard to come by without connections from quests, and buying ingredients from someone who has a high disposition with you.

You'd still have to grind to pay for training. I don't really see it as being any less of a grind, and I'd actually argue that's more of a grind since Morrowinds quests can be somewhat tedious.


I understand that, however there is an end, or at least a conclusion to the game. Most of the time the gamer sets an end, or a goal based upon his minor/major successes within the game. However there is also an end created by the developer, you could argue that in an open world game there is no end, however that would be somewhat silly. Because there is always an end, whether it's defined by you, or the developer there is always an end.

This is what the role playing in a role playing game is all about.

A starting mage will probably work on alchemy; such a character would almost certainly be starting with an Alchemy skill high enough to know the first (and possibly second) effects of ingredients. There are several plants growing right around the starting village that share the first effect of Water Walking, for instance. That mage will also soon probably acquire a soul trap spell, and start filling gems for fun and profit.

A thief will have a different way of raising money.

Warrior types just go raid the bandit caves; there's plenty of loot down there.

How you make money in the game is by playing the role.


No, there isn't. I have open-ended characters whose lives I return to from time to time. I know people who have hundreds of hours on individual characters, some of whom have never even touched the main quest of the game. There's no need to finish anything at all, unless you want to.

As a practical matter, there's an obviously finite amount of time that it would take to explore and "clear" every dungeon in Morrowind, to do every available quest, etc. But that's not all there is to these games, and, for some players, that doesn't even begin to define what the games are. Oblivion can't be "finished" at all, since dungeons respawn.

And we haven't mentioned mods, have we?

You're looking at it as somebody who has start of the game all planned out. You understand the synergy between race, birthsign, skills, and attributes. I could create a character who started the game out very proficient in alchemy (already unlocking 3 first ingredient effects) but that's because I understand the synergy from trial and error, as well as research.

Most people won't understand that.



I'll use myself as an example. I played Minecraft for 8 months, to give you some perspective I rarely play a game for more than 4 months before growing bored of it. It amazes me that it help my attention for so long because it's a very shallow game. I've also wasted many an hour playing Animal Crossing, and WoW. I enjoy games without an end, or that can be played for a very long time. However I also understand that I am the exception to the rule, rather than the norm.

I'd argue that many will only play the game until the end of the main quest, rather than playing and discovering every little thing.

I am talking ALL RPGs ever, from Dungeons & Dragons to Savage Worlds to GURPS to Rolemaster to Baldur's Gate to Daggerfall to Morrowind to Dragon Age to Diablo II (Which averts the "Mages pour points into magic" - nobody invests any points into Energy) to Nethack to Dwarf Fortress (Yes, it has an RPG mode). Attributes are problematic in all those cases.

I think they pick up on it. If the game "grabs" somebody, they'll be willing to reroll a new character. If after a few hours of playing they think rerolling isn't worth it, they're probably not the sort of person who wants to play through all the complex faction stuff anyway. They make different games for different people.


You're probably right. Funny thing, though, the game is still selling after more than ten years. There are new players asking for build advice in the Morrowind forums right now. Some of those people discovered TES through Skyrim, and are expanding into the older TES games.

As people have said several times in this discussion, nobody is suggesting that Morrowind is for everyone. It's still a very good game though, with all of its age and its acknowledged flaws.

And none of those other games have anything to do with TES.

I don't think the problem lies within the "complex" nature of the game, but more that it hasn't aged well.



People also still play the crap out of Diablo, WoW (considering that it's only 2 years older than Morrowind), Warcraft, Starcraft, Mario, etc. It speaks more to the fact that some people just prefer older games, or that some people just like to try new thing .




I'd argue that D&D had a HUGE influence on Elder Scroll games. I don't see how you could say that they had nothing to do with each other.

Great job of quoting my first half and then totally missing the second half where I said that Caius TELLS you to go train because you are not ready yet. What the world would be like if people simply finished what they started...