Well, the expression is overused those days, still it's true that all games suffer from it, although it may be for good reasons sometimes. However...
* I miss the part where I had to study the conversation log, read a book to get an answer, or go to some place or person I was vaguely referred to. Now, I instead have a compass with a quest marker, I cannot disable it and have no journal with conversation log instead.
* I feel like there aren't enough mysteries or secrets: the daedra quests are easy to find, feel too much like "so this is a daedra, just give me your quest so that I can get my artefact" (exception granted for the haunted house) and I found very little secret places, underwater passages and such. Anyway, there are always those icons on the compass telling me there is something to see. But in Morrowind, not only it didn't feel like it was needed (we only had dots for the important places, and only if we heard about it before I think) but finding a secret place was suddenly very exciting

Anyone here played Morrowind and really miss how you had to use your brain and how exploration felt ?

*You can turn off quest markers, and you can turn off the compass entirely.

*Uh, have you done all the Daedric quests? There's only three I can think of that even start at a shrine. Also, turn off the compass.

Another one of these threads? Cutting the fat and dumbing down are two completely different concepts.

Yes, totally.

Well it seems they cut off a bit of the meat with the fat. I wholeheartedly agree with the OP -- I really miss the treasure caches in Morrowind that you could stumble upon. The Daedric faces (really, Daedric in general) and artifacts like Eleidon's Ward and the Dragonbone Cuirass added to the sense of exploration. You never knew when the little cave you were entering was gonna yield up something huge. Both Oblivion and Skyrim have taken the hunting out of treasure hunting. And though I'll admit that caves and dungeons are very well-made in Skyrim, the reason you enter them now is because somebody told you to, not because there's the enticing promise of long-lost treasure to drive you on.

If you only enter dungeons because you've been told to go there, you're missing out a lot. There's a lot of unique loot (Ghostblade, Dragon Priest masks, some specific helms, etc.) that can be found in random dungeons. Some of it can even only be found if you go without taking a quest to go to that dungeon (Yngol's Barrow comes to mind).

While I agree that there's a number of interesting items to be found in the tombs and dungeons of Skyrim, none of them -- or at least none of the things I've found -- have been terribly useful. Going back to the example of the Ghostblade, I found it and tossed it in my chest in Breezehome because I found that I preferred my Skyforge steel to it (I don't abuse the crafting skills, either; my smithing is was probably in the 30s when I found it). They're oddities more than anything else, and nice additions to the game, but they do not compare to the thrill of finding the artifacts scattered around Vvardenfell. The Ghostblade is no Chrysamere or Ice Blade of the Monarch.

Really? Thank you, I didn't see this option. But then we don't have any conversation log to remember things up and the quests' summaries are not really helpful. And the conversations themselves are built around the quest marker: many times a NPC tell you to "go to ancient ruins" rather than telling you to "follow the river to the SE until you reach a valley with old ruins at the center". The game itself must be built differently when there are no quest markers.

I don't know if I did all of them but I get the "15 daedric artefacts" achievement. I have more than 100 hours behind me, though.

Compass.. how?

I really enjoyed Oblivion and Skyrim... got morrowind, but never played... (i'm prepared to be flamed now lol) .. keep wanting to play because of all the hype about it, but the graphics is a turn off for me

You find the Daedra quests easy? really? ... Only done 2 so far, drinking one (which reminded meof the hangover, brilliant) and the haunted house, not come across anybody else yet? ... Do we see Hiricine? (sp?)

I can really empathize with you, though being a console gamer, i guess you hate me.

The sad fact of the video game industry, is that you need to sell to 60-6 year old players with money.

If you don't make money... you can't make games.

So in order to continue a company making games... obviousely, they need to sell a lot of them.

Hard core gamers, which I respect very much, are not enough to keep the casual gamer from making tons of cash for game developers.

Which comes to the dumb down thing.

Mc Donalds could serve prime rib... they sell cheese burgers, and make a lot of money doing it.

If they sold prime rib.. everyone would say that the food is better.. but they'd go broke.

The video game industry is a billion dollar business people!!!!

SELL SELL SELL!!!!

If you're looking for integrity.. please look in a place where integrity doesn't cost you millions of dollars.

Games are made to make money.

THAT IS NOT GOING TO CHANGE!!!!!!

Dumbing down/ streamlining is not a selling point.

Compass can be turned off via the console on a PC, or you can just make the whole HUD transparent.

And I didn't find the Daedra quests simple. I was responding to the OP's assertion that you could easily find every Daedric quest. Most of them aren't even clearly Daedric quests until you're close to finished.


Dumbing down and streamlining are two totally separate concepts.

When people can play an rpg without reading ANY of the dialogue or ingame literature and still be 'successfull', you know it's been dumbed down too much. I'm not exaggerating either. A friend of mine skips all NPC dialogue and has indeed not read a single book or note he's found, because he 'doesn't care' what they have to say. He's lvl 47 now, plays on expert difficulty and hasn't even noticed that there are different elven races I think.
I've watched him play and it's kind of like this: the NPC starts talking, he agrees to do whatever it is the NPC wants him to do and walks away while the NPC is still explaining. He doesn't know who the Dwemer were, has no idea what the Falmer are doing in their ruins (eventhough he has completed the Thieves Guild quest now ), and probably thinks a Thalmor is an alchemy ingredient.

I doubt that it's a lot of fun playing Skyrim the way he does, but I'm more shocked by the fact that it is possible in the first place. This is an rpg not a shooter for heavens sake.

Ah sorry my bad.
Thanks, do you happen to know the console for compass only?

I don't off the top of my head, but I know it's been posted in this forum before.

Hmm yeah i see, i think the only thing i've realised in skyrim thats changed from oblivion thats "dumbed down" to me.. is as you say the interation.. persuade, threaten etc doesn't have any impact? .. there is no real incentive to do it, i used to just skip dialog but now i've told myself to listen to them all, read all the books i find (its hardly a chore, there all small books and good for learning about the game)

I agree that the game could use a lot more deduction, and there is especially a lot to build such things around, descriptions of landmarks or vague maps could actually be identified through exploring and getting to know the environment as every part of Skyrim is very unique.

I would not agree to put Morrowind as some form of benchmark though, apart from the difficulty of sorting through your messy journal, you still had a map screen with a big blinking sign to everything you needed to find, you just had to be able to read. It needs to be more subtle than that.

We could make games for einstein, or idiots. I'm wiling to bet that idiots buy more games than einstiens.

Again I'll write this:

VIDEO GAMING IS A MULTI BILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All of you hard core gamers can do math right?

Figure it out. stop complaining and understand that the developers only care about one thing... MONEY!!!!!!!

It is overused. Along with Thief, when you are clearly an Assassin, and immersion. I dislike them all. While I will agree with you on some points. I think there could be a lot more substance to the NPCs and the way you are reacted to and having consequence to your actions. However, the support for your selected terminology ends there.

Yes.
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Absolutely. When I get back to my console I'll turn off the whole HUD and see where that leads me.

You can't really turn off quest markers because the NPC's don't give directions, thus you won't know where to go.

About the Daedric quest. Are you kidding me, only half of the daedric quest even have shrines. The other half only feel like normal quests until you see the name of a daedric lord. I mean, Calvicus, Molag Bal, Sanguine, Mephala, Vaermina, Hircine, Namira, these ALL start out like miscelanous quests.

They trimmed the fat a bit too much & the fat is where the flavour is, Some may think that acrobatics was useless or worthless surplus but that's somebodies build which is now redundant, The same could be said of many other features.

I can understand trimming down certain features to make them more efficient & user-friendly but instead of using a scalpel Bethesda used a JCB digger, Bethesda should have used a more subtle approach.

The demographics of computer and video gamers show that the average single-player gamer is 30+ with a proffessional career, and that would also be the demographic group that is most likely to pay for their games as oppossed to pirating them as they have disposable income...if you want to make money, that's the group you cater to, and I doubt that they resent games with complex content...

Well, MetalGod answered below so...
Regarding Morrowind, if you ever manage to go through the outdated graphics and animations and really dive into the story, the odds are high it will be one of your greatest videogaming memories. As for me it's in the top 5.

I certainly do not hate you for being a console player. Besides consoles allow studios to get far more money than they would from PC alone.
I just hate the fact that Bethesda did not invest 2k$ - 5k$ more on the PC UI (estimation made as a professional developer who anecdotically worked on a videogame UI before).

Now, on the sales argument, I think people usually overstate the benefits of the "dumbing down". Not only I am not convinced that removing the marker quest and compass indicators would turn Skyrim in a game for hardcoe gamers only (even if one or two secret quests need you to read a book and understand it hides a tip to the player, not everything has to go that far, for most quests a good UI with a clear quest objective and the related conversation below is good enough for the vast majority of people), but I would like to see the proportion of gamers who played Morrowind when it came out and the one for Skyrim today. Besides, I guess that those who play an Elder Scrolls as a FPS tend to think of them as poor games and either pirate them or do not buy the sequels.

Indeed but it quickly appears they actually are daedric quests and all the introductory quests are hard to miss, although you may not be inclined to do them (Calvicus especially). Besides, Mephala and Vaermina's events feels daedric as soon as you hear about them. Now, among all of them, I would only mention Vile, Molag Bal and Sanguine's quests to have a special flavor but it may be a personal taste.