Sorry that it took me so long to respond. :)

I guess the characters are very static compared to some other games but I don't think that it is too big of a deal that they don't travel around.


Caius Cosades is a very good example because he actually leaves during the main quest. Unfortunately, you can't find him in the game world. Normally, the NPCs stay where they are, which is somewhat of a shame. One of the worst things about Morrowind is that even enemies don't follow you through doors that move you to another cell.

No, I'm not sure which quest you mean.

In many cases it makes sense to me that the shop inventory is static because most shop keepers should stock up on their wares and have the same products most of the time. It would be better to include some randomness in it but a totally random inventory isn't necessarily a good thing.

I won't argue with the fact that Daggerfall has big cities. That is true, of course, and I understand that big cities are important to you.
However, I think it is inappropriate to say that Bethesda didn't do enough with these cities.
The cities are very unique and coming up with the unique assets and city layouts must have been more work than creating Daggerfall's cities.

Combined with "mark and recall" or an "intervention" spell/potion/scroll that isn't a problem.
A problem you haven't mentioned is that it is difficult to find information where to find a transportation service to a specific city.

That's a very good decision. Even though I am convinced that Morrowind is a great game, not every one has to like it and I wouldn't want to make you spend your money on something you don't like.

I believe that there is such a thing as objective quality and Morrowind is objectively high quality in many points that other games don't focus on. If you care for these points enough to be willing to put up with the annoyances that come with the game is a different matter.

What was the problem with these games?

First of all: pickpocketing is broken in Morrowind. A fix for it is included in the Morrowind Code Patch.
I think it's a lot of fun playing a thief in such an open open world game but some may find it boring because you know that the NPCs will stay in one place.


Well, the conflict of interest I was talking about there is not exactly subtle. You'd expect a more complex plot twist from a novel for example.

Don't read too much into this specific example. I just wanted to demonstrate how progressing a certain story-line can make a lot of NPCs hate you.

About the NPC's personality: what quest givers will tell you gives an insight into their personality. It isn't much and most of the time you'll do so few quests for them that the personality doesn't get fleshed-out a lot. You're right. NPCs' personalities aren't a strong point of Morrowind (though I would argue stronger than in the other TES games apart from Oblivion). This kind of what I'd call micro-complexity is a bit lack-luster but there is a lot of macro-complexity when you look at all NPCs as a whole.

I remember playing Morrowind thinking that no other RPG would come close to be as great.

Then I discovered Gothic 2, and it came close to be as great.

Hmmm i can't help but recall one of my approaches which was more min/maxing, which was to select the skills based on how easy they were to level. Alchemy, and Mercantile among the easiest (I forget exactly what ten, I'd have to look at the list and re-select them). When i say easiest, i mean after i get the skills i wanted elsewhere, I'd brute force the skills required to level, hopefully targeting specific stats to get the2 +5's. Skills that are difficult to raise (block, most magics, athletics, swim, etc) are poor choices for primary skills.

It's cool, my computer got a virus and I just got it sorted :P

True, but I was willing to forgive that. A lot of games at the time had that problem :P

Okay, but what about the cool stuff that I don't want to use myself that I sold the shopkeeper? I guess no one wants to buy Orcish or Daedric weapons because in Morrowind, steel long swords, iron arrows and all that other peasant-mart crap is so much cooler :P

Daggerfalls shops while random still usually had the usual crap like leather armour and iron and steel weapons but sometimes, you could find something really cool. Ever notice in RPGs the best stuff is usually found, not purchased? Coming to think of it, I'm not sure if I even bought any weapons or armour from a shop in Morrowind............I agree that shop inventory shouldn't be completely random, but Morrowinds static shop inventory is a step backwards, that is unless that Rebirth mod you mentioned earlier addresses that problem

Each of the cities in Morrowind had their own architecture which made the places you visited feel very alien (which IMO is a good thing), it's just the scale of it bothers me a lot. Small settlement like areas are fine too but I didn't see the big cities I wanted to see. Considering the game world, I would have settled for at least three.

If you bought the disc version of Morrowind, you got a really nifty paper map and it showed you where the silt striders were (but didn't tell you where they would take you). If I remember correctly, they were all linked.

As for mages guilds, couldn't you just teleport to any place there was a mages guild? I can't quite remember.....

The problem is no incentive to play a thief and every reason not to. For instance, fail a pickpocket and everyone is after your blood. Steal from a shop, get caught and everyone wants to kill you (and is usually perfectly acceptable in the game). "A thief stole a piece of wood from me, let's get him!!!!!" If you encounter this situation and don't reload, you're probably breaking the game (if you haven't already). Also, in a lot of RPGs, killing ugly things is usually where the highest amount of XP comes from (Yes, I realize not all RPGs follow this dynamic) but killing is not the primary role of thieves. Sneaking past a big nasty doesn't get you XP (or at best, gives you a negligible amount), pick pocketing that grumpy guard doesn't get you XP, picking a lock doesn't get you XP but joining a party and cracking skulls improves thieving skills? Yeah, I can't quite wrap my head around that either. I know not every game does this but in a lot of games where you can play a thief, you will have at least a few of these problems.

In gothic, you did get XP for pickpocketing but most of your XP came from quests and cracking skulls. Arx fatalis and Amulets and Armour are dungeon crawlers, good luck sneaking your way through those games. Baldur's Gate, most of the XP came from story line quests which of course involved a lot of dungeon crawling and head smashing. You get the idea.

I was pretty sure for a lot of the magic skills, all you needed to do was make a cheap spell with the school you wanted to improve, cast it over and over and rest until you get your mana back. Or was this changed in Morrowind?

Balmora?

When I first laid eyes on Vivec I was like, "This is a city?"

Which is one thing Skyrim fails at, they don't have a big capital city as memorable as Vivec, Mournhold, and the Imperial City.

Whiterun could have been just another major city in Oblivion's Cyrodiil.

Oh that will work alright, you can make the spells with any spell crafter and they cost like 50g (cause they are so weak as to be useless except for training). I remember running from one area to another, having on damage 1pt of fatigue over and over and over again... But it takes a while. Like 20 casts per 1 level or something. Quite often i run into something to fight before i hit 10. At least those are faster than running and jumping constantly (After like level 30).

A note on that, only choose 1 effect/school at a time. If you don't, it will randomly select which one gains the experience, so unless you just wanted to cast 1 spell for all of them over and over again (which is more expensive mana and spell cost-wise, and other stuff) it's not really worth it.

I also recall getting 1pt of locking and putting it on 3-4 nearby barrels, then picking the locks over and over again, which was sorta effective but still time consuming.

Morrowind was such a trip, man

http://orig01.deviantart.net/26a2/f/2012/351/2/5/fear_and_loathing_in_morrowind_by_tramvaev-d5oaumv.jpg

The only games I've spent more time on than Morrowind are MMO games like WoW and Eve

I hope to play this game some day :)

Or, of course, you could use the trainers. In fact, I have thought of a method that should let you easily train a skill to 100.

1. Create a spell that drains and then fortifies the skill 100 points for 1 second on self. After the second ends, your skill will be damaged to 0.
2. Train the skill as much as you want. It will cost 1 gold per training session, and because you effectively damaged the skill, you won't have to keep recasting the spell.
3. Use a shrine to restore the damaged skill to normal.

Hmmm i never considered that... I mean i always lowered the skill to 0, but never damaged it to get the same result.

Still buying each point eventually gets annoying. Doing that before i've asked myself twenty minutes later 'why am i doing this?'.

Maybe I should give it another chance some day. Love Oblivion and Daggerfall, but have trouble getting into Morrowind.

I beat up the god Vivec one time just because he annoyed me. You get a very serious slap on the wrist after you do that.

"Have fun in the DOOMED world you've created for yourself, jerk!" :p

Ancient vampires crumbled in fear, whole coverns fled my blade of fire. I flew over the land like, like, a invisible shadow!

You can't see me. I am invisible.

I hope they make cities opened up for the next TES game. The Witcher 3 has already proved that open world games can incorporate open cities/buildings without load screens. That was one thing that's very frustrating about TES games and shows their age a bit. Going into a building gives you a feeling of disconnect. I know some mods were done for Oblivion and Skyrim that made them part of the world without load screens, so there's no reason why the Bethesda devs don't fix that problem for future titles.

Then again, we just recently found out that companions in Fallout 4 won't be kill-able, so there's no telling what other FUBAR they might attempt.

Skyrim is awesome due to all the lovely mods one can play with....