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Arkanin
Village Dweller
Joined: 06 Feb 2005
Posts: 4
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| Morrowind's flaws are so frustrating |
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I've spent a couple hundred hours on Morrowind, and I've finally decided that it's both the most in-depth, beautiful, and tragically flawed RPG a person can find.
Don't get me wrong, Morrowind is beautiful. But it seems to me that Morrowind could have been a vastly better game if it had about half as much work put into quest and landmass content, and twice as much work into game balance, the character system, the combat and magic system, and the economy.
Imagine if Morrowind had been different. Go ahead and assume time spent on balance and gameplay means time lost on content -- shrink down the continent some, and give it fewer quests. Imagine if it had at least a variety of combat animations and injected at least some strategy into melee combat. Imagine if you actually had to make an effort to become decently powerful, rather than make an effort to not become a demi-god who is completely unstopable and experiences no challenge. Imagine if NPCs were strong enough to stand up against powerful characters. Think of all the possibilities!
The gameplay is ultimately just plain cheesy. There's no use for gold after the first half of the game, practically, and the economy is broken. Character movement is unnatural, and so is combat. The Enchant skill is broken. A lot of skills are over-powered or underpowered. The Athletics skill and speed stat makes characters whose run speeds are ridiculous and look silly -- rather than offering some sort of realistic, but beneficial model. The same is true for acrobatics. The worst problem is that armor and weapons are pretty much thrown at you -- and power in general is usually acquired too quickly. While being able to loot anyone you kill was realistic and neat it first, when NPCs are so weak, it leads to characters being relatively wealthy after less than a day off the boat.
I guess what I'm saying is, Morrowind would have had so much longer-lasting appeal with a slightly different approach that would have been simple. Imagine how much more meaningful the rewards would have been if it was a good idea to work truly hard to prove your worth to the fighters' guild so that you could slowly and surely buy yourself a nice set of bonemold armor with those quest rewards -- rather than just jog out in the first ten minutes and whack somebody over their head and take their bonemold armor.
That's the big problem with morrowind. It pretty much throws all of the really cool gear at you, and you become one of the most powerful or the most powerful person on the continent way too quickly and easily. Its difficulty is very poorly balanced and the character advancement and strength your character is given is simply cheesy. This frustrates me so much because morrowind isn't a good game; it's a *great* game. It's so beautiful, and so rich, and there's so much history and depth to Vvardenfel. And yet it's so, painfully, mind-numbingly shallow, one-dimensional, and cheesy.
I've looked into modding to fix these problems, and I don't see a good way to balance the game in a way that is very rewarding given some fundamental design decisions. And it's all very frustrating.  |
Sun Feb 06, 2005 6:53 am |
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NidPuterGuy
Fearless Paladin
Joined: 08 Jan 2003
Posts: 237
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This game is pretty wide open. You don't have to do the things you mentioned and become that powerful. You don't have to kill NPC's and take thier things. You don't have to abuse the enchant skill. By the way I'm a level 21 mage/enchanter and I can barely enchant anything. Also you can limit your looting. Don't always have to do the mark and recall and load up on loot. Don't use the mud crab or the scamp in Caldera. Play with more DnD type characters. Thief with only leather armor, short sword. Mage, no armor, no sword. Fighter, no magic spells. I admit I wish the quests had more effect on the story. Also admit the game could feel more alive with more quests that were intertwined. More things happening locally would be cool also. Like Balmora. So big but so few things really happening. Lots of oppurtunity for mod I suppose. |
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Mon Feb 21, 2005 5:29 am |
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Robyn
Village Dweller
Joined: 18 May 2002
Posts: 2
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quote:
Don't always have to do the mark and recall and load up on loot
This is the thing. What I love about Morrowind (and daggerfall before it) is you don't feel you have to open every door, hail ever npc... loot every last item and cart it off.
If you power game you become over powerful... but the other side of that coin is that you can enjoy and eventually win the game without needing to do it.
I would agree though that some more thorough balancing would have helped... it's not a perfect game by any means. |
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Mon Mar 28, 2005 12:46 am |
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calvinist3
Village Dweller
Joined: 10 Nov 2005
Posts: 3
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I like being an all powerful character. That's part of the appeal of morrowind is being able to reach lvl 200, have a 1000pt strength, blinding speed, and jump over mountains. The problem is there is no real challenges in the game! As huge as the game is the only enemy is Dagoth Ur? Tombs, dwemer ruins, strongholds could each have there own in depth story. Each town could have its own main quest. Think of all the quest you go on. Think if there was a little more to some of the quest than go buy 5 things of sload soap. I like making my char. as strong as possible. I don't want to dumb down my char. on purpose just to make the game challenging. My character could take out whole armies. So where are the armies. Of course you can always go rogue. Kill Vivec, Kill Amalexia in the presence of all those high Ordinators, Kill King H and his room full of guards. But there is only so much you can do. If you've explored one tomb you've explored them all. The could have made the game better. But that still hasn't stoped me from playing this game for 6 months and still not done everthing. I bought morrowind used (X-BOX) for $20. I'd say I got my money's worth. Most games you're finished with in 2 weeks. |
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Fri Nov 11, 2005 8:25 pm |
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Michikawa
Village Dweller
Joined: 20 Nov 2005
Posts: 13
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I agree that Morrowind system has it's flaws, but I think if you decide to play it more "role-play" style it offers some really great moments. The open endedness of the world allows you to create your own story and create sort of history for your character. With my first character I became Morag Tong's leader which felt really great an achievement, completely different course which I took with my second character who was much more honorable and empathic spell-binder.
_________________
Lead musician of Ultima IX Redemption
Soundtracks: http://www.mikseri.net/essence/
Ambient: http://www.mikseri.net/divinity/ |
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Sun Nov 20, 2005 11:30 am |
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