Arcanum and Morrowind are still unsurpassed

[Beans00]

While I agree that Arcanum's combat isn't good, I'll never understand the codex' extremely negative view of it. There's worse in even overall decent games.

My first playthrough of Arcanum was with a firearm build, and I even played the entire game in RT. I remember thinking it was so chaotic, I can't even click on enemies early on. Still didn't think it was so bad once I got used to it.

I think it's bad but no so bad it ruins the game. RT is hectic and insane but I mostly used it for trash mobs. TB was underdeveloped but maybe passable. The game excelled in so many other areas I could look past the combat.

 

[Nutria]

Arcanum is a little too broken for me to truly love. My #1 gripe with RPGs usually is when they've got difficulty spikes where you can't tell if you're dying because your build sucks or it just briefly got way harder. And then you reach the end of the game and you realize that yeah, your build does suck but most of the game has been easy enough to this point to make you complacent.

As for quest markers in Morrowind, I'd say I love quest markers... when I'm playing Battlefield. If some guy is probably going to shoot at me in the next 5 seconds then I don't have time to get my bearings. What Morrowind did well was knowing what the pace of the game was and that you had some time to open up the journal and read the directions you were given. And the directions weren't totally explicit but using a little brain power you could figure out what they meant.

This is one thing that frustrates me a little bit in some of these newer indie games like Underrail. People give me extremely vague directions in a world where it's difficult to orient yourself and then you're supposed to remember them for hours until I run into that quest.

 

[TripJack]

morrowind is fun until it isn’t I never finished it and I never will, i still got many hours of entertainment out of it though

 

[deuxhero]

I think Morrowind's itemization is actually underated. Yes, it's utterly trivial to break the economy (even a modest merchant skill is enough to sell things for more than they've been purchased for, alchemy generates valuable items from common bread, and even pearl hunting gives loads of money), but it did some things very well. Gear mainly falls into three tiers: poor (iron, netch leather), normal (steel, chitin, bonemold) and exceptional (Ebony/Daedric, glass). You can obtain "normal" gear very quickly even with no outside knowledge (first merchant has it and the first dungeon gives more than enough stuff to buy it with), so poor equipment is mainly reserved for arming NPCs so they have gear to use, but it's generally too heavy to loot and sell forcing the player to focus on looting small valuables (premium alcohol, gems, potions, magic scrolls). This means there is no loot treadmill and instead all the exceptional gear you find is, truly, exceptional (unless its so late in the game that it's redundant). Instead, gold is used to buy training to improve your skills, which have a huge impact on your performance.

 

[Trashos]

There is a reason why Troika is no longer around

I was not around the RPG community when all that went down, and I understand that Tim and Leonard have kinda internalized the guilt that they should have gone about their games differently.

Still, by reading about what happened, I strongly suspect that Troika was taken out by its competitors, and the games they made had little to do with its ultimate demise. I suspect this very-very strongly.

 

[Nutria]

I strongly suspect that Troika was taken out by its competitors

It's probably not a coincidence that it happened right around when CD burners became available to everyone. Lots of companies went out of business around then even if they had no competition.

 

[Wunderbar]

I'm brofisting only arcanum part.

you can't brofist only a half of the post. Sorry bro, you are now officially a fan of Todd.

 

[cretin]

I put a lot of hours into morrowind when I was young. Too many probably.

But it has aged like milk, and just like every other TES game, it is built upon illusions. Eventually you find a thread sticking out, and you starting pulling and the whole thing comes undone rapidly. Once that happens you can't enjoy it ever again.

Whatever it is, Bethesda have become masters at it. For example, objectively to me skyrim is not a good game. I have installed and uninstalled it many times, trying many combination of mods to make it good. And yet, even now, I have the desire to install it again and give it one more chance, because there is something there, a feeling of potential adventure you just don't get with other games. But this is illusory, if I do that, I will quickly find out it was only good in my head.

And we all know how common this is: Putting 60+ hours into a TES game and then turning around at the end and going "hang on a minute, this is shit!"

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Joined in 2015 though. It's a shame Morrowind was your first rpg :p.

Joined the Codex in 2008, yet has such limited experience with RPGs as to not recognize Zed Duke of Banville as a character in Dungeon Master.

For the record, the first CRPG I ever played was Rogue, on-line.

(fortunately receding in recent years).

They've exchanged it for slavish support of CYOAs

 

[Beans00]

Joined the Codex in 2008, yet has such limited experience with RPGs as to not recognize Zed Duke of Banville as a character in Dungeon Master.

I find it pretty telling that with your paltry intellect you need to resort to spamming memes. Rather then discuss Morrowinds merits(if it had any besides walking around and spamming jump).

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Even before I clicked the thread I knew who wrote it

 

[Maxie]

unsurpassed heaps of overrated bullshit cynically designed for modders to fix

 

[Falksi]

Morrowind is mostly for explorationfags, because combat is obviously utter shit, and while writing has its moments, the wiki dialogue kills that bird. But people praising its exploration generally don't objectively evaluate it, all of it.

Sure there are some good parts, like you have to figure shit out yourself (though this was true of pretty much all games around that time period), and there are some cool exotic places, and you can use certain spells and abilities to aid it.

But you have to also mention the boring animals and monsters (the eponymous cliff racers, the fucking mudcrabs or whatever those knocking insects were, the daedra, etc), for a world of such vast size, the enemy/beast variety was very underwhelming, and their brain dead AI made things far worse.

You also have to mention the massive copy-pasting going on with points of interest. Once you saw one vampire crypt, or cave, or daedra shrine or whatever, the next 50 you would find would be rather boring, because they all felt the same, with some minor cosmetic differences. There was little in the way of custom, unique content for each, like say quests, in most cases, so it just got old fast. Bethesda games also always had very underwhelming equipment and loot, so that didnt help either.

That's just not true.

There's 45 different types of creatures throughout Vvardenfell . Lots of which are very unique and original such as the Kwama's and their variations.

Considering Vvardenfell is roughly 16km worth of playing space, that's more than plenty. I mean, there's only just over 40 species of animals on display at the British Wildlife Centre to represent the entire of the UK.

The cliffracer & mudcrab thing is annoying fair enough. From a gameplay perspective that and the combat definitely drag the experience down. But you've got to be pretty flakey to allow such a minor annoyance detract you from all the positive stuff which Morrowind offers and which JarlFrank has posted about. It's like having a violent, rape-esq threesome on offer with Belladonna and Faye Reagan submissively offering themselves you you as your fucktoys, and turning it down because they want you to buy them some shoes.

That kind of zero-to-hero progression is over-rated, I don't think it's as essential to an RPG as other factors, and lack of it doesn't necessarily make a game not-an-RPG. Some progression is nice, sure, but going from zero to hero is kind of artificial and immersion-breaking unless there's a rationale for it in the virtual world/story, which is really hard to come by other than starting you off as a callow youth, a bum or an amnesiac.

You're missing the context though dude. In the context of Morrowind it adds massively to the creating the feel of a spectacular alien world, where anything is possible, and where exploration and discovery offer game-changing rewards.

Within a few hours of playing Skyrim I know what I'm getting for the entire 60+ hours. Shouts, perks, and items & spells mostly just increasing my ability to kill in some way. In Morrowind that's the case for the first few hours, but then you start discovering stuff which changes things even further, and 60 hours later you're flying and running faster lightening, whilst jumping around Hulk stylee.

And you're a reborn God dude. From birth to journeying to Vvardenfell and blossoming into your fully thriving physical form. If that isn't rationale enough I don't know what is.

stunningly absorbing and unique world.

I remember it being mostly brown or gray, foggy, and either a swamp or a desert. At the time I was horribly disappointed by the tiny dungeons, stripped-down character creation from Daggerfall, and generally worthless guilds. It felt gimped due to being a console port. Any possibility of being immersed into the world was totally ruined by the generic wikipedia-style NPCs who repeat the same hyperlinked topics by town or region.

Truthfully I haven't played it since release, the experience was so tedious I've never had the urge to replay it.

The first section is, but dig deeper and there's a ton of goodness to drink in.

And yeah I think the dialogue repetition is definitely a very valid criticism, but it didn't effect the fun in discovery for me. In later plathroughs I used the "Less Generic NPCs" mod.

 

[luj1]

and generally worthless guilds.

No game has done guilds better than Morrowind.

There are 16 joinable guilds (20+ in total) with detailed backgrounds and conflicts between them (and conflicts between different people within the guilds themselves). Guilds have more than 1 quest giver and multiple guild halls, so you can just move to another town with a different handler.

You have to improve your skills in the guild's specialty to advance, you can get expelled from a guild, etc.

Guilds in Morrowind are extremely self-interested and use you for horrible things in the name of the greater good. Corrupt superiors asking you to gather evidence against their rivals or murder innocent people just to deny other factions the opportunity to recruit them, etc. Such depth is unprecedented.

The game has more quests per faction than needed for progress in the guild, I believe something like 30+ quests for each which can take you days to finish and have as much depth as the main plot.

It felt gimped due to being a console port.

It was in fact Bethesda's last PC game. You can clearly tell from the UI that it was designed for mouse and keyboard.

Morrowind has its problems, but guilds and consolization aren't one of those.

 

[JarlFrank]

Lmao at the people who hop onto the flaws of both games when I fully admit those flaws exist in the OP.

Yes, Arcanum's combat is mediocre at best and its encounter design is utterly abysmal. Yes, the world map is a bit empty for its huge size.
Yes, Morrowind's combat is mediocre, too. The static NPCs with their wiki-style dialogues feel more like signposts than people.

I am aware of those flaws.
Doesn't change the fact that the things these games do right have never been done better, either before or since. And there are barely any attempts to try and recreate these elements in modern games, with the exception of a few indies you can count on half a hand.

No matter how shit the bad elements of those games are, find me an example of an RPG that does the things I described in my OP better than either Arcanum or Morrowind do them. You can't, because such a game does not exist.

 

[jackofshadows]

No game has done guilds better than Morrowind.

There are 16 joinable guilds (20+ in total) with detailed backgrounds and conflicts between them...

...and the fact that you can collect head titles like stamps basically abolishes everything good about them. At least the devs were bold (I guess, or should I say smart?) to separate the joinable great houses.

 

[luj1]

... abolishes everything good about them.

Sorry but that's just retarded.

 

[Falksi]

Lmao at the people who hop onto the flaws of both games when I fully admit those flaws exist in the OP.

Yes, Arcanum's combat is mediocre at best and its encounter design is utterly abysmal. Yes, the world map is a bit empty for its huge size.
Yes, Morrowind's combat is mediocre, too. The static NPCs with their wiki-style dialogues feel more like signposts than people.

I am aware of those flaws.
Doesn't change the fact that the things these games do right have never been done better, either before or since. And there are barely any attempts to try and recreate these elements in modern games, with the exception of a few indies you can count on half a hand.

No matter how shit the bad elements of those games are, find me an example of an RPG that does the things I described in my OP better than either Arcanum or Morrowind do them. You can't, because such a game does not exist.

I get the feeling that all we're gonna see is a circular set of points about each game's flaws over and over, rather than any example or comparison of other games which allegedly do these things as well/better.

 

[Thal]

I think Morrowind's itemization is actually underated. Yes, it's utterly trivial to break the economy (even a modest merchant skill is enough to sell things for more than they've been purchased for, alchemy generates valuable items from common bread, and even pearl hunting gives loads of money), but it did some things very well. Gear mainly falls into three tiers: poor (iron, netch leather), normal (steel, chitin, bonemold) and exceptional (Ebony/Daedric, glass). You can obtain "normal" gear very quickly even with no outside knowledge (first merchant has it and the first dungeon gives more than enough stuff to buy it with), so poor equipment is mainly reserved for arming NPCs so they have gear to use, but it's generally too heavy to loot and sell forcing the player to focus on looting small valuables (premium alcohol, gems, potions, magic scrolls). This means there is no loot treadmill and instead all the exceptional gear you find is, truly, exceptional (unless its so late in the game that it's redundant). Instead, gold is used to buy training to improve your skills, which have a huge impact on your performance.

I would still say though that Morrowind is too generous with expectional gear, including daedric weapons. For example, Ibad-Dad is almost impossible to miss when if you approach the Urshilaku camp from the South-West (which is what I expect most people to do). If you got the Ebony Armor from the Bosmer nearby, now you're pretty much all set, even though the main quest is pretty much just begun. Also, I walked directly into the dungeon that contains Chrysamere just by following directions of a guild quest (forgot which one).

 

[Ravielsk]

I put a lot of hours into morrowind when I was young. Too many probably.

But it has aged like milk, and just like every other TES game, it is built upon illusions. Eventually you find a thread sticking out, and you starting pulling and the whole thing comes undone rapidly. Once that happens you can't enjoy it ever again.

Whatever it is, Bethesda have become masters at it. For example, objectively to me skyrim is not a good game. I have installed and uninstalled it many times, trying many combination of mods to make it good. And yet, even now, I have the desire to install it again and give it one more chance, because there is something there, a feeling of potential adventure you just don't get with other games. But this is illusory, if I do that, I will quickly find out it was only good in my head.

And we all know how common this is: Putting 60+ hours into a TES game and then turning around at the end and going "hang on a minute, this is shit!"

Its not really a illusion, you see the thing is that Skyrim is a good game... for the first 10-20 hours (depending on how you approach it). In that timeframe quests are actually exciting, the combat makes sense, the perks are neat and overall its a decent action RPG. The problems begin after that initial 10 hour period because its pretty obvious the game was never play tested for that. The level scaling and the absolute lack of content simply fall cause the game to cave in on its self.
Its the inverse of Morrowind and (partially) Oblivion where the more you progress the more there is to do and experience. Sure you can break either of these games in half with the right strategy but in both cases that is something you have to consciously pursue, not something the game gives you a tutorial on how to do(Skyrim smithing).

Its not really tricking you into anything, its just that Skyrim is a 100+ hour game with mechanics made for a 10 hour game. Everything is there right from the start its just that it does not become obvious right away.

 

[Maxie]

No matter how shit the bad elements of those games are, find me an example of an RPG that does the things I described in my OP better than either Arcanum or Morrowind do them. You can't, because such a game does not exist.

if you assume from the get-go that there's nothing to invalidate your claim then your claim is dogmatic and your fanboyism religious in nature

 

[JarlFrank]

No matter how shit the bad elements of those games are, find me an example of an RPG that does the things I described in my OP better than either Arcanum or Morrowind do them. You can't, because such a game does not exist.

if you assume from the get-go that there's nothing to invalidate your claim then your claim is dogmatic and your fanboyism religious in nature

If there's something to invalidate my claim, produce proof.

I'm waiting.

 

[Maxie]

No matter how shit the bad elements of those games are, find me an example of an RPG that does the things I described in my OP better than either Arcanum or Morrowind do them. You can't, because such a game does not exist.

if you assume from the get-go that there's nothing to invalidate your claim then your claim is dogmatic and your fanboyism religious in nature

If there's something to invalidate my claim, produce proof.

I'm waiting.

no you're not

You can't, because such a game does not exist.

this threads serves no purpose whatsoever

 

[gurugeorge]

I put a lot of hours into morrowind when I was young. Too many probably.

But it has aged like milk, and just like every other TES game, it is built upon illusions. Eventually you find a thread sticking out, and you starting pulling and the whole thing comes undone rapidly. Once that happens you can't enjoy it ever again.

Whatever it is, Bethesda have become masters at it. For example, objectively to me skyrim is not a good game. I have installed and uninstalled it many times, trying many combination of mods to make it good. And yet, even now, I have the desire to install it again and give it one more chance, because there is something there, a feeling of potential adventure you just don't get with other games. But this is illusory, if I do that, I will quickly find out it was only good in my head.

And we all know how common this is: Putting 60+ hours into a TES game and then turning around at the end and going "hang on a minute, this is shit!"

Its not really a illusion, you see the thing is that Skyrim is a good game... for the first 10-20 hours (depending on how you approach it). In that timeframe quests are actually exciting, the combat makes sense, the perks are neat and overall its a decent action RPG. The problems begin after that initial 10 hour period because its pretty obvious the game was never play tested for that. The level scaling and the absolute lack of content simply fall cause the game to cave in on its self.
Its the inverse of Morrowind and (partially) Oblivion where the more you progress the more there is to do and experience. Sure you can break either of these games in half with the right strategy but in both cases that is something you have to consciously pursue, not something the game gives you a tutorial on how to do(Skyrim smithing).

Its not really tricking you into anything, its just that Skyrim is a 100+ hour game with mechanics made for a 10 hour game. Everything is there right from the start its just that it does not become obvious right away.

Very well put. And that's part of the decline thing spoken of above - when these games were made for nerds, they more or less had to flesh out the game to the end, because autists would raise a stink if the game didn't have good (preferably increasing) depth and complexity right through to the end.

But now developers know that most people will only play some way into a game and not finish it anyway, so their triage for their ROI is just to front-load the goodness, and take the minimal bit of flak they'll get from nerds proportionate to the gushing reviews they'll get from the Blue Cheka.

We love our hyperbole here but it's probably fair to say that many of the games we consider modern stinkers are kind of okay in the first few hours (someone was talking about quite liking the first few hours of even a turd like ME: Andromeda). Of recent games, Cyberpunk 2077 was like that too - the quest with lots of C&C that they showcased was very good C&C-wise, but it turned out to be one of the only very few quest lines that had comparable complexity (apart form the main itself). I remember enjoying Skyrim's first few hours too myself (bar the console annoyance).

 

[jackofshadows]

... abolishes everything good about them.

Sorry but that's just retarded.

I was just too lazy to adress everything you wrote about guilds to point out why that's good only on paper and not in practice. Classless system without limitations whatsoever vs guild requirements to join, roughly half of those 30+ quests are mmo-tier fetch ones which should've been cut to oblivion, praised NPC agency while game's world feels static and stale but that "conflicts between them" while you can be the head of any (aside from the great houses, like I said) guild and that doesn't change a thing just stants out the most hence my remark.

There's simply too many factions and quests in them for the game's own good. They should've cut that and flesh out remaining more. A good attempt overall but result is nothing to praise. A bloated mess, essentially.