Elder Scrolls Let's fix Morrowind

[rusty_shackleford]

"no ur rong!" isn't an argument you ESLtard

 

[Funposter]

OpenMW sucks until all of the best Lua mods are remade for it.

 

[anvi]

You should all play EverQuest and then think about what to do to Morrowind.

 

[Jarmaro]

How good is the performance of Morrowind without OpenMW? I was shocked how well it worked for me, but then now I am using a proper computer with 2GB of VRAM instead of old laptop. Will there be a noticable difference if I use standard Morrowind + MSE + MGEX instead of OpenMW? I just want to have a good playthrough without the game breaking at some point or crashing 24/7.

 

[Dr1f7]

There's nothing wrong with becoming a money machine. If you're a competent investment banker, you can become a money machine without using any of your own money.

Training was already fixed in Daggerfall. Once per day and only up to 51%. The problem is that training some skills beyond that can be extremely grindy.

Alchemy is only broken because there is no effects cap. It's only a couple lines of code. However, you are free to choose to not use alchemy that way.

As far as level scaling goes, this is an rpg. You're supposed to start steamrolling things as you get to a high enough level. That's the part of the game where your character stops being a normal character and should be far superior to the vast majority of inhabitants of the world. If there's not a point where you start steamrolling things, then what's the point of a level system? You level up just to keep up with the number bloat of enemies? There's no point even bothering with a leveling system if that's the case.

You are free to choose to not use Creeper or the Mudcrab merchant. You're also free to choose not to rest for 24 hours after performing a series of transactions to maximize your shekel gains while clearing your inventory of high cost loot.

You are free to choose to roleplay and not rest everytime your magicka bar runs out. You are free to choose to use magicka potions to refill your magicka. You also should be running the Atronach sign anyways.

You are free to choose to roleplay and to not exploit broken things.

I have never seen a corrupted save file. Maybe if you stop editing your save files you won't come across that problem. Also, overwriting files in games in general is often a bad idea and can cause save corruption. For most games, I recommend you regularly delete quicksave and autosave files and create new hardsaves regularly. I've played Rome: Total War for a long time which is notorious for these memory leak problems and have never seen any issues associated with that using this method.

So now to my proposals. How about you stop being a whining retarded faggot and use your free will to choose to play this game without exploiting things or play a different game.

Usually I would agree with

You are free to choose to roleplay and to not exploit broken things.

Most games have a small number of exploits that really aren't obvious and you'd never encounter unless you look up some guide, and can be easily ignored. Morrowind however is broken in so many ways that you need to have the restraint of a saint to avoid them. And even if you have that restraint, there are still many ways to unwittingly stumble upon something that breaks the game.

Yes I can choose not to rest, train, use alchemy, sell soul gems, use certain spell effects, pretend certain NPCs just don't exist, pretend that I can't pick up the ridiculously overpriced dark brotherhood armor that the game throws at you 10 minutes into the game, ignore busted and overvalued weapons lying on random floors, pretend the boots of blinding speed actually work and make my screen dark, ... but at that point I'm just not engaging with a huge chunk of the game, and also just around the corner there's probably some other broken thing that will catapult my character to god level and suddenly make everything feel pointless

I agree that

this is an rpg. You're supposed to start steamrolling things as you get to a high enough level. That's the part of the game where your character stops being a normal character and should be far superior to the vast majority of inhabitants of the world. If there's not a point where you start steamrolling things, then what's the point of a level system?

However in vanilla Morrowind this happens much too soon, like 5-10 hours into the game. Being strong should be obtainable but I don't want to get there quite so fast, lest it feel like I basically "beat" the game before it even began

So, anyway, these are the reasons for my desire to rebalance with this modlist.

 

[Dr1f7]

As for the mods, I've been confused as of late due to texture mods. I want to play Argonian, and as the vanilla models are ugly as fuck, mods are an obvious way of improvement here. Now I have the choice between really solid AI upscalled textures or hand-crafted Argonian replacers, and it's a tough choice as AI upscaled vanilla really gives the mods a run for their money, and doesn't make Argonians look like wierd flat-headed dinosaurs. Now, I assume that this thread wasn't made in mind with graphical improvements (I'm sure Morrowind purists will scream and howl at the very mention of any changes), but I do think having OpenMW makes the game looks much better according to everything I've seen. Just look at this video, the graphical advancement and the player's running animation. Just this makes the game look better than Oblivion ever could.

The graphics mods all end up looking like ass IMO - there are definitely impressive elements in that video but there's also the weird ultra-bright grass that sticks out bizarrely on the landscape, major mismatch in art styles between different textures (from different packs, perhaps), and the usual oddness of modern shaders being used on low-poly-ish models.

AI upscaling is theoretically exciting because it preserves the actual original art style rather than changing everything into a hideous mess like the above images but AI upscaled stuff always has a certain weird Google Deep Dream look to it which is distracting as hell. Honestly, I think the best bet for Morrowind, with the mods that are currently on offer, is to just play it with the original visuals. The game's visual distinctiveness is one of its strong points, when you start including fifty different flora mods from fifty different authors that all have competing styles (or just steal the textures and models from different games), the game starts to look like Disneyland on an acid trip.

That said, the OpenMW video probably does demonstrate the best case scenario for a carefully curated modlist that manages to update assets where appropriate without rupturing the game's visual integrity.

I enjoy Morrowind Watercolored for just a nice easy blanket texture replacer
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/43375

To me stays true to the atmosphere of Morrowind while smoothing things out and making everything just feel coherent. I'm generally not a fan of the texture mods that go for 'realism', Morrowind to me had a dreamy feel to it and Watercolored doesn't forego that

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I enjoy Morrowind Watercolored for just a nice easy blanket texture replacer

I thought this was going to be a texture replacement for blankets

 

[Dr1f7]

I enjoy Morrowind Watercolored for just a nice easy blanket texture replacer

I thought this was going to be a texture replacement for blankets

 

[Dr1f7]

Remove skill training. If its necessary, you can add some themed mini quests that reward X amount of skill, like "bring this potion while its still warm to that guy in 2 minutes, rewrds athletics skill.
More gold sinks, like repair costs, cost to sleep at an in, rent cost for property you can buy.
You can only sleep in a few designated save spots (costs gold), or you risk ambushes, AND THE AMBUSH HAPPENS BEFORE YOU ARE REGENERATED.
Skill breaking is fine, because a player has to try to do it, it won't happen by accident. If you don't want it broken, don't break it.

@Todd, I am available to hire.

I like and agree with these suggestions, we should keep them in mind as we build our frankenstein. The skill training idea is a good one, but I don't know if any mods add quests that reward xp for doing missions. (PLEASE IF YOU KNOW OF SUCH, SHARE!) I thought it might be a nice mod idea to pay a trainer to follow you around, and as you travel together you gain xp in whatever you're training at an increased rate, but I don't think such a mod exists either.

We should try to incorporate mods that work on these aspects into our eventual list

 

[Dr1f7]

And Ill tell you why you should NOT use it

Due to OpenMW using a different scripting pipeline (its a whole different engine) you're forfeiting:

1. MCP
2. MWSE and MGE XE
3. PfP
4. 90% of mods
5. Lua, which are the best mods ever made for Morrowind
6. 99% of shaders

And the REAL reason you SHOULD use OpenMW:

1. Multiplayer
2. Better framerate in distant cells of TR and P:T
3. volumetric fog

Let me add OpenMW has higher system requirements and doesnt work so well on older systems/machines

As you can see, the situation is very clear. All the best modders and projects are ignoring OpenMW. The OpenMW team didnt want to cooperate with the rest of the morrowind community for a decade, and now its too late to migrate cuz no one cares

OpenMW is the true plebeian choice, of people who arent well informed and easily hyped

Yes, admittedly one secret reason I also thought OpenMW was a nice idea, was because if we all installed the same list, we could have a codex MP server. Would probably be pretty fun

However, that could be for another thread. I think I'm convinced that for this thread we should focus on the vanilla engine. So I'd like to propose that, for this modlist here in this thread, we base our choices on the Vanilla Morrowind engine + MWSE and all the goodies that come with

 

[Dr1f7]

Ok, guys!

Per recommendations from specifically Funposter luj1 whydoibother , I have put together a NEW first proposal, for our frankenstein vanilla-engine morrowind monster.

THE MODS I propose are as follows:

1: ECONOMY

HARDER BARTER
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/46188
BUYING GAME
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/50574
WARES
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/49205
SILVER TONGUE
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/49086
Morrowind Anti-Cheese
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/47305

----------------------------
EXPLANATION: Harder Barter reduces item's values proportional to the inverse of the log of their original value, the effect being it drastically reduces ridiculously overpriced item values, while basically maintaining original item values of normal items. Buying Game, combined with Wares, adds regional prices for items essentially allowing for a traveling merchant playstyle and expansion of the 'mercantile' skill. Silver Tongue overhauls the 'speechcraft' skill, making it much more interesting and worthwhile. Morrowind Anti-Cheese is a blanket-style (rusty_shackleford ) solution to 'random cheesy crap' present in vanilla (examples being broken boots of blinding speed, and easily obtained/unguarded super valuable items)
----------------------------

2: WORLD REBALANCING

LIMITED RESTING WAITING AND REGEN
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/49191
MULE - Mort's Ultimate Leveling Experience
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/47452
The Morrowind Randomizer
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/44989
MDMD - More Deadly Morrowind Denizens
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/48745
Beware the Sixth House (Sixth House Overhaul)
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/46036
Immersive Corprus
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/44961
Tribunal Rebalance
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/45713
Bloodmoon Rebalance
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/45714

----------------------------
EXPLANATION: Limited Resting Waiting and Regen is a configurable addon that gives you control over when, where, how, and how often resting is allowed in game. For me, this means resting will only be available on a bed, but it's very configurable. MULE overhauls leveling so that attribute points are automatically granted based on the skills you level, instead of being chosen at 'level-up' screen (which is removed). The Morrowind Randomizer randomizes the locations of a number of legendary items (non-quest related), which should enhance thrill of exploration.

MDMD - More Deadly Morrowind Denizens customizes some 230+ important NPCs, essentially adding variety in combat and especially boss battles. Beware the Sixth House makes sixth house creatures extremely challenging and high level, as they should be. Immersive Corprus allows you to catch corprus disease from certain sixth house creatures, makes it 'impossible' to cure

Spoiler

outside of main quest

, and puts a hard timer on curing it, ending your game if you fail to cure it in time. Tribunal Rebalance and Bloodmoon Rebalance do as they say, rebalancing respective expansions in line with Beware the Sixth House.
----------------------------

Let me know thoughts on these, and if you have any additions/changes to suggest

 

[SlightlyRadioactive]

Are there any mods that overhaul the sidequests (well, at least the faction ones) to not be painstakingly boring?

 

[Rincewind]

Meh, original MW engine a piece of shit, it will be never be as stable or fast as OpenMW. Btw, Lua support is coming to the next version of OpenMW, but why would you want all that modder-level garbage anyway... Some lore-friendly graphical improvements are nice, and stuff like Graphic Herbalism, but otherwise all these fan-made quests and rebalances are mostly garbage, they introduce tons of incompatibilities and instabilities, and thus are a massive waste of time (that's actually true for most games, not just Morrowind).

This guy does a good rundown of some of the more useful graphical mods to use with OpenMW, I'm intending to use his advice when I revisit the game next time. That's all you need.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG40-n0QU2M

 

[mondblut]

Alright boys, we all know that morrowind is simultaneously the greatest game ever made and a huge piece of crap

True. But you seem to mostly have a problem with the "greatest" part.

Here is how to fix Morrowind:

Spoiler

Remove cliff racers

There, it is fixed.

 

[Funposter]

but otherwise all these fan-made quests and rebalances are mostly garbage, they introduce tons of incompatibilities and instabilities, and thus are a massive waste of time

no

 

[mondblut]

(but she's still coated in eyeshadow, of course, because modders can't conceive of a female character without a ton of chemicals on her face.

You must be a modern game developer. Pretty women are verboten!

 

[Funposter]

Everyone recommends Better Heads and the like.

Find me a single person who in 2022 doesn't just recommend Mackom's Redone heads or Facelift/Familiar Faces with upscaled textures. Maybe you'll find some people who still swear by Westly's heads.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

With regards to complaints about the game itself:
I've been told by people I trust to not have shit opinions that the tamriel rebuilt mod is actually very good.

 

[Rincewind]

Here is how to fix Morrowind:

Coming from you, I was expecting "uninstall.exe" :D

 

[Maggot]

OpenMW has vastly improved combat AI and pathfinding so the AI doesn't just spaz out and 180 while you poke at it with a spear. Lua mods are for homosexuals that want to larp camping trips and the only downside to OpenMW is no vanilla water shader.

 

[perfectslumbers]

1. Have more ambient noises and better sound effects.
2. Have a longer ost with better dynamic music implementation (Like how Daggerfall had special tracks for taverns and different times of day etc.) The games poor sound design and poor music implementation really hurts the games ambience and atmosphere and makes dungeon crawling much less immersive.
3. Let me kill Sotha Sil. I hate those Tribunal fucks and I find it very disappointing that I can only kill two.
4. Running doesn't consume stamina, it's already slow as fuck and it's stupid to have to rest constantly.
5. Let spells scale like they did in Arena and Daggerfall. 100 max damage? Come on that's pathetic.

These things always really bothered me about Morrowind. I imagine there's mods to fix most of them at this point.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

vastly improved [...] pathfinding

you mean "it actually has pathfinding"
but yes, it's true. OpenMW has a dynamic navmesh system that is recreated as necessary(read: only once unless you add new BSAs altering geometry) for the geometry and cached to disk.

and the only downside to OpenMW is no vanilla water shader.

OpenMW has a full post-processing framework coming in the next version, already available in nightly builds.
There's already mods that use it e.g., raycasted volumetric clouds + mist: https://github.com/zesterer/openmw-volumetric-clouds


...Which is extremely important for keeping the scale of Morrowind feeling as it should be. Morrowind looks completely wrong when rendered at view distances obtainable on modern PCs.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/48909

Starwind Remastered - A Star Wars Conversion​

This mod requires OpenMW V0.47 or newer!

mgexetroons on suicide watch

 

[Maggot]

I just want this water back in OpenMW.

 

[Rincewind]

Lua mods are for homosexuals that want to larp camping trips

Pretty much.

The only heterosexual-compliant Lua content I found was:

• DassiD's Weather Overhaul (if I remember correctly) which was part of his Morrowind Enhanced Overhaul mod. (It has been removed for some reason recently, which is a shame as it also contained some really nice high-res loading screens based on scans of the maps that came with the game. I think I still have a copy on my HDD somewhere.)
• Glow in the Dahrk — eye candy only, but really nice (works with OpenMW as well, with slightly less features)
• MUSE (Morrowind Music System Extended) — to implement a dynamic music system

Have a longer ost with better dynamic music implementation (Like how Daggerfall had special tracks for taverns and different times of day etc.) The games poor sound design and poor music implementation really hurts the games ambience and atmosphere and makes dungeon crawling much less immersive.

I agree with that. While the original soundtrack is very nice, we really need different music for dungeon crawling. The "underground" tracks from Tamriel Rebuilt are very nice and integrating them into the game with MUSE enhances the experience a lot, IMO.

The best music mod I found is Better Music System Redone (for Vanilla and MUSE) which works together with MUSE to implement dynamic music that varies by location. It comes with a set of quite experimental tracks that you will either love or hate — I started with hate, then it grew on me. I think the weird music fits the alien world of Vvardenfell perfectly. I actually helped the guy to improve the MUSE Lua config (see the mentioning of "Revenant" in the download section — that was me). That's one mod I would like to see ported to OpenMW.

Another good sound mod I found is Kirel's Interior Weather — with it enabled you can faintly hear the sound of rain outside when you're in a cave or a building, really nice touch.

the only downside to OpenMW is no vanilla water shader.

How about these?

https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/49391

https://www.reddit.com/r/Morrowind/comments/n7acr0/morrowind_vtastek_water_shaders_for_openmw_2021/

There's already mods that use it e.g., raycasted volumetric clouds + mist: https://github.com/zesterer/openmw-volumetric-clouds

Man, that looks hot!

---

Btw, this is a good resource for OpenMW related mods, although some of the choices are a bit questionable in the "curated" lists. Still, a good starting point for some graphical enhancements.

https://modding-openmw.com/mods/

This Graphical Overhaul list is not half bad either (but it's probably best to stop around the halfway point):

https://wiki.nexusmods.com/index.php/Morrowind_graphics_guide