Elder Scrolls Why Morrowind is a bad RPG

[Sigourn]

Fallout: New Vegas is my definition of a diamond in the rough. I've always maintained that, had it used the original Fallout engine and given an adequate time for Obsidian to do the major things they planned (most important of which being "fleshing out the Legion") it would occupy the #1 spot as the best cRPG ever made.

I can't honestly say I've "replayed" New Vegas a lot, in the sense of "yeah I made it to the end of the game five times". In fact, I've never, ever, finished New Vegas. I always bail out just as the Hoover Dam battle is available. Why, I can't say. The title says "Morrowind" but I'm talking about New Vegas, so why is this the case? Because even though there's an initial hurdle to overcome in New Vegas (in my personal experience, if I can get past Novac I know I'll play the hell out of the game), in Morrowind I'm going through a constant initial hurdle. And I'll explain why, giving my honest opinion on Morrowind.

Morrowind is a game that, as opposed to what its RPG label and its "open world freedom!" would lead me to believe, is a game that gets more and more boring the more I play through it. There are many reasons as to why I find Morrowind boring, but there is one in particular that outright breaks the game for me. And that is quest design. Morrowind's quests can be divided in two:

• Non-faction quests, which rarely demand something out of your build.
• Faction quests, which are usually oriented towards your build.

We can see an immediate difference with New Vegas: whereas Morrowind's quests are separated between "incloosive" and "gatekeeping", New Vegas quests, most of the time, have specific skill checks to unlock different paths or rewards. But even Morrowind's faction quests are a lie:

• Thieves Guild/Hlaalu: you can easily spam the Persuade or Taunt button to pass most of the quests oriented towards "smoothtalkers".
• Mages Guild/Telvanni: very few quests actually demand your magic-oriented character to use their magic, if any.
  
• Fighters Guild/Redoran: very few quests actually demand you to engage in opponents in physical combat, if any.

The one major exception are the stealth-oriented quests. Without high enough stealth, you will be relying on extreme chance to complete these quests. This is made even worse because of Morrowind's downright awful stealth mechanics. Whereas Skyrim's stealth is overpowered, leading everyone and their grandmother to play as stealth archers, Morrowind's are infamously bad, where trying to stealth your way around a quest without having previously honed your skills by cheesing Mudcrabs, Scribs, and feeble tavern patrons standing near a dimly lit candle, will have you raped, gently, by telepathic enemies. In fact, the stealth mechanics are SO bad that at low skills you simply can't hide at a reasonable distance from NPCs, but at high skills you can hide in front of the fucking NPCs.

The one aspect of Morrowind where skills truly come into play is your success chance to physically attack your enemies, your success chance to cast magicka, your success chance to brew potions, etc. Basically anything but quests (stealth quests, again, being the exception). This is a huge contrast with New Vegas' quest design: without the proper skills, you are locked out of certain paths or rewards. It is also a huge contrast with New Vegas' moment-to-moment gameplay, where your skills have a less noticeable impact because the game doesn't rely on dicerolls, instead augmenting your resistance and damage: it's easier to notice the growth from missing all the time to landing all your attacks than it is to notice "hey, I'm dealing 40 damage instead of 30 now!", especially when New Vegas doesn't display damage dealt with each attack.

Earlier I said Morrowind gets more and more boring the more I play through it. And that's because it lacks replayability as an RPG.

• Most quests don't rely on your build, meaning you can effectively do them all.
• The ones that are locked behind a certain build don't actually require that build at all. We love to mock Skyrim's "you can become the Archmage of Winterhold while knowing how to cast one single spell", but how is Morrowind's "the guild requires you to have certain stats but rarely expects you to cast spells?" any different? In fact, I've taken the time to browse Morrowind's Mages Guild quests: out of 33 quests distributed among the guilds, only ONE absolutely requires you to use magic, either scroll or spell (Soul of an Ash Ghoul), while another two require either spells or having a good sneak skill, with one of these two also being easily solved by picking up a key lying around. That's right: in Morrowind's Mages Guild quests, there are absolutely no quests that absolutely demand you to be a mage, because literally any character can use a spell scroll. The faction requirements are entirely arbitrary.

When your game's RPG elements ultimately boil down to your prowess in combat, and when said combat is arguably one of the worst combats RPGs have ever seen (and this is ultimately what will get users to agree with me or not), then you have a bad RPG in your hands. Morrowind's quests are a mostly linear affair, require no particular skills, and the ones which do require skills are either "fake" (e.g. faction questlines) or require cheesing (i.e. stealth quests).

Once more, let's go back to New Vegas' quests: skill checks are necessary because they ask what is needed. You need high Medicine skills because you are required to have Medicine skills in order for you to cure gravely injured Boomers. You require high Speech skills because you are required to have high Speech skills to convince a destruction-driven man to stop his rampage across the Mojave. New Vegas rarely pulls tricks on you in this regard; we can argue some skill checks are poorly assigned, but we can barely argue "the game demands a skill check when it has no reason to", as opposed to Morrowind's factions demanding requirements that are never asked to be put into use explicitly: play through the Mages Guild as a fighter, or play through the Redoran quests as a mage, the game doesn't give a shit. Did Bethesda truly dumb down Skyrim, or did they just accept that Morrowind's faction requirements were retarded because the quests weren't designed around those requirements in mind?

As much as I enjoyed writing modding guides for others to use, I have to come to terms Morrowind is the one RPG that may be a true "play once and be done with it", because every time I try to play it I either give up fairly early, or end up dropping the game because of boredom altogether.

 

[Harry Easter]

Yeah, that boils is down. Morrorwind has an interesting world and the stoy is interesting too, but learning skills is just broken. That's why I never got far while playing.

 

[Egosphere]

Yeah, I sort of agree. Morrowind's appeal was in it's setting and size, rather than the game/quest design

 

[octavius]

Morrowind has many good quests.

But the real flaw is the static NPCs. The player character is the only dynamic entity in the whole game world.
That's what eventually put me off Morrowind (and even made me prefer Oblivion), not the quest design.

 

[Popiel]

There is a reason why Morrowind is a cult classic for a specific generation, and IMHO lies in a completely different category of cult classics than, let's say, Planescape: Torment and aforementioned New Vegas. Younger you are better and more flexible your imagination is, and Morrowind is almost the best game that's out there for impregnating your imagination. Setting is only thing that is legitimately a masterpiece in this product, and a lot of it depends on player reading these fucking books and reading these Almsivi-damned Wikipedia dialogues. Morrowind captured dozens with it’s world and imagination replaced, in memory, what sucked - that it almost everything else. There are some good characters (most of them transcended into memes years ago), there is a very strong backstory (not main plot, this one is shit, it’s only as good as player’s understanding of what happened at the Red Mountain), aesthetics are very strong (part of the setting IMHO), but rest? Jesus. Mechanics are completely broken and game goes fucking bonkers really easily, AI is shit, whole game design is fucking awful (OP highlights it well). The list goes on and on.

You can easily LARP in game and pretend that it's a good one, but that's only your aforementioned imagination doing it's magic.

 

[Sigourn]

Morrowind has many good quests.

But the real flaw is the static NPCs. The player character is the only dynamic entity in the whole game world.
That's what eventually put me off Morrowind (and even made me prefer Oblivion), not the quest design.

I'm not going to argue quest design because Morrowind has one unfair advantage that makes its quests more interesting than they are. And that is the lack of quest markers. Add quest markers to Morrowind's quests, and you will quickly realize how most of them are Skyrim-level filler. I agree with the static NPCs. Hell, there are a lot of things I don't like about Morrowind, I just mentioned the one that stops me from replaying the game and enjoying it at the same time. I could also talk about:

• How it is one of the most offensively ugly 3D RPGs ever made. Many people will laugh, but when you happen to be running from one place to the other all the time, you kind of expect the graphics to make it worthwile, because that's all you are seeing while pressing forward.
  
• It is very easy to break the game and thus rendering "progression" pointless very early into the game, meaning you lose any reason to explore the island since there is nothing of value for you to find. You find potions left and right, but I can't say finding a cave full of loot was more interesting than finding a single potion in Gothic.
  
• How NPCs have no personalities and 90% of them are copy pasted.
• How the music is repetitive.
• How despite some iconic sounds, the sound design is pretty bad.

Truth is that that replaying Morrowind kills the one thing that makes its quests stand out, which is the lack of quest markers. There's no need to read the directions when you know where anything is. The first time you play Morrowind you HAVE to find Caius Cosades. The second time you play Morrowind you don't; you simply run there or take a silt strider, no need to ask for directions or even listen to the ones you are given. Your memory becomes the quest marker, which would be noble if it wasn't because that's really the best part of Morrowind's otherwise fairly forgettable quests.

Morrowind has taught me that to truly judge a game you need to play it twice, because the second time you may realize just how bad the game actually is. Many people like to replay games, so it is important to know what you are getting out of a second playthrough. In Morrowind's case, you literally lose the magic of finding things for the first time.

 

[Shadenuat]

I don't know if you noticed, but most faction quests being more about politics than anything else, including MG with leader who is too dumb to even read and is being trolled by Telvanni at every step is the actual Morrowind-thing making it great. I'd say every premise there in Guilds, carefully intertwined with Morrowind politics is a lot better than mopping floors or learning how to cast magic missiles.

It is very easy to break the game

Name 1 classic RPG which is not.

graphics are bad

Also in NV you can master basically all skills and those you can't just use magazines.

 

[octavius]

Most of the faults of Morrowind, like broken game mechanics, can be fixed with mods and self imposed rules.
But nothing can fix the static NPCs.

And of course the sense of exploration is hard to recapture, unless you wait a long time to replay it. And it's one of the few cases where having a poor memory may be an asset.

 

[JarlFrank]

The rather boring nature of the fetch quests and the static NPCs are the only truly bad things about Morrowind.

The underlying RPG system (lots of skills, huge amount of items, 16 (!) individual equipment slots, self-made spells and enchantments, etc etc etc), the lore and worldbuilding, and the compass-less exploration are all incredibly strong points that make it an amazing experience that no other game has managed to surpass or even reach yet.

If you kept Morrowind exactly as it is, but improved the conversation system a bit, added some more interesting quests with C&C, made NPCs less static and overhauled the combat system, it would be the best game ever.
Those things are all that need to be improved. Everything else is perfect as is.

 

[Sigourn]

Name 1 classic RPG which is not.

I'll rephrase: it is very easy to unintentionally break the game.

Also in NV you can master basically all skills and those you can't just use magazines.

Which is why I said it is a diamond in the rough. A mod easily fixes this issue with New Vegas, leaving you to enjoy the quest system just fine. But an equivalent mod for Morrowind, one which adds new quest paths depending on your skills, would be a massive undertaking and as such it doesn't exist.

 

[octavius]

Dare we hope for an Enhanced Edition by Beamdog?

Spoiler

 

[Shadenuat]

Name 1 classic RPG which is not.

I'll rephrase: it is very easy to unintentionally break the game.

Also in NV you can master basically all skills and those you can't just use magazines.

Which is why I said it is a diamond in the rough. A mod easily fixes this issue with New Vegas, leaving you to enjoy the quest system just fine. But an equivalent mod for Morrowind, one which adds new quest paths depending on your skills, would be a massive undertaking and as such it doesn't exist.

Breaking Morrowind involves quite intentional and repetitive grinding like

honed your skills by cheesing Mudcrabs, Scribs, and feeble tavern patrons standing near a dimly lit candle

based around doing same actions over and over again like an autist, like grinding alchemy or leaving the game to run for multiple hours or casting same spells 2000 times.

And are we judging game design now by how you can mod it instead of playing how it was done by developers?

Morrowind doesn't work with "paths through quests" and skill checks because, imo, it is not a game intended to work around those. The idea behind it seems closer to immersive gameplay, where you have a goal but the way you achieve it, be it stealing item from npc, intimidating him by beating him up or casting charm spell, is up to you. Same with combat - if you want, you can engage in combat; if you don't want to, you can almost never engage into Morrowind combat by using things like items with invisibility enchants. A locked door behind robot with [Science] skill check can't exist in Morrowind because it was designed as a game with no locked quest doors.

 

[thesheeep]

If you kept Morrowind exactly as it is, but improved the conversation system a bit, added some more interesting quests with C&C, made NPCs less static

I think the problem wasn't so much that the NPCs were all super static, but that there was such a discrepancy between its scale/politics/setting/mechanics and the staticness.
NPCs are as static as in Morrowind in a great deal of games, but that doesn't usually harm those games as much as it does Morrowind.

The problem might be that the entire game is just this wonderful, dynamic sandbox, where you can go anywhere you want any way you want. But then every NPC just stands around and only you do things.
Seems to me that the AI cannot really keep up with the rest of the game. While in Oblivion and Skyrim, it's not that much of a problem, because the rest of the game isn't really that great, either

and overhauled the combat system

That depends, overhauled in what way?
To make it more action-y like Oblivion+? No, thanks, Morrowind combat is true RPG combat (well, as true as it can get for a first person RPG), and that's a fine thing. We need more first person combat using RPG mechanics instead of action combat, not less.
To make it less... awkward? Sure. There are many things lacking about its combat. Feedback is severely lacking, aiming ranged weapons seems messy, summons are useless (a true Elder Scrolls hallmark throughout the series, isn't it?), combat is mostly just clickclickclickclickclick in hyperspeed until one side drops, etc. It is all-around clunky.

I also disagree that breaking the game is a problem, even accidentally. It's a single player game. Discovering ways to break the game is what makes its systems so much fun.
Of course, they could have been better, but they also could have been a lot worse.

And quest design? Mhm. Well... to me, the game is more of a sandbox to have my adventures in, as all ES games are, really.
I really like the story and lore, but not because they make the quests I do so wonderful, but because they give so much depth and coherence to the setting.

Morrowind's biggest problem hasn't even been mentioned yet: The slow initial walking speed
That's actually one of the very few things I'd prefer a more action-y approach, by not having it stat-based so much.

 

[laclongquan]

Morrowind is a bad Role Playing Game because... :drumroll:

It has bad writings. Very bad writings. Juvenile. Pretentious. Unmemorable.

Its characters are flat, without flavour. Do you know the personality of any character at all? Or are they as flat as a paper of their looks?

It's very hard to immerse among the characters of MW because they feel like sliver of 2 dimensional plane walking around. The fact that we could stand to explore its large and vibrant world, as well as partake in many activities, is a testatement to the strength of its gameplay, despite the horrible writings.

EDIT: also its huge fan clubs would have you think its writing is serviceable, if not great. So they would keep wondering why the hell it's a bad rpg. But once you accept the fact that its writing level is frankly at low/bad threshold, you will suddenly understand why.

The fact that you like MW writings is no problem. But once you think it's great, there's a big problem with your taste.

 

[JarlFrank]

Morrowind's biggest problem hasn't even been mentioned yet: The slow initial walking speed

Good thing there's like 5 different mods that fix this :D

 

[jungl]

There mods if you want that change how the leveling system works. Lot of stuff aged really bad like the graphics. New vegas is the same set your intelligence to 9 and you forget about the rpg mechanics. When these games came out you didn't care or really notice their faults. Both games are mainly played for the exploration and immersion. Morrowind still btfo new vegas in that department if you played them both around release.

 

[Sigourn]

Breaking Morrowind involves quite intentional and repetitive grinding like

honed your skills by cheesing Mudcrabs, Scribs, and feeble tavern patrons standing near a dimly lit candle

based around doing same actions over and over again like an autist, like grinding alchemy or leaving the game to run for multiple hours or casting same spells 2000 times.

Your suggestion is then:

• Try to raise Sneak naturally, failing all the time because enemies will quickly find out where you are. Meaning that your Sneak raises so slowly as to never actually be of any use. This also encourages massive savescumming for picking chests, because in addition to the terrible sneak mechanics, Bethesda placed these in locations that, should we be talking about "the real world" would make these chests literally unpickable (one quest relies on you standing in the shadows and picking a lock that is meters away from you and in plain sight of its owner, for instance).
  
• Try to raise spellcasting naturally, again failing all the time because many of these schools rely on spells that you will barely be using compared to something like Restoration spells.
• Try to raise Acrobatics naturally, which is again a very slow process because you barely need to jump in Morrowind to get around, as the poor collision meshes make it impossible to jump on things you should realistically be able to jump onto if the meshes were done properly.

And you say it is the player's fault they cheese these skills? No, the player has to cheese them because skill progression is fucked. This is a verifiable fact, and there's a reason why many mods tackle this issue specifically, usually by making combat skills raise more slowly (since they are the skills you will regularly use) and making these other skills raise faster.

And are we judging game design now by how you can mod it instead of playing how it was done by developers?

Even though you can max all your skills in New Vegas, in practice this only becomes a problem as you get to the end of a playthrough, as opposed to Morrowind's skills being broken during the entire duration of it.

Morrowind doesn't work with "paths through quests" and skill checks because, imo, it is not a game intended to work around those.

Which is why it is a bad RPG, since there's nothing genuinely good about Morrowind looking at it from a pure RPG perspective. What JarlFrank remarked about Morrowind makes it, at best, a fun playground, but by no means a good RPG.

 

[Sigourn]

There mods if you want that change how the leveling system works. Lot of stuff aged really bad like the graphics. New vegas is the same set your intelligence to 9 and you forget about the rpg mechanics. When these games came out you didn't care or really notice their faults. Both games are mainly played for the exploration and immersion. Morrowind still btfo new vegas in that department if you played them both around release.

Ideally you will roleplay, however. If my character has 9 Intelligence it will be because I wanted an intelligent character, not because I wanted to min-max.

 

[Shadenuat]

I think early slow walking is actually not bad, only problem when you replay game. Makes you pay attention and also treasure lategame achievements like spells and better speed more.

Your suggestion is then

- Start as character with high sneak & train through masters
- There is a % based chance of success for spells which depends on their power, if you fail "all the time" you're doing it wrong lol.
- Why do you need Acrobatics? but just as Athletics, it will eventually rise since it is faster to jump at times than simply walk (like when climbing hills)

pure RPG perspective

Your stats, skills and equipment affect gameplay and your success with everything, so I don't see how it is not a pure RPG.

 

[jungl]

I couldnt roleplay on the mid 2000 gamebyro engine cause combat looks like you rollerskating. fallout 3 killed it for me initially when you can 360 no scope super mutants right out the vault at level 2 and how they overdid the gore.

 

[Trashos]

I can't honestly say I've "replayed" New Vegas a lot, in the sense of "yeah I made it to the end of the game five times". In fact, I've never, ever, finished New Vegas. I always bail out just as the Hoover Dam battle is available. Why, I can't say.

I have heard other people say this as well. I don't get it. You reach very close to the end after dozens of hours of play, and then you don't spend 20 mins to finish it? Put a power armor on and go.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Even though you can max all your skills in New Vegas, in practice this only becomes a problem as you get to the end of a playthrough

You do realize that people actually played NV, right? Of course the implementation of skills there is much better than in F1-2, but they completely pussied out of making it actually matter and you can just pass virtually every check with no problem. In my playthrough I remember not being able to pass only one explosive check and that's because I just couldn't be bothered to go find a magazine. Contrary to Morrowind, it doesn't require any cheese or powergaming, just doing completely legal, no-brainer stuff.

For the record, I'm not defending Morrowind. Similarly to FNV, it's a good for what it is game that's also hugely overrated by many people.

 

[thesheeep]

pure RPG perspective

Your stats, skills and equipment affect gameplay and your success with everything, so I don't see how it is not a pure RPG.

Some people think that story and quests are somehow vital in the definition of what an RPG is, as if other genres did not have stories or quests.
They are wrong, of course, but there's not much you can do to help them realize that.

It makes this whole thread quite funny, as some of the biggest criticisms brought up against Morrowind being a "bad RPG" don't even touch its RPG-ness.
Par for the course on the Codex

 

[Sigourn]

Start as character with high sneak & train through masters

Sorry, but if I select Sneak as my primary skill why should a rely on such a mechanic? Trainers are a crutch you should rely on for Misc skills, Minor skills even. Because of how easily you break economy in Morrowind without trying, you can use this "crutch" as your primary level up tool because it really is that much faster than actually playing your character.

There is a % based chance of success for spells which depends on their power, if you fail "all the time" you're doing it wrong lol.

Again, you can select any school of spell as a primary skill: I'd say a 50% chance to fail a spell is a fairly high number. Especially when you won't see any considerable gains as a result of you barely using that skill because it doesn't have a particularly "useful" spell selection. It also wastes one valuable slot since primary skills are skills you should be using regularly.

Why do you need Acrobatics? but just as Athletics, it will eventually rise since it is faster to jump at times than simply walk (like when climbing hills)

So you are suggesting "bunnyhopping", which is a known way to spam Acrobatics...

Your stats, skills and equipment affect gameplay and your success with everything, so I don't see how it is not a pure RPG.

I didn't say it wasn't a pure RPG. I said it was a bad one.

 

[Shadenuat]

What 50% to fail at spell? If your stamina is full and spell fits your skill level, it won't fail.

Especially when you won't see any considerable gains as a result of you barely using that skill because it doesn't have a particularly "useful" spell selection.

...then don't use it?

I mean, there are no useless Spell Schools in Morrowind, but if you don't find one of the skills useful, then... I am not sure I understand the problem here.

I can tell that with mod for SLOWER skill growth and larger skill cap, as a mage through game, with only moderate investments in trainers, I reached about 120 in main skill (Destruction usually) and 70 of all other magic schools, with maybe one or two lagging behind.

So you are suggesting "bunnyhopping", which is a known way to spam Acrobatics...

If jumping can move you faster somewhere and you want to raise Acrobatics, then yes you can jump. Or not. It's not actually required to be a super jumper in this game, unless you refuse to use all other options including enchancing actual Acrobatics skill with items or magic.