To me, a faction's quests should be directly related to a faction. In that regard, Morrowind's quests are fine. If there are faction requirements, I expect those to tie in directly into the faction's quests. Else they become generic, and expose faction quests for what they really are: quests where the "faction" element is simply that you are doing these quests for a particular group.
What do you expect or not is not a reason to define Morrowind faction's questing as a bad/fake one. Your description of Morrowind faction questing is distorted. Morrowind quests "faction element" is indeed in a strong way linked with the worldbuilding around these factions or sometimes more personal interests by other faction members. But besides that, Morrowind factions favour certain builds and no others
clearly by their faction skill preferences that lock advancement and new quests by player level in favoured skills. So there are not many drastic impediments in quest solving by faction favoured skill checks (with some exceptions) but Morrowind faction design
highly penalizes or hinders faction advancement and quest giving by required levels in favoured skills and attributes.
An example to explain how false is your idea that every character build is suitable for every faction: If you decide to play with an argonian witchhunter and join the Fighters Guild, using mostly your favoured skills and not faction's ones to quest solving, you could need to use
10 points in level ups invested in two of your worst attributes and specially
level up 85 times on one and 30 times on two more of your less favoured skills outside the faction quests in order to access to new quests and reach the higher rank... It's ridiculous.
This would make sense if it wasn't so easy to level skills in Morrowind in different ways. Ideally you pick a build and stick with it, i.e. I decide to play a fighter and naturally the factions of choice will be Redoran, Fighter's Guild, or Imperial Legion. But no.
No, it's not so easy, specially in opposite builds. A pure fighter or even a mixed stealth/melee character, for example a redguard warrior or rogue, should level up 85 times in one of his miscellaneous magic skills and 30 times in other two magic misc., to reach higher rank in Magues Guild or Telvanni House + level up 10 points in 2 of your worst attributes. So you should basically solve three or four times more quests or freely adventure the world 3/4 more time using these allegedly non preferred skills than you must use the non favoured combat skills to complete one of these magic factions... Other unspeakable solutions to player
trying intentionally to break a game try to solve factions quests with other skills than any of the favoured by the faction and that in case that player decide to finish both factions are mandatory, are obssesive, artificial, ultra-abusing, mmo-grinding-like solutions:
-Larping hard: Cast several thousand times some spells of two different schools to the air or try also several thousand times you enchant or alchemy making attempts, failing most times because you start at level 5 in order to artificially level up the favoured skills.
-Abuse of trainers at mental disorder levels: You must pay and train 145 fucking times!! in three of the miscellaneous skills that any of aforementioned magic factions favour. Even in this case, you need to find master level trainers at least in one skill, so even more artificial work (or even worse metagaming) to
try intentionally to break game design finish factions using a character with skills not favoured by these factions.
I believe you can join any faction from the start.
If this was the case, and? Why every faction must forbid join mandatorily, instead to limit rank promotions? Why a faction of our world, from the past or in a imaginary world should ban some random guy that would like to help them in low level jobs, to do it? Don't makes more sense to limit promotion by skillls favoured in that faction? But anyway there is an axception in Morrowind,
Orc women characters of most classes (15/21) can't even join Imperial Cult, Imperial Legion, Tribunal Temple or Thieves Guild at game start. They must level up Personality to 30 to join these factions.
Because it boils down to dicerolls in a game where the action-part allows you to completely break it. There are no rounds. There are no turns. You attack as fast as you please and then are able to spam potions in your inventory at will. Those are genuine problems with the combat. You asked about New Vegas: I don't think New Vegas has good combat, but at least it is proper action combat in an action-RPG.
Don't get me wrong: you make a lot of good points. Those are all genuine strong points with Morrowind's combat. But we cannot ignore the fact the combat is based on dicerolls, in a game with a first person perspective, and it is about as unengaging as it could hope to be.
I think so many people tend to call dicerrolls to every mechanic that it's not action directly based, but dicerrolls imply rng as simulation of dicerrolling, a mechanic that many rpg includes (most blobbers, infinity games, etc). In Morrowind, actions performance depends on stats and only stats, without random numbers. So hit chance, damage level, cast success, barter and prices reduction, etc, depends on your, your tools and/or your opponent stats.
I think the most common alleged problem with Morrowind combat is a fake problem: Succes rate in melee or magic, basically. Since start, you will success in most your attacks or cast attempts in your favoured skills if you do it with high fatigue, and this information is abundantly presented in character creation, attributes/skills sheets info and dialogue. Also I don't need an specific animation that show player the ways in which he fail. I think Daggerfall/Morrowind way is the most rpg way (as other user already mention) to abord an action combat with no turns or pauses. ALL depends on stats. And you don't know the formula but you have hints about how combat works everywhere.
I disagree, many Morrowind quests don't have multiple solutions. A lot of times it boils down to "do the quest or don't do it".
Most quests can be solved by the use of different sets of skills, so in diverse ways, that was one of your original complaints.
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Maybe you simply like more Gothic or New Vegas style or story-guided rpgs in general, but this don't make Morrowind better or worse rpg or experience. There are a lot of incline in Morrowind and as I said in my first message here, and after very recent interviews deeper confirmation: Most Morrowind developers, with few exceptions, want the opposite in games of what Morrowind offers, so this game is some kind of miracle, an accident product of the inheritance of another era in crpg and general gaming and the total dominance (but in tricky ways) of Kirkbride in design.
But I suppose the Battlemage, Spellsword and Crusader classes are meant to be shit at Destruction magic... oh no, they have it as their Primary skill.
