Would you have bought DX:HR if it wasn't Deus Ex?

[AEmer]

Better to have a system that poses a challenge than a level-with-you system where bandits run around in full daedric armor in no time and where a rat does more damage at lv10 than any heavy hitter at lv1. In Morrowind you know if you run into a dangerous place and you get worked over that you need to train harder while in Oblivion everything is as piss easy or difficult (depending where you set the slider) at lv1 or lv1Million.

But that's not what Morrowind had though. It didn't pose a challenge to those who treated it like Scientific Lab Work: The Game, and puzzled out the mechanics before they started. But it was absolutely impossible for a player designing a non-combat-oriented or non-stealth-oriented character who didn't know of these mechanisms. That's not player choice. You could go for basically one or two archetypes, that was it. Unless you "solved" it, in which case the game did not pose any level of challenge at all.
Look, Oblivions system may have been bad, but on the whole, Morrowinds was worse.

Morrowind punished a few character builds in an way it should not. Oblivion on the other hand punished abominably anything but the two builds the developers have been using. Skyrim goes even further where one build is favored like hell and anything else is a joke.

This is simply wrong. Oblivion was an easier game. Some players _did_ get late-game gimped, but those very same builds in morrowind would have been left alone by frustrated players who hadn't discovered how to game the system because they'd be steamrolled. I suspect the only reason it seems like there seems to be any difference on this is because morrowinds system mercifully kills you off before you waste time on a build the game doesn't agree with.

Which is one of the many reasons Oblivion sucks. Throwing that out of the window is great just that in Skyrim they went on to replace it with even more fucked up ideas.

More fucked up? really? you now have to make 20 new characters at the start of the game to puzzle out the XP system? You now have to start an ant-farm to develop your intellect and heal skills in the beginning of the game? Or maybe you must start a successful honey production company, tending bee-hives and making sure to get stung a lot to raise your damage resistance and bartering skills?

Mudcrab boxing was about as fucked as you can get in an RPG, but when you say stuff like that, this is where my mind goes. So tell me, how did they fuck things up even more?

I want to reiterate, I had a blast playing Morrowind. I can even add that I did not have a blast playing Oblivion. My tastes have developed and I'm not as easily satisfied. That doesn't mean Oblivion had worse design.

In a reasonable way. It didn't throw off the entire game as it did in Oblivion where you get actually punished for leveling up. Smart people go all the way to the end-boss at level 1. How brain-damaged is such a system please?

Well, no. Morrowind would introduce harder and harder enemies as you leveled up. Same essential thing. Maybe you don't recall it, but enemies like the Golden Saint don't start appearing before level 20, and obviously the caverns beneath vivic change from having a relatively amenable infestation of skeletons to having bonelords and daedra demons. Under Vivec. No, really. presumably a player with an ok starting build but no understanding of the levelling system would be able to gimp himself in 10 easy levels in Morrowind just as easily as in Oblivion....and conversely, I will bet you that any player who actually understands the levelling system in either game can make absolutely any character they want, given that they're willing to pull some illogical grinds.

As for beating the end boss at level 1, well, all you gotta do in morrowind is take alchemy, take the strider to bal morra, take the mage guild to the Telvanni mage guild (I believe they're called tel-vanni...), sell all your stuff, buy mandrake root and potion bottles, brew intelligence potions, drink intelligence potions, brew intelligence potions (now being more effective due to your higher intelligence), drink intelligence potions (now being able to brew more powerful ones), buy mandrake root, brew potions, sell the potions to the mandrake root shop for a profit, buy more potion ingredients, etc.

Repeat till you have 500k intelligence that will last you the next 5 years. That should all take you less than 20 minutes. Now brew the other stat potions, trading in your amazing intelligence potions, and you're a living god. Proceed to play the game without any clothes on and no weapons, and simply kick the crap out of everyone like you're f'ing beowolf. Or vivec I suppose, since he doesn't have any clothes either.

So that's what smart people do. How brain-damaged is such a system, please?

[AEmer]

@ Dragon
send-bob? What's that mean exactly?

@ Shadowblade

The troopers saw you? That's probably an IFF bug. Or maybe they assumed you were a tenant?

I never noticed an enemy throw grenades at their feet. Did get a fair few thrown at me though.

I never fought a cloaked enemy in a gun-fight, so I can't attest to that.

It took me 10 tries or so to get out of that situation, with grenades. I only had one cell of augmentation energy, though. They would flank me and shoot me most of the time, till I pulled off a gas-grenade frag-grenade combination as the remaining enemies tried to rouse their friends.

My room mate spent at least 20, since he didn't have 'nades, and had to shoot everyone without getting hit himself. He didn't have reticule enabled either though, which may be a reason for increased difficulty.

On the whole, I'm not sure I like the way the AI attempts to rouse knocked-out allies. It made for some intelligent gun-play, and it meant many situations had more solutions, but it felt kindof cheesy.

[Akerfeldt]

Just thought I'd pop in:
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/09/02

Anyway, muslims and jews and morrowind. Carry on.

[bobby 55]

Too bad I can't screenshot or video-crap with this crap-shit called Steam.

No video but what about F12 for screenies on Steam?

[Dragon]

But that's not what Morrowind had though. It didn't pose a challenge to those who treated it like Scientific Lab Work: The Game, and puzzled out the mechanics before they started. But it was absolutely impossible for a player designing a non-combat-oriented or non-stealth-oriented character who didn't know of these mechanisms. That's not player choice. You could go for basically one or two archetypes, that was it. Unless you "solved" it, in which case the game did not pose any level of challenge at all.
Look, Oblivions system may have been bad, but on the whole, Morrowinds was worse.

That's silly. You can't go and say it allows only for combat or stealth. There's nothing else than combat you can do in an RPG (except buy/sell which is a support skill not a main skill) so saying you can do only combat and this is bad is quite silly. The problem is "how" you can do combat (and stealth is one possible solution).

More fucked up? really? you now have to make 20 new characters at the start of the game to puzzle out the XP system? You now have to start an ant-farm to develop your intellect and heal skills in the beginning of the game? Or maybe you must start a successful honey production company, tending bee-hives and making sure to get stung a lot to raise your damage resistance and bartering skills?

I don't get your gripe with the XP system. It's a very simple XP system based on improving what you use instead of spending XP points as most other RPGs do. If you ever played JA2 this is more than a familiar system to you. In Morrowind I could go a fucking staff wielding Argonian if I wanted to and be good at it or a bow wielding Kahjit with nimble skill like hell or a mage specializing in any of the schools of magic I like. Morrowind allowed all this with a simple XP system allowing you to improve what you actually use while you use it. Oblivion punishes anything except the builds preferred by the developers as anything else does next to no damage. I really don't call this better.

Mudcrab boxing was about as fucked as you can get in an RPG, but when you say stuff like that, this is where my mind goes. So tell me, how did they fuck things up even more?

Artificial grinding in any RPG is fucked up and should not really be used as an argument. Oblivion provides a lot more ways to artificially grind yourself up (I just say tavern-jumping or 1-mana-spell-training) than Morrowind did if that's what you are after.

Well, no. Morrowind would introduce harder and harder enemies as you leveled up. Same essential thing. Maybe you don't recall it, but enemies like the Golden Saint don't start appearing before level 20, and obviously the caverns beneath vivic change from having a relatively amenable infestation of skeletons to having bonelords and daedra demons. Under Vivec. No, really. presumably a player with an ok starting build but no understanding of the levelling system would be able to gimp himself in 10 easy levels in Morrowind just as easily as in Oblivion....and conversely, I will bet you that any player who actually understands the levelling system in either game can make absolutely any character they want, given that they're willing to pull some illogical grinds.

Which is the main point. Morrowind introduces "new" enemies which are stronger to match your level. Oblivion on the other hand upgraded the "same" enemies in a way you got no foot on the ground since your damage output dropped tremendously with higher level. In Morrowind with new enemies you had something to do. You had to learn a new enemy and to figure out how to attack them to beat them without getting damaged too much. Nevertheless a rat stayed a rat and had not suddenly 100 times more damage output just because you have a bunch of levels more on your virtual back. In Oblivion killing a rat at lv10 is more difficult than the same rat on lv1 no matter where in the world you meet it. That's the big difference between a level-with-you system and spawning different enemies depending on your level. One is a challenge, the other bad design.

As for beating the end boss at level 1, well, all you gotta do in morrowind is take alchemy, take the strider to bal morra, take the mage guild to the Telvanni mage guild (I believe they're called tel-vanni...), sell all your stuff, buy mandrake root and potion bottles, brew intelligence potions, drink intelligence potions, brew intelligence potions (now being more effective due to your higher intelligence), drink intelligence potions (now being able to brew more powerful ones), buy mandrake root, brew potions, sell the potions to the mandrake root shop for a profit, buy more potion ingredients, etc.

Repeat till you have 500k intelligence that will last you the next 5 years. That should all take you less than 20 minutes. Now brew the other stat potions, trading in your amazing intelligence potions, and you're a living god. Proceed to play the game without any clothes on and no weapons, and simply kick the crap out of everyone like you're f'ing beowolf. Or vivec I suppose, since he doesn't have any clothes either.

So that's what smart people do. How brain-damaged is such a system, please?

Morrowind has design bugs, nobody denied that. But this is a design bug which the player has to exploit on purpose to ruin the game not like Oblivion which forces the design mistakes upon the player no matter if he wants to or not. That's like using god-mode in an FPS game. Saying Morrowind sucks due to this design bug is as stupid as saying an FPS game sucks because you play it with god-mode enabled.

EDIT:
@bobby: Nope, not working. One reason I dislike steam based games without a proper screenshot action you can bind to a key.

[justanotherfan]

Just thought I'd pop in:
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/09/02

lol, one would have hoped they'd skew skills toward combat now that it's necessary. That comic shouldn't have been funny when I haven't played yet.

[AEmer]

@ the Penny Arcade comic:
Yes. Yes Gabes choices were ridiculous. You do have choice, but it's not a free lunch; you also have a job to do =P

@Dragon

You actually can rebind the Steam screenshot key.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=steam+screenshot+rebind+key

That's silly. You can't go and say it allows only for combat or stealth. There's nothing else than combat you can do in an RPG (except buy/sell which is a support skill not a main skill) so saying you can do only combat and this is bad is quite silly. The problem is "how" you can do combat (and stealth is one possible solution).

Alright, that's fair. Only armorer, acrobatics, athletics, mercantile, speechcraft, enchantment and security are non-combat, non-stealth skills, and security is debateable....and those should not really repressent any particular build. I should have been more clear. What I meant was, as a newbie, the only character that will seem to work is one that focuses on killing things with weapons and staying alive, or alternatively, one that's somehow really good at sneaking. A new player cannot possibly survive as an unarmored brawler, for instance...unless they choose the sign of the lover, of course, in which case I belive they will have in inordinary easy time. Mages will have a real hard time too.

That's silly. You can't go and say it allows only for combat or stealth. There's nothing else than combat you can do in an RPG (except buy/sell which is a support skill not a main skill) so saying you can do only combat and this is bad is quite silly. The problem is "how" you can do combat (and stealth is one possible solution).

Alright, that's fair. Only alchemy, armorer, acrobatics, athletics, mercantile, speechcraft, enchantment and security are non-combat, non-stealth skills, and security is arguably a stealth skill too....and those should not really repressent any particular build, taken together. I should have been more clear. What I meant was, as a newbie, the only character that will seem to work is one that focuses on killing things with weapons and staying alive, or alternatively, one that's somehow really good at sneaking. A new player cannot possibly survive as an unarmored brawler, for instance...unless they choose the sign of the lover, of course, in which case I belive they will have in inordinary easy time. The point was, for new players, there's not much choice if they want to have a fighting chance.

I don't get your gripe with the XP system. It's a very simple XP system based on improving what you use instead of spending XP points as most other RPGs do. If you ever played JA2 this is more than a familiar system to you. In Morrowind I could go a fucking staff wielding Argonian if I wanted to and be good at it or a bow wielding Kahjit with nimble skill like hell or a mage specializing in any of the schools of magic I like. Morrowind allowed all this with a simple XP system allowing you to improve what you actually use while you use it. Oblivion punishes anything except the builds preferred by the developers as anything else does next to no damage. I really don't call this better.

I'm using it as one example of Morrowind having consistently poor game design by todays standards. For sake of argument, I'll dive into your criticism, and try to elaborate on what I think is wrong.

This is all from memory, but no, it is _not_ a very simple xp system. It might be based on improving what you use, but that's not the result for a player who's trying to beat the game. It's not the result for a player who's _not_ trying to beat the game. It's only the result for a player who has a very clear vision of his character and doesn't mind that it gets gimped by the experience system. Since you don't get the gripe, let me elaborate on how it actually works:

Upon a level up, you get 3 attribute advancement points. You gain a level up when you have gained 10 skill increases in your major or your minor skills, and you rest. If you don't rest till you have gained 20 such skill increases, you gain 2 levels.

But you can gain up to 4 bonus attribute points for each attribute advancement you make, provided you select 3 different attributes of which you have advanced skills governed by the attribute by a total of 10 points, where each misc skill must not contribute more than 4...but if the bonus would give more than necessary to cap the attribute out at 99, the bonus is thrown away.

So if you want to advance strength, speed and agility as much as possible, and you have sneak, unarmored and long blade as major skills (because you're a cloth-armored thief! With a longsword!), you would be careful to sneak just enough, get hit just enough without armor, and kill stuff just enough with a longsword to advance those skills 9 times, insuring that you get, for example, exactly 4 longsword advancements, 3 sneak advancements, and 3 unarmored advancements (YAY mudcrab boxing!).

Then you would switch to fur armor, pull out a short sword, and jump a lot, because those are among your misc skills (acrobatics, light armor, short blade) untill you had advanced each of those 4 times. THEN you would pull your shield out (and better make sure not to be hit on your light armor because once you cap light armor you won't be able to use it for attribute pumping anymore! But it'll be better than being hit on your cloth, because then you might gain a skill up in cloth armor and that will make the next levels trebulations more difficult!), and you would run a lot, and you would use your axe to kill stuff. That's Axe, Block and Athletics, also misc skills!, you would make sure not to kill stuff quite so much though, because you only want 2 skill ups on axe, but you need 3 from athletics and block, so better try to avoid conflicts beyond a certain point.

Now you can finally take an extended rest, and reap the rewards of _5 times as many_ attribute points as you might have gotten if you'd just haphazardly advanced 5 major or minor skills twice and not had any synnergies with any misc skills.

Do you _see_ why it's fucked up? Because I certainly do.

Heh, as an aside on my gripes, don't even get me started on how they gradually limit movement speed based on weight carried, or how you can only sell for up to 5k gold at even the most renowned shop, so you make sure he has an item of approximately 10k value, some of approximately 15k value, some of approximately 20k value. Then, when you sell something expensive, he can pay out his side of the bargain with items you know and love, and which you have already agreed are worth an exact amount of money (though it's weirdly always worth slightly more when he has it). Then you wait for 24 hours, and then you can get 5k more gold and another well known "change" item in return for the one you bought yesterday! You have to imagine that blacksmith owners would also be hotel owners, since these waiting "guests" must be a fairly frequent occurence.

Also, don't you ever dare store anything at cassius cosades house, even though he's your friend and will let you use his bed, because that guy has a real mess around his place and he'll think it's his and if you try to take it he will fight you till death and then you can't complete the game!

Morrowind is not a piece of good game design. I like the underlying philosophy, but it's like the people who designed it have no understanding of the interplay between complicated systems and rewarding strategies. It's designed to simulate the complicated interplay between humans, challenges and learning, but the problem is, it doesn't simulate that. It does something else, I can't really describe what, but it is certainly not that. I can tell you that it seems to have been designed with a complete disregard for how the simulation runs. It's as though they haven't even done the simplest possible calculus, an incentive analysis. But I digress.

Here's the point. If Oblivion punishes players for using anything but a very specific build that the developers used, then Morrowind punishes players for playing the game in any way that _isn't batshit crazy_. Incidentally, Oblivion isn't much different here, but the larger issue is, Morrowind wasn't something any game should try to copy. The number one goal for a new TES game should be simplifying the game mechanics and making them behave such that you are actually rewarded for playing the way the underlying philosophy intends.



But this isn't about artificial grinding...that's just a much, much easier way to do it in Morrowind because it's really hard to rig your adventures in a fashion that gives you even a chance of getting good bonuses. In oblivion, everything is a lot easier, so the punishment is, ultimately, far lower. The system is still fucked up, of course, but you can't really screw yourself over if you pay attention, even if you're a new player. And there's always the difficulty slider to bail you out.

Also, oblivion really didn't provide more ways to artificially grind yourself up. It's almost exactly the same, though morrowind does have trainers and I don't recall if oblivion has those.

Which is the main point. Morrowind introduces "new" enemies which are stronger to match your level. Oblivion on the other hand upgraded the "same" enemies in a way you got no foot on the ground since your damage output dropped tremendously with higher level. In Morrowind with new enemies you had something to do. You had to learn a new enemy and to figure out how to attack them to beat them without getting damaged too much. Nevertheless a rat stayed a rat and had not suddenly 100 times more damage output just because you have a bunch of levels more on your virtual back. In Oblivion killing a rat at lv10 is more difficult than the same rat on lv1 no matter where in the world you meet it. That's the big difference between a level-with-you system and spawning different enemies depending on your level. One is a challenge, the other bad design.

If you're saying the problem is ludo-narrative dissonance, then I'll counter that both systems have it. Why the hell are there bonelords under vivec? Why are there suddenly alligator-like daedra? I know there's unrest, I know Dagoth Ur is doing his thing beneath the mountain, but you'd think the guards could at least keep the bloody sewers free of monstroud demonic entities. The rats might get weirdly stronger, but at least they're actually supposed to be there. In one systems its just far more visible, and far easier to point out as being ridiculous. But alright; I'll give you that one is easier to ignore, and that makes Morrowinds design better in this regard.

It's still not good though. Stronger monsters shouldn't appear in old areas without a reason, as a rule...so here they simply transitioned from a bad design choice into a worse one.

Morrowind has design bugs, nobody denied that. But this is a design bug which the player has to exploit on purpose to ruin the game not like Oblivion which forces the design mistakes upon the player no matter if he wants to or not. That's like using god-mode in an FPS game. Saying Morrowind sucks due to this design bug is as stupid as saying an FPS game sucks because you play it with god-mode enabled

Yes, you got me there..except, what I was actually saying was, it's _also_ just as stupid as saying that the smart players in oblivion went straight to the end boss while remaining level 1. I was drawing a parallel; trying to illustrate why the dichotomy you outlines was false.
Obviously, a player who actually did _either of those_ wouldn't be having much fun with the game. Both are exploits, concequences of the developers making certain subsystems simply too general and too broad.

[Neveos]

Did anyone else find it really easy to beat the guys who try to attack you after meeting with Zhao?

I 'cheated' by cloaking at exiting via that vent. No probs.

I cheated by putting gas mines at the elevator.

[Hassat Hunter]

Too many posts... gotta go, stuck on page 3, still wanna reply.

Jeez, zombies? Darn... that makes me want DX:HR even less. What the fuck's up with everyone including zombies in everything anyways?

And yes, Morrowind > Oblivion. And Skyrim may say much, Oblivion did say quite as much (radiant AI anyone) so my hope is very very VERY low...

[EER]

Too many posts... gotta go, stuck on page 3, still wanna reply.

Jeez, zombies? Darn... that makes me want DX:HR even less. What the fuck's up with everyone including zombies in everything anyways?

Spoilt.

And yes, Morrowind > Oblivion. And Skyrim may say much, Oblivion did say quite as much (radiant AI anyone) so my hope is very very VERY low...

I thought Radiant AI was a great idea to prevent a static world like in Morrowind, except it didn't really work the way I would have expected it to.

[Dragon]

You actually can rebind the Steam screenshot key.

Believe me I would not say this if I would not have tried various things first to no avail. I'm not one of the kind lamenting about a problem if it not really is one.

What I meant was, as a newbie, the only character that will seem to work is one that focuses on killing things with weapons and staying alive, or alternatively, one that's somehow really good at sneaking. A new player cannot possibly survive as an unarmored brawler, for instance...unless they choose the sign of the lover, of course, in which case I belive they will have in inordinary easy time.

The problem there is more that the game is an RPG. And so far I've not seen a single RPG out there which is not about killing stuff to win. Well... except for Deus-Ex but I'm reluctant to call it an RPG as in my opinion it went beyond what RPGs are (and always had been). Granted some have a different idea of RPGs and even make distinctions like J-RPG but that would derail the conversation in an unhealthy way.

( xp system explanation)

I'll give you that, this improve-while-sleeping system rubbed me against the spine too. It never annoyed me though since I did not bother to power-grind my character as I managed to play (and win) just fine playing without worrying about this system. It's definitely questionable and one of the major downsides of Oblivion (in concert with the level-with-me system). Ripping that system out is the right way to go, I agree with you there.

( selling fun explanation )

Ah yeah, the good old messed up economics system of Morrowind. It still puzzles me how such an obviously flawed system (you can sell the same item for more gold than you buy it for) managed to slip through QA. Still better though than Oblivion where you can't sell most items at all since the best merchants you find have like 2k (not sure about the actual number) gold available. At last in Morrowind you find a way to sell your stuff. In Oblivion it's a dead-end with no solution. It's though arguable which system is more broken than the other. Personally I prefer the Morrowind one especially since you are not totally encumbered once you carry a full armor and some goodies as in Oblivion. Bag of holding was one of the first mods I installed and good god this improved the game experience a lot.

Also, don't you ever dare store anything at cassius cosades house, even though he's your friend and will let you use his bed, because that guy has a real mess around his place and he'll think it's his and if you try to take it he will fight you till death and then you can't complete the game!

Which is not really the fault of the game. It's not your house after all and there Morrowind is strict. I stored all my crap in the mage guild in Balmora (or how this is called exactly). I even used their cupboards. Nothing ever went missing and nobody cared when I picked up my stuff or stashed it somewhere. At the end of the day I had nearly the entire floor around their dormitory area cluttered with unique weapons I found on my journeys. Quite the museum I build there ... and in Morrowind you can actually place objects well in contrary to Oblivion with its horrible usage of Havok physics

But this isn't about artificial grinding...that's just a much, much easier way to do it in Morrowind because it's really hard to rig your adventures in a fashion that gives you even a chance of getting good bonuses. In oblivion, everything is a lot easier, so the punishment is, ultimately, far lower. The system is still fucked up, of course, but you can't really screw yourself over if you pay attention, even if you're a new player. And there's always the difficulty slider to bail you out.

Can't agree with you there. I tried playing once as bow-wielding kahjit (as I did in Morrowind) and good god have you been fucked there. After a couple of levels your bow did less damage than whacking somebody with a spoon (not TNM spoon... that would DO massive damage ). A fist-fighter build I tried had been even more punishing than the bow one. In Morrowind I played various builds and I never got really punished. Granted I didn't try a fist-fighter build there.

Also, oblivion really didn't provide more ways to artificially grind yourself up. It's almost exactly the same, though morrowind does have trainers and I don't recall if oblivion has those.

They did. Morrowind has some ways to power-grind the way you explained and some I know. In Oblivion though you get in addition to these problems also 1-mana-spell training as well as summon-training which both are in my opinion even bigger power-grind ways. But here too I guess one can argue which power-grind is worse.

Why the hell are there bonelords under vivec? Why are there suddenly alligator-like daedra? I know there's unrest, I know Dagoth Ur is doing his thing beneath the mountain, but you'd think the guards could at least keep the bloody sewers free of monstroud demonic entities.

This is indeed questionable but if we start to apply logic to RPG games then we have to throw any of them into a waste bin since all of them have a sort of area where enemies of similar strength live and the areas are laid out in a way that they get harder and harder the further you get. Hardly realistic or logic that enemies just stay in one zone although they are more than capable to level entire villages or cities nearby. In this system at last one could say that stronger enemies found their way over time into zones they previously never had been in. Sounds to me personally more reasonable than having rats doing suddenly 10 times more damage. But that's also open for debate I guess.

Obviously, a player who actually did _either of those_ wouldn't be having much fun with the game. Both are exploits, concequences of the developers making certain subsystems simply too general and too broad.

[/quote][/quote]
I would not put it that way. In the Morrowind case the player can short-cut to make the boss piss easy and skipping most of the game by exploiting a design bug. In Oblivion players have to keep themselves artificially to lv1 to avoid getting owned in the later game. What goes for me I consider a system worse where the player is forced to exploit the system to stand a chance.

[AEmer]

Steam screenshots really won't work for you? Maybe you should consider filing a bug report?

And, well, if one game screwed you over and the other one didn't for almost exactly the same choices, I'm not going to argue with that. That's clearly worse. I don't think it'll be the general trend, but if it is, then I'm wrong, and it was downhill already for oblivion.

I do however recall speccing out tons and tons of new characters in morrowind. I couldn't get a spellcaster to work till my second playthrough. I'd get my skull stomped in by the first scamp I encountered.

It was reasonably easy to make my way as a redguard fighter, though. I could essentially beat anything into a pulp with a sword. Contrast with Oblivion where I could relatively easily do a very broad mage...anyway, it seems we're closer to being on the same page at this point.

Skyrim might suck, of course, but I'm looking forward to it - and I'm looking forward to however they decide to change up the character system. Hopefully it'll be a lot more intelligent.

[Hassat Hunter]

I won't argue the grumpy part though, I have become quite disillusioned with the games industry. Seeing everything I like getting slowly ripped out of every genre I like does that it seems.

You too, eh?
FPS got ruined by regenerating health and cover. As do RPG's apparently now.
RTS by special abilities, 3D to loose control and overview and general too much crap on screen to properly plan conquest... still haven't found a 3D RTS I like, so sticking to AoE2, Red Alert 1.
I suppose they aren't killing racing games as much, but I miss my splitscreen to play with friends on the same PC.
Anything I missed?

This is simply wrong. Oblivion was an easier game. Some players _did_ get late-game gimped, but those very same builds in morrowind would have been left alone by frustrated players who hadn't discovered how to game the system because they'd be steamrolled. I suspect the only reason it seems like there seems to be any difference on this is because morrowinds system mercifully kills you off before you waste time on a build the game doesn't agree with.

Not really. Being your character got promoted in Morrowind (hit, damage, being better stats). While doing what you SHOULD in Oblivion got punished. Your enemies became stronger for it (more than you).
In the end, it became very apparent to even the most obsotute gamer. In Oblivion you had to pick major and minor attributes YOU NEVER USE to properly play the game. Unheard of in Morrowind. What sounds like the more fucked up system?
PS. I used the same skills and khajiit in both...

That doesn't mean Oblivion had worse design.

Yes, it had. From leveling, to characters, to the looks, to the dialogue, pretty much *everything* took a plumet. Only boon is that some quests became better (the painting one) but that didn't save the game from being waaaaaaaaay worse than Morrowind.

It's still hilarious bad to have 3 bandits, each wearing 30K armor asking you 25 gold for toll...

Morrowind would introduce harder and harder enemies as you leveled up. Same essential thing. Maybe you don't recall it, but enemies like the Golden Saint don't start appearing before level 20

Nope, didn't notice. Which automatically means it's lot better system than "exploring is useless, everything's the same."

So that's what smart people do. How brain-damaged is such a system, please?

Not really. Smart people play the game as intended. In Morrowind that's possible. In Oblivion, you get hardly punished for it.
You complain you have to play like brain-damaged. But only in Oblivion is it required.

You do realize that AI in a stealther is designed with a lot of weak-spots, because that way the player can attempt to fool it, yes? It's not a bug, it's a feature

I hate people saying this.
Same with Alpha Protocol. They all expect GOD AI that knows 24/7 your location like a FPS. But this AI actually takes into account that they may not know where you are.
So which is the worse AI?
Then again, haven't played DX:HR so can't give a conclusive statement about DX:HR AI.

But supperior gameplay mechanics ? _really_?

Yes.

I ended up restarting morrowind 5-10 times in order to create a character that was tough enough to run around freely. I wasn't dumb, I wasn't new to gaming...the game was just that tough to get into.

Funny. I made a Khajiit. I had NO idea what Morrowind was all about. Had pretty much no RPG-experience at all.
And that was the only character I ever had. Never made a new one...

It was full of horrible mechanics like favoring people who chose _not_ to take training in endurance and hand-to-hand and heavy armor, then equip heavy armor and go to the nearest beach, try to swim and box with a mud crap for a couple of hours. Can you say WTF?

Funny, I never saw this in Morrowind. Did in Oblivion though... without the mud crabs that is. And it was horrible.

And do you recall that the much lampooned scaling enemy system _was in morrowind too_ ?

Nope. Must have not been horrible...

Because starting over again and again is the only way to slowly figure out the ups and downs of how to create a character.

As stated, I never had to do that. I am no super-intelligent being either. You just stick to something and learn to live with it.
I think the only reason why it's "needed" for you is because you are a power-gamer. Regular gamers don't need to remake their Morrowind character EVER.
Oblivion is another though, after you learn that you just made the most horrible issue of actually picking skills you use. Now there is something strange...

I like puzzling things out.

Then why, instead of doing JUST THAT, you start a new character instead?

So if you want to advance strength, speed and agility as much as possible, and you have sneak, unarmored and long blade as major skills (because you're a cloth-armored thief! With a longsword!), you would be careful to sneak just enough, get hit just enough without armor, and kill stuff just enough with a longsword to advance those skills 9 times, insuring that you get, for example, exactly 4 longsword advancements, 3 sneak advancements, and 3 unarmored advancements (YAY mudcrab boxing!).

Oh, you silly powergamers.
You DO realise most of us wouldn't bother with such a system? And guess what... it doesn't break your Morrowind character any way what-so-ever.
You only make it so hard on yourself because of your urge to maximise. That doesn't mean the system is hard to understand at all, or counter-intuitive. If you just go with the flow, instead of manipulate it like you do.
So what's the better choice? Allow both, suiting both gamers? Or take away a part of the system so the option falls away for one part of the gamers (you powergamers in this case)? It would have been fine if they didn't make it horribly flawed in the progress, forcing us ALL to be powergamers. And me, I rather play natural. Hence my dislike for the Oblivion system.

The number one goal for a new TES game should be simplifying the game mechanics and making them behave such that you are actually rewarded for playing the way the underlying philosophy intends.

How about the number one goal should be to MAKE IT FUN. Appealing to the lowest commonoter (or whatever it's spelled, ask Jonas) doesn't usually generate the best games. Heck, even YOU as powergamer would be unhappy with a completely of appeal stripped system, why are you trying to promote it?
Forcing the players to 'act natural' in a game is going to backfire horribly anyways, anyone can tell you that. Especially with powergamers like you around willing to break any system for the best character. The only way to actually reach what you want is remove stats al-together, and just make it a first person adventure/shooter. You want that?

Spoilt.

Blame Jonas, he brought it up...
Hope he's making a joke though. It would be... pretty bad.

I thought Radiant AI was a great idea to prevent a static world like in Morrowind, except it didn't really work the way I would have expected it to.

The Witcher 1 did *waaay* better. So sad. And their excuse "we downgraded it because it proved too smart for our testers"... hilarious. I wonder what ways out they will come up this time when features announced are missing or broken in Skyrim.
Since Bethesda is king of bugged up products. It's kind of funny (and very sad) to see some people think otherwise these days. "Fallout: New Vegas is so buggy. Bethesda will show them with Skyrim what a bugless release is"... sure, poor poor disillusioned fanboy. Oh, don't expect Bethesda to fix these 'issues that aren't there', the fanpatch will surely fix all 2000 again anyway.

[justanotherfan]

@ the Penny Arcade comic:
Yes. Yes Gabes choices were ridiculous. You do have choice, but it's not a free lunch; you also have a job to do =P

True. The concept of "I guess my choices were WRONG?", of course they were. Players can always be wrong. Loading up on the Swimming skill in DX would probably be wrong. Choices should have a wrong answer. From the reviews of DX3, I'd focus on combat and stealth. Still, I'd be annoyed if a game preferred choices I didn't like. Hacking was so cyberpunk and intellectual it'd be hard to pass up.

Never played Morrowind or Alpha Protocol, so, I agree.

[EER]

Blame Jonas, he brought it up...
Hope he's making a joke though. It would be... pretty bad.

CURSES JONAS! Although I think he would be joking, there are no zombies in Deus Ex, unless I will root them all out in HR, including their cause I presume there will not be any.

The Witcher 1 did *waaay* better. So sad. And their excuse "we downgraded it because it proved too smart for our testers"... hilarious. I wonder what ways out they will come up this time when features announced are missing or broken in Skyrim.
Since Bethesda is king of bugged up products. It's kind of funny (and very sad) to see some people think otherwise these days. "Fallout: New Vegas is so buggy. Bethesda will show them with Skyrim what a bugless release is"... sure, poor poor disillusioned fanboy. Oh, don't expect Bethesda to fix these 'issues that aren't there', the fanpatch will surely fix all 2000 again anyway.

Never played the Witcher, also didn't hear about the Radiant AI system being "too smart for testers" I guess they need new testers then
I agree that Bethesda are well known for producing bug-ridden products (that are still somehow fun to play), I guess I'll get Skyrim for PC so I don't get left behind. Unless they console-up the UI even more than Oblivion.