I remember playing both Morrowind and Oblivion with like a ton of notes on how exactly to level up my character, not to min/max but to keep the game from scaling the difficulty too much.
I’d rather see a remake of Morrowind over Oblivion, though. I have the game on GOG but I don’t have the time in my life to go through all the mods to make it playable (especially getting the journalling system up to par with modern games).
I really dislike any game with difficulty scaling. It might make some sense, if you fight random bandits in the middle of nowhere, since they had time to level up a little, but in most places it’s just annoying.
I’d rather have my character level up and be able to literally destroy everything with one hit when I spend a shit-ton of time making it stronger. See: Gothic games or classic RPG’s.
Wow I’m really surprised to hear people actually played with vanilla Morrowind and Oblivion leveling. I modded both games to fix that issue almost immediately after realizing how bad the system was.
I don’t think it was a problem in Morrowind, iirc there was no scaling at all, NPCs just existed at a set level so different areas of the map opened up to you naturally as you leveled up. It’s been a minute since I played through it so I might be mistaken but I don’t remember it being a problem, as opposed to OPblivion
Oblivion’s scaling was so wonky. Especially compared with what I really believe to be one of the worst leveling systems of all time. Anyone defending the leveling in Oblivion is nostalgic or thinks things are good just because they’re complicated. Being able to both under AND over level was such weird design.
Scaling in Morrowind wasn’t really a problem because almost every enemy was hand placed. You don’t have hordes of generic “Bandits” (in glass fucking armor at end game) - you have Tunipy Sharmirbasour, who has a reason for being where she is and a set level. Barring like guards and some of the humanoid enemies in Tribunal and Bloodmoon - everyone has a name.
Leveling only really comes into play when it comes to some of the generic loot that can be rolled, what some shopkeepers might have, and generic creature enemies. Even then, the scaling isn’t ridiculous - going from rats to Kagouti doesn’t feel uneven. Unlike Oblivion, you also will continue to see lower level enemies generated.
Oblivion even levels the quest rewards - so your Daedric artifacts and faction completion rewards will be useless once you level.
Leveling in Oblivion also affects enemy stats, and a lot of time it’s a flat bonus. Late game ogres and Minotaurs are not fun to fight, because they’re just massive health pools.
Morrowind has the same “inefficient” leveling problem (like, endurance is something you want to upgrade as early as possible, because it effects how much health you get every level up) - but in Morrowind you aren’t permanently fucked because you spent your first ten levels training acrobatics and speech craft or something.
Don’t run everywhere (keep fatigue bar at least half full). Don’t use weapon skills that are less than 40 (train them - there aren’t restrictions like in the later games).
It’s closer to D&D than an action RPG. Your swing is like a “to hit” roll. The game cares about your character’s skill - not yours.
I like Morrowind a lot mechanically - I like that the game will happily allow you to kill anyone you want (and with Taunt - you can do it legally!) You can complete the main quest after slaughtering everyone on Vvardenfell bar one person (the thread of prophecy might be broken - but a larger theme in ES lore is that we make prophecies happen).
I like that the game is designed around the lack of fast travel. When I complain about fast travel in Oblivion and Skyrim, I hear “just don’t use it” but it isn’t really feasible (playing a Survival run in Skyrim and life just sucks if I have to go to Morthal).
Morrowind’s world is just real and thought out in a way that I haven’t seen in a game since. The towns are designed around food sources, there’s a lot of thought into to the economies of plantation slavery, and it’s all used to enhance the world building.
The level up system was bad. The thrust/chop/slash system for weapons is awkward. Every attack costing stamina is bad for early characters. The excessive number of weapon categories, combined with short and long blades being the only ones that were common. The persuasion system was just bribe people to get what you want, or taunt them for free murder. Run speed being a skill, jumping being faster than running and being a skill as well (combined with the level system this can cause problems). Item durability in general. The encumbrance system, and containers having weight limits. The spell making and enchantment system had some cool things, but it was also trivial to break the game in multiple ways. The quest tracking and journaling was garbage. Alchemy was undercooked. Merchants had way too little gold so selling became annoying by mid level. The haggling quickly got annoying as you could sell at extreme markup or buy for nothing fairly easy. Magicka didn’t regenerate, so being a mage was annoying at early levels until you had sufficient potion access.
There’s also some things that are more bugs I think than bad mechanics. Stealing from a merchant flagged every copy of an item as stolen from them. I once managed to make every redoran guard hostile to me on sight, which got really annoying.
The absolute shit mechanics had some kernels of gold though. I loved my Fortify Strength 100 Jump 100 spell and my 10 chaingun lightning amulets. Very few games let you do properly weird stuff with magic.
I remember playing both Morrowind and Oblivion with like a ton of notes on how exactly to level up my character, not to min/max but to keep the game from scaling the difficulty too much.
I’d rather see a remake of Morrowind over Oblivion, though. I have the game on GOG but I don’t have the time in my life to go through all the mods to make it playable (especially getting the journalling system up to par with modern games).
I really dislike any game with difficulty scaling. It might make some sense, if you fight random bandits in the middle of nowhere, since they had time to level up a little, but in most places it’s just annoying.
I’d rather have my character level up and be able to literally destroy everything with one hit when I spend a shit-ton of time making it stronger. See: Gothic games or classic RPG’s.
Skywind is being developed as well.
Wow I’m really surprised to hear people actually played with vanilla Morrowind and Oblivion leveling. I modded both games to fix that issue almost immediately after realizing how bad the system was.
I don’t think it was a problem in Morrowind, iirc there was no scaling at all, NPCs just existed at a set level so different areas of the map opened up to you naturally as you leveled up. It’s been a minute since I played through it so I might be mistaken but I don’t remember it being a problem, as opposed to OPblivion
There was scaling, but it was done pretty sensibly, compared to Oblivion
Oblivion’s scaling was so wonky. Especially compared with what I really believe to be one of the worst leveling systems of all time. Anyone defending the leveling in Oblivion is nostalgic or thinks things are good just because they’re complicated. Being able to both under AND over level was such weird design.
Scaling in Morrowind wasn’t really a problem because almost every enemy was hand placed. You don’t have hordes of generic “Bandits” (in glass fucking armor at end game) - you have Tunipy Sharmirbasour, who has a reason for being where she is and a set level. Barring like guards and some of the humanoid enemies in Tribunal and Bloodmoon - everyone has a name.
Leveling only really comes into play when it comes to some of the generic loot that can be rolled, what some shopkeepers might have, and generic creature enemies. Even then, the scaling isn’t ridiculous - going from rats to Kagouti doesn’t feel uneven. Unlike Oblivion, you also will continue to see lower level enemies generated.
Oblivion even levels the quest rewards - so your Daedric artifacts and faction completion rewards will be useless once you level.
Leveling in Oblivion also affects enemy stats, and a lot of time it’s a flat bonus. Late game ogres and Minotaurs are not fun to fight, because they’re just massive health pools.
Morrowind has the same “inefficient” leveling problem (like, endurance is something you want to upgrade as early as possible, because it effects how much health you get every level up) - but in Morrowind you aren’t permanently fucked because you spent your first ten levels training acrobatics and speech craft or something.
I mean, for Morrowind at the time I played it, I probably didn’t even realise modding was a thing, I must have played it around 2005 or so :-)
Morrowind was better than oblivion and Skyrim. Skyrim was good but Morrowind was so well done.
Couldn’t you just kill primary quest givers and be locked out of the game?
Morrowind had a decent story and great world building but the mechanics were absolute shit.
Don’t run everywhere (keep fatigue bar at least half full). Don’t use weapon skills that are less than 40 (train them - there aren’t restrictions like in the later games).
It’s closer to D&D than an action RPG. Your swing is like a “to hit” roll. The game cares about your character’s skill - not yours.
I like Morrowind a lot mechanically - I like that the game will happily allow you to kill anyone you want (and with Taunt - you can do it legally!) You can complete the main quest after slaughtering everyone on Vvardenfell bar one person (the thread of prophecy might be broken - but a larger theme in ES lore is that we make prophecies happen).
I like that the game is designed around the lack of fast travel. When I complain about fast travel in Oblivion and Skyrim, I hear “just don’t use it” but it isn’t really feasible (playing a Survival run in Skyrim and life just sucks if I have to go to Morthal).
Morrowind’s world is just real and thought out in a way that I haven’t seen in a game since. The towns are designed around food sources, there’s a lot of thought into to the economies of plantation slavery, and it’s all used to enhance the world building.
Other than the roll to hit mechanic (which would be pretty cool if paired with parry and dodge animations), which mechanics were “absolute shit”?
The level up system was bad. The thrust/chop/slash system for weapons is awkward. Every attack costing stamina is bad for early characters. The excessive number of weapon categories, combined with short and long blades being the only ones that were common. The persuasion system was just bribe people to get what you want, or taunt them for free murder. Run speed being a skill, jumping being faster than running and being a skill as well (combined with the level system this can cause problems). Item durability in general. The encumbrance system, and containers having weight limits. The spell making and enchantment system had some cool things, but it was also trivial to break the game in multiple ways. The quest tracking and journaling was garbage. Alchemy was undercooked. Merchants had way too little gold so selling became annoying by mid level. The haggling quickly got annoying as you could sell at extreme markup or buy for nothing fairly easy. Magicka didn’t regenerate, so being a mage was annoying at early levels until you had sufficient potion access.
There’s also some things that are more bugs I think than bad mechanics. Stealing from a merchant flagged every copy of an item as stolen from them. I once managed to make every redoran guard hostile to me on sight, which got really annoying.
The absolute shit mechanics had some kernels of gold though. I loved my Fortify Strength 100 Jump 100 spell and my 10 chaingun lightning amulets. Very few games let you do properly weird stuff with magic.
Levitate on up to the top of my Telvanni tower and tell that to my face—oh wait, you can’t!
psh all i need is a horse and i will climb anything
Touché, but not even a horse can get you through a hole in the middle of a room’s ceiling.
Also, there were other things that were mechanically better about Morrowind, such as its much more interesting/immersive fast travel system.
I tried that once, found it too tedious, and just stopped levelling up instead
There is a group that’s remaking Morrowind in Skyrim, but I have absolutely no idea how far along they are https://tesrskywind.com/