~+~ Explanation of what happened to TES games ~+~

Emperor

The video below explains extremely well why old-school TES fans are upset. If you have some time, give it a good watch. Like the person that made the video, I understand that we will never see another amazing game like Morrowind from Bethesda because it is a business and its goal is to make money.

I am sad to see the TES games continue to go downhill and to continue to be "dumbed down", but I will get over it. Maybe another company will make a game that had the same attention to detail as Bethesda did when it was starting to grow as a company.

But enough complaining, I am just here to post this informational video to explain why you see a lot of upset customers. It's not because ESO is a bad game, it's because we know what a TES game has the potential to be.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=JweTAhyR4o0

*** Warning ***
This video will probably make you want to punch the 2 children in the picture he uses or it might just be me...

Soothy

I don't agree with all of his points but (some of) the comments are quite interesting to read.

Emperor

Soothy wrote: »

I don't agree with all of his points but (some of) the comments are quite interesting to read.

I also don't 100% agree with every point he made, but I definitely agree with him overall. People think Skyrim and ESO are detailed games? Their minds would be blown away in the first 10 minutes of playing Morrowind.

indytims_ESO

Morrowind?

You do know that they made two games AFTER Morrowind that were BETTER than Morrowind, right?

I don't need a video to tell me that.

I don't recall being promised a perfect TES experience for ESO. In fact, it isn't really possible. There is quite a bit in TES games that really can't be replicated in ESO. The TES games were always designed as single-player games, and to suddenly toss in multiplayer, or MMO, kinda breaks the mold and forces a lot of changes that die-hard TES fans are obviously going to hate.

For me - a fan of the series since Arena - every TES game has gotten better than the previous one, with Skyrim easily being the best. ESO is not necessarily a TES game, but it has a definite TES 'feel' to it. It just so happens to be crowded with thousands of other players, most of whom couldn't care less about the TES series itself, and many of whom enjoy being *** and ruining the experience for others.

Emperor

indytims_ESO wrote: »

Morrowind?

You do know that they made two games AFTER Morrowind that were BETTER than Morrowind, right?

I don't need a video to tell me that.

I don't recall being promised a perfect TES experience for ESO. In fact, it isn't really possible. There is quite a bit in TES games that really can't be replicated in ESO. The TES games were always designed as single-player games, and to suddenly toss in multiplayer, or MMO, kinda breaks the mold and forces a lot of changes that die-hard TES fans are obviously going to hate.

For me - a fan of the series since Arena - every TES game has gotten better than the previous one, with Skyrim easily being the best. ESO is not necessarily a TES game, but it has a definite TES 'feel' to it. It just so happens to be crowded with thousands of other players, most of whom couldn't care less about the TES series itself, and many of whom enjoy being *** and ruining the experience for others.

Of course I know there are 2 other TES games after Morrowind. There is no need to attempt to put me down. I am not here to start a spam war. I am simply here to show this video to people that don't understand what people like me are complaining about.

You should actually watch the video before starting an argument. If you have played all the TES games try to imagine them all at the same graphics level. I know graphics can make a huge difference to some people's enjoyment to a game so this is very important to understand what I mean. Once you imagine Skyrim having the same graphics as Morrowind what game truly is better as an RPG?

The attention to detail in Morrowind is outstanding. There is so much to do and so much replay value that people are still actively playing the game and making mods for it. Even without the great graphics a modern game has, Morrowind is still way more realistic. It is not "dumbed down" and makes you really feel like you are a part of the world.

Anyway... watch the video for a full explanation of what I am talking about. I am not saying Morrowind is the best TES game in all categories. I just mean the foundation of the game is amazing and I wish they would have kept that in mind while making the games after it instead of trying to please the casual player.

Sakiri

The attention to detail to Morrowind was astounding.

The stat system was annoying.
The combat was infuriating.
The quests, I have a binder full of maps and directions because the 10th time an npc said "to here, its around there between two rocks" in a field of rocks a mile in area is annoying.

People look at things with rose colored glasses. Im not gonna lie. I loved the hell out of Morrowind. After Oblivion and then Skyrim's combat system? Theres a reason Morroblivion, Skywind exist.

LordEcks

indytims_ESO wrote: »

Morrowind?

You do know that they made two games AFTER Morrowind that were BETTER than Morrowind, right?

I don't need a video to tell me that.

I don't recall being promised a perfect TES experience for ESO. In fact, it isn't really possible. There is quite a bit in TES games that really can't be replicated in ESO. The TES games were always designed as single-player games, and to suddenly toss in multiplayer, or MMO, kinda breaks the mold and forces a lot of changes that die-hard TES fans are obviously going to hate.

For me - a fan of the series since Arena - every TES game has gotten better than the previous one, with Skyrim easily being the best. ESO is not necessarily a TES game, but it has a definite TES 'feel' to it. It just so happens to be crowded with thousands of other players, most of whom couldn't care less about the TES series itself, and many of whom enjoy being *** and ruining the experience for others.

TL;DR - Just read the bold.

Have to disagree with you for the most part.

I think the evolution of TES titles has brought about great improvements and great drawbacks.

The real problem in my eyes is neither side is willing to acknowledge the other.

A lot of this is just my opinion so take it with a grain of salt, but....

Skyrim had by far the best gameplay in a TES title. The action flowed very smoothly... the mana/stamina systems worked and the variety of left hand / right hand weapons / abilities was phenomenol.

It had a pretty good story, but there have been better stories in Elders Scrolls games. Oblivion and Morrowind both outclass Skyrim in this department.

Morrowind had a much larger diversity of not only weapons, but abilities. Things you can do.....

I remember making a Dragoon in Morrowind.. enchanting my armor with tons of Jump and 1pt Feather running around with a spear. I think near the end-game my enchants had gotten so powerful I could literally leap from city to city.

The gradual dumbing down is to appeal to the masses, and some of it yes is constructive, some of it is simply unecessarily simplistic (like reducing the game to only 3 weapon types).

Your mileage may vary. I dont think any of the TES games stands out as a clear winner. They seem to excel at different aspects of RPG game-dom.

Emperor

LordEcks wrote: »

indytims_ESO wrote: »

Morrowind?

You do know that they made two games AFTER Morrowind that were BETTER than Morrowind, right?

I don't need a video to tell me that.

I don't recall being promised a perfect TES experience for ESO. In fact, it isn't really possible. There is quite a bit in TES games that really can't be replicated in ESO. The TES games were always designed as single-player games, and to suddenly toss in multiplayer, or MMO, kinda breaks the mold and forces a lot of changes that die-hard TES fans are obviously going to hate.

For me - a fan of the series since Arena - every TES game has gotten better than the previous one, with Skyrim easily being the best. ESO is not necessarily a TES game, but it has a definite TES 'feel' to it. It just so happens to be crowded with thousands of other players, most of whom couldn't care less about the TES series itself, and many of whom enjoy being *** and ruining the experience for others.

TL;DR - Just read the bold.

Have to disagree with you for the most part.

I think the evolution of TES titles has brought about great improvements and great drawbacks.

The real problem in my eyes is neither side is willing to acknowledge the other.

A lot of this is just my opinion so take it with a grain of salt, but....

Skyrim had by far the best gameplay in a TES title. The action flowed very smoothly... the mana/stamina systems worked and the variety of left hand / right hand weapons / abilities was phenomenol.

It had a pretty good story, but there have been better stories in Elders Scrolls games. Oblivion and Morrowind both outclass Skyrim in this department.

Morrowind had a much larger diversity of not only weapons, but abilities. Things you can do.....

I remember making a Dragoon in Morrowind.. enchanting my armor with tons of Jump and 1pt Feather running around with a spear. I think near the end-game my enchants had gotten so powerful I could literally leap from city to city.

The gradual dumbing down is to appeal to the masses, and some of it yes is constructive, some of it is simply unecessarily simplistic (like reducing the game to only 3 weapon types).

Your mileage may vary. I dont think any of the TES games stands out as a clear winner. They seem to excel at different aspects of RPG game-dom.

I mostly agree with you. Skyrim did some things better, but I am only talking about the foundation of the game in the RPG aspect.

Emperor

If anyone knows of a game that is taking the direction Morrowind took in regards to RPG style please let me know.

fosley_ESO

To be fair to the simplified skill system "dumbing-down" in Skyrim, they replaced them with a perks system which (other than the horrible UI) was actually pretty decent, and gave more meaningful choice than "this skill be my good skill". Sure, you only had "one-hand", but you still had to put perks into swords and axes if you wanted the best of both, and so forth. Without DLC or cheating, you had a limited number of perks, so you still had to choose what you would specialize in, just like previous games.

And while Morrowind had the random conversations, they tended to be rather generic, so while it was a little more immersive than the later games, it wasn't *that* big of a loss either (and was lacking in certain respects compared to the Daggerfall dialogue).

And the quest system in Morrowind was. . . flaky, at best. Absolutely no help if you couldn't figure out the cryptic directions, except the internet, and the quest givers were often extremely cryptic, even when the questgiver could have literally just pointed across town and said "that guy".

It's one thing to have non-important quests or items that most players will never even know exist, so the randomly lucky people can feel excited, but when a simple "take this to my buddy" quest turns into a needle-in-a-haystack routine, it's a bit problematic.

Emperor wrote: »

People think Skyrim and ESO are detailed games? Their minds would be blown away in the first 10 minutes of playing Morrowind.

I don't think so. Morrowind was very detailed coming from Daggerfall with its procedurally-generated everything, but it wasn't any more detailed than Skyrim in most respects.

LordEcks wrote: »

The gradual dumbing down is to appeal to the masses, and some of it yes is constructive, some of it is simply unecessarily simplistic (like reducing the game to only 3 weapon types).

Some of the dumbing down was due to technical issues. Morrowind removed the climbing present in Arena and Daggerfall, which was likely because climbing all the perfectly-vertical walls in those games was much easier to code than climbing round, rough objects from later games. Oblivion removed the levitate spells so you had to use the door to get into town, which allowed them to make much more detailed cities without destroying performance on the lower-end machines of the time. I'm sure there are others I don't remember or didn't grasp the reasoning behind.

And some of it was just silly stuff. Like, who actually sat around farming easy-to-kill nymphs until their nymph skill was higher so their dog could now faceroll nymphs while they were at work? And it's not like you could use the skill to make awesome nymph friends (I was very sad in Daggerfall when I realized the skill was about killing them instead of chatting them up ). But yeah, a lot of it was unnecessary.

Still, I really can't think of much in Morrowind that I liked better than Skyrim, except: vampires with sun damage, and a fast travel system that was a bit more realistic. Fast travel between majors hubs then running to a destination, instead of just teleporting anywhere at almost any time made it feel more like you were venturing away from civilization, and mark/recall with teleportation scrolls gave you essentially a Diablo-style town portal ability while delving through dungeons. Although I always wanted someone to make a mod so silt striders would actually stride from town to town, instead of just teleporting you.