\"The mixing with dice and real combat often ends up just frustrating, at least early on. While this does give a good sense of progression, the disconnect from whomping a little rat in the face for a time you can measure and just hearing the miss sound over and over, it will haunt me to my grave.\"
I\'ve seen it get a bit of flak in recent years, but I personally love the dice based combat. I like the feeling of starting out as a complete weakling who can barely take care of rats and scribs, and then growing into a superhuman able to beat ash vampires with ease. Yeah, it can be frustrating early on, but it made the game world feel more dangerous right off the bat and I liked that.
About the leveling, I consider character development options to be the most important part of an RPG, and so I was more than happy with Morrowind\'s system. That said, I thought Skyrim\'s ability trees, while a bit oversimplified were pretty cool. I\'d like a future TES game to have a system somewhere in between the two. Preferably with something like the Fallout \"perk\" system or the D&D \"feat\" system instead.
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A beautiful, if frustrating early on, piece
Skyrim was my first Elder Scrolls game, but eventually I found it lifeless, overall.
It is curious, then, that Morrowind, a game where the NPCs repeat the exact same dialogue across the world and all stand completely still, would be more appealing.
Morrowind is a very good "sandbox" game, perhaps better than any other. Now, Skyrim begins with a dragon attack, Oblivion begins with the assassination of the Emperor, Daggerfall an exceedingly large dungeoncrawl. Morrowind, after a strange dream you immediately exit into the world as gentle exploration music plays, with some vague instructions. In this odd sense, it has the best introduction out of them all, a relaxing one that sort of leaves you to do whatever, explore. This has its own problems, but is appreciated.
Where Morrowind really succeeds is its setting. Skyrim had a lovely aesthetic, but it really doesn't come close and a lot of the more interesting lore pieces seemed cut. Cyrodiil was really generic. Daggerfall made the mistake of embracing scale rather than a lovingly crafted area. But Vvardenfell is a exotic alien beauty, filled with mushroom houses and generally unique monsters. And cliff racers, but give me a silt strider over a horse any day. The politics are interesting, and the guilds feel less disconnected (one key problem with Skyrim and Oblivion, especially the former).
The gameplay does have its merits. I admit, there was some fun in following directions, and using Mark/Recalls was more involved than just using Fast Travel. I won't argue that this is really superior to quest markers or Skyrim's travel-after-unlocking, however, though it's not really an option in future games (disable markers and there is little-to-no other direction). Morrowind's system was more productive, I feel, to more unique builds, but leveling was overcomplex and "gamey" (not until Skyrim does it become anywhere natural).
The mixing with dice and real combat often ends up just frustrating, at least early on. While this does give a good sense of progression, the disconnect from whomping a little rat in the face for a time you can measure and just hearing the miss sound over and over, it will haunt me to my grave. Still, the fun of endgame crap can be great.