A Black Falcon

Nothing new, just didn't want to put this in the thread where we are arguing about BG and KotOR...

I've been playing Arena for a few days now. You know, the now freeware first TES game... then yesterday I played a bit of the Daggerfall demo (thanks to one of my older demo CDs...). Interesting to see the differences and similarities. There are all kinds of techical issues (Arena requires EMS so it must be run in DOSBox, and it runs badly there so I cannot get a smooth framerate... weirdly Daggerfall runs much better than Arena in DOSBox. It also runs in Windows since it can accept XMS... but it runs a bit better in DOSBox I think.), but for now I'll ignore that and stick to more important matters.

I would say that these two, and Arena in specific (since I've mostly been playing it) are interesting contradictions. On the one hand, you have massive worlds. Arena lets you go to cities and towns (and their surroundings) across the continent. You'll visit all nine parts of Tamriel. It's older so it's got some limitations (the cities and towns are not connected by land -- you must use the Travel map to go between them, for instance.), but you can certainly see the connection... anyway, so you start in your home province and start adventuring. So what did I mean by contradictions? On the one hand, it has massive scope. 400+ towns and cities, every one with various inns, temples, equpiment stores, a palace, a mages' guild... and one gate in or out. There are also various tilesets, depending on which culture you are in. Different parts of the world will look different. They've also got their own people... the people on the streets in each province are different. And there are numerous quests you can do... you can pretty much do fetch quests forever, for instance, and there are an uncountable number of randomized dungeons littered around the world.

However... it is also limiting. Character intraction is for the most part VERY limited. People who give you quests will have something to say (just a text block and a yes/no to the quest), but other than that pretty much all you can do is ask people their name and profession (and these will start to repeat after a couple of hours of doing this, making this part mostly ignored), ask for General or Work-related information, or ask where any of the relevant places to go in town are. If you're very near the place the person will also put the name of the store on your map (the only other way to do this is to go into the store, get its name, come out, and label it on the map yourself... a tedious process.). This is important because you want to know which places are which on the automap (inn, store, or temple, mostly, except the mages' guild). The names of stores and stuff also clearly get drawn out of a pool because you'll see the same names over if you visit just a few towns. Each region is different a bit but still... it gets old fast. Especially once you consider the fact that the INSIDES of the stores, temples, and inns are EXACTLY THE SAME EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD. Yup, the same white humans are inside the inns with the same racially-based (as in based on your character's race) comments to make everywhere. While EVERYONE on the streets outside are of the race that is supposedly dominant in that province. This is just stupid... my character's a High Elf, so I should expect that in Summurset Isle the people in the inns should mostly be High Elves, right? Nope, they are uniformly humans with the same insulting things to say they say everywhere else. Stupid.

Really what I am trying to say is that Arena has truly massive scope but very limited variety. Four hundred towns but before you've gone to three you'll see repeating store names, jobs (if you bother to ask), answers to your 'Rumors - Work' or 'Rumors - General' questions, etc. You'll get the same, or very similar, fetch quests in towns. You can explore virtually identical dungeons. The only real differences are the tileset used for the city graphics and inhabitants (in the overworld city map that is, not in buildings) (and this only varies between provinces), the name of the city you are in, and the layout of this particular city or dungeon... and that is certainly random like so much else.

So you can spend forever if you wish in the game, but I've been playing it for like three days and am already getting tired of the repetition... makes me want to just focus on the main quest for a while and then probably not play the game anymore. After all even if you focus on the main quest it's a very long game...


As for Daggerfall, it's both similar and different. Based on the demo I can tell that it focuses on just one part of the continent, but allows travel between all parts of this section of it and has much smaller towns... which means fewer cultures to deal with which makes some of the problems with Arena less. But it's still got very limited interaction with the people where it's mostly either accepting quests, asking about rumors or work, or asking where places are. And it is certainly a massive-scope game but I've heard that that comes at the price of having lots more virtually identical towns with more virtually identical things to do in them and more virtually identical dungeons to hack through (and that's the other major contradiction -- the games tie a deep roleplaying system and massive open world to just about the simplest form of hack and slash gameplay...)... a game you can play forever if you want to, but I don't quite see how it keeps the interest for that long.


Oh yeah if anyone else wants to play it it is here

http://www.elderscrolls.com/tenth_a...anniv-arena.htm

And DOSBox is here (the newest version that is)

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)

OB1

Never played Arena...

Sacred Jellybean

That makes two of us.

With a little effort, we could get a baker's dozen to all wave our asses in ABF's direction for posting about games nobody here has played!

__________________
"Michael Moore wins points for occasional humour factor.
Ann Coulter wins points for Big boobs and a tight ass."
-alien space marine

A Black Falcon

1) It's freeware

2) You have played Morrowind, which is in the same series

3) ... do I really need a #3?

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)

OB1

Morrowind is not the same game as Arena. And who cares if it's freeware? I don't even have the time to play all of the games that I payed for.

A Black Falcon

True for me too. Which is why I don't finish much.

It's not the same game as Arena, but it is founded on the same principles and is the same basic kind of game, so it applies... like many of the themes in Warcraft I are still present in WCIII.

... it's really about how you said you liked the open-ended games so much. I can see some of the attraction in this game but I also see so many limitations... even today there is only so much they can do when they are dealing with such big areas. You can't have everyone in every town have something unique to say! So you either have them repeat or just not say much. TES does both, at least in its first two titles. Same with towns, store/inn names, people's names, etc... if you make a giant world it comes at the cost of detail. This shows in everything from Arena to KotOR. So the question really becomes if you want to wander around similar areas (getting more interested each time you go to a new part of the world and less as you stay in that area for a while) or if you want a focused story (at the cost of limiting the size of the gameworld and what you can do)... both are fun sure but given the limitations of videogames while the former might take up a huge amount of time it seems like it'd be ultimately less satisfying as there is all kinds of breadth but little depth...

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)

Dark Jaguar

Actually the FF games in general DO have every person in every town saying different stuff.

__________________

OB1

Saying that Arena is the same game as Morrowind is like saying that Mario 1 is the same game as Mario 64. You can't talk about Morrowind unless you've played it.

And I'd much rather have the freedom to go wherever I want, whenever I want in a huge world then be restricted to paths. There are drawbacks of course, but the pros far outweigh the cons.

A Black Falcon

Uhh... and? Oh, right. Yeah, they do. How do they do it? By having very small towns with few people to talk to in them. If FF had towns with as many people as a town in a typical modern PC RPG then they'd have repetition just like PC games do, with most people repeating things (based on which type of character they are) and a few special ones with more to say, I imagine...

Daggerfall is pretty much the same as Arena. Yes, those games came out in '94 and '96 and Morrowind came out some years later, but still... isn't it sensible to say that game three of a series will be similar to the first two in most cases? I would certainly say so. My example with Warcraft is a perfect case. 1994, 1995, and 2002 but the similarities are very clear. Mario 1 vs 64 is not a good comparison. Mario 1 (1985) vs. Mario Land 2 (1992) or Yoshi's Island (1995) would be much better... Mario 64 was a major shift in the series and was dramatically different from past versions. That does not appear to be the case in TES by everything I can see.

Oh it's nice to be able to go anywhere, but doesn't the repetition and monotony get old after a while?

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)

OB1

Uh, no. Play Morrowind for at least five hours and then come back to me. Until then...

Repetition and monotony? In what sense? You've never played Morrowind, so you can't even begin to talk about this.

A Black Falcon

http://archive.gamespy.com/articles...ed/index6.shtml

Gamespy certainly has its problems, but based on playing Arena and Daggerfall I'd say that here they are right on the money.

So it has less randomness and a more directly designed world. It still turns into more of the same people with almost nothing to say or talk to about (and what they do say is just about the same everywhere -- they say it there and it's also true in Arena and Daggerfall) and more very similar quests.

Five hours? Five hours in you won't see those flaws. As they say it takes time, and travel, to see the flaws in the TES games... at first it's amazing, but then you see the cracks behind the facade.

I'm not saying it's a bad series. It's good. Very ambitious. It's just got some sizable problems that aren't really fixable in a game of that scope -- which is why more focused games exist and why a lot of the time it is more fun overall to play those games.

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)

OB1

Gamespy is crap.

Listen up buddy, if you can't take the time to form an opinion for yourself then you shouldn't be trying to start a debate. This is ridiculous even for you.

A Black Falcon

What an idiotic comment. That article was just posted in SUPPORT of my position, not in making my opinion... as I said, that article proves that Morrowind isn't THAT different from Arena and Daggerfall and many of the criticisms of the first two games that I made are still quite valid. Why is it so hard for you to accept that sometimes people don't agree with your opinion? This is CLEARLY a case where your opinion is not objectively right. Is mine? I don't know. What I know is that it's right in both my and many other people's opinions and that's all anyone should need to know.

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)

OB1

ABF, you're an idiot! You're arguing an opinion that you don't even have!! You've never even played Morrowind you dipshit, so YOU HAVE NO FUCKING OPINION ON THE MATTER!!

Holy FUCK are you dumb. WOW.

A Black Falcon

Every post in this thread emphasizes again and again how my (more and more intermittent) thoughts that maybe, sometime, you could act like an adult are very faint at best. You are clearly immature and unable to behave like a normal person... or at least that's how you act online. I keep trying to be decent but you clearly just don't deserve it... and writing anything to something you say is obviously a waste of time. I probably should do like DJ and block your posts. The amount of stupidity in them is truly astounding. I won't, but that's just because DJ is a stronger person than I am I guess...



This is just like if I made comments (GENERAL ones, not specific.,.. I mentioned some specific things, but only in passing and not as major themes) about Warcraft II and applied them to Warcraft III. The sensible person would say 'some of those things have changed but Blizzard still makes games the same way'. Which is obviously true.

Warcraft III may have added production queues, subsections in unit groups by type, auto-heal, heroes, one less resource, many different units, etc. but at its core it's a Blizzard RTS. And they are all very similar. Small unit groups, building at buildings (not on a sidebar), no attitude controls, map editor, funny sound effects, great artwork, etc, etc. Just like all Westwood or Ensemble RTSes share a lot in common. Or all Interplay or Sir-Tech (PC) RPGs. Game developers usually do not shift dramatically midstream unless a major innovation (like Mario going to 3d) happens. This does not apply to TES because, from the first title, the games are "3d" (Arena is more like 2.5d, but it's first person with polygons... and Daggerfall is full 3d.). So no. When we are talking about things as general as I am I do not have to play Morrowind to understand.

Now, if I HADN'T played any TES games sure you'd have a much better point. But I have, and they clearly are all to a large degree similar, so you don't have much of one. Not beyond pointing out how the series changed from the things I said. Which you have not done (and that's what I'd like to hear! Is Morrowind any different from how the previous ones are (as I stated), substantively?)

Morrowind. After playing the past games in the series and reading about it (which I've done quite a bit of over the years) I think I have a pretty good idea of how the game works. You create a character. Complex process, like it always is in an RPG. Then you go into your first location. Some dungeon or city. You wander around, do fetch quests, recieve adventures to local dungeons, meet the populace (and ask them where things are or about rumors since that Gamespy post makes it clear that that is still pretty much all you can say to people, just like both of the previous games)... go to the stores, break into houses, level up your character, wander around and kill monsters with a very simple hack-and-slash combat system, wander around some more, walk across part of the continent for the next week if you really so desire... and later visit more cities. See new regions with their different (and neat) graphics. Explore innumerable dungeons and kill legions of monsters. Do more quests in towns, kill people if you wish, buy real estate (at least you can in Daggerfall if you have enough cash-- houses, horses and carts, ships, etc)... etc.

However, the things I said from the first game are still largely prevalent. Now Gamespy said that the random factor is much reduced, which is welcome (and impressive! Actually designing that large a world by hand?). I assume that that also means that the problems with repeating names of people you talk to, repeating names of stores and inns, etc. are also much less prevalent if at all? That would be good... though I don't know how much they could do. Could they really name every store in hundreds of towns something different? I guess they could... it'd take a while though. Anyway, even with a set overworld instead of a random one and set dungeons and towns -- which defintitely would improve things from the first two games! Random gets old, and is generally less interestingly designed -- there are still plenty of things I said that are almost certainly still valid.

-Interaction with the NPCs. How much can you say to the people? Topics other than asking locations? Any personal details at all? Do they say different things in different parts of the world? Are the names greatly varied?
-Quests. Different in different regions? Unique dungeon layouts most of the time? Keep you interested in going through dungeons in new locations (with a good variety of graphic sets for dungeons, enemy variation, other things of that nature)? Is the main story worth following? Are there other stories (told by quests that are optional) that are worth doing for a story standpoint?
-Towns. Are they truly differently designed? Different people names, shop names, sizes, etc. Things to do in a town that are unique to the area (don't know of any such thing in the first two titles).
-Combat. Complexity. Challenge. Beyond button-mashing (or, in Daggerfall or Arena, mouse-waving -- to swing your sword you click and hold the right mouse button and move the mouse in the way you want to swing your sword. It's a very unique system that doesn't have much gameplay implications -- I can't tell if different ones have much different effect -- but in a more advanced (newer) game like Morrowind I could easily see it being pretty interesting if they kept that same system... did they? This I'm interested to hear, because that sword system is the one unique thing in the combat and the one thing keeping it above being a clickfest. Magic... magic is just clicking on 'cast spell' and choosing the spell.


"But you can do anything!" Hmm... anything? Like get into meaningful conversations with people? Oh, not that. Only in relation to quests, and even there I have not heard great praise of this aspect of any of the TES games, to say the least. Go to new places? Yup. Kill anyone? Pretty much yeah. See that new places are substantively different from the old (not just new graphics)? Not so much. Finish the game? Quite unlikely. It seems like 'anything' refers more to 'can go to many locations that are physically far apart and look different' and 'play side-quests or explore dungeons until I get bored or make my character all-powerful'.

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)

OB1

Brian, whenever I think you can't get any dumber, any more immature, you top yourself. Every single time.

Right now you are ARGUING about aspects of a game YOU HAVE NEVER PLAYED. How can you possibly consider that anything but fucking idiotic and immature beyond reason??? It would be like me complaining about how Fallout 2 sucks based off of my Fallout 1 experiences. You can talk about Arena all you want, but until you actually play Morrowind you're going to have to shut the fuck up about it! This is beyond stupid!!

A Black Falcon

Read the post, idiot. You'd see that I'm not talking about Morrowind as if I had played it. Only someone as unobservant as you could think such a thing...any normal person would have seen the post to be what it is, but you... you manage to make an issue of of it that it is not because it is impossible for you to read a post without finding issue with it and getting angry for no reason that anyone else can discern.

I do not make any definite judgements about Morrowind (with the exception of stuff gotten from that and other articles... which I didn't understand nearly as well before, but now that I have played Arena and Daggerfall I understand perfectly what they mean.). I asked QUESTIONS about the series -- "does Morrowind continue to have these issues that the previous games do?". That is a dramatic difference, but as usual it completely escapes you... as usual you respond to criticism of a game you like with denial and insults instead of sense, and it gets very, VERY old. For once couldn't you act like an adult and not a five year old? All I want is for you to just read and respond to that last post... it really isn't that hard. And if you actually read the post you'd see how your complaint here -- that I am judging it based on nothing -- is wrong.


Actually, I think I know the main problem here. You haven't played Arena and Daggerfall so you don't realize how similar they clearly are to Morrowind... *here goes OB1's comment that I haven't played Morrowind* Ah, but I have played the first two and have read quite a few reviews and articles about Morrowind. All you have to do is read any review of the game and it becomes IMMEDIATELY clear that it's a very similar game to the first two in most respects. If you had played the first two you would understand that and would be able to answer my questions about the changes the third one makes to the formula... you still could answer them to some extent if you tried, but it's harder without the background.

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)

OB1

Dickhead, you started this thread for the sole purpose of complaining about Morrowind... a game you never even fucking played! You only played Arena, idiot. Arguing on end about how the games are identical to each other when you haven't even fucking played Morrowind only increases your status as forum dumb shit.

A Black Falcon

Uh, no. Not true. I started the thread to say that, because I have now played Arena, I understand the format of Morrowind better now. See, as far as I can tell the only single player games like Morrowind are Arena and Daggerfall. I can't think of anything else in the same category. I like RPGs. So I wanted to try this kind of RPG as well. And you know what? As I said, it's not like it's all bad... actually Arena is pretty fun. Maybe that didn't come across (or you paid very little attention), but Arena is fun... I just identified some things that I would call issues that are pretty much all true in Daggerfall as well. Is it really so unreasonable to ask if they are also true in Morrowind? We aren't talking about a change of your example of Mario World to Mario 64 here! Going by Arena to Daggerfall, the series change would probably be better compared to the example I used: Blizzard's RTSes. As in, substantial change but the same basic themes and game design, as one would expect.

And before you once again say how different Morrowind is, how come the biggest complaints about the game are exactly what I stated here: so open-ended you get lost or tired of going through the styilistically different but substantively similar areas.

So. Can you answer this? I really am interested.

This one's more about why you consider the game fun given the limitations (that is, why you consider it better than a normal RPG that is more focused).


Actually, I'd like to add one thing. About combat. On the one hand, the extremely simplistic combat detracts from the game because it makes it shallower and less complex. On the other hand, I don't think you could make the system too complex. Not in a game of this scope. It's just too big, too long, and has too many fights to work well with a slow-paced combat engine like most RPGs have... that would probably greatly increase the amount of time the game would take and that wouldn't be good for something already as overly long as these games. So some kind of simple combat is almost required, I think... given that the open-endedness and scale are the main draws of the game and obviously wouldn't change.

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)

Great Rumbler

It's been a while since I've played Morrowind, so I can't really answer any of the other questions, but I can answer this one. While there are some towns that look similar to other ones there is plenty of variety. The starting town is a coastal town with wooden houses, some others has houses made of mud bricks, another is a town set in the middle of a lake that has several cantons with multiple levels including a sewer lever, another has buildings inside of giant trees, there was one that had that was straddling a river that had brick buildings and paved roads, and so on. So, yeah, there's diversity in town design. As for names of people and shops, it seems like there was some diversity, but maybe not quite as much as you would find in a real world.

__________________
Lucille: Michael Moore confronted me on national television!
Michael: First of all, that was not Michael Moore. That was a Michael Moore look-alike. And second it wasn't national television. It was for a bit, on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Lucille: I don't know what that is nor do I care to find out.

A Black Falcon

Graphical design, of course there is diversity. I would fully expect that -- even Arena has varying looks in different regions, even if it isn't as big in effect as in Morrowind (it's just graphical; the actual layouts and stuff are all similar). And to some extent that does provide differering experiences, especially earlier in the game, as Gamespy pointed out. Why my point there was (all of those questions were things that, as far as I know, the series doesn't have). But this is true in all RPGs. However, in most (relatively modern) RPGs the differences go beyond that to real cultural, speech, quest, etc. differences. Like KotOR -- Manaan is quite different in style, speech, type of quests, etc. from Tatooine or Kashyyk! From what I can tell that isn't really true in TES. Hence my comment that TES has unmatched breadth but less uniqueness and, depending on your definition, depth, (It's deep -- I can play forever; It's not deep -- I keep experiencing the same things forever after not too long) than the average complex PC RPG.

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)

OB1

It doesn't matter if the change is Mario World-Mario 64 big you idiot, what matters is that you haven't even touched Morrowind so you have no right to complain about it! Idiot.

A Black Falcon

When will OB1 read one of my posts and figure out that that isn't what I am doing? Never, I expect... now if only someone else who has played the series was here and actually wanted to discuss it (other than GR that is)...

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)

OB1

Here's what you said:

Then I said that you shouldn't be talking about Morrowind that way until you actually play it, then you posted a crappy Gamespy article about why they hate the game, and then I call you stupid for complaining about a game you never played.

So I absolutely did read your posts, you just tried to deny what you originally set out to do with this thread even though your posts are still up there! Like I said: Idiot.

A Black Falcon

Umm... why I hate the game? No, I obviously do not hate Morrowind. I haven't played it after all. I don't hate Arena or Daggerfall either. Rather, what I did was point out the significant flaws in the game, which are mostly centered around the lack of decent NPC interaction (I've heard them described as 'cardboard' and it fits well) and the lack of variety with a game that long. Buit is Arena fun anyway? Yeah, it is. For a while.


In short, you used the word "hate" to describe a series of posts that did (and do) not express hate. That is because you cannot see any shades between "my position" and "the opposite position"... which is sad in a way but incredibly annoying in so many more... I don't know where you get "hate" from but it makes no sense. As I said ten times, Arena is a good game! It's just got flaws that show why the TES games are pretty much the only RPGs that open-ended... the sacrifices in many ways aren't worth the benifits, in my opinion. Yours is obviously different, but that fact by no means means that I "hate" the TES games.

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)

OB1

You complained about Morrowind specifically, even though you've never touched it. That is just plain retarded to the extreme, even by your incredibly low standards.


Yes, Morrowind is a very flawed game. But the fact that it is one of the best-selling PC RPGs ever despite its many flaws just goes to show you how much gamers value freedom. The combat is shit, the graphics are shit, and the quests don't even need to be bothered with. Yet-despite all of that!!-the game is still insanely fun to play. Make the combat suck in Baldur's Gate and you simply have a broken game that nobody in their right mind would ever want to play. So you can imagine my excitement over Oblivion which looks to fix everything wrong with Morrowind. It has the potential to destroy all RPGs, console or PC.

A Black Falcon

No. I complained about THE SERIES AS A WHOLE. As in things that, based on everything I know, are in ALL of the games. I tried to say which things I talked about are things that Morrowind fixes (see: random level design -- it's the way Arena and Daggerfall work but evidently Morrowind has a fully designed world... that is a major upgrade which I recognized. I do not know of any other such major changes about any of my other major points, so I have to assume that those ones stand for the sereis...). But I was most certainly never talking just about Morrowind. Note my frequent use of "TES" (series in general), "Arena", and "Daggerfall" and not "TES3" or "Morrowind"...

So, what is it that makes it so fantastic? As you say, the combat is merely adaquate (I'd say adaquate and not horrible, at least for the first two... as I said, with that much fighting and time you can't have the system be too complex...), the quests mediocre at best, and the NPCs have no personalities or individuality... so what is it?

Based on Arena, the main impetuses to progress would be A) To see new regions of the world; B) To get more cool items (from dungeons); C) To dungeon hack; D) To do things you can't do in most RPGs like kill people and then buy their houses without significant gameplay repurcussions (like you could kill anyone in Fallout, but some people are far better left alive (though Fallout certainly has a lot of non-linearity and has more evil paths to completing the game)... and in the BG games it's really hard to be evil. In this game you can do those things with less repurcussions if any... of course the problem there is that most of those things that you lose in a traditional RPG by doing such things never existed in the first place in TES.

As for BG... yes, that with bad combat wouldn't be very fun. Because it;s a D&D-style RPG. It's all about questing. D&D is about questing. And in most cases, questing without combat it is nothing... the only thing that can make up for it really in such RPGs are story and a more detailed world (Torment!). That's the only D&D-style RPG that I could see still loving if it had a bad combat system... but other than that one, yeah, because that's what it's about. Wandering around a world, meeting people, getting a quest, solving the quest, and doing fighting along the way. TES just is a very different game design. It's not really about story (it's there but it's only mediocre), great, involving quests, or unique NPCs... it's kind of hard to say what exactly it IS about. What comes to mind for me is seeing a vast world and doing dungeon hacking (that is, exploring numerous dungeons in hopes that you will get cool items or progress in the game).

It's kind of funny actually. When I describe it like that it kind of sounds like I dislike TES's style a lot. But actually I find it fun... it's just kind of weird because of how when I compare it with conventional PC RPGs it seems to end up on the losing side on most of the issues. There is one thing that can help, actually... thinking about PC RPGs BEFORE 1997. That is, before Fallout. If you don't remember, the PC RPG business had been in a major slump for several years. Like adventure games for some time now they were thought to be dead. 1994, 95, 96, 97... look back and you won't see much. Before that were the older greats like the SSI Gold Box series (Eye of the Beholder) and the Wizardry games, but by '92 or so those serieses had faded...) Sure, Fallout came out in '97, but it didn't do well enough to bring the genre back to life. Baldur's Gate did that in 1998 in a huge way. It really did single-handedly bring a genre most in the industry had thought to be as dead as adventure games were becoming into full rebirth. But Arena... Arena came out in 1994. Daggerfall in 1996. So for their times they probably were some of the best RPGs of each of those years... I know Daggerfall won a whole lot of awards at least. The question really is how the series held up once it got real competition in the genre... I'd have to play Morrowind to really know but it seems to me that while it still certainly is a fun type of RPG it is one that more advanced RPGs (that is, compared to most of the stuff we were seeing before 1997 -- play Wizardry VI and then Baldur's Gate and you'd see what I mean...) like Fallout and Baldur's Gate have shown where the flaws in TES are. That doesn't make them bad games... within their niche they are good. Like as I said, while BG would be awful with TES's combat, TES would probably be almost as bad with BG's...

However, here is a question. If TES's style is so great. why is it that no one tries to copy it, while the other subcategories of PC RPGs (action-RPGs like Diablo, turn-based ones like Fallout or Greyhawk: ToEE, and pausable realtime like BG, I think) have so many titles in each of them? Is it the sheer amount of work it'd take to make such a huge world? Actually, I think I have the answer. Everyone else making games like that are making MMORPGs, not single player titles.

This brings up a point. You keep saying how you prefer open-ended RPGs. However, I don't see anything that meets all of your specifications other than The Elder Scrolls... and you've only played the third one. So is this opinion of yours not really that but really a "I really REALLY love Morrowind", or is it a broad-based thing? As in, what other games fit into this category, in your opinion? I sure can't think of any... the next closest thing in PC RPGs is probably Fallout and Arcanum, and while they are in between the two extremes they are probably closer to traditional RPGs than to TES. Still, the two Fallout games are definitely not your typical titles... especially Fallout 2. That is, by all accounts, a very open-ended game. It's not TES, but it's the next closest thing that I can think of without going into MMORPGs.

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)

OB1

The SERIES AS A WHOLE as in ONE GAME THAT YOU PLAYED!

If you want to see what makes the game so great then play the damn thing.

It's because that type of game takes an incredible amount of time and manpower to create, while Diablo shit can be done in a fraction of the time.

I said that I love open-ended games, RPGs being the best type. Body Harvest, GTA, Spider-Man 2, and the like are other types of games that offer great freedom in terms of environments and exploration. When it comes to RPGs the closest thing to Morrowind is probably Gothic. Since open-ended RPGs are the most difficult kind to make, not many developers choose to make them even though Morrowind proved that there is a huge audience for that type of gameplay.

A Black Falcon

Two. Sure I just played the Daggerfall demo, but it's a big demo and gives you a very good sense of what the game is... especially if you have the background of having played Arena for comparison.

Diablo??? Diablo 1 didn't take hugely long but Diablo 2 took years... that is a very bad example of a game that didn't take long to create. And it shows... Diablo 2's world has a lot of detail. The NPCs are decently fleshed out, the graphics are very nice, the different areas are unique, the quests are mostly well designed... no, that wasn't a good example of a game that can be done quickly. Actually, good RPGs usually can't be... the scale and complexity of a good RPG pretty much precludes that. Yes, in some regards TES has more complexity than most for sure, but in others it doesn't... it's a mix. I'd say that the biggest reason for its uniqueness is that everyone else making such games is making MMORPGs... where the real big money can be.

Body Harvest is a pretty good game... but at least in the first world, is it that open-ended? I mean, you are stuck in a specific area and can only progress by beating a boss. You only can save at those points between "stages". Yes, you can drive around and steal all kinds of vehicles (which is a lot of fun), but it seems like most of the stuff you do is follow the main path... the off-path stuff is just about how you get from point A to point B and how much time you spend looking for stuff (hidden basements, etc). It's certainly somewhat open-ended, but it's got more than enough linearity that you never have any question about what you are supposed to be doing... for a RPG comparison Fallout might work. Though Fallout doesn't have walls keeping you only in one small part of the game until you beat bosses.

As for market, do you know Morrowind sold great or have you just heard it? And did it sell great on PC or because it was also done on X-Box? And how do other RPGs on PC compare... I don't know the answers to those questions. I think the biggest thing Morrowind proved is that people will buy well done PC ports on consoles.

Yeah, that had a whole lot to do with those paragraphs and really helped answer my questions.

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)

OB1

Yet you have not played Morrowind, the game in question. My point stands.

I'm referring to the endless number of watered-down Diablo cloned on every system known to man, the most abundant type of RPG out there.
You've only played Body Harvest for a very short amount of time, I can see. Body Harvest offers incredible amount of freedom to explore, and the total game area size is larger than Morrowind, GTA 3, and Vice City put together.
Morrowind sold very, very well on both the PC and X-Box. It was in the top ten for a very long time, and kept on popping up every so often. The game has legs like no other RPG.

The purpose of this thread was to complain about a game you've never played before. Go troll somewhere else.

A Black Falcon

I'm sure it sold well. However, you are acting like you are sure that it sold so much better than pretty much any PC RPG -- something there is no way I would believe without proof. I know that the BG games were extremely successful, for instance...

Not at all! The purpose of this thread was to say that now I understand much better what kind
Like halfway through the first world... good game, but at least in the first world it's definitely broken up into stages... long stages perhaps, but stages.

No, you are still ignoring the fact that this was never just about Morrowind. Unless you somehow thought that the thread name of "Arena" actually reads "Morrowind"?

It's not my fault that you haven't played Arena or Daggerfall, and blaming ME for what YOU haven't done is not right!

In that case, possibly. But the Diablo games themselves are clearly games that took a lot of work to make.

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)

OB1

Look up the numbers and see for yourself.

That's not how it started and you know it! Your posts are right there, stupid!

You've obviously never played it for more than a few minutes. There are missions, but not stages. You have an open world to explore from the get-go. DMA made it, the guys behind GTA. There are obvious similarities between BH and GTA.

Idiot, I posted our exact conversation (that this this fucking thread) a few posts up, and you were very clear about the fact that the thread was created to complain about Elder Scrolls, and Morrowind in particular. You even posted a crappy article from crappy Gamespy to support your baseless opinion on Morrowind! How much more of a complete dickhead can you get??!

They still suck...

A Black Falcon

Diablo II was a lot of fun while it lasted... I find it quite boring to play again after I completed it (on Normal) the first time, but still, it was a fun game. And it has a lot of polish, a nicely complex system of skills and upgrades that requires thought, and a greatly detailed and well thought out world...

Morrowind by way of the previous games. And I made it VERY clear that one of the main thing I wanted was for someone (you or others) who had played Morrowind to compare what I was saying mostly about Arena and Daggerfall and tell me which of those things are still true in Morrowind and which aren't. I'm still hoping for someone to do that...

You can't play it for just a few minuites if you want to progress, at least not at first... you can't save until you finish the whole first stage after all and that takes quite a lot of time. How far am I? Not that far, I think I've just beaten the first two stages of Greece... fun game though. It's cool that you can drive almost anywhere and steal so many vehicles, and searching for hidden rooms and stuff is fun. But fully open-ended? No. You must go to some specific points. You must stay in this part of the world until you beat the boss of it, which requires doing a few specific tasks at certain places. It is NOT fully open-ended. I can't visit the later game areas after all, or other time periods, until I get that far in the linear game progression... now, this isn't a bad thing. A game like that works best with a linear progression and new areas to unlock. I think that the game design is great. I'm just saying that I think that you are expanding its freedom and open-endedness beyond what it has, if I am interpreting you correctly.

I said in my last post how it's funny that it often comes out negatively while Arena is definitely a fun game in plenty of ways...

And I find these numbers where?

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)

Great Rumbler

Speaking of Morrowind, I got it on the Xbox today for only $8.

__________________
Lucille: Michael Moore confronted me on national television!
Michael: First of all, that was not Michael Moore. That was a Michael Moore look-alike. And second it wasn't national television. It was for a bit, on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Lucille: I don't know what that is nor do I care to find out.

A Black Falcon

... didn't you say you had it already?

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)

Great Rumbler

I borrowed the PC version from my brother, but I don't have the disk and the installed files and CD-key were lost when I had to wipe my harddrive. I figured it was easier just to get it on the XBox.

__________________
Lucille: Michael Moore confronted me on national television!
Michael: First of all, that was not Michael Moore. That was a Michael Moore look-alike. And second it wasn't national television. It was for a bit, on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Lucille: I don't know what that is nor do I care to find out.

OB1

I absolutely hated the combat system, and it had nothing else that interested me.

No, you did that later. First you complained about Morrowind, and since you've never played it yourself you posted an article from the very dumb people at Gamespy about why the game is overrated. Very sad, very juvenile.

GTA is the exact same. You're given specific mission objectives but can choose to just run around and have fun. And the whole world is never open at first, you have to unlock it. And while you can't go back to previous time periods later on in the game, each world is larger than Vice City and GTA 3 combined, so it's no big deal. I know very well how open-ended the game is because I have it. You have only played a few minutes of it, so you have no right to debate this with me.

What with this recent trend of arguing about stuff you know almost nothing about, Brian? It's very sad.

That didn't make any sense.

What am I, your nanny?

A Black Falcon

Please. Before you make such assertions, look at the posts. In this case, please look at the first post in this thread. It's mine. What do I do there? I talk mostly about Arena and a little about Daggerfall. Not about Morrowind at all in fact. The only way it could connect to Morrowind is the way I explained later -- 'what about these things in Arena I am describing is still true in Morrowind and what isn't?'... I was thinking it from the start. Maybe I didn't state it immediately, but I did before too long. And anyway, I was talking about Arena! Arena! NOT MORROWIND!

If you thought that the first post was about Morrowind, then all it'd do is prove my assertion that the games are inherently similar in theme (though I know some aspects of what I discussed have changed).

What I was trying to do was exactly as I stated early in this post. Say that now I understand how the series works a whole lot better and can comment a lot better on it. So I was talking about Arena and hoping that someone would say which aspects were right for Morrowind and which weren't -- ie, in what ways the series had improved over time and in what ways the things I identified in the first game were still there... not to directly talk about Morrowind myself but to hope that someone else would!

Actually, I have it too... got it this summer. As I said, I've played it for a couple of hours. Sure, I haven't gotten too far -- only beaten the first half of the first mission (that is, two of the four stages of Greece) -- but enough to know what the game is like and certainly more than "a couple of minuites".

As for GTA(3), that one I really haven't played more than a very small amount so I didn't really know that. Maybe it is a decent comparison then, though GTA obviously has a whole lot more to do as you wander around... in Body Harvest your options are somewhat limited.

Action-based RPG combat isn't the best, but some of the time it works okay... I definitely prefer strategic, but action-based isn't always horrible. Diablo's was better than average, I'd say, because of the great variety of skills... that was a great strategic element in the game.

As in despite how most of my posts about it were negative, Arena really is enjoyable. Though not so much so that I'll spend lots of hours in it... but enough so that I'd say that it's a decent game, and a good one in plenty of respects.

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)

OB1

Not only did I look at your posts, but I quoted you in this very thread and proved you wrong! Are you really that dumb, man? Why on earth would you quote stupid gamespy if you didn't want to make a troll thread?

Just because you can't do side-missions doesn't mean it's not open-ended like GTA. I spent hours just flying around in Body Harvest, and exploring with all of the different vehicles. There's tons of stuff to discover, more so than in GTA. You've barely scratched the surface of the game if you honestly believe what you're saying.

All you do is click on enemies.

Then why did you quote that gamespy article bashing Morrowind, you dolt? That's called trolling!

A Black Falcon

Whatever, I'd have to play GTA3 to be able to really tell... but yeah, the important part would be that the two definitely have a lot of similarities.

I just explained why I quoted Gamespy! To say that what they were saying about Morrowind to a large extent was the same kinds of things that I was saying about Arena. As in, to show that, contrary to your statements, the TES series has a lot of identifiably similar traits that go throughout the series. As I obviously haven't played Morrowind to judge it, I wanted to quote something that would discuss those things about Morrowind (while I had mostly focused on Arena and a bit on Daggerfall). What you were supposed to do was say whether you agreed and if you disagreed on which points you think Morrowind was more different from the previous ones than I (or, more importantly for Morrowind, they) said.

If you want proof for that, look at my second post in the thread.

As in, so you can compare my statements and reply accordingly.




On the other issue, the only applicable quote of mine in your posts that I can find is this.

and I don't see anything wrong with it. It was written with Arena as the basis (while the subject was the series as a whole, for the purposes of that post Arena was a nearly as good point of reference (as basing it on all three games would be)...) because, based on everything I know about Morrowind, in the aspects I talked about there that game is inherently similar. The one significant difference I know of is that the world is no longer random -- and I talked at length about how that would be a great improvement to the series that definitely would help.



Like... if I was to respond to some of those complaints from a Daggerfall perspective (that is, look at what I was saying about Arena and applying to the series in general unless disproved (as I was asking people to do) and respond with instances from Daggerfall), I could say some responses like this.

-The graphics are much better. For instance, houses now have rooves. No weird construction with everything having homes that end abruptly after their top normal story. Ramparts on walls. Etc.
-The 'identifying buildings on the map' issue has been greatly resolved. Now the area you have to ask someone in to get them to directly label the building on your map is much, much larger. Also, you can do it by just clicking on the building and having the name appear both on your screen and on the map. Easy, quite unlike Arena.
-Cities now have multiple exit gates, making getting around them and exploring the world easier.
-You can travel over land (instead of using the travel screen map) from town to town if you really so desire, unlike Arena.
-You can do stuff like buy houses, carts, horses, and ships. There is also a much greater variety of shops and guilds in the towns -- not just nearly idendical weapon/armor merchants, inns, and a mages' guild. The merchants have a much greater variety of things to sell. You can also buy normal clothing, not just armor, in a wide variety of styles (instead of just armor on top of your default character model).
-The insides of the buildings fit their outside size -- in Arena this is most definitely not true. Outside buildings are some shape but inside they are based off of the (small number of) base building types for that kind of building. Number of floors, size, etc. have no relation to the outside shape... it is clear that the town was randomly generated, the inn floormap chosen at random from the few ones available, and the name chosen from the list. Also, you can only enter or leave a building through its one main door. In Daggerfall things are different... buildings are still clearly built on certain repeating patterns, but the inside and outside fit -- the building comes as a unit, not a seperate inside and outside. And the building is in the world -- in some cases you can jump from rooves, etc, if they have doors up there.
-Specifics of what the classes and races are and their benefits/penalties, as well as well as skills, etc, are defined in the game instead of leaving you guessing if you don't have the manual.
-The way you get quests is better thought out -- less asking everyone in town 'what are rumors about jobs/quests' and having them all repeat the same ones about some people they "know" who have jobs for adventurers (which of course is one quest everyone in town repeats until/unless you take it -- or travel elsewhere where you can get a very similar one).
-More getting quests that send you to dungeons around the towns, even early on, instead of just fetch/deliver quests around town.

Etc. But I think you get the idea.

The article just stated complaints that are widely heard about the TES series and you'd have to be incredibly blind to not know that...

Yes, but it has a great variety of skills that make combat more interesting. You frequently need to change abilities, etc... there is a lot of click-click-click, certainly, but it forces you to mix up what abilities you are using if you want to be the most effective.

__________________
My Games Collection My Webpage!
Currently Playing: 1. Guild Wars (PC) 2. Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) 3. Super The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) 4. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (GC) 5. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC)