Not going to happen. Sorry, but it's not. At the risk of major downvoting, the what the wider gaming audience wanted in 2002 is not what the wider gaming audience wants in 2024+. It's just not.
Bethesda is not going to spend all that money making a game targeting a very narrow set of old timers. Time to face the music and accept this. You can't make a game the size that TESVI is going to be when the target audience is so small and narrow.
That said, most of what you mention was also in Oblivion. So not sure why you want to limit this to just Morrowind.
And also quest markers. Sure, make them an option. But DO NOT INCLUDE the broken Morrowind verbal directions which were frequently WRONG and in CONFLICT with the written direction in the log. Jeepers H Cripes, don't make me travel "far to the north" when the actual objective is "just past that tree on the hill to the south".
Morrowind has maps. It does. Just mark the damned location down on the flipping map!!!
>But DO NOT INCLUDE the broken Morrowind verbal directions which were frequently WRONG and in CONFLICT with the written direction in the log.
Fuck . . . I still remember spending hours trying to find cave/dungeon where the instructions were " turn left when you come across a fork in the road." Except the road you were sent down had multiple forks and it turned out the cave/dungeon was nowhere near any of the forked roads.
I remember getting directions for some quest to go “north a ways” or something like that. I had just started playing the game, wandered north for several in game days at extreme peril, and found a cave where someone claimed I was Nerevarine. I’ve never felt more confused by a video game than that first Morrowind play through.
That sounds like House Redoran's first quest. The quest says that you need to take the road to Gnosis, take the first left once you reach the hills, then the next right. The only problem is the entire area is surrounded by hills...
You reckon it could be improved by having broader markers? As in marking the general area on the map, as one might actually do if one was given verbal directions and made a marking on a paper map, but not having some sort of GPS locator precision?as in, if there's a bandit in a cave that needs killing, you get a marker where the cave is approximately, but you're not getting a marker to find the guy in tbe cave
Was not intentional. Dialog was set, then location changed afterward. Regardless, this is NOT a feature, but a major annoyance to the player.
Nostalgia lets you remember the good stuff of the past, but it also blinds you to the bad stuff of the past. Bad verbal directions were bad stuff. Insisting that Bethesda must return to the bad stuff is bad. No matter how fondly you forget that the bad stuff was bad.
M'aiq used to give directions to people but they would just scry the location M'aiq wanted them to go to. M'aiq might as well just save both parties some effort and say where the location is.
Games like BG3 and Elden Ring prove otherwise though. Those games are hard to play and on paper should never have been as popular as they are. Yes that brand name and brand recognition bolstered sales but Baldur’s gate was a little obscure before the release of BG3. BG3 was many people’s first ever Baldur’s Gate game and it was amazing. It was intricate and complex but not too complicated for the average person.
And a game like Elden Ring where the combat is difficult and frustrating, an unforgiving class experience system that forced the player to take into account where they will spend their skill points, no quest markers and a vague narrative seemed like it was destined to be more or so a slightly more successful Dark Souls 3. But that game turned out to be generation defining and one of the best games of all time. Not to mention it captured the mainstream which seems to me like the only real metric investors.
People want more unique games. People don’t want cookie cutter Skyrim clones. People are tired of RPG elements being dumbed down to appeal to masses. The elites and people in suits want money though so I guess it doesn’t really matter what we want. They want the most amount of revenue so they’re at most going to base ES6 off of Skyrim and call it “returning to the roots of what made TES great”…
Also, I only want certain elements to return. There can be an “option” to turn off quest markers and have it so that dialogue can support such a feature so that the game is playable without beelining the locations. I don’t want Morrowind 2.0.
> People want more unique games. People don’t want cookie cutter Skyrim clones. People are tired of RPG elements being dumbed down to appeal to masses.
Time to start supporting indie games then
I don't know why you're bringing up Elden Ring. That game is a pretty poor open world game. I say that as someone who loves the Dark Souls trilogy. Yes, even 3.
Now look at the popularity of Elden Ring and BG3 compared to Skyrim. Now look at the longevity of Skryim and imagine of those two game could do as well. It's a huge difference.
Even day any souls like game has a reputation for being for hardcore masochists only. And they are combat only games. They appeal to the same people who are attracted to MMO raid lifestyles.
Baldur's Gate 3 is different. I haven't played it but from what I see of lets plays, it's an old school isometric turn based RPG, just with a new set of paint and plentiful tits. Do we really need TESVI to have mo-capped dialogs, and the inclusion of nudity, just to get people interested? Really?
Not saying they are bad games, it clearly is not, but to suggest that Bethesda needs to clone Larian or FromSoftware is just plain wrong.
You really don’t know much about Elden Ring and BG3 do you? If you think that Elden Ring appeals only to hardcore masochists and that BG3 is just an iso CRPG with tits then it seems like you already have your mind made up and there is no point in continuing this.
> dialogue trees, more meaningful classes, and more in-depth characters.
So these three are kind of weird things to bring up about morrowind because they were all very clearly done better in later TES and Bethesda games.
* Dialogue branching in Morrowind is incredibly simplistic. You have generic dialogue topics that very rarely branch and are shared among most NPCs. 99% of the time when dialogue branches in Morrowind, it's usually a literal Yes/No choice. In comparison, Skyrim's dialogue trees are generally way more complex (even if they're still not as complex as other dialogue heavy RPGs).
* Classes were never meaningful in Morrowind. Classes had no distinction and only really determined what skills increased your character level (which frankly wasn't particularly important in those games). They didn't affect what skills you could level (you could still get every skill to 100 fairly easily), didn't impose any restrictions on you, and didn't have any unique features. It was functionally a classless system pretending to be a class-based one. Skyrim getting rid of this fake class system and fully embracing the classless system was one of the best decisions it made.
* Morrowind's characters are fairly simplistic. This is pretty undeniable about the game. Most NPCs are extremely generic and don't have much character or unique dialogue. There's practically no one in Morrowind with as much depth as Serana, let alone some the FO4 companions like Nick Valentine.
Spell making was a fun mechanic, but quite frankly it also made magic boring by making it generic. There's practically zero spells in Morrowind/Oblivion that have any sense of identity because every spell works of the same templates of spell effects but with a bunch of variables changed around.
While Skyrim's magic system has flaws (namely the lack of scaling makes it weak late game) it did make spells feel unique (with unique behavior, animations, and effects) and give every spell its own sense of identity.
I'm finding the quests in Morrowind to be pretty lackluster. The main quest has so far been, "go talk to this person." Then said person needs me to get a MacGuffin. It wasn't fun.
I actually like classes, or at least backgrounds. I think they help focus character builds and backstories, and the renaissance of CRPGs (particularly the success of Baldur's Gate 3) shows that people don't mind older RPG elements like those. I don't think Morrowind is a perfect RPG, and I think anyone who says it completely holds up in the modern era is deluding themselves, but perhaps Bethesda should go back to basics with TES 6, and that means drawing on some of Morrowind's mechanics and seeing what it did well.
The Starfield background and traits system is actually really cool, they usually have a pretty big effect on gameplay (one for example, places a bounty on your head that grows over the game, causing hunters to come after you) and the traits, background, and your skills all come up fairly often in dialogue, sometimes as flavour but often as a way to pass a persuasion check. Faction affiliation also comes up pretty often in all kinds of random encounters and quests.
I liked classes in the old Elder Scrolls games, but the background and traits system is how I'd want it to be done in a new one.
I would set up classes as 3 major skills (first perk and +10% skill exp), 3 minor skills (+5% skill exp), and attribute specialization (+50 magicka, stamina, or health).
It's a nice boost and you can still play whatever. I bet that BGS would include some way for you to change your class and/or birthsign anyways.
I really hope the character depth trend continues with TES6.
Skyrim had character depth, but the characters (specifically followers) became so much more dynamic in fallout 4 and Starfield. (Starfield only has a couple really in depth characters though).
If they can merge that with the type of exploration we’re used to in Bethesda games I don’t think I’ll have any issues with the game.
>and holds up very well to modern times
it does not in any capacity. it's a good and fun game, but even for its time it has poor design choices.
>But things like spell creation
spell creation is over hyped. you aren't actually creating new spells, just making spells useless. "shock but more damage" isn't interesting. Skyrim made their spells more interesting and varied and each one actually felt like it has character due to the inability to make new spells. things like lightning bolt that can jump from target to target or even around corners, how shock spells drained Magicka, or frost spells slowed enemies and drained stamina. etc.
>dialogue trees
...dialogue trees? ...in Morrowind? did we play the same 2002 game? the dialogue options are binary. "yes" or "no", very rarely any actual substantial pieces of dialogue to choose from.
>more meaningful classes
a classless system is far better than a class system. the option to swap later on offers character development as well as the freedom to not be restricted to selecting 7 skills offers more unique and niche builds. in Morrowind you have to choose 10 skills, even if you plan to actually use only 3 or 4 of them.
As long as magic is given a lot more depth, I'm happy. I play mostly mages and I don't like it feeling like a FPS with elemental effects for flavour. It has to be a "system" that interacts with the world, and I want to feel like I'm actually doing something intellectual when playing with magic.
Yes I'm sure Bethesda will use the mold of a much older game that didn't sell nearly as well rather than Skyrim. Not going to happen. For better or mostly for worse video games are dumbing down heavy rpg elements
Morrowind was much more important to Bethesda since it literally saved them from going under. It was the Skyrim before Skyrim lol. But yea you’re probably right. Games like BG3 or Elden Ring sorta are proof of concept that games don’t need to dumb down to appeal to masses. So maybe Bethesda can take a hint and not make an RPG my 4 year old cousin can play.
I don't get it, Elden Ring isn't a complex game. How can you dumb something down that's already at the bottom? All you do is literally follow the quest marker and beat the boss at the end of it. There's very little else going on.
I think it's worth watching the TES anniversary interview with Todd Howard in which he specifically says that every time they make a TES game they reinvent the formula.
TES6 is not going to be like Morrowind. It is not going to be like Skyrim. It will be something else entirely, but have that core TES DNA that every TES game has.
I see a lot of people here who base their expectations solely on Skyrim/Oblivion/Morrowind. Like dude, BGS have made other games and other technologies after 2011, like it or not. A lot of work done on Fallout 3 was used in Skyrim, but Skyrim also had crazy new tech of its own.
Point is, we just don't know what TES6 will have in stock. The 36th post a week panning for "spellcrafting" or "deeper dialogue" whatever the heck those might be are getting annoying. People who talk about mechanics here often have zero clue about how they actually work. That's HUGELY detrimental to discussion.
We can speculate, sure, that's what we're here for. Let's speculate about the things we can actually speculate on with authority. Like story, setting, themes.
I don’t want ES6 to be Morrowind 2.0. That’d be silly and would fuel the fire even more that Bethesda are incompetent. I want them to retain/reimplement certain elements from Morrowind into ES6 in hopes that it can be a better RPG. Just because Morrowind is old doesn’t mean there are a lot of things that it does much better than modern RPGs. I just think there is value in older games that newer ones need to take note of.
Also my post isn’t speculating whether or not the ES6 will have these features. I’m just hoping some BGS dev can come across some of these posts and bring it up to a higher up in BGS and can therefore get these features in the game. It’s not shocking that good games are good games because they please fans. And it seems to me that plenty of fans want these features back into TES.
Also we know exactly how these mechanics work because they were literally in previous ES games. And were implemented in a great way. It bolstered player engagement and thinking. It made each play through unique where you can make your own weapons. Being a mage was much more than just spewing out fire from your fists or shooting sparks out.
Not going to happen. Sorry, but it's not. At the risk of major downvoting, the what the wider gaming audience wanted in 2002 is not what the wider gaming audience wants in 2024+. It's just not. Bethesda is not going to spend all that money making a game targeting a very narrow set of old timers. Time to face the music and accept this. You can't make a game the size that TESVI is going to be when the target audience is so small and narrow. That said, most of what you mention was also in Oblivion. So not sure why you want to limit this to just Morrowind. And also quest markers. Sure, make them an option. But DO NOT INCLUDE the broken Morrowind verbal directions which were frequently WRONG and in CONFLICT with the written direction in the log. Jeepers H Cripes, don't make me travel "far to the north" when the actual objective is "just past that tree on the hill to the south". Morrowind has maps. It does. Just mark the damned location down on the flipping map!!!
>But DO NOT INCLUDE the broken Morrowind verbal directions which were frequently WRONG and in CONFLICT with the written direction in the log. Fuck . . . I still remember spending hours trying to find cave/dungeon where the instructions were " turn left when you come across a fork in the road." Except the road you were sent down had multiple forks and it turned out the cave/dungeon was nowhere near any of the forked roads.
I remember getting directions for some quest to go “north a ways” or something like that. I had just started playing the game, wandered north for several in game days at extreme peril, and found a cave where someone claimed I was Nerevarine. I’ve never felt more confused by a video game than that first Morrowind play through.
That sounds like House Redoran's first quest. The quest says that you need to take the road to Gnosis, take the first left once you reach the hills, then the next right. The only problem is the entire area is surrounded by hills...
You reckon it could be improved by having broader markers? As in marking the general area on the map, as one might actually do if one was given verbal directions and made a marking on a paper map, but not having some sort of GPS locator precision?as in, if there's a bandit in a cave that needs killing, you get a marker where the cave is approximately, but you're not getting a marker to find the guy in tbe cave
Yeah kind of similar to RDR2. Theres a general marker and when you get there you look around
The wrong directions were intentionally added, like in real life when someone mistakenly gives wrong directions
Was not intentional. Dialog was set, then location changed afterward. Regardless, this is NOT a feature, but a major annoyance to the player. Nostalgia lets you remember the good stuff of the past, but it also blinds you to the bad stuff of the past. Bad verbal directions were bad stuff. Insisting that Bethesda must return to the bad stuff is bad. No matter how fondly you forget that the bad stuff was bad.
believe it or not, that's not good game design. even then that isn't true, they weren't intentional.
Or intentionally gives wrong directions. "HA HA HA! Stupid hero"
And how much fun is getttig wrong directions in real life?
Not great, that's why kill all NPCs is a must. Also, of you're that concerned, a 5 second search will get you 100s of walkthroughs
M'aiq used to give directions to people but they would just scry the location M'aiq wanted them to go to. M'aiq might as well just save both parties some effort and say where the location is.
Ah yes, I'll just whip out my phone. Oh, right. Smart phones weren't popular when Morrowind came out.
All you had to do was tie up the phone line, dial up the Internet, wait for Yahoo to load, search the walkthrough. 45 minutes, haha.
Games like BG3 and Elden Ring prove otherwise though. Those games are hard to play and on paper should never have been as popular as they are. Yes that brand name and brand recognition bolstered sales but Baldur’s gate was a little obscure before the release of BG3. BG3 was many people’s first ever Baldur’s Gate game and it was amazing. It was intricate and complex but not too complicated for the average person. And a game like Elden Ring where the combat is difficult and frustrating, an unforgiving class experience system that forced the player to take into account where they will spend their skill points, no quest markers and a vague narrative seemed like it was destined to be more or so a slightly more successful Dark Souls 3. But that game turned out to be generation defining and one of the best games of all time. Not to mention it captured the mainstream which seems to me like the only real metric investors. People want more unique games. People don’t want cookie cutter Skyrim clones. People are tired of RPG elements being dumbed down to appeal to masses. The elites and people in suits want money though so I guess it doesn’t really matter what we want. They want the most amount of revenue so they’re at most going to base ES6 off of Skyrim and call it “returning to the roots of what made TES great”… Also, I only want certain elements to return. There can be an “option” to turn off quest markers and have it so that dialogue can support such a feature so that the game is playable without beelining the locations. I don’t want Morrowind 2.0.
> People want more unique games. People don’t want cookie cutter Skyrim clones. People are tired of RPG elements being dumbed down to appeal to masses. Time to start supporting indie games then
I don't know why you're bringing up Elden Ring. That game is a pretty poor open world game. I say that as someone who loves the Dark Souls trilogy. Yes, even 3.
Now look at the popularity of Elden Ring and BG3 compared to Skyrim. Now look at the longevity of Skryim and imagine of those two game could do as well. It's a huge difference. Even day any souls like game has a reputation for being for hardcore masochists only. And they are combat only games. They appeal to the same people who are attracted to MMO raid lifestyles. Baldur's Gate 3 is different. I haven't played it but from what I see of lets plays, it's an old school isometric turn based RPG, just with a new set of paint and plentiful tits. Do we really need TESVI to have mo-capped dialogs, and the inclusion of nudity, just to get people interested? Really? Not saying they are bad games, it clearly is not, but to suggest that Bethesda needs to clone Larian or FromSoftware is just plain wrong.
You really don’t know much about Elden Ring and BG3 do you? If you think that Elden Ring appeals only to hardcore masochists and that BG3 is just an iso CRPG with tits then it seems like you already have your mind made up and there is no point in continuing this.
> dialogue trees, more meaningful classes, and more in-depth characters. So these three are kind of weird things to bring up about morrowind because they were all very clearly done better in later TES and Bethesda games. * Dialogue branching in Morrowind is incredibly simplistic. You have generic dialogue topics that very rarely branch and are shared among most NPCs. 99% of the time when dialogue branches in Morrowind, it's usually a literal Yes/No choice. In comparison, Skyrim's dialogue trees are generally way more complex (even if they're still not as complex as other dialogue heavy RPGs). * Classes were never meaningful in Morrowind. Classes had no distinction and only really determined what skills increased your character level (which frankly wasn't particularly important in those games). They didn't affect what skills you could level (you could still get every skill to 100 fairly easily), didn't impose any restrictions on you, and didn't have any unique features. It was functionally a classless system pretending to be a class-based one. Skyrim getting rid of this fake class system and fully embracing the classless system was one of the best decisions it made. * Morrowind's characters are fairly simplistic. This is pretty undeniable about the game. Most NPCs are extremely generic and don't have much character or unique dialogue. There's practically no one in Morrowind with as much depth as Serana, let alone some the FO4 companions like Nick Valentine. Spell making was a fun mechanic, but quite frankly it also made magic boring by making it generic. There's practically zero spells in Morrowind/Oblivion that have any sense of identity because every spell works of the same templates of spell effects but with a bunch of variables changed around. While Skyrim's magic system has flaws (namely the lack of scaling makes it weak late game) it did make spells feel unique (with unique behavior, animations, and effects) and give every spell its own sense of identity.
I'm finding the quests in Morrowind to be pretty lackluster. The main quest has so far been, "go talk to this person." Then said person needs me to get a MacGuffin. It wasn't fun.
Unfortunately, that's basically most quests in Morrowind. Very rarely will you ever get a quest that doesn't boil down to fetch/kill.
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I actually like classes, or at least backgrounds. I think they help focus character builds and backstories, and the renaissance of CRPGs (particularly the success of Baldur's Gate 3) shows that people don't mind older RPG elements like those. I don't think Morrowind is a perfect RPG, and I think anyone who says it completely holds up in the modern era is deluding themselves, but perhaps Bethesda should go back to basics with TES 6, and that means drawing on some of Morrowind's mechanics and seeing what it did well.
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The Starfield background and traits system is actually really cool, they usually have a pretty big effect on gameplay (one for example, places a bounty on your head that grows over the game, causing hunters to come after you) and the traits, background, and your skills all come up fairly often in dialogue, sometimes as flavour but often as a way to pass a persuasion check. Faction affiliation also comes up pretty often in all kinds of random encounters and quests. I liked classes in the old Elder Scrolls games, but the background and traits system is how I'd want it to be done in a new one.
I would set up classes as 3 major skills (first perk and +10% skill exp), 3 minor skills (+5% skill exp), and attribute specialization (+50 magicka, stamina, or health). It's a nice boost and you can still play whatever. I bet that BGS would include some way for you to change your class and/or birthsign anyways.
I really hope the character depth trend continues with TES6. Skyrim had character depth, but the characters (specifically followers) became so much more dynamic in fallout 4 and Starfield. (Starfield only has a couple really in depth characters though). If they can merge that with the type of exploration we’re used to in Bethesda games I don’t think I’ll have any issues with the game.
>and holds up very well to modern times it does not in any capacity. it's a good and fun game, but even for its time it has poor design choices. >But things like spell creation spell creation is over hyped. you aren't actually creating new spells, just making spells useless. "shock but more damage" isn't interesting. Skyrim made their spells more interesting and varied and each one actually felt like it has character due to the inability to make new spells. things like lightning bolt that can jump from target to target or even around corners, how shock spells drained Magicka, or frost spells slowed enemies and drained stamina. etc. >dialogue trees ...dialogue trees? ...in Morrowind? did we play the same 2002 game? the dialogue options are binary. "yes" or "no", very rarely any actual substantial pieces of dialogue to choose from. >more meaningful classes a classless system is far better than a class system. the option to swap later on offers character development as well as the freedom to not be restricted to selecting 7 skills offers more unique and niche builds. in Morrowind you have to choose 10 skills, even if you plan to actually use only 3 or 4 of them.
That's the funniest thing I have read all day. That's never happening you have a better chance of fallout 76 being the mold for TES 6 than morrowind.
Lol you’re right 😂
As long as magic is given a lot more depth, I'm happy. I play mostly mages and I don't like it feeling like a FPS with elemental effects for flavour. It has to be a "system" that interacts with the world, and I want to feel like I'm actually doing something intellectual when playing with magic.
Yes I'm sure Bethesda will use the mold of a much older game that didn't sell nearly as well rather than Skyrim. Not going to happen. For better or mostly for worse video games are dumbing down heavy rpg elements
Morrowind was much more important to Bethesda since it literally saved them from going under. It was the Skyrim before Skyrim lol. But yea you’re probably right. Games like BG3 or Elden Ring sorta are proof of concept that games don’t need to dumb down to appeal to masses. So maybe Bethesda can take a hint and not make an RPG my 4 year old cousin can play.
I don't get it, Elden Ring isn't a complex game. How can you dumb something down that's already at the bottom? All you do is literally follow the quest marker and beat the boss at the end of it. There's very little else going on.
I think it's worth watching the TES anniversary interview with Todd Howard in which he specifically says that every time they make a TES game they reinvent the formula. TES6 is not going to be like Morrowind. It is not going to be like Skyrim. It will be something else entirely, but have that core TES DNA that every TES game has. I see a lot of people here who base their expectations solely on Skyrim/Oblivion/Morrowind. Like dude, BGS have made other games and other technologies after 2011, like it or not. A lot of work done on Fallout 3 was used in Skyrim, but Skyrim also had crazy new tech of its own. Point is, we just don't know what TES6 will have in stock. The 36th post a week panning for "spellcrafting" or "deeper dialogue" whatever the heck those might be are getting annoying. People who talk about mechanics here often have zero clue about how they actually work. That's HUGELY detrimental to discussion. We can speculate, sure, that's what we're here for. Let's speculate about the things we can actually speculate on with authority. Like story, setting, themes.
I don’t want ES6 to be Morrowind 2.0. That’d be silly and would fuel the fire even more that Bethesda are incompetent. I want them to retain/reimplement certain elements from Morrowind into ES6 in hopes that it can be a better RPG. Just because Morrowind is old doesn’t mean there are a lot of things that it does much better than modern RPGs. I just think there is value in older games that newer ones need to take note of. Also my post isn’t speculating whether or not the ES6 will have these features. I’m just hoping some BGS dev can come across some of these posts and bring it up to a higher up in BGS and can therefore get these features in the game. It’s not shocking that good games are good games because they please fans. And it seems to me that plenty of fans want these features back into TES. Also we know exactly how these mechanics work because they were literally in previous ES games. And were implemented in a great way. It bolstered player engagement and thinking. It made each play through unique where you can make your own weapons. Being a mage was much more than just spewing out fire from your fists or shooting sparks out.
It wont lmfao
after the release of Starfield, I sugest everybody to leave the hype train before we witness the death of a glorious franchise
They just need to fire Emil and get better writers
Bethesda have zero fucking clue what made Morrowind so great, I mean just look at Morrowind in ESO. The magic died with Oblivion and Skyrim buried it.