Rooster Cogburn said:
Agreed, most of the loot was vendor trash. But is that really that different from Skyrim and Oblivion? Most of the loot in those games is also vendor trash.
The difference is that Oblivion and Skyrim had vendor trash that was my level, and thus more expensive, and thus worth all the money I had to spend to repair/buy potions etc. etc. In Morrowind, dungeon delving was normally a net loss for you because of the static loot being always so low level that it couldn't pay for the armor repairs.
Rooster Cogburn said:
And if you weren't playing a weird monk or something you should have found tons of items your character could use. I don't know how to account for that because I never had that experience and I know, for a fact, that there is useful gear around and I recall many of the locations it could be found. Many of the tombs and things did not have epic lootz because most of the tombs were very short and along the beaten path. Generally speaking, taking on a challenge was rewarded. I really don't see that big a difference in the usefulness of the loot. Even if I did, I don't see a reason to attribute that to the static loot system. I don't really understand what the connection there is. And finally, putting something static in the world means there is something in it to discover. Finding a piece of dwemer armor in a dwemer ruin was exciting. Finding a good item was discovering something. The thought of finding generic loot unconnected to the place I found it in that spawned in a random chest doesn't get my heart pounding.
I looted nearly every box in Morrowind, and rarely found anything useful because most boxes had the exact same items as the last. In Morrowind there was this small set of super generic items that filled up 90% of the containers, anything good was pre-placed, it killed any desire for me to look through boxes because I knew they just had the exact same thing as the last box.
Finding a good item really wasn't discovering anything, I didn't feel like it was a reward for real work, I felt like it was just a good item at the end of a boring boring grind. It's like getting that good item in a MMO after killing the same boss 50000000 times, I dont feel like its a real reward, i just feel like it was a boring boring grind.
It also killed replayability because every dungeon was always the same as the last time you went it, it never changed, In Skyrim I can replay the same dungeon 100 times, and get different things each time, its always fresh and exciting.
Furthermore, Skyrim loot containers are set based on where they are, Dwemer containers have a Dwemer loot list, old Nordic chests have a noridc loot list, etc. etc. Loot is not random, and is tied into the place.
Rooster Cogburn said:
In Oblivion, I felt less free, not more. Instead of having a playground where I could tackle challenges when I was ready for them, the challenge conformed to my level every time. I felt rail-roaded. I felt like I was treading water. I couldn't take on bigger challenges in hopes of better rewards, or visit a lower level location for a quick buck. The experience felt more directed and stifling, not less. Because it was in fact more directed, even if I could travel the whole map at level one and crush everything like a god, which you just about could. Leveling and progression felt totally pointless, probably because it was in actual fact somewhat pointless and actually counterproductive.
I felt the exact opposite, in Morrowind I felt like the entire world was crafted into a very specific series of areas designed for different level ranges.
I felt like I was being directed into specific dungeons, because everything was level keyed. Its like MMOs were you have a starter area thats level 1-10, then a second area that's 10-20, then another area that's 20-30, the world didn't feel open, the world didn't feel like it wanted me to explore it, the world felt very closed off, and like the developer was holding my hand telling me "don't go there just yet, you have to do the things here first to level up"
Rooster Cogburn said:
I don't see how the game is more of a grind when there are leveled monsters. Your skills still go up the same way. If you found a challenge that was too difficult, you just did another quest or something until you built yourself up to it. It was level-locked sure but overcoming that obstacle never involved grinding, at least unless you chose that over the alternatives. I never grinded (ground? greended?) in Morrowind. You didn't have to do that and I'm positive most people didn't. I guess if you choose not to do quests and things you could call what's left over "grinding" but I don't see how that is different from more recent titles.
Because Morrowind quests, just like everything else, was level keyed, but they never gave you ah int to what level it was designed for, and you couldn't get any more quests until you did that one.
There was numerous points in the game were I had done every quest in towns, and all the quests for the local guild, and it still wasnt enough to get past the next thing because Bethesda decided to randomly put something 10 levels higher up the road I had to go down.
when left with
-no quests in town
-no available guild quests until you complete the ones your on
I was forced to go out into the world, aggro a crap ton of cliff racers, and then kill them to raise my skills.
