I’ve mentioned before, but I think in Morrowind’s case it even adds to some things, like the guy stuck in the river because somebody stole his pants while he was bathing, it just seems kind of silly when he’s got a loincloth on.
Also, the two instances of Nord dudes who made unwanted advances on lady spellcasters and end up paralyzed and stripped for their efforts. Their humiliation is simply enhanced when their dongs are left flapping in the wind.
Haven’t read the thread yet, and it may be too late, but what I did was read on how the leveling system worked and then built a custom class. That’s me, though. I like that kind of control/customization.
I also like to keep the experience vanilla at least my first time through. I basically installed the “better heads” and “better bodies” mods to make the graphics not unbearably ugly. That was back when I played, so there may be better stuff out for that already. I’d avoid hi-res texture mods if you can tolerate that. The ones I’ve tried were indeed higher res, but killed the atmosphere by putting generic fantasy oil paintings in the tapestries instead of the vvardenfel designs. ymmv wrt that tho
I definitely had that experience with the pants stealin’ lady. I think I had also unwittingly installed a mod to add genital physics as part of MGO. Laughed p. hard.
Okay, so I’ve actually got the thing not-crashing. I installed better heads, bodies, and armor, so that’s a bit nicer. I created a custom pure wizard, high elf class under the Atronach sign because apparently I can’t help but be a glutton for punishment. Why do I do this to myself. Going to use my alchemy skills to make mad mana potions though.
Using the graphics extender for distant land, we’ll see how that pans out too.
I’m not going to bother too much with power levelling because everything I’ve read says that Morrowind is more forgiving than Oblivion was if you screw up your levels. Worst case scenario: I’ll lower the difficulty to nil.
Now to just find some time to play! My weekend fun time evaporated.
Alchemy alone can break the game wide open, though you have to be willing to run around the forest pressing E on mushrooms which is not the greatest mechanic ever.
kind of disappointed they haven’t figured this out in decades and it’s now bleeding into other games
Drudgery is an odd game mechanic to make work and it’s real hard in a game where it’s not ritualized as it is in Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing & Farmville descendants.
It’s especially rough in a 3D game about the landscape when it’s encouraging you to enjoy the ground textures.
Yeah, one of the maddening things about survival games, which suck as delineated in that other thread someone made recently about survival games, is that it’s the same Press E On Everything, Use Menu expanded into an entire game and it’s just like, why. What is compelling about this.
(this should probably be in the other thread but)
I think the survival scenario is interesting and has much the same appeal as zombie fiction: what are the process details to live off the land? In the same way that police procedurals can remain engaging despite a complete lack of moral engagement, we respond to details and interlocking systems that have a clear method and goal. It’s not just walking up a tech tree ‘because’.
But is IS just because. It’d be one thing if climbing the tree were in service of advancing a plot or exploring level design. (In Morrowind, it’s annoying if tolerable because it’s just an element in expanding character power for a bunch of other purposes.) But the climbing is the end in itself. I just don’t get it.
Don’t the best survival games have either some endgame scenario, some building aspect, or both, so there’s some purpose beyond mere survival?
Although I agree. Playing UnReal World, chopping down a tree to make firewood to be warm at night was neat… the first time, but you have a simulated day-night cycle and you have to go through the process every time. Gets old pretty fast for me.
This was my entire experience in Oblivion sooooo yeah I’m up for it. It’s amazing how hard I did not even come close to finishing that game. All in service of wandering around a forest pressing E on mushrooms and flowers.
Fuck I love Alchemy, and also wandering around in forests.
Well, if it’s balanced right (and the beginning of this wave of survival was balanced real hard next to AAA), a survival game has the consequences right out in the open at every point. Ideally this will be combined with enough randomness to force interesting situations where the player must improvise using their systemic knowledge.
It’s similar to roguelike play in that a repetitive action (combat) can be incrementally improved as the player learns the system.
Personally I think they’re rather thin without other players as the random factor; Don’t Starve is the least interesting for me because you quickly figure out optimal path and each playthrough is executing on your best path until you reach new tech tree and explore again.
morrowind is my favorite Wandering Around in Forests game by far, so you’re in good hands
MGSO 3.0 made me enjoy this aspect even more, but i know that tastes vary (tulpa probably wouldn’t approve, heh heh). i’d expect most settings to be kinda framey without a dedicated graphics card or integrated graphics from ivy bridge or later, so fair warning. also it’s a bit of a pain to set up, but the amount of time it takes is still pretty miniscule compared to how fucking long morrowind is
I tried to use MGSO but it kept soft locking with some weather error I couldn’t click through. Probably just my poor baby laptop struggling
oh no, poor child ;~;
One day my little baby laptop will spin a silicon cocoon, and will later emerge as a beautiful lap-butterfly. It will drift through keyboard fields, drinking the tasty electric nectar from the hard drive flowers, eventually spawning its own baby netbooks.
But until that day it’s going to work like a horse attempting to run Dead Rising 2 and Burnout, and I’m going to cuss at it whenever it freezes when I open up too many Excel files. Life is pain.
True to my legacy as “guy who plays games mostly to pick flowers and read books,” I’ve spent an hour in Morrowind mostly plucking mushrooms from swamps and reading about the history of the empire.
I’m really into this game so far. I got attacked by an assassin when I slept but I killed that bastard with my flaming death-hands. I assume this is the thing that @sleepysmiles was talking about. It’s some great armor!
I tried to do one of the early quests with a cave near Seyda Neen but got my ass handed to me. Will probably try again now that I have this armor though.
Thanks again for all the help everyone, I’m having a blast collecting shrooms and reading tomes.
now i feel like playing this game again
what did people think of the expansions? i reviewed them yeeaarrsss ago for my first writing gig.
I loved tribunal because it reminded me of ultima underworld 2. bloodmoon was also pretty rad
What you mean like if you fail you die? I guess but who cares. I mean sure, at some level of abstraction you can say this about almost any game but without a win condition or at least some kind of permanence death is meaningless, as is advancement. Even Nethack has an ending.
I only tepidly liked Tribunal. Morrowind is a rare open world game where the open world is actually the most compelling part of it so making a more straightfoward, plot-centric subgame kind of exposes how jank the mechanics are. And while I appreciated fleshing out the Tribunal I actually liked them better as whispered mysteries in old tomes (this is my opinion on most everything TES).
Bloodmoon I never even played which is absolutely bizarre because I played Morrowind for like 250 hours and it’s my favorite thing. I’m a bad fan I guess.
Ultima Underworld 2 was worse than both the first one and Arx Fatalis