madphilb on 16/8/2003 at 21:27
I've heard this complaint several times about the game, and I think I can somewhat understand why.
If I'm beating a dead horse or something, forgive me please.
Let me also start by saying ahead of time that I understand that there really isn't a wrong way to play Morrowind, that different people play it different ways, etc. (though I do hold to the belief that abusing the console commands to "dumb down" the game, so to speak, is a bit on the cheating side, but that has nothing to do with this post :cheeky: ).
I started off playing the game by doing everything the hard way, even when I bent the rules a bit by making tiny spells to "boost" my spell stats... my logic, it was "practice"... you wouldn't always cast full blown spells in practice. This worked ok... and I spent a few times hitting the trigger on my XBox controller to cast one of those spells, while I one-hand typed in a chat room with some of my friends.
I also took advantage of some of the more wealthy buyers in the game (you know the two odd ones, they come up often enough, usually in the "how do I sell the really expensive stuff" threads). Spent a good week or so camped out on a beach trying to sell off a enchanted piece of armor for it's 180000 value (or was it 120000?).
With that in mind, I now have quite a bit of gold at my disposal, and I boost it every so often with some of the pricier items I find on my adventures. In the past week I've fallen prey to paying for training.... 10 points or more at a time!
So, my character has these killer stats, and I can kick ass with the best of them... or so it seems anyway, there may be a few really tough ones out there.
The game is starting to feel a bit easy.
I can taunt quicker (thanks to my speachcraft skill), I pay less gold to get 100% on the people's opinion poll (admire works well), my glass halbred (SP?) or bound spear take out most baddies rather quickly (though it's not a major skill)... and I'm not to shabby with a bow, though I'd like to be able to take down a few more things in one shot.
But how much longer would it have taken me to reach this level, with these skills if I did the following:
1) Never sold some of the more expensive things (I wonder if the gold value was put on them to make them harder to sell because the writers of the game didn't intend you to sell them or have such large gold stashes).
2) Since #1 would lower the overall gold reserves, less training could be paid for, thus more of your stat skills would have to be raised the "hard way" (working them).
I think once I'm done with this character (I don't think I'll join any other guilds at this point, I'm at the top of my class in both the Temple and the Hiaatu) I think I'll give this a try.... could be interesting.
Do I think it's wrong to boost stats and such? No, not really... but I don't know that the writers took that into consideration when they wrote the game. Frankly I dropped the 1st character because I was tired of emptying 20 arrows into a cliffracer to only get one crappy hit (and then have to result to my sword to finish 'em off). I was a bit poor in spell ability for a SpellSword as well... couldn't destruct my way out of a box.
Well, that's my 2 cents.... not worth much more.....
flamers... be gentile! :eek:
PHIL
Ania on 16/8/2003 at 23:21
Yes, it does get rather too easy, even without cheating. I am charging through Bloodmoon with my original character, and even after I dropped all my kickass weapons and special items, it's still easy. I think it's because I worked hard on beefing myself up early in the game, when I kept dying.
Anyway, this is partly why I now have 3 other characters, who will try the harder jobs sooner, and all have limitations instead of trying to be good at everything. And they'll be able to do all possible quests/ ways of doing stuff between them.
Here they are:
Atargatis, female Altmer: House Telvanni, magic-based character. Has little in the way of morals. Unscrupulous.
Kit, male Khajiit: House Hlaalu. Thief/assassin. Opportunist. Doesn't like slavery.
Ishtar, female Redguard: House Redoran. Fighter, no magic except restoration. Very god-fearing. Sickeningly good, proper and noble. Touching faith in authority. Likes taking orders. This one will be really mentally tortured when she becomes a vamp!
It should be fun.
Ania
RyushiBlade on 16/8/2003 at 23:59
Ishtar? You named it after that movie that bombed? (Yeah, who else read that article on msn? Ishtar was like... 6th worst movie I think. Pluto Nash was the worst.) Heh.
I'm pretty leniant on what I consider cheating... With a game like Morrowind you don't really need to cheat. It's pretty easy... Maybe if you stopped at level 10 it would be a lot harder.
And I've just got a Nord Barbarian named Ryushi. Pretty much cold and heartless. He'll kill anyone for enough money.
My second char is Cyrus. He's a nord too and his occupation is Knight. He joined the Imperial Legion early on, and he's also painfully honest. Whenever he stole things (like books) he left money in their place. But he's gotten over that after realizing no one really cares.
I might create a sorcerer some time... Dark Elf/Wood Elf probably. Possibly female. And I'd be blasting people with massive fireballs, heh. :cheeky:
Ania on 17/8/2003 at 10:36
Ishtar is one of the names for the great goddess, worshipped all over the ancient Middle East. She is also known as Astarte or Ashteroth. Redguards are dark-skinned, so I thought this would be a neat name.
Atargatis is another middle eastern goddess. After I realized that the Daedric names in MW are lifted straight out of Babylonian/Assyrian myth and history I thought I'd kind of maintain the continuity and have names of similar origin for the characters. This all fits quite well- if you bear in mind that Daedra were/are worshipped, it would make sense that people would be named after the elements of their religion, even if the religion's original language fell out of use. In the real world, there are many Hebrew names in use, in fact some of the commonest names are Hebrew- John, Mary, Anna...
What was the Ishtar film? I never even heard of it.
Ania
PlaneShifter on 17/8/2003 at 12:26
You could always try Wakim's Game Improvements and the More Morrowind plugins. They both make the game more balanced. I also recommend the Armor Effects mod.
Chimpy Chompy on 18/8/2003 at 08:21
Part of what makes the game too easy is probably your access to ebony\daedric weapons. As soon as you're tough enough to go one-on-one with dremora or Golden saints, you basically have an unlimited supply of top-notch weapons available. You can of course either use these yourself, or flog 'em to mudcrab in exchange for masses of gold for enchantments or training (ie rapidly turbocharge your character).
The Huntsman on 18/8/2003 at 11:00
It's the presence of Creeper and Mudcrab that unbalances things -- if they didn't exist, you wouldn't be able to cash in so big, and thus wouldn't be able to get so powerful without effort.
Of course, you could always show discipline and work hard on your training rather than buying it. Maybe then people wouldn't bitch about the game being unbalanced.
sappe on 18/8/2003 at 13:11
I play W/O creeper and mudcrab, it's still easy.
:eek:
PlaneShifter on 18/8/2003 at 18:36
Quote:
Originally posted by The Huntsman Of course, you could always show discipline and work hard on your training rather than buying it. Maybe then people wouldn't bitch about the game being unbalanced.
Um, even without training or using either mudcrab or creeper, the game is very easy. It's too easy to get money (even without selling off daedric stuff) and too easy to advance. These things are still fun, but without any real challenge.
Tuco on 20/8/2003 at 07:16
Morrowind should've never been skill based.
Get experience points for doing quests, killing baddies, or stealing/unlocking certain items/doors.(vaults etc)
Bethseda took a leap of faith with their leveling system of skills and found a deep abyss of ease for the player that they fell into.
One thing about morrowind is that its difficulty lies not on killing that Dremora, but rather by figuring out the quests on your own, the puzzles, and spending the god awfully large amounts of time wandering to your next assignment.
I would have preferred a much more complex combat system with a more conventional experience based system, much more time spent for balancing, and ridding of the ability to sell items. That's right, no selling excess items. Training should give 5 stat points and 10 skill points, and you can train once per level. Something like that.
Besides, once you know where the sweet items are, the game is trivialized. Morrowind is supposed to be a free place, not linear, so... bitch plz.
