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One of the major issues highlighted in this thread is what I'm calling the "trainspotter" issue

Well, to make it clear, I'm referring to not-empty as in no lack of towns, treasure, or people. If other players were actually looking for ways to progress the story, then they bought the wrong game. You could complete the story in 10 minutes if you can survive the combat. Morrowind wasn't a story game.

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Original post by TechnoGoth I think that is the main problem most people had with it. The fact that the during the time they played they found very little. If I have to invest 10 hours into a game before I can start find substance in the game world then there is something wrong with the game.

You're thrown into a town that is no more than 10 feet from a cave when you start the game, along with signs to other areas. If you can name a town, village, cave, or any type of interesting spot in the game, I can tell you where another is that is less than 30 feet from it. If you explored for hours without finding something to interact with, you must have traveled in a straight line and ended up very unlucky. All of the areas are connected. For example, someone in a town will clue you in on a cave to the west. Or a bandit in a cave may tell you where he got his supplies. If you're just in a hurry to do something else, you may have missed all of this. Keep in mind that I'm not saying the game should have been fun for everyone, I'm just saying it's not empty. The content of this game was everywhere.

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But I have to agree that the game was rather empty. Its been said that there is lots of things to discover, but the problem is that game world is so large that those things can be easily missed.

I'm not sure we would even have a word to represent "discover" if things were easy to find. That's like asking for muscle but being too lazy to lift anything. The hardship is what makes the treasure so valuable.

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Travel time - it took forever to walk anywhere, making travel outside the fast travel points tedious.

I have to agree the character movement speed started too slow. They should have started with twice the speed points, or speed points should have had a lot more impact. But this is only a concern at the beginning of the game. Some of my characters could leap across mountains near the middle of the game.

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Original post by TechnoGoth I think that is the main problem most people had with it. The fact that the during the time they played they found very little. If I have to invest 10 hours into a game before I can start find substance in the game world then there is something wrong with the game.

I wish this game were multiplayer, because man could I show you some of the coolest sites, treasures, books, etc. In fact, I did this for a friend who was suffering from agoraphobia and wouldn't leave Seyda Neen: I took him on a grand tour of all of Vvardenfell using saves, but didn't tell him exactly how to get to the cool places he saw. After that, he and another friend who thought the game was boring were playing for months.

Now, this is not to be insulting (of course[grin]), but could part of Morrowind's problem be that because it violates convention, people need instructions for how to play the game? I'm being serious. If the game violates certain norms (like Diablo's confined dungeons or the chapter-bound Forgotten Realms games), should it strongly explain-- maybe in game, or via a guide-- what it has to offer and what you have to do to get it?

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Original post by Jiia I'm not sure we would even have a word to represent "discover" if things were easy to find. That's like asking for muscle but being too lazy to lift anything. The hardship is what makes the treasure so valuable.

Granted, but keep in mind that there are tolerances to this. I loved the amount of open space in Morrowind, but in Freelancer (a far less dense gamespace), even though there were wrecks and messages and secret backdoors to find, it got VERY old, VERY fast. That you have to work for it doesn't mean that the game still isn't responsible for providing a "discovery pacing," made by density and distance.

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I have to agree the character movement speed started too slow. They should have started with twice the speed points, or speed points should have had a lot more impact. But this is only a concern at the beginning of the game. Some of my characters could leap across mountains near the middle of the game.

You can also hack the game using console cheats (on PC, anyway). On replay, I always triple my speed. It's almost like having a mount.

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Now, this is not to be insulting (of course), but could part of Morrowind's problem be that because it violates convention, people need instructions for how to play the game? I'm being serious. If the game violates certain norms (like Diablo's confined dungeons or the chapter-bound Forgotten Realms games), should it strongly explain-- maybe in game, or via a guide-- what it has to offer and what you have to do to get it?

I totally agree with this. All my friends had the same problem (and, apparently, quite a few people here). They just couldn't find anything to do, despite the fact the game was chock full of content.

In fact, if you sift through all the interviews with the devs on Oblivion, you'll learn that their main concern is in fact making it more clear what there is to do in the world.

I believe that in Oblivion they've implemented a compass/arrow at the top of your screen which points to the nearest cave with lots of loot. Though I personally don't like the concept of it, I can definately see it helping people find stuff to do.

They're also adding in an 'instant transport' system, where you click on places you've been previously on the map and it takes you there immediately.

Actually, if you look closely, you'll realize that Bethesda is working on every single thing which as been complained about in this thread. It seems the company actually listens.

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Now, this is not to be insulting (of course), but could part of Morrowind's problem be that because it violates convention, people need instructions for how to play the game? I'm being serious. If the game violates certain norms (like Diablo's confined dungeons or the chapter-bound Forgotten Realms games), should it strongly explain-- maybe in game, or via a guide-- what it has to offer and what you have to do to get it?

I hadn't given it much thought until you brought it up, though it has been lurking in the back of my mind abit, and i'm afraid you may be right. Most gamers don't have the kind of exposure to the number of games some of us do, and most commercial games lead you by the nose with story driven gameplay. If presented with a game with limitless freedom people may be at a loss and have no idea what to do with it without being given some direction. This is kind of dissapointing, and will probably require some rethinking of the development of freeroaming environments and gameplay.

Bethesda has always been a company that produces high quality and content packed games, albet usually riddled with bugs upon release. I think gamewise Daggerfall was abit better than Morrowind, the spaces were to large for the ammount of content yes, but you could do alot more in that game than its sequel. There were mounts, carriages, ship's, houses you could BUY in various locations, and you could play through the whole game as a vampire/werewolf instead of it being a forced mini-quest that has to be completed like in Morrowind. Another boon was limitless ingame quests, though Morrowind handled this with modding utilities.

Overall, i really did like Morrowind, it had this kind of atmosphere and adventurism that you don't see very often. So any new game of this type is always good. :)

I never liked Morrowind due to a couple of problems with the game. There was very little point (read that as there was no overall storyline pushing you). There was A story, but you could completely ignore it if you wanted to. Fallout 2 did something similar but was done much better. The game lacked content (creatures, NPCs, etc). I hated the endless walking with nothing to do. I also hated that all I had to do was stand on a rock and shoot at people and I was a god. BEHOLD THE POWER OF MY 2 FOOT HEIGHT ADVANTAGE. Basically it got so boring that I just started killing every character in the game and stealing from everyone. It wasn't that difficult. But what really killed the fun in that game for me was the bad game play and AI.

Oh, and just so people know. I beat the game and downloaded most of the fan made stuff. Even the fan created addons were bad.

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Original post by TheFez6255 BEHOLD THE POWER OF MY 2 FOOT HEIGHT ADVANTAGE

[lol][lol][lol] ..Yeah.. That was almost as bad as the alchemy problem.

I'd have to say that I both love and hate this game.

I love the fact that it has a huge expansive world, but I hate the fact that I have to walk everywhere (other than riding the giant fleas)

I love the fact that there are a lot of skills, but I hate the fact that I used 3 throughout the entire game (long sword, heavy armor, and acrobatics)

I love the fact that there is a lot of different arms and armor, but I hate the fact that I can get the best after only 2 hours of gameplay (Lord's Mail and Umbra's Sword)

I love the fact that you can jump off tall buildings and drag against the wall. When you hit the ground it doesn't hurt you.

I hate the sea life. Those damn fish are so annoying. Also the flying things. I'll be walking along and all of a sudden I hear that freakin noise they make. I can kill them so easily, but they just suck.

What the hell is alchemy? Just kidding, but I haven't used it once.
How are you shooting people? Again I'm kidding, but I haven't used that once either.

And how the do I learn to be a fighter, mage, theif, and cleric all in a single lifetime?

I joined every faction and didn't seem to have any consequences.

Go make a spell that adds 100 points to a stat and then add soultrap to the end of it. Boom, instants permanent stat modifier. I have stats over 10,000.

As one of the people already said, I usually resort to killing everybody and then quitting.

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Original post by TheFez6255BEHOLD THE POWER OF MY 2 FOOT HEIGHT ADVANTAGE.

Stop picking on the gnomes. Its not they're fault they're too short to reach you :D Just kidding

I was hooked on this game for a long time as was my wife. The biggest problem i had was that you could make any class into a god. It did not matter what you started with, it all ended up the same. I have had mages being the leader of the fighters guild and barbarians taking control of the mages guild.

Whats worse is that you can accomplish this without killing a single creature of completing a single quest. Steal stuff, sell it to the crab who pays top price and pay for training. Didn't really matter what your primary and secondary skills were as you could pretty much max everything with enough money which is easy as hell to obtain.