At home, I'm playing a bit of Crimsonland and a lot of Morrowind. (I'm happy to say my particle effects are better than theirs in several ways, heh.)

And yeah, it's mismatched armor. Dwemer "I am a rusted iron robot" stuff especially doesn't mix well with other types -- I want to get rid of the left bracer but haven't found a good replacement yet.

This character kicks a lot of butt. Almost every butt I've encountered... though there are some very, very dangerous things in tight spaces that levitation doesn't help with. And fairly dangerous things even out in the open, sometimes. I don't want to unleash my Red Destroyer enchantment on something that will reflect its effects back at me -- soul trap, 100% weakness to fire for 3 seconds, and 100 fire damage/sec for 3 seconds. It tastes like burning.

The permanent levitation thing is getting to be a pain. It's nice to be able to zoom all over the map, but very not nice to get caught on every corner and edge in some of the more complex buildings, as in Ald-Ruhn, Vivec, Dwemer ruins, any spiral staircase, and especially the wacked-out Telvanni cities on the east coast. I need to try throwing down one of those precious Summon Golden Saint scrolls and blast it with Red Destroyer, see if I can get myself a permanent levitate item and quit using the exploit. That way, when I get indoors I can take off the item and walk. On my feet. Which are wearing ugly Dwemer boots which go stomp.

There's a weird sort of thrill in this game though: a feeling that I'm someplace I shouldn't be, doing things that I shouldn't, it's dangerous and I am threatened. Even in towns, when Ordinators and other sorts of unpleasant guards give me their "Let's not make this official, outlander" or "We're watching you.... scum." But more particularly in Dwemer ruins, near Daedric shrines, and in ancestral tombs. They do a great job of creepy and menacing, even though at this point I could probably kill 95% of the things in the game.

This is different from the feeling of paranoia in Neocron, and better than the "ooh this is a scary high-level place" vibe in Camelot. It's more akin to what I felt like on my first visit to the Spider Temple in GS3.

I wonder if not being able to gauge the difficulty of an opponent beforehand (or even being able to find out its name until you are very near it) helps. I expect more of it is the story though. People don't like you. Old families with lots of power and a lack of scruples don't like you. The dominant culture doesn't like the foreign invaders that you work for, either. The theocracy is not particularly happy about you, and neither are the heretics. The island's more ancient residents don't like you, or in fact anyone. Your boss is a drug addict and your "friends" want you to steal things and murder people. There's no simple good vs. evil conflict or quest, though some of the most unpleasant people in the world depict it as such.

Considerably more interesting than "go kill 50 giant rats, now go kill 75 goblins, now go kill 150 orcs..."

Posted 10:39 PM CST [Link] [Archives] [Index]

Your character in Morrowind looks really cool. :) I'll have to dig up a picture of my gangly looking Orc fighter/mage (yes, what was I thinking?) sometime.

I'm going to have to strongly agree with your wonderings about whether the lack of a "consider" system in Morrowind adds to the excitment in a game world. I really think it does.

I played UO for years, and half the adventure was looking at creatures you've never seen before, and wondering "can I kill that?" and then trying to kill it. Luckily, in UO, monsters would run REALLY slow, so it helped the getaway process if you found out that no, that creature was way too freaking strong for you to kill. :)

A lot of current MMORPGs, I think, are missing that "excitment" feeling because they DO let us know what we can kill and what we can't. It's practically robotic, and you know EXACTLY where to fight next, what's the most efficent monsters to kill to level, etc. I think by taking away the mystery of these types of games, it really makes them less immersive. You move from creature camp to creature camp, and that's pretty much the extent of your adventuring in the world.

UO was really a different game, though. It got away with having no "consider" system because of the way it was made. Monsters were kind of rare on the surface of the world (IE, not in dungeons), and if you were to run across a spawning point for creatures, there'd be some sort designated structure to show that there was indeed creatures living here.

Because of this, you didn't have to worry about low level characters running across the strongest monsters in the game (so you knew that any monster outside of a dungeon probably wasn't very tough, so no one really had to know if such a creature was going to kill you). The addition of the Recall spell also helped the game, because if you found yourself in a sticky situation, you could get out of there real quick. This helped by providing a way to escape from areas that you may have found too difficult for your character.

I'm always hoping more games don't use a "consider" system (although most people expect it, so I guess it'd be difficult not to include), and instead provide different ways of guaging a creatures strength. Or just let the players find out for themselves. ;)

As you can probably tell, I'm a big fan of Ultima Online. I think it's a great game (even today), and I'm hoping more games pickup some of the magic that UO had (I'm thinking Blizzard can do such a thing, and perhaps Simutronics can too). ;)

Oh, and I also wanted to add that story helps a lot. That's really what can cause much of excitment in areas (if it's done right, of course). Morrowind has the advantage of being a HUGE game, and has a lot of story to it.

I really like Bauldar's Gate 2, as well. I think that game had a lot of story elements that kept be enthralled (for several weekends in a row) until the very end. :) Really a great game.

Er, what that line should say, "I also wanted to add that I agree that story helps a lot."

I'm done now, I swear. :)

Well... found that a constant-effect Levitate item does NOT stop you levitating when you take it off. So much for that.

Maybe it's something screwy with my character, possibly due to using that exploit in the first place. Mumble.

So instead I have a constant effect Restore Health 1 point, Night Eye however much fit on the item (15ish?). I haven't noticed a lot of difference from the health restoration simply because my spear is enchanted with Absorb Health anyway.

Thank you for the Crimsonland link. I didn't know about it, and it is very entertaining and addictive. Great stuff to get rid of some stress.

Hey Dave,

I was looking around for some Morrowind cheats (I thought perhaps one might help you fix that permanent levitation bug thing), and I came across this list of debugging commands that might help.

http://www.actiontrip.com/cheats/theelderscrolls3morrowind.phtml

Try checking out the "fixme" command and the "setflying" commands, and see if those help. Otherwise you can skim through the massive list of debugging commands and see if you can find one that might be useful.

I'd reccomend saving your character before you try any of those, though, who knows what they do. :)

Yep, setflying helped me out. I got stuck at 300 which made navigating indoors almost impossible.

Thanks :)