What do you dislike in Morrowind

[lgromanowski]

Hi,

I was playing last night my favorite game, guess which one and was thinking of what could make me switch to OpenMW once the v1.0 will be available (don't bother me, I know it will not available soon )

The obvious answer is if OpenMW is not having the little annoying things that Morrowind has. I don't speak about game play, just technical things. So why not making a list, perhaps we could see some new ideas.

Other reasons should be real improvement of usability. It could be a way to rewrite a better ways the wiki wish list.

So, I begin:

- improve loading time.
- improve saving time; on a USB hard drive it is terrible.
- ability to set shortcut, i.e. return to game directly from training window or selling items without going through discussion window (I use French version, so I don't know the exact English window name).
- Ability to scroll & zoom the map, mark some points or roads taken or visited
- remove the many lags of the graphics
- More in game graphic options to be able to run on low power system (not that fast on an eeePc 701).
- get rid of whatever that may glue NPC that are following you.
- A really improve journal and quest management system that make it comfortable to retrieve old unfinished quest or an old discussion (may be a search system with keywords could help).

It is up to you to complete this list.

I hope that most of these improvements will be included in the v1.0, so that old players or new players could find it much more attractive than Morrowind may be.

-Definitely saving times on my usb because it takes about 1 whole minute to save. I turned off save when rest cuz it's a nightmare.

-I don't know if this is considered gameplay or not, but more animation slots for npc's and smooth conjunction of new animations if one is already playing.

-Ability to change face structure and body structure without messing up any animations, meshes, or textures.

-Morrowind engine can support more mods running at the same time.

I could brainstorm a lot if I wanted... but I'm too lazy right now.

I'd like some sort of visual indication of when there's a hostile enemy about, instead of having to rely on the change in music. I like to listen to other music when I game, and I can't with Morrowind because I might miss when that cliffracer decides to get mad at me and fly behind me through a crowded town...

Cleaned up shadows. Since we're using a completely different renderer this should not even be an issue, but the shadows in Morrowind were all kinds of buggy.

I forget the dead enemies lying under the ground, or half under the ground, a minimum of physics could help to let them rest in peace at the right place.

I really don't like textures that sometimes fit very wrongly, it is very visible on some sky parts, there are lines between textures, using Caelum and a real computed sky should remove these artifacts.

The Morrowind path finding method is a big stupid bunch of code, too easy to glue an enemies behind a small rock, or he doesn't know just to turn to run and come fight you, too easy for long range weapons such as bow or spells. Perhaps some animals such as rats cannot think of better path, but they have to stop running at the same place, too ridiculous, this is not possible for clever creatures. Humanoid creatures should even open doors if the settings are set to hard level, which would be much more realistic.

As Vance already said in a previous post, when an arrow is missing its target, it should be clear that the path used by the arrow was wrong.

Oh one more thing, did you notice how you character is jumping, too funny, it is not realistic at all. Think about first Prince of Persia version, a more realistic animation could be used, perhaps several animations depending on the context.

Something that also irritates me is the alchemy screen and some other badly designed gui windows. It takes way to many clicks to browse through that tiny little ingredients window when you have a lot of ingreds and want to make many potions.

Also don't like how the GUI eventually slows down to a crawl (and tooltips stop working from time to time) even on modern hardware. Or that in places with high FPS the engine start skipping button clicks (eg. you have to press jump 3 times before it jumps.) Or that the map revealing (removing the black fog of war when you move somewhere) also just stops working sometimes.

There's also way too much information (quests, dialogs, places you've been) but no way to organize it. I'd want better map notes, marking which quests you're currently, writing annotations and notes to yourself, or sorting inventory you intend to sell from inventory you want to keep/use.

I would like basic physics like what pogzy said when npcs die, they lay down sometimes half eaten up by the groundcover or get stuck between a wall. That could be fixed...

And I would like to see realistic lighting and shadows from what raevol mentioned. With major lighting mods installed it's chaos with all of the seams in the lighting, shadow bugs that show between solid matter, and major LAG.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2899105/the%20g ... blems.html

Oh Lord, I feel like It is still beta.

And, besides that gameplay is just stupid but we are not talking about it.

The thing that bothers me is that everything is small - no mountains, only hills, no towns, only villages...

The thing that bothers me is that everything is small - no mountains, only hills, no towns, only villages...

Indeed. There was some groundwork done by Lightwave for both Morrowind and Oblivion. I don't know if there's a separate thread for 2xVvardenfell, but the 2xCyrodiil thread seems to cover the reasons as to why it never took off. Like too much work rebuilding all the cities and such.

I'd kinda want to believe that OpenMW could make some things with that conversion work easier, but probably i'm just fooling myself.

Well... yes.

The only one game that done this fine was daggerfall (buggerfall) but it was randomly generated, and well... it really didn't matter - there was no point in travels.

But it was back in the XX century, I think that now we may be able to make something better

For me, Morrowind is the best game in the world... but it's also the most annoying. I tried buggerfall (lmao) and gaylivion. Their just not my games. I like classics, but not ones that hurt my eyes. I like pretty games, but not ones that lag the hell out of my computer and every single npc sounds like their ejaculating. lol... Morrowind is the perfect mix of gaming experience for me. I've spent at least 1 year of my life searching for a perfect game that suck the life out of me, and I keep going back to morrowind. With mods and a new engine to fix all of the stuff I don't like, the game will be perfect. That's why I was so exited to find out about this project, and will be there for you all 100%. XD *happy dance*


THE END

One thing I never liked with Morrowind is the fact that you have one level of water and that is it! Now perhaps interiors, this is fine; but you cannot make a river run to a waterfall on the overland... and that stinks

SilentThief

You're right, water in Morrowind is just annoying. It should be very different to swim in a river and in the sea. There should be at least some waves in the sea. Monsters shouldn't be the same in the sea and in inland waters.

Forgive me for being new, so I may ask some questions that are posted somewhere so that people like me don't ask the same questions over and over again...

That being said, Where would I put in official requests for features for the OpenMW project?

Specifically, there were a few things that I found I wanted to do with the MW construction set that you cannot:

1) Like I posted earlier, multiple levels of water instead of just one. This would give us the ability to have a river run to a waterfall and continue down to the sea. In regular MW, there is ONE water level and that is ALL.

2) How about allowing for dynamic adjustment of the terrain? I mean, using the scripting language; allow the designer to have the ability to raise and lower the ground. I realize this might be incredibly difficult, tho.

ST

Right there, in the wiki : http://openmw.org/wiki/index.php?title=Wishlist

We could get around this by making a currentmarker or a CurrentSpace, which more or less "pushes" or "Flows" in a general direction.

As for things I personally dislike, It's more or less mechanical, and I would hope the extension of morrowind into OPENMW would fix them.

- NPC pathing, companion teleporting.
- Complexity of making quests.
- Healers not healing. (should heal to 50% if critical for free, rest is paid)
- animatons.
- The journal. I can't tell you how much the journal needs to be changed. It needs more room for text, as my journal is well over 200 pages long now, going to quests is annoying...other than that, I love that I can look up words and get all the information. Love that. It needs an appearance update.
-Target Spells all functioning like fireballs. Some effects combine to be pretty, but we need more particle effects like bolts, fields, and so on, for sure.

Scripting system; there is plenty of features that look like bugs there.
For example SetSkill breaks a character if he is wearing a boost stat items; you cannot know without hack (increase way too much and reading the results) the max health or mana of a character; you cannot know the gender of the character... etcetc

Scripting system; there is plenty of features that look like bugs there.
For example SetSkill breaks a character if he is wearing a boost stat items; you cannot know without hack (increase way too much and reading the results) the max health or mana of a character; you cannot know the gender of the character... etcetc

I think the setskill thing might be fixed by MCP, and we might be half done covering that particular problem, but the display of your characters information is easy to fix. It can be added in one of the GUI spaces on the character sheet. Once the gui stuff is polished we can add that.

Another recent Dislike:

Collision. I get stuck on really stupid things. t least when we implement bullt and collision that might be solved.

I do not know, probably for 1.0.0 is better making everything exactly as Morrowind; as far as we know there might be some mod that uses the misfeatures somewhat.
Later I would add a setting that put in the begin of the script enables more toughful semantics.

I have too many idea with this game but as far as dislikes go a few simple ones would be making it so that the ground does not seam when there are more than two textures touching. Maybe a fade-in method of applying land textures like there is in the Starcraft 2 editor? A sort of rag-doll physics for clothing meshes so as to have flowing robes and capes? Allowing beast races to wear closed helms and boots but additionally present a third condition in the items body-part management, i.e. Male clothing/armor, Female clothing/armor, Beast clothing/armor. That would be a few minors.

- Ability to scroll & zoom the map, mark some points or roads taken or visited
(...)
- A really improve journal and quest management system that make it comfortable to retrieve old unfinished quest or an old discussion (may be a search system with keywords could help).

It would be cool if quests and discussions were shown on the map. By clicking on them, we would get the texts we have in old Morrowind. When playing, we often remember where we got a quest or where we did a part of it, but not its title.

Zooming would thus be required as the map would become unreadable. In order to stay readable at min zoom, we should have the ability to toggle on/off this option. Btw, this opens other possibilities as well. (toggle on/off caverns, transports, trainers...)

Good Idea ?

Some things I dislike:

1-) The hardcoded map size.

2-) The view distance of the objects. I'd like to see morrowind render the trees, houses, etc, from a far, far distance, with the NPC's and enemies moving normally.

The justice system.
`If you are not seen it is not a crime' policy is ridiculous. The Legion should move if stuff or people disappear.

For stuff it might even easy: just add a chance the Guards ask the player to see the inventory. `We got some theft, please let me check your stuff.'

For people it might be hard--- random chance (maybe based on security or sneak skill?) that Guards understand you are the killer?

2-) The view distance of the objects. I'd like to see morrowind render the trees, houses, etc, from a far, far distance, with the NPC's and enemies moving normally.

OK then the NPC should also know your presence and see you if you see them, which should change the number of enemies that can attack you because the vision range will be wider.
I'm not sure, but I think that some creatures are moving only if your are closer enough, this must change accordingly, does anyone can confirm this?

The justice system.
`If you are not seen it is not a crime' policy is ridiculous. The Legion should move if stuff or people disappear.

Right, it should depends of the game difficulty chosen by the player, a hard difficult game system could include more realistic game rules that should be activated in this mode, post v1.0 stuff.

Please keep in mind that the empire still must abide by the armistice agreement.

[...], but I think that some creatures are moving only if your are closer enough, this must change accordingly, does anyone can confirm this?

According to the morrowind wiki, it depends by the Fight attribute: an hight Fight attribute make the NPC attack the player when it is near.
The exact distance is based on the attribute, higher means longer distance. Only 100 of Fight means attack on sight.

The justice system.
`If you are not seen it is not a crime' policy is ridiculous. The Legion should move if stuff or people disappear.

Right, it should depends of the game difficulty chosen by the player, a hard difficult game system could include more realistic game rules that should be activated in this mode, post v1.0 stuff.

Well, sure it is post 1.0... but we are talking about what we dislike, don't we?


Returning to the topic, a small but extremely annoying thing.
Morrowind cannot order bsa contents because files inside bsa archives do not have timestamps. It would be extremely easy at least use the bsa timestamp itself for all the files inside. A bsa cannot contains two files with the same name, so it should be sufficient.

With this small change most mods can use their own bsa making installing and (overall) uninstalling much easier.

Edit:
Item placing, in MW you cannot rotate items and place items easily. A way to rotate and place items like `The Dark Mod' would be a simple and great addition.