GameBanshee Forums

A friend has been asking me about Morrowind, and he made reference to a comment I had made that it are (IMO) the mods that truly make the game.

This got me to thinking about my own criticisms of Morrowind and some of the mods I employ to compensate.

I am also curious at what your criticisms of the game are and the ways you deal with your dissatisfaction.

For me, the biggest problem is the homogeneity, and thus I use the following

* [url="http://lgnpc.sabregirl.com/index.php"]The Less Generic NPC series[/url]

* Persuasion Response Expansion
* Neverarine Greeting
* Nudity Greeting Expansion
All of the above available [url="http://www.freewebs.com/glassboy/index.htm"]here[/url]

* [url="http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=1007"]NPC Replacer by Zero the Hero[/url]

More?

p.s Yes, I know this is yet another mod thread And, I realise that some of these issues and mod suggestions have been discussed elsewhere, but I thought it might be helpful if we had a single thread

The empty cities and (aside from a few animals) countryside, a trait Morrowind shares with Oblivion. The answer is Morrowind Comes Alive, which adds 1000+ types of NPCs to over 300 Morrowind cells. They add some numbers to the cities, as well as diversity: ruffians (who attack you), booksellers, mages (who can enchant for you), rangers, other various merchants, crusaders (who will defend you, or even work for you), etc.

[QUOTE=fable]The empty cities and (aside from a few animals) countryside, a trait Morrowind shares with Oblivion. [/QUOTE]

On a similar note, what really bothered me was being attacked by nearly every creature, and the general lack of wildlife diversity.

This is addressed by all kinds of animal life mods like:
* [url="http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=175"]Passive Healthy Wildlife[/url]
* [url="http://lgnpc.sabregirl.com/index.php"]Fireflies Invade Morrowind[/url]
* [url="http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=3572"]Birds by Cait and Leeloo[/url]
* [url="http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=2786"]Abot's Where Are All the Birds Going[/url]
* [url="http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=7636&id=258"]Abot's Water Life[/url]
* [url="http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=1695"]Cait's Critters[/url]


To name just a few..

Although as a whole I didn't like Daggerfall, it had one advantage over Morrowind, in my opinion: the guilds didn't automatically open up all services to new members. You had to earn your way into those services through guild advancement, which made them more valuable when achieved.Service Requirements restores this to Morrowind. If a guild member offering a service is now significantly higher than you, they may refuse a service altogether; a few ranks lower than that, and they may offer the service with a surcharge. Some services that ordinarily require fees, such as bounty removal, now have a charge directly based on your rank.

I couple it with selected files from Wakim's Game Improvements, especially Game Factions. This one greatly raises the bar for guild advancement in terms of attributes and skills. It means that you really do have to concentrate on one guild, though you can do a bit to advance in the others at the same time--no more hitting all at once. You can expect to do a lot of training...and of course, it feeds into Service Requirements, because you're not advancing as far as you were in the past. Both together create a really significant challenge in the game.

In addition to all the points raised above, I have a few things.

Mournhold is too small - so I use Mournhold Expanded
The relative lack of interactivity (with world items) - Writing and Journal Enhanced
Lack of interactivity with NPC's - Dracandos voice
The fact Morrowind is a big square island in the middle of the Ocean - I use mods like Tusar and Korobal Island to make the map look more organic.

I disliked the fact that your character never had to eat, drink or sleep, hello [url="http://www.tadnan-hideout.com/MW/mods/Necessities.html"]Necessities of Morrowind[/url]

That your character could continue to battle at full capacity, even when almost dead, enter [url="http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.List&game=3&category_show_all=1"]Shoujou's Wound Penalties[/url]

The whole concept of levelling, solved by [url="http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=2030"]Galsiahs Character Development[/url]

To be honest I usually just work my way through the [url="http://www.mwmythicmods.com/realism.htm"]Empirical Morrowind[/url] List

Real Signposts, so you can actually read signposts .

The devs never realized that players would want homes, or that they'd want them to store objects. As a result, they never considered that players would want to collect weapons, or books, or anything else, and it all makes for an ugly mess--since books stack flat on the floor, and weapons lie away from you. Rotate Enhanced gives you a spell that, aimed at an object, lets you reorient it in any of three dimensions. Also excellent is Book Rotate. Click to place a book, and you're offered four positions with it. Book Rotate also senses nearby books, so it will "snap" one you place right next to its neighbor. Both excellent ease-of-use mods.

I'm afraid I originally found Morrowind's inhabitants to be rather hideous to look at, apart from Argonians, so the majority of my initial characters were never allowed to remove their helmets.

Therefore I'm infinitely greatful to those who prodcued Better Bodies, Better Heads, and the multitude of other head/hair replacers.

I'm the same. The Better Bodies, Pretty Faces and the Face mods from Emma's Morrowind Site make up for it though.

The clothes let me down a bit too - they all seem so generic too. Again though, there are a lot of clothing mods that make up for that a bit.

The children adding mod by Emma improves the overall look of the game too, the first time I used that I walked straight out of the starting area in Seyda Neen to see two little boys fighting each other lol and it just kind of adds a bit of realism to the game.

So, uh, I can just load all these mods to my XBox and use them there too, right?

*sigh*

Spoiler

Yes, I know the XBox can't use mods, just wishful thinking.

Sorry Darzog....
I have played the game on XBox at a friend's and I think the combat is definitely better than on PC.. but I prefer PC because of the mods.

Maybe if your computer can run it, consider getting MW for PC too? That way you sort of have the best of both worlds.

Back on topic
One mod I'm seriously considering for my next reinstall is "Light based Sneaking." It has always struck me as odd that you can sneak in broad daylight with no trouble at all.

'Tis a good mod but one has to be incredibly careful about using CE items that enhance the sneak skill. At times when I've played the penalties applied by the light sources have reduced my sneak score on a permanent basis. (until restored).

Weather based sneaking has never caused me any problems though.

Better Faces and Better Bodies is a must as are Rhedd Heads female heads, though that's a purely cosmetic fix.
More NPC interaction would have been nice in the original as would have been a more diverse fauna.
Surprising for me is that considering the game is open ended, your character doesn't get the chance to either buy houses/strongholds ( or let them being built by hired NPCs ). Storage area has to be a prime considering how much equipment/weapons etc. you find, which is another source for trouble....the missing money for trading. I can understand it when small traders don't have much money, but why don't the Guilds or Houses don't have the ability to trade with higher sums?

Armor and Weapon weight is another matter, most of the really goodlooking and hardhitting weapons and armor are just to heavy. There is no way that a Daedric Katana weights 40 kilogramms, who would wanna lift a sword that weights more then half of your character ?

I modified creeper to hold about 5 000 000 gold. Bliss if a little unrealistice, I just can't be bothered with how long it takes to sell things anyway.

Surprising for me is that considering the game is open ended, your character doesn't get the chance to either buy houses/strongholds ( or let them being built by hired NPCs ).

To be fair to Bethesda they probably thought that most people would adopt the homes of characters they kill along the way, and there are a tremnedous amount of bandit caves for storage as well. Of course for the more law abiding PC player there are many mods that you can buy (eg Buyable Ghorak Manor, Ascadian Rose Cottage).