Favorite Bethesda Game

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm sure you totally naturally found this out in a game with hundreds of quests and didn't just scrounge 4chan/UESP for some example that in your eyes justifies Oblivion's constant waypoint handholding.

You just think it's good because you were 9 when you played it. All millennials should be sent to reeducation camps.

[maidenhaver]

I voted just to make rusty mad.

[agentorange]

You can't actually name anything good about morrowind.
"muh exploration"
the island is the size of my back yard.
"muh directions, no quest markers!!!"
half the directions were flat out incorrect because they didn't bother doing any QA.
Read the directions given here and see how long it takes you to find the desired location.


"t-t-that's just one example"

The first one isn't even wrong in any way, those directions will get you there if you follow them. I suppose if you go due South of Dagon Fel you can get lost, although the fact there is no branching path that way should indicate you are going the wrong direction, but if the area in question is not there, then go further West or go back to Dagon Fel and take the other Southern road. This isn't rocket science, learn some patience.

Again, the directions are correct. He is West of Ald' ruhn and West of Caldera, that should tell you that he is further West of Ald' ruhn than Caldera is. And it clearly states he is in the middle of nowhere and it will be a hike to find him. He isn't meant to be easy to find.

The island in question clearly is North of Dagon Fel. North and also to the West, but it is in fact North of Dagon Fel. There are three major islands North of Dagon Fel, so if you search one and she isn't there then search the others. Or do other stuff and end up running into her. This idea that you need to be able to beeline directly to every quest objective is modern checklist game design mentality and it's exactly what lead to quest compasses.

[rusty_shackleford]

I suppose if you go due South of Dagon Fel you can get lost

"follow the road south"
I'm sorry, are you a woman by chance?

[wndrbr]

I don't remember having troubles navigating in Morrowind. The only time i got lost looking for a quest objective was during the search of Cavern of the Incarnate.

[agentorange]

I suppose if you go due South of Dagon Fel you can get lost

"follow the road south"
I'm sorry, are you a woman by chance?

"South" "west" and "coast" is all you need from those directions to deduce the generally correct area, and again the fact there are branching paths on one side and none on the other side. If you can't figure this stuff out based on context then you have a low IQ. Also looking at this stuff in isolation and saying the game sucks because it didn't pinpoint the location is stupid, because while playing the game if you end up in the wrong area then anyone with a few functional brain cells would go "Oh ok so it must be further West or further South, I'll continue exploring until I find it," instead of having some tantrum and posting about it on twitter.

You have to scrounge so hard to find the few possibly good little morsels of design in Oblivion then prop those up as reasons why Oblivion is good game, but you then have to scrounge around for the smallest flaws in Morrowind like a couple of potentially misleading directions then use those to say the entire game is bad.

Then again I know you don't really give a shit either way and you're just trying to rabble-rouse.

Also you're fat.

[Oyster Sauce]

I am well aware that Oblivion is a shit game and the waypoints/fast travel are among the worst features ever added to a video game
HOWEVER
Do you remember the Morrowind thieves guild questline? Can you tell me what happened in the Morag Tong's storyline, or even just one thing interesting you did out of all of its quests? I can't, which is weird because I've played Morrowind a hell of a lot more than Oblivion, yet I'll never forget the cursed ring in the well, getting high on hist sap and slaughtering an entire village, buying a haunted house, the goofy murder mystery mansion where you're the murderer, stealing the Elder Scroll, or even just competing with other thieves guild initiates to steal from a specific target in the city first.
Granted, it is far better to have to find objectives yourself, but it hardly matters when nearly every quest in the game is completely uninteresting and forgettable.

[Falksi]

Morrowind is the easy pick for me here, in a game all about world exploration it's the only Bethesda game which has a genuinely interesting and absorbing world. The spell system really makes it stand out too.

Oblivion had some nice quests, but the copy-paste shrines and shit like level scaling killed it (expansions were cool though)

Skyrim starts good then descends into soulless, repetitive dross after 20-ish hours.

Daggerfall is good-ish, but comes with a lot of dated elements which grate now.

Fallout 3 I really enjoyed for my first playthrough, but replaying it really showed it's flaws up big time. It's a "mong-out" game rather than an interesting one, and when I first played it I's a few weeks to do little but mong-out, so was ideal for that.

Fallout 4 is an abomination.

[Element]

the island is the size of my back yard.

half the directions were flat out incorrect because they didn't bother doing any QA.
Read the directions given here and

[Element]

Also, playing Morrowind->Oblivion->Skyrim back to back makes it painfully clear that Morrowind has the worst quests by far. They're nearly all boring fetch quests or static targets to kill.

Oblivion wastes potential by expending the dynamic world on ridiculous quests like assassinating a captain of the imperial guard who conveniently takes off his armour to float in a pond in the middle of the town for 4 hours each evening

[Oyster Sauce]

Also, playing Morrowind->Oblivion->Skyrim back to back makes it painfully clear that Morrowind has the worst quests by far. They're nearly all boring fetch quests or static targets to kill.

Oblivion wastes potential by expending the dynamic world on ridiculous quests like assassinating a captain of the imperial guard who conveniently takes off his armour to float in a pond in the middle of the town for 4 hours each evening

Singled out "ridiculous" quest in Oblivion: You're given an enchanted arrow to slay a retired guard captain. It cannot pierce his armor. The target moves around and is accompanied by a bodyguard at all times except for a brief 8 minute period each day where he removes his armor to swim or when he's asleep. Optional objective to cut off his finger and deliver it to his successor.

Every single Morag Tong quest in Morrowind: The target is standing still. Hit him until he dies. If the guards are called, they don't arrest or attack you because you have a writ.

[Element]

Also, playing Morrowind->Oblivion->Skyrim back to back makes it painfully clear that Morrowind has the worst quests by far. They're nearly all boring fetch quests or static targets to kill.

Oblivion wastes potential by expending the dynamic world on ridiculous quests like assassinating a captain of the imperial guard who conveniently takes off his armour to float in a pond in the middle of the town for 4 hours each evening

Singled out "ridiculous" quest in Oblivion: You're given an enchanted arrow to slay a retired guard captain. It cannot pierce his armor. The target moves around and is accompanied by a bodyguard at all times except for a brief 8 minute period each day where he removes his armor to swim or when he's asleep. Optional objective to cut off his finger and deliver it to his successor.

Every single Morag Tong quest in Morrowind: The target is standing still. Hit him until he dies. If the guards are called, they don't arrest or attack you because you have a writ.

Yes, and all that doesn't make the quest any more ridiculous. I'd rather he was standing still, if the alternative is whatever that was.

[Oyster Sauce]

Oblivion wastes potential by expending the dynamic world on ridiculous quests like assassinating a captain of the imperial guard who conveniently takes off his armour to float in a pond in the middle of the town for 4 hours each evening

Singled out "ridiculous" quest in Oblivion: You're given an enchanted arrow to slay a retired guard captain. It cannot pierce his armor. The target moves around and is accompanied by a bodyguard at all times except for a brief 8 minute period each day where he removes his armor to swim or when he's asleep. Optional objective to cut off his finger and deliver it to his successor.

Every single Morag Tong quest in Morrowind: The target is standing still. Hit him until he dies. If the guards are called, they don't arrest or attack you because you have a writ.

Yes, and all that doesn't make the quest any more ridiculous. I'd rather he was standing still, if the alternative is whatever that was.

So your core issue is that the timescale of a video game isn't 1:1 with reality?

[Element]

Singled out "ridiculous" quest in Oblivion: You're given an enchanted arrow to slay a retired guard captain. It cannot pierce his armor. The target moves around and is accompanied by a bodyguard at all times except for a brief 8 minute period each day where he removes his armor to swim or when he's asleep. Optional objective to cut off his finger and deliver it to his successor.

Every single Morag Tong quest in Morrowind: The target is standing still. Hit him until he dies. If the guards are called, they don't arrest or attack you because you have a writ.

Yes, and all that doesn't make the quest any more ridiculous. I'd rather he was standing still, if the alternative is whatever that was.

So your core issue is that the timescale of a video game isn't 1:1 with reality?

My issue with Oblivion is that they didn't utilize their dynamic world to make great quests, rendering all of it a mere gimmick.

[Emphyrio]

half the directions were flat out incorrect because they didn't bother doing any QA.
Read the directions given here and see how long it takes you to find the desired location.

About 20 seconds.

[Havitner]

le old meme

[agentorange]

I am well aware that Oblivion is a shit game and the waypoints/fast travel are among the worst features ever added to a video game
HOWEVER
Do you remember the Morrowind thieves guild questline? Can you tell me what happened in the Morag Tong's storyline, or even just one thing interesting you did out of all of its quests? I can't, which is weird because I've played Morrowind a hell of a lot more than Oblivion, yet I'll never forget the cursed ring in the well, getting high on hist sap and slaughtering an entire village, buying a haunted house, the goofy murder mystery mansion where you're the murderer, stealing the Elder Scroll, or even just competing with other thieves guild initiates to steal from a specific target in the city first.
Granted, it is far better to have to find objectives yourself, but it hardly matters when nearly every quest in the game is completely uninteresting and forgettable.

What you're describing is the epitome of theme park design. All of those quests can be summed up reductively but truthfully as "scripted thing happens" followed by awkward moments of gameplay where characters spaz out and say inane dialogue. Your descriptions in retrospect make the quests seem far more interesting than they are in actuality. As Element said, for all the talk about the radiant AI and how Oblivion tries to have a "dynamic living breathing world" the quests do absolutely nothing to try and take advantage of the unscripted open world systems, they're all a series of highly scripted events that play out the same way every time for everyone no matter what kind of character you have. Items that are needed for quests only spawn once you have the quest, people you need to kill for the quests only spawn or become killable once you take the quest, etc. Having heavily scripted quests isn't a bad thing in itself, VTMB and AoD both do it and I like both of them but those games play to their strengths, but in the case of Oblivion the strength of the game is supposed to be the open world and none of the quests take advantage of it whatsoever.

It's the opposite for the most part with Morrowind, where yeah you can't necessarily point to a single quest and describe it the way you do with the Oblivion quests as this exciting isolated cinematic moment, but the in the moment gameplay is far better and your approach (literally as how you get to a quest objective can be an adventure in itself) to a quest can be significantly differently depending on what kind of character you have. The quests in Morrowind feel like they are naturally taking place in a larger world rather than every quest feeling like an isolated, instanced event which is what makes it a better open world game.

[junior]

Even just looking at the difficulty slider in Oblivion tells you everything that you need to know without playing, the developers had zero confidence in their game and everyone that played it blind knows how utterly broken the core rpg mechanics are, which isn't that crazy there are a lot of crpgs with broken systems but this one goes beyond because it's unfixable with any patches or mods, the only way to make it ""work"" is to use some illogical system abuse method called efficient leveling.

► Show Spoiler

I think people who voted for Oblivion are just trolling and/or having a laugh

[asf]

@rusty_shackleford is still looking for caius cosades

[Oyster Sauce]

Even just looking at the difficulty slider in Oblivion tells you everything that you need to know without playing, the developers had zero confidence in their game and everyone that played it blind knows how utterly broken the core rpg mechanics are, which isn't that crazy there are a lot of crpgs with broken systems but this one goes beyond because it's unfixable with any patches or mods, the only way to make it ""work"" is to use some illogical system abuse method called efficient leveling.

► Show Spoiler

I think people who voted for Oblivion are just trolling and/or having a laugh

What makes Oblivion's slider different than the ones in Skyrim and Morrowind?

[junior]

Even just looking at the difficulty slider in Oblivion tells you everything that you need to know without playing, the developers had zero confidence in their game and everyone that played it blind knows how utterly broken the core rpg mechanics are, which isn't that crazy there are a lot of crpgs with broken systems but this one goes beyond because it's unfixable with any patches or mods, the only way to make it ""work"" is to use some illogical system abuse method called efficient leveling.

► Show Spoiler

I think people who voted for Oblivion are just trolling and/or having a laugh

What makes Oblivion's slider different than the ones in Skyrim and Morrowind?

game doesn't work as it supposed to without it

[Emphyrio]

I am well aware that Oblivion is a shit game and the waypoints/fast travel are among the worst features ever added to a video game
HOWEVER
Do you remember the Morrowind thieves guild questline? Can you tell me what happened in the Morag Tong's storyline, or even just one thing interesting you did out of all of its quests? I can't, which is weird because I've played Morrowind a hell of a lot more than Oblivion, yet I'll never forget the cursed ring in the well, getting high on hist sap and slaughtering an entire village, buying a haunted house, the goofy murder mystery mansion where you're the murderer, stealing the Elder Scroll, or even just competing with other thieves guild initiates to steal from a specific target in the city first.
Granted, it is far better to have to find objectives yourself, but it hardly matters when nearly every quest in the game is completely uninteresting and forgettable.

What you're describing is the epitome of theme park design. All of those quests can be summed up reductively but truthfully as "scripted thing happens" followed by awkward moments of gameplay where characters spaz out and say inane dialogue. Your descriptions in retrospect make the quests seem far more interesting than they are in actuality. As Element said, for all the talk about the radiant AI and how Oblivion tries to have a "dynamic living breathing world" the quests do absolutely nothing to try and take advantage of the unscripted open world systems, they're all a series of highly scripted events that play out the same way every time for everyone no matter what kind of character you have. Items that are needed for quests only spawn once you have the quest, people you need to kill for the quests only spawn or become killable once you take the quest, etc. Having heavily scripted quests isn't a bad thing in itself, VTMB and AoD both do it and I like both of them but those games play to their strengths, but in the case of Oblivion the strength of the game is supposed to be the open world and none of the quests take advantage of it whatsoever.

It's the opposite for the most part with Morrowind, where yeah you can't necessarily point to a single quest and describe it the way you do with the Oblivion quests as this exciting isolated cinematic moment, but the in the moment gameplay is far better and your approach (literally as how you get to a quest objective can be an adventure in itself) to a quest can be significantly differently depending on what kind of character you have. The quests in Morrowind feel like they are naturally taking place in a larger world rather than every quest feeling like an isolated, instanced event which is what makes it a better open world game.

How EXACTLY is a quest supposed to "take advantage of the open world"?

[Emphyrio]

I am well aware that Oblivion is a shit game and the waypoints/fast travel are among the worst features ever added to a video game
HOWEVER
Do you remember the Morrowind thieves guild questline? Can you tell me what happened in the Morag Tong's storyline, or even just one thing interesting you did out of all of its quests? I can't, which is weird because I've played Morrowind a hell of a lot more than Oblivion, yet I'll never forget the cursed ring in the well, getting high on hist sap and slaughtering an entire village, buying a haunted house, the goofy murder mystery mansion where you're the murderer, stealing the Elder Scroll, or even just competing with other thieves guild initiates to steal from a specific target in the city first.
Granted, it is far better to have to find objectives yourself, but it hardly matters when nearly every quest in the game is completely uninteresting and forgettable.

Oblivion had lots of clever writing, but I think people didn't realize it at the time because the game is let down by the potato faces, zoom-in dialog and overworked voice actors.

[wndrbr]

How EXACTLY is a quest supposed to "take advantage of the open world"?

by allowing players to get lost in it. Morrowind forces you to actually pay attention to what a questgiver says, watch where you're going, point out the landmarks, etc. Meanwhile in Oblivion you can just fast-travel to a quest marker.

Kingdom Come Deliverance, despite overall having a rather inconsistent approach to quest design, has quite a lot of good quests that take advantage of the open world. Not all quests guide you directly to a specific location or an NPC, in some cases you must ask the neighbors on their whereabouts, or visit a local pub or an inn. The infamous monastery quest takes advantage of the NPC AI routines, forcing the player to larp as a monk for a few days and repeate the same actions as other fellow monks in order to blend in.

[rusty_shackleford]

starfield is the first beth game I've played for more than ~15 hours tbh, and it was shit

excluding fo76, which was made by a separate team

[Emphyrio]

How EXACTLY is a quest supposed to "take advantage of the open world"?

by allowing players to get lost in it. Morrowind forces you to actually pay attention to what a questgiver says, watch where you're going, point out the landmarks, etc. Meanwhile in Oblivion you can just fast-travel to a quest marker.

Kingdom Come Deliverance, despite overall having a rather inconsistent approach to quest design, has quite a lot of good quests that take advantage of the open world. Not all quests guide you directly to a specific location or an NPC, in some cases you must ask the neighbors on their whereabouts, or visit a local pub or an inn. The infamous monastery quest takes advantage of the NPC AI routines, forcing the player to larp as a monk for a few days and repeate the same actions as other fellow monks in order to blend in.

Let's not conflate fast travel with quest markers. Morrowind had fast travel too, they were just called silt striders and boats, and good thing because it already requires aggressive movespeed mods. And you couldn't fast travel to undiscovered locations in Oblivion or any subsequent game.

Can you REALLY "ask the neighbors their whereabouts", though? There's a lot of jokes about people not finding CC, but it really is stupid. My recollection is that the locals just say "yeah he's in east balmora somewheres" and you're just supposed to break into every house unannounced until you find him. Maybe this was changed in the mod that adds tons of dialog and people are mixed up about it? And in Kingdumb Cum it was even worse for one of the quests, and I remember getting kinda pissed off about it. The quest where you're supposed to steal wine from the Rathouse, but it has tons of locked doors and you can't actually ask Capon which one it is. Then it turns out that the only way to get to the wine cellar is to go to the 2nd story first and then go downstairs again to a door that looks like it should lead back outside.

[Rigwort]

My recollection is that the locals just say "yeah he's in east balmora somewheres" and you're just supposed to break into every house unannounced until you find him

If you hover your cross-hairs over doors the name of the house is displayed. Further, you're directed to the corner club and a man there will give you directions.

[asf]

You can find caius cosade immediately if you don't have brain damage and spend more than 2 seconds reading the instructions

[Emphyrio]

My recollection is that the locals just say "yeah he's in east balmora somewheres" and you're just supposed to break into every house unannounced until you find him

If you hover your cross-hairs over doors the name of the house is displayed. Further, you're directed to the corner club and a man there will give you directions.

OK, guess I misremembered. It's been a long time.

In Oblivion, Caius would actually frequent the club he is only said to frequent in Morrowind.

[Emphyrio]

This is how Oblivion handles a "find a person" quest. I think this one example "takes advantage of the open world" better than anything in Morrowind.

Quick Walkthrough
Speak with the leader of the Bruma Mages Guild, Jeanne Frasoric. She needs help in finding a mage who has been missing for days.
Either look for J'skar by yourself or get help from Volanaro, his mischievous friend.
Tell Jeanne Frasoric that you have found J'skar to obtain her recommendation.
Detailed Walkthrough
Bruma Mages Guild
Talk to Jeanne Frasoric in the Bruma Mages Guild. She will request that you find J'skar - a missing mage who hasn't been seen in days. If you can find him, you'll have your recommendation from her. There are two possible ways to accomplish this quest.

Working with Volanaro
Talk to Volanaro, also in the guild hall. If his disposition towards you is at least 70, Volanaro will agree to help you find J'skar if you help him play a prank on Jeanne. He wants you to steal Jeanne's Manual of Spellcraft from her desk upstairs. He'll even teach you the Minor Latch Crack spell (a more efficient version of Open Easy Lock). Go upstairs to Jeanne's room, unlock her desk, and steal the Manual of Spellcraft from it. Jeanne's copy of this book is unique; other versions of the book will not work for the quest. Be sure you are not caught taking the book, or else you will be suspended for stealing from the guild. Return the book to Volanaro who will tell you to meet him in the living quarters after 10pm.

Wait or return around 10pm to the living quarters downstairs. Find Volanaro in his room and speak to him. Once you're ready, ask him about J'skar. In a flash, J'skar will appear before you. Apparently the two were just having some fun with Jeanne, and he was invisible all along. Report to Jeanne that you've found J'skar in order to receive her recommendation.

If you want to get the Minor Latch Crack spell without pranking Jeanne, just agree to Volanaro's plan, don't steal anything, and then follow the walkthrough below to find J'skar yourself. Even if you don't steal Jeanne's book after receiving the spell, Volanaro will still remark on how great the prank went.

Searching for J'skar on your own
The easiest way to find J'skar is using Detect Life and looking for the only purple glow not associated with any visible person. J'skar is most likely to be in the basement. You may also bump into an invisible barrier from time to time, and the tool-tip at the bottom of the page will tell you it is J'skar. If you speak to him while he is under the Chameleon effect, J'skar will say, "Shhh! Go away! You'll ruin everything!"

Once you have found J'skar, cast Dispel on him and he will reappear. The apprentice-level spell Dispel Other can be purchased from Alves Uvenim in Leyawiin; at journeyman level in Mysticism, Volanaro can sell you the Greater Dispel Other spell. If you are not able to cast a spell, you can instead use a Dispel Other Scroll or a Staff of Dispel. The scroll and staff can be found in random loot from as low as level 6 and the scroll is sometimes available from some stores that sell random leveled scrolls, such as the Mystic Emporium in the Imperial City Market District.

Once J'skar reappears, he will complain that you're "no fun at all" but agrees to tell Jeanne that you found him.

Notes
Until this quest is completed, Volanaro is scripted to cast a Chameleon spell on J'skar every evening. The spell (FormID 00083600) provides 100% Chameleon for 2880 seconds (as with all spells, the duration is real time; for standard game settings, the spell will last 24 in-game hours). It is possible to get in Volanaro's way when he is casting the spell, resulting in the long-duration Chameleon spell being cast on you instead.