Min-maxing needs to be removed from the leveling system. But maybe someday, in a far future, long after the dehardcoding, I'd like to make a "raevol's mechanics overhaul" that implements some things. Do I think these changes should be incorporated into OpenMW? Helllll no, OpenMW is supposed to be faithfully recreating Morrowind. So what's your point raevol? Why are you spending all this time bashing a game that you obviously love, since you've been supporting OpenMW for so long? My point is I think with some mechanics changes, Morrowind could be updated to be a really interesting modern game. The only real strategy is preparation before-hand. The enemies have no particular strengths or weaknesses to exploit, the terrain doesn't afford any advantages or disadvantages, and there's no real strategy or tactics that can be employed on an instant by instant basis. Sure, you can swap around spells or switch weapons, and the weapons have different attacks, but at the end of the day all you're doing is flailing the same attack over and over, or lobbing the same spell over and over.
And as a player, there's very little variation to your abilities when retaliating. There's absolutely no variation to their behavior. Enemies in Morrowind either charge, or kite if they are a caster or archer. Second, the enemies exhibit varied and interesting combat behaviors: they will charge in, they will run away, they will circle around for a better strike. First, because you're a little tribal girl with primitive weapons fighting big, burly machines, the combat has an inherent intensity because you always feel outmatched. I've been thinking about what makes Horizon's combat so fun. But is realizing that you need to dump a few racer plumes because your jump height is starting to suffer fun? No, that's an absolute chore.Īnd back to the combat. Is it fun to find powerful and interesting items in dungeons? Or stealing valuable items from fancy NPCs? Absolutely. I can't imagine that I am the only one that feels like they spend way too much time in Morrowind with the inventory open, shuffling crap around trying to figure out what's worth keeping and what needs to be left to garbage collection. I would say the core gameplay mechanics in Morrowind are exploring, which is fun, and inventory management, which really isn't fun. Combat is almost an afterthought in Morrowind, it's a barely realized gameplay mechanic.
So what are the core gameplay mechanics of Morrowind? It's really *not* the combat. And aside from running around and picking stuff up, it's the overwhelming majority of the gameplay. But what's the critical difference, as far as gameplay is concerned? Hunting robots in HZD is fun, engaging, and immersive. Of all of these games, Morrowind is most like Horizon: Zero Dawn. But I think there's a key lesson to be learned here. Not obviously Uncharted is an odd man out in this set of games because it's not an RPG. There's no real inventory to deal with, there's no dialog choices, the levels are linear so there's not really much in the way of exploring. Sure, there's picking up ammo, and swapping guns sometimes, and hunting down treasures if you are trying to get that trophy, but almost all of player time is spent on the core gameplay. In Baldur's Gate they are inventory management, trading, and clicking through seemingly limitless UI elements. In Horizon they are crafting, foraging/scavenging, dialog, trading, etc. In Horizon and Baldur's Gate, there's also a ton of side activities that the player has to deal with. Seems weird to mention dialog as a "gameplay activity" but if you've played that series, you know it's true. In Baldur's Gate the activities are combat and dialog. In Horizon, the activities are fighting robots, and a second activity that could be noted is exploring. Puzzles is a third, it's definitely another thing you do in that game, but I'm not going to really address that here.
For Uncharted that would be gunfights and platforming, the game has two very specific gameplay mechanics. When you are playing games, there's usually a set of different activities you do, but there's generally only one or two activities that make up the actual gameplay. And then putting all of that in context with OpenMW. This is inspired by a lifetime of playing games, but more specifically by my recent experiences playing three particular games: Baldur's Gate, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and the Uncharted series. This is a brain dump I've been wanting to write up for a long time.