The Elder Scrolls -

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Clicking the confirm button over and over to watch the same animation play out 10 trillion times isn't exactly what I would call thrilling gameplay, or even gameplay at all.

Same goes for a "game" where you aim and hit dead center, and it still registers as a miss. That's the very definition of a bad game. At least JRPGs had nice animations to look at, and you can actually breathe and formulate a strategy due to it being turn-based. If the combat is real time, a dead-center hit should register, since it obviously didn't miss.

Not to mention the fact that Morrowind looked like a game from the late 90s, not the 2000s.

 

[scathefire]

Ulfric was motivated by vengeance, loss, and revenge. Dagoth Ur was motivated by simple greed and lust for power. Compared to Ulfric Stormcloak, Dagoth Ur is just the magic Dunmer equivalent of Mr. Krabs.

Dagoth Ur was driven crazy by the Tools of Kagrenac and perceived himself as being betrayed by Nerevar. Did you even play the damn game?

 

[HeyYou]

Dagoth Ur was driven crazy by the Tools of Kagrenac and perceived himself as being betrayed by Nerevar. Did you even play the damn game?

He also knew the truth about the Tribunal murdering Nerevar and erasing his house from the records and was infuriated that they were being worshiped as gods.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Dagoth Ur was driven crazy by the Tools of Kagrenac and perceived himself as being betrayed by Nerevar. Did you even play the damn game?

Which again, is just another Isildur-type storyline with him being tempted by tools of power. As I said, his story is too similar to Isildur without adding much to the formula:

Dagoth Ur just reeks of the same stereotype that Isildur had-of a once-noble man who's gone off the deep edge.

Just as Isildur was tempted by the One Ring of Power and he decided to keep it for himself to use it, so too did Dagoth Ur try to keep the Profane Tools and make use of the power coming from the Heart of Lorkhan.

But by the time you meet him in Morrowind, Dagoth Ur is just angling for more power, creating a false god of his own and trying to turn his house into god-priests, which again, just shows that he's greedy for more power for himself. So yes, by the time you meet Dagoth Ur in Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, he's become the Dunmer equivalent of Mr. Krabs.

He also knew the truth about the Tribunal murdering Nerevar and erasing his house from the records and was infuriated that they were being worshiped as gods.

And his answer to that was to make a false god of his own and make his house into god-priests. Which again, shows that he is no better.

Also, other records state that Nerevar and Dagoth Ur fought, and that the former died by the wounds that he had suffered while fighting the latter because Dagoth was corrupted by the tools.

 

[Titos]

Same goes for a "game" where you aim and hit dead center, and it still registers as a miss. That's the very definition of a bad game. At least JRPGs had nice animations to look at, and you can actually breathe and formulate a strategy due to it being turn-based. If the combat is real time, a dead-center hit should register, since it obviously didn't miss.

Not to mention the fact that Morrowind looked like a game from the late 90s, not the 2000s.

What strategy? Attack every other turn and heal the other, the only JRPG with even slightly complex combat is SMT.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

What strategy? Attack every other turn and heal the other, the only JRPG with even slightly complex combat is SMT.

And? Compare that to Morrowind where you just buff yourself and whale on the enemy, and it's downright fun in comparison.

I'm not saying JRPGs are perfect, I preferred 2000s Bioware games to them like KOTOR and Mass Effect, but when compared to Morrowind, they're practically a work of art. Especially when Morrowind looks like a bad PS1 game in comparison. They really should have stuck with sprites until Oblivion.

 

[Titos]

And? Compare that to Morrowind where you just buff yourself and whale on the enemy, and it's downright fun in comparison.

I'm not saying JRPGs are perfect, I preferred 2000s Bioware games to them like KOTOR and Mass Effect, but when compared to Morrowind, they're practically a work of art. Especially when Morrowind looks like a bad PS1 game in comparison. They really should have stuck with sprites until Oblivion.

Buffing myself to retarded strength and then oneshotting an enemy sounds much more fun to me than just selecting shit off a menu then watching a 3 minute long animation every single fight. The fact that JRPG devs put in an option to have the game do the combat for you alone kinda proves they know JRPG combat sucks ass.

 

[HeyYou]

And his answer to that was to make a false god of his own and make his house into god-priests. Which again, shows that he is no better.

Also, other records state that Nerevar and Dagoth Ur fought, and that the former died by the wounds that he had suffered while fighting the latter because Dagoth was corrupted by the tools.

Yes, that's the point, believe it or not. The Great Houses, the Tribunal and Dagoth Ur all have major flaws and aren't exactly good people. Dagoth Ur wouldn't exactly be a good villain if he didn't have villainous traits, would he?

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Yes, that's the point, believe it or not. The Great Houses, the Tribunal and Dagoth Ur all have major flaws and aren't exactly good people. Dagoth Ur wouldn't exactly be a good villain if he didn't have villainous traits, would he?

All he has are shallow, villainous traits. And yet he never even gets to enact his plan. Which means that as far as villains go, he's a wannabe. Nothing more. Hey, at least Ulfric successfully stole half a country from the Empire and waged a guerilla war against them. Dagoth gets boned before his war with the Empire even started.

Not to mention that the Great Houses and the Tribunal are again, 50 shades of the same proud race that thinks they're hot shit and that slavery is OK. The followers of the "true" Morrowind religion worship evil Daedra like Mephala and Boethiah, the followers of the False Tribunal worship false idols, and all the Great Houses outside of House Hlaalu are perpetuating the same flawed system that's held Morrowind back for ages. Outside of the abolitionists, who keep themselves hidden, House Hlaalu, which works with the Empire, and the Azura-worshipers, the rest of Morrowind could get swallowed up by the Argonians, and I wouldn't give a damn.

Buffing myself to retarded strength and then oneshotting an enemy sounds much more fun to me than just selecting shit off a menu then watching a 3 minute long animation every single fight. The fact that JRPG devs put in an option to have the game do the combat for you alone kinda proves they know JRPG combat sucks ass.

No, that's not fun. That's not even a battle, it's a joke. Also, you're selecting shit from a menu too in Morrowind to buff yourself up. At least JRPGs have better animations and fights, and when I fight a god in a JRPG, it actually feels like a fucking war, not a skirmish. The battle is long and arduous, and if you fuck up, you're back at square one. And no, you can't just let the game play itself on an important battle, because if you do, you'll get slaughtered 90% of the time.

 

[Titos]

No, that's not fun. That's not even a battle, it's a joke. Also, you're selecting shit from a menu too in Morrowind to buff yourself up. At least JRPGs have better animations and fights, and when I fight a god in a JRPG, it actually feels like a fucking war, not a skirmish. The battle is long and arduous, and if you fuck up, you're back at square one. And no, you can't just let the game play itself on an important battle, because if you do, you'll get slaughtered 90% of the time.

In what world does a character sitting there and taking turns letting you hit them feel like a war? The way you're describing combat makes it sound like you're talking about Ninja Gaiden, not a game where you mash the confirm button over and over again to watch the same animation 30 times per fight with no real time input or tactics required. It's not like it matters anyways since "JRPG" is a misnomer since they're not RPGs, they're just tactics games for brainlets.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

In what world does a character sitting there and taking turns letting you hit them feel like a war? The way you're describing combat makes it sound like you're talking about Ninja Gaiden, not a game where you mash the confirm button over and over again to watch the same animation 30 times per fight with no real time input or tactics required. It's not like it matters anyways since "JRPG" is a misnomer since they're not RPGs, they're just tactics games for brainlets.

You're engaged in a long battle against an enemy that can send you back to a checkpoint that's 30 minutes or 1 hour ago. Compare that to Morrowind where fighting a god is basically you just beefing yourself up for 30 seconds and killing him in 5, it's far better. Especially if you fuck up, you have to start over, making the battle more tense, with more consequences.

And yes, you need tactical input and tactics, or else, those JRPG bosses would eat you alive.

Again, it's not my ideal RPG game, I prefer KOTOR or Mass Effect where it's more fluid, but JRPGs do it better than Morrowind does.

 

[Titos]

You're engaged in a long battle against an enemy that can send you back to a checkpoint that's 30 minutes or 1 hour ago. Compare that to Morrowind where fighting a god is basically you just beefing yourself up for 30 seconds and killing him in 5, it's far better.

And yes, you need tactical input and tactics, or else, those JRPG bosses would eat you alive.

Again, it's not my ideal RPG game, I prefer KOTOR or Mass Effect where it's more fluid, but JRPGs do it better than Morrowind does.

I have to wonder what kinda J"RPGs" you're playing that require tactics because the most difficult they ever get in my experience is shit like SMT3 and even then the only "tactic" you need is spam an attack that is the weakness of the boss and heal yourself every other turn while casting buffs, I say that as someone who likes SMT.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

I have to wonder what kinda J"RPGs" you're playing that require tactics because the most difficult they ever get in my experience is shit like SMT3 and even then the only "tactic" you need is spam an attack that is the weakness of the boss and heal yourself every other turn while casting buffs, I say that as someone who likes SMT.

Final Fantasy games, Mario RPGs, and the like. FFVI, FFX, among other games.

They're not as fluid in gameplay as early 2000s Bioware RPGs like KOTOR or Mass Effect, but they're still far better than Morrowind.

 

[Titos]

Final Fantasy games, Mario RPGs, and the like. FFVI, FFX, among other games.

They're not as fluid in gameplay as early 2000s Bioware RPGs like KOTOR or Mass Effect, but they're still far better than Morrowind.

I would rather click on something and miss a bunch at the start of the game then see my character able to oneshot shit at the end of the game after leveling up and learning stuff like how to abuse alchemy than start a game mashing confirm on a menu and ending the game mashing confirm on a menu but now with bigger numbers. I liked Kotor but it's combat was basically just doing the same shit of putting stuff in the queue over and over then watching the animation for the entire game. Most of the time the same exact same attacks and animations. Mass Effects combat was basically Gears of War combat but enemies get less bullet spongey the higher level you are. RPGs in general have shit combat, and I don't think having watered down Gears Of War combat or watered down tactics game combat is any better than having diceroll combat.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

I would rather click on something and miss a bunch at the start of the game then see my character able to oneshot shit at the end of the game after leveling up and learning stuff like how to abuse alchemy than start a game mashing confirm on a menu and ending the game mashing confirm on a menu but now with bigger numbers. I liked Kotor but it's combat was basically just doing the same shit of putting stuff in the queue over and over then watching the animation for the entire game. Most of the time the same exact same attacks and animations. Mass Effects combat was basically Gears of War combat but enemies get less bullet spongey the higher level you are. RPGs in general have shit combat, and I don't think having watered down Gears Of War combat or watered down tactics game combat is any better than having diceroll combat.

And all those games are far better than Morrowind where you beef yourself up for 30 seconds and kill a god in 5. Mass Effect and KOTOR's bosses actually feel like bosses, meanwhile, Morrowind, you might as well throw away the game and just go with a D&D session without a videogame.

Diceroll combat is better in KOTOR than in Morrowind. At least we see the characters dodging missed attacks. You don't have a knife that lands dead-center at the enemy's torso reading as missed. That's just bad gameplay.

As I said before, a real-time first person system implies that hit chance should be dictated by your skill as a human with a controller/keyboard & mouse. With this system, YOU are the character. A stats and dice-roll based combat system is designed primarily to compensate for limited control and a total lack of visual cues. It's a layer of abstraction between you and the player character. Mixing them both is what makes the design of the Morrowind combat system objectively bad as they are two diametrically opposing systems.

Mass Effect gameplay isn't perfect, but it's far better than Morrowind's. You can have low sniper skill, and that makes aiming hard, but if you land a shot in the enemy's face, it scans as a hit, and it hits them hard.

 

[Titos]

And all those games are far better than Morrowind where you beef yourself up for 30 seconds and kill a god in 5. Mass Effect and KOTOR's bosses actually feel like bosses, meanwhile, Morrowind, you might as well throw away the game and just go with a D&D session without a videogame.

Diceroll combat is better in KOTOR than in Morrowind. At least we see the characters dodging missed attacks. You don't have a knife that lands dead-center at the enemy's torso reading as missed.

Mass Effect bosses are just aiming at something and spending 10 minutes holding down the fire button. I can't even remember kotor bosses outside of the final boss. It sounds like you don't want an RPG, you want an action game with stats and choices but without them having much importance. Half the RPG shit in Morrowind wouldn't be nearly as interesting if it was just contact based combat. It's nice seeing your character go from not being able to beat a tiny bug to being able to destroy a god, and you can't really achieve that effect as potently if you aren't doing diceroll stuff. Unless you bloat enemy healthpools in which case you are spending 5 minutes swinging at an enemy and hitting them to kill them instead of spending 5 minutes swinging at an enemy and only hitting them once a minute. At the end of the 5 minutes the enemy is dead either way and the only difference is you got some extra sound and visual effects.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Mass Effect bosses are just aiming at something and spending 10 minutes holding down the fire button. I can't even remember kotor bosses outside of the final boss. It sounds like you don't want an RPG, you want an action game with stats and choices but without them having much importance. Half the RPG shit in Morrowind wouldn't be nearly as interesting if it was just contact based combat. It's nice seeing your character go from not being able to beat a tiny bug to being able to destroy a god, and you can't really achieve that effect as potently if you aren't doing diceroll stuff. Unless you bloat enemy healthpools in which case you are spending 5 minutes swinging at an enemy and hitting them to kill them instead of spending 5 minutes swinging at an enemy and only hitting them once a minute. At the end of the 5 minutes the enemy is dead either way and the only difference is you got some extra sound and visual effects.

So? At least other games like JRPGs and Bioware RPGs have bosses that actually can give you a war. The gods of Morrowind, once you've leveled enough, are gnats. You're not gearing up to fight cosmic forces, you're just artificially grinding until you can kill everyone by farting in their general direction. That's not what an epic, role-playing adventure looks like. It's more like a stupid math equation that you solve by spending 20 hours grinding your skills unnaturally instead of just leveling up fluidly and fighting a final boss who can give you a battle worthy of being the endpoint of an epic, role-playing adventure. Becoming a god in Morrowind isn't an epic adventure worthy of the gods, it's just spamming shit until you're at the right level.

Take the tedium you have when fighting Malak or Saren, and multiply it by a factor of 20-30. You spend one hour fighting Saren or Barthandelus in a final boss fight, or spend tens of hours grinding like an idiot. (Or if you have a PC, you just use the console command.) I think I'd rather have the 1-hour fight over the dozens of hours of grinding that, quite frankly, breaks the role-playing aspect in half. If I'm playing the role of a warrior who's tasked with saving the world, the grinding breaks the immersion in my role-playing, especially if the fate of the world is at stake, and I'm jumping my way to wherever I go just to level up acrobatics, or I'm standing in a fire healing myself for days just to level up my healing skill. At least a 1-hour boss fight is fitting for a final boss that I have to face at the end of a role-playing adventure, so it's akin to a final test of all my skills and knowledge.

Again, Morrowind's gameplay is bad because it tries to mix two diametrically-opposed systems into one. Diceroll combat works in turn-based RPGs like KOTOR where your skills are based on your stats and your luck. It does not work in real-time combat where you have to aim and hit the enemy dead-center, because your skill with how you hit things is depending on how good your actual aim is.

All these excuses for Morrowind's objectively bad gameplay just goes to show that you people are desperate. RPGs with better gameplay systems exist, from the realtime gameplay of the Mass Effect series, to the turn-based combat of KOTOR and Final Fantasy, and they're all far more well-known and more successful than Morrowind. Which is why Elder Scrolls didn't really hit its stride until Oblivion, where they finally decided on real-time combat deciding whether or not you hit or miss by your aim, and left the dice-rolls to critical hits.

The moment they abandoned Morrowind's inane dice-roll combat, Elder Scrolls suddenly hit big and Bethesda became a contender with bigger RPG studios like Bioware and Squeenix. Then they made Skyrim, where they doubled-down on the same kind of combat that Oblivion and Mass Effect had, and everyone from CDPRed to Nintendo started trying to copy them, while every major platform had their release of Skyrim because the game was so well-loved.

It seems that the farther they went from Morrowind's formula, the more well-loved and popular Elder Scrolls became. And no, Morrowind's way isn't the only way for true RPGs, since KOTOR and ME1 were true RPGs, without having to rely on Morrowind's style of bullshit combat and gameplay. KOTOR did the dice-roll combat right, Mass Effect did the real-time combat right. Morrowind tried to mix both systems, and failed at implementing them properly.

 

[Titos]

So? At least other games like JRPGs and Bioware RPGs have bosses that actually can give you a war. The gods of Morrowind, once you've leveled enough, are gnats. You're not gearing up to fight cosmic forces, you're just artificially grinding until you can kill everyone by farting in their general direction. That's not what an epic, role-playing adventure looks like. It's more like a stupid math equation that you solve by spending 20 hours grinding your skills unnaturally instead of just leveling up fluidly and fighting a final boss who can give you a battle worthy of being the endpoint of an epic, role-playing adventure. Becoming a god in Morrowind isn't an epic adventure worthy of the gods, it's just spamming shit until you're at the right level.

Take the tedium you have when fighting Malak or Saren, and multiply it by a factor of 20-30. You spend one hour fighting Saren or Barthandelus in a final boss fight, or spend tens of hours grinding like an idiot. (Or if you have a PC, you just use the console command.) I think I'd rather have the 1-hour fight over the dozens of hours of grinding that, quite frankly, breaks the role-playing aspect in half. If I'm playing the role of a warrior who's tasked with saving the world, the grinding breaks the immersion in my role-playing, especially if the fate of the world is at stake, and I'm jumping my way to wherever I go just to level up acrobatics, or I'm standing in a fire healing myself for days just to level up my healing skill. At least a 1-hour boss fight is fitting for a final boss that I have to face at the end of a role-playing adventure, so it's akin to a final test of all my skills and knowledge.

Again, Morrowind's gameplay is bad because it tries to mix two diametrically-opposed systems into one. Diceroll combat works in turn-based RPGs like KOTOR where your skills are based on your stats and your luck. It does not work in real-time combat where you have to aim and hit the enemy dead-center, because your skill with how you hit things is depending on how good your actual aim is.

All these excuses for Morrowind's objectively bad gameplay just goes to show that you people are desperate. RPGs with better gameplay systems exist, from the realtime gameplay of the Mass Effect series, to the turn-based combat of KOTOR and Final Fantasy, and they're all far more well-known and more successful than Morrowind. Which is why Elder Scrolls didn't really hit its stride until Oblivion, where they finally decided on real-time combat deciding whether or not you hit or miss by your aim, and left the dice-rolls to critical hits.

The moment they abandoned Morrowind's inane dice-roll combat, Elder Scrolls suddenly hit big and Bethesda became a contender with bigger RPG studios like Bioware and Squeenix. Then they made Skyrim, where they doubled-down on the same kind of combat that Oblivion and Mass Effect had, and everyone from CDPRed to Nintendo started trying to copy them, while every major platform had their release of Skyrim because the game was so well-loved.

It seems that the farther they went from Morrowind's formula, the more well-loved and popular Elder Scrolls became. And no, Morrowind's way isn't the only way for true RPGs, since KOTOR and ME1 were true RPGs, without having to rely on Morrowind's style of bullshit combat and gameplay. KOTOR did the dice-roll combat right, Mass Effect did the real-time combat right. Morrowind tried to mix both systems, and failed at implementing them properly.

Sounds to me like you just have ADHD or a severe inability to understand how dicerolls in something like Morrowind are an abstraction of classic Tabletop games. Or more likely you just want an action game with stats and choices instead of a game where roleplaying is the main focus. Something becoming more popular does not mean it has become better especially with RPGs, just look at how much more popular ME2 was compared to ME1 despite culling a bunch of RPG elements. Would you really like Xcom more if hit chances were 100% but just did different damage based on whether or not you did a critical hit? People might say so but I have a feeling they wouldn't. Hell you can play Morrowind mods without diceroll combat as I tried recently and it makes combat tedious as fuck, and if you want hits to be more common just spec your character better.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Sounds to me like you just have ADHD or a severe inability to understand how dicerolls in something like Morrowind are an abstraction of classic Tabletop games. Or more likely you just want an action game with stats and choices instead of a game where roleplaying is the main focus. Something becoming more popular does not mean it has become better especially with RPGs, just look at how much more popular ME2 was compared to ME1 despite culling a bunch of RPG elements. Would you really like Xcom more if hit chances were 100% but just did different damage based on whether or not you did a critical hit? People might say so but I have a feeling they wouldn't. Hell you can play Morrowind mods without diceroll combat as I tried recently and it makes combat tedious as fuck, and if you want hits to be more common just spec your character better.

Classic tabletop games did not have real-time combat. Which again, goes to show that Morrowind's implementation of it was bullshit, since they tried to mix it with real-time combat. Whereas in KOTOR, since the combat is turn-based and you don't aim at your enemies, you just toggle the cursor at them and press the button to choose an attack, it worked well. There's a reason why I don't call bullshit on KOTOR's dice-roll combat, while I do on Morrowind: because KOTOR keeps the dice-roll combat in its proper context as a system in the Dungeons and Dragons-style gameplay, by making it a turn-based game where you roll the die and see if you hit or miss. Morrowind tries to mix real-time combat where you have to aim at the enemy with dice-roll combat that determines whether or not you hit or miss based on the dice-roll, which is bullshit.

As I've already said beforehand, a real-time first person system means that hit chance should be dictated by your skill as a human with a controller/keyboard & mouse. With this system, YOU are the character. Whether or not you hit the enemy is based on your aim with the controller or the keyboard/mouse. A stats and dice-roll based combat system is designed primarily to compensate for limited control and a total lack of visual cues. It's a layer of abstraction between you and the player character. Your character's aim is not your aim, you could have shit aim in real life, but since you put so much XP on the right stat, your character will hit the enemy nine times out of then. Mixing them both is what makes the design of the Morrowind combat system objectively bad as they are two diametrically opposing systems. It's like mixing oil and water, it doesn't work.

And? Again, you seem to think RPG elements are good just by themselves, when in reality, that is not the case. RPG elements exist to enhance the game, they are not the only things that make the game good or bad. Oblivion and Skyrim have watered-down RPG elements compared to Morrowind, yet they're better games, more fun and more well-loved.

Not to mention the fact that you fail to get at the bottom of what makes an RPG: PLAYING A ROLE. Hence the acronym, RPG, which stands for ROLE-PLAYING GAME. It's not about dice-roll combat or stats, it's how well you play a role, and Mass Effect 2 stuck to that well, because there are certain attacks, weapons or fighting styles that you can only use with certain classes, whereas Morrowind (and every subsequent Elder Scrolls game) just lets you grind all skills, meaning that you're no longer playing a role, you're just mastering all stats. Even in Mass Effect 2, where the stats are toned down, you still play the role of a biotic, an engineer, or a soldier. A biotic will mix up weapons with biotic attacks, an engineer relies primarily on technological attacks against the enemy. A soldier is a master of weapons and relies mostly on gunplay to blow through hordes of bad guys. You pick a role, and you have to stick by it THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE GAME. So by that metric, Mass Effect 2 sticks to the ROLE-PLAYING aspect moreso than Morrowind does, making it the superior RPG since you're given a role, and you stick with it.

Shit, even the much-maligned Final Fantasy XIII does the role-playing stuff better, since characters are given roles that they are good at, and finding the right combination for your team is your key to victory. Each party member comes right off the bat better at one skill or another, and using their different skill sets to create a team that can handle each enemy is how you win in that game, which means that yes, it's better at the role-playing aspect than Morrowind is.

You people seem to idolize the concept of what a true RPG is, without looking at what the acronym even means.

 

[Titos]

Classic tabletop games did not have real-time combat. Which again, goes to show that Morrowind's implementation of it was bullshit, since they tried to mix it with real-time combat. Whereas in KOTOR, since the combat is turn-based and you don't aim at your enemies, you just toggle the cursor at them and press the button to choose an attack, it worked well. There's a reason why I don't call bullshit on KOTOR's dice-roll combat, while I do on Morrowind: because KOTOR keeps the dice-roll combat in its proper context as a system in the Dungeons and Dragons-style gameplay, by making it a turn-based game where you roll the die and see if you hit or miss. Morrowind tries to mix real-time combat where you have to aim at the enemy with dice-roll combat that determines whether or not you hit or miss based on the dice-roll, which is bullshit.

As I've already said beforehand, a real-time first person system means that hit chance should be dictated by your skill as a human with a controller/keyboard & mouse. With this system, YOU are the character. Whether or not you hit the enemy is based on your aim with the controller or the keyboard/mouse. A stats and dice-roll based combat system is designed primarily to compensate for limited control and a total lack of visual cues. It's a layer of abstraction between you and the player character. Your character's aim is not your aim, you could have shit aim in real life, but since you put so much XP on the right stat, your character will hit the enemy nine times out of then. Mixing them both is what makes the design of the Morrowind combat system objectively bad as they are two diametrically opposing systems. It's like mixing oil and water, it doesn't work.

And? Again, you seem to think RPG elements are good just by themselves, when in reality, that is not the case. RPG elements exist to enhance the game, they are not the only things that make the game good or bad. Oblivion and Skyrim have watered-down RPG elements compared to Morrowind, yet they're better games, more fun and more well-loved.

Not to mention the fact that you fail to get at the bottom of what makes an RPG: PLAYING A ROLE. Hence the acronym, RPG, which stands for ROLE-PLAYING GAME. It's not about dice-roll combat or stats, it's how well you play a role, and Mass Effect 2 stuck to that well, because there are certain attacks, weapons or fighting styles that you can only use with certain classes, whereas Morrowind (and every subsequent Elder Scrolls game) just lets you grind all skills, meaning that you're no longer playing a role, you're just mastering all stats. Even in Mass Effect 2, where the stats are toned down, you still play the role of a biotic, an engineer, or a soldier. A biotic will mix up weapons with biotic attacks, an engineer relies primarily on technological attacks against the enemy. A soldier is a master of weapons and relies mostly on gunplay to blow through hordes of bad guys. You pick a role, and you have to stick by it THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE GAME. So by that metric, Mass Effect 2 sticks to the ROLE-PLAYING aspect moreso than Morrowind does, making it the superior RPG since you're given a role, and you stick with it.

Shit, even the much-maligned Final Fantasy XIII does the role-playing stuff better, since characters are given roles that they are good at, and finding the right combination for your team is your key to victory. Each party member comes right off the bat better at one skill or another, and using their different skill sets to create a team that can handle each enemy is how you win in that game, which means that yes, it's better at the role-playing aspect than Morrowind is.

You people seem to idolize the concept of what a true RPG is, without looking at what the acronym even means.

I'm pretty sure when you roll the dice in a tabletop game time doesn't stop, because if it did people who play TTRPGs would be much less likely to be virgins. You seem to also not understand what an RPG is if you think FF games are RPGs at all in any regard. RPG means inhabiting a role and playing as that role. Let's say you are playing as a thief in Morrowind, what can you do? Well, you can lockpick, pickpocket, sneak, etc. If you are playing a thief in FF it just means you get the "steal" command in combat. If you are stealing from someone during combat you aren't a thief, you're a fucking mugger.