Creative Liberty...

I think you probably didn't get the 1.45 patch, Bethesda put the walls in after forgetting to merge Alex Hicks level design work circa 2003.

Opps egg on your face.

Good points.  There are also things that were omitted from vanilla Morrowind that we can now add.  I'd like to see guar herds and coves and smuggling ships hidden on smugglers coast for example.  I also really like the new Vivec concepts.  We have the opportunity to improve upon the original game and don't need to sacrifice being lore accurate within reason.  That requires that people who have more experience with Morrowind constructively weigh in on concepts and planning, especially where they are not true to the original game.

May i remind you that this is Skywind, and not Morrowind, this is our own creation, our own dream of how Morrowind should have been.

This is not a clone of Morrowind, will never be, and neither you or anyone else can change that fact.

Have a nice day

Cool, make your own Skywind, with blackjack and hookers. Damn I'm so fed up with those "know - it - better" fixer people who don't know the context of decisions (both things you pointed out were decided so because of tech reasons, and Vivec docks ARE mentioned in lore, read up before you post), but will just complain and offer no help whatsoever. You're not paying us, so you're in no position to make demands. Go make love to yourself, or change your tone when making suggestions (hint - this ain't a suggestion).

Skywind is not a port or a direct recreation of Morrowind. That would be pretty lame. We're making it our vision of the game. Suck on it.

Rule of cool dominates, here.  We are not seeking to make copies if everything in Morrowind, but to show an interpretation that is updated for modern computers and works within the confines of the Skyrim skeletons.  You want to play Morrowind again just as it was with fresh puppy dog eyes?  Go back to 2002.

The idea that Morrowind can be improved is a crazy idea it seems.

-Natterforme

Tracker, If morrowind had been made today, do you think it would look the same as the original 2002 version? Nope, it wouldn't, because design choices are heavily affected by what is realistically attainable.
PC's and consoles in 2002 had the computer power of a potato.
Whilst MK had amazing ideas, much of it didn't end up in game.

The team who made Morrowind was a fraction of the size who made Skyrim.

Take a look at dragonborn DLC. Netches arent the same, horkers arent the same; Ideas evolve. Especially when your original vision is actually attainable thanks to advances in computer graphics.


Yes I have played morrowind, original and overhaul, ive run around to get a feel of the world. Then i look at skyrim and MK's original concepts, and yes, we took liberties with the designs. 

Because if u want to play original morrowind, play original morrowind, or play the OpenMW. 
 

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[External image] [External image]Hmmm.... not sure what to think perhaps envisioning new concepts improved visuals voice acting sounds scripts and all the rest that i have not mentioned and to be able to keep to the original story and feel is not the way to go..... lets pack up shop every one were done here....... wait how does any game improve and evolve over the years 
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Begone Troll!!!

If you want attention, go get a dog.

Natterforme

The idea that Morrowind can be improved is a crazy idea it seems.

-Natterforme

Welcome to the asylum ;)

Just because you haven't seen something before doesn't make it bad. Change can be good, and in the opinion of a large majority of people working on this project, who have thought about this long and carefully, this change is a good addition to what WE are working on. As many have stated before, this project is our own. We are creating something that we think enhances a player's experience of Morrowind. We're trying to make a better game, not just reskin it with better graphics. If you've got an issue with the wall because you feel that it in some way diminishes a potential player's experience, then that's fine. But if you're going to criticize the work of the people here just because it isn't exactly the way you remember it, that's not really a valid excuse. Also, if you're going to criticize the ideas of the people who are making this game FOR you, please try to have a little more respect for them. They've all been very dedicated to the development of this game, and have spent many long days working out ideas and concepts like the very one you're complaining about now. I know for a fact that they've put more thought into it than you. They put together many factors including aesthetic design as well as graphical performance when considering the plans for a wall. So it's not really fair to openly insult these ideas that have been in place since early development when the only consideration you've given them is a brief glance and a swift judgment.

You criticize us of being rude to you. Perhaps you should take a look back at your first comment, and read it over carefully. Imagine if you were in our shoes. You have been working on this project for YEARS, poured your heart and soul into it. And someone comes in, with no previous knowledge of the project or what you've done here, and says, "this idea is stupid. What the hell are you thinking? I think you should just fundamentally change your plan because I don't like it. Goodbye." I think you would be pretty angry, too.

This goes to Dragomir's limited patience with people who complain about things without knowing the reason why they were done.  

Why feet on Cliffracers?  They are tied to Skyrim's dragon skeleton.  The dragon skeleton has legs.  How can having legs be an improvement?  Well now cliffracers can land, and possibly have nests.  Abominations indeed, how dare they ever land!

Why do the dreugh not have human faces, four equivalent tentacles and a large shield claw and spear claw?  Tied to the skeletons of the Seekers. How can this be an improvement?  Dreugh armor based after this creature rather than a creature based after the appearance of armor as you had in Morrowind.  Notice how the dreugh in Morrowind looked like they were wearing a helmet and cuirass?  Ours looks more in keeping with later styles of land dreughs anyway.

Why does Vivec have a wall?  Performance.  Vivec is going to be larger than any city ever represented in an ES game, including the Imperial City, which you'll notice was walled in and had separate load screens.  As did every town in Skyrim.  Morrowind's didn't, but you'd just be walking through town and suddenly HIT a load screen.  Putting walls around Vivec is necessary for those without hog PCs that could handle it, so if it is to be incorporated, why not make it part of the planning?  How can this be an improvement?  Hey, remember how dull And confusing Vivec was to navigate?  Now look at Roman's concept.  No, really look at it.  Take those rose tinted glasses off and really compare the two.  Case closed.

Later you'll ask why we're not keeping to Yagrum Bagarn's originally intended voice.  Let me nip that one in the bud - it's an asstarded voice.

Let's see what else... You'll probably complain about skills not being exactly the same too.  Limited by the engine.  

You want to whine about adding guar mounted Redoran guards, our 2 1/2ish all new music, our switch from the standard robe to magus robes for Telvanni?  Surely not.

Your biggest sin, though, is that you offer nothing constructive.  You even lament the fact that, heavens, you just haven't any modicum of talent!  Poor thing!  Dude, look.  Do you know how much skill you need to do some of the more menial tasks around here?  Copy pasting text files, navmapping, checking dialogue for typos... Tedious and necessary, often thankless, but no skill needed.  Lacking an art degree is not what's holding you back.

Hey Smite, having just gotten my art degrees, I can tell you that even with them the skill wall is quite high...and on the other side is a loading screen.^^

-Natterforme

@thetracker-

I accept your apology. I say we drop it and move on. We have all been there at some point.^^

-Natterforme

Hey, if you want to help out and have the time to put in we're always hiring in my department.  But it's mostly those tedious tasks that no one likes to volunteer for - editing and copy-pasting.  As soon as Taerkalith gets our exportation gremlins wrangled, we'll need all hands on Google Doc duty.

Yeah, sure.  No jobs at the moment but I'll keep you posted.

I might gotten a bit carried away in my reply, but as I said right in the beginning - I'm quite fed up with this kind of opinions. If you were to make a post in the Vivec design thread asking why we added the wall, I'd list all the reasons - lore/design/technical/logical, and after that the wall would seem like a very small price for what we're going to do with Vivec.

I love Vivec. I played Morrowind for 10 years, I know it inside out. I played it so long, that I was actually able to take off my nostalgia goggles and see what designs could use an improvement. Where it's possible we drain from Kirkbride, when there's no reference we make up our own stuff. You say having a dock is a good idea? Now notice where the walls go. I deliberately made them only guard the docks, these are water walls. First, having a defence system around a dock is no novelty, read up on some ancient mediterranean ideas for that (Rhodes with their colossus). Vivec is extremely vulnerable to attacks from the Sea, because it's generally pretty open (the cantons are like castles themselves, but then we kept it), and also the only real threat would come from outside Vvardenfell, necessarily by sea. If enemy ships were able to just sail around the cantons they'd fall pretty quick. Now the canal area is enclosed and you may control what sails in with those neat watergates. But that's only the beginning and logic behind it.

Then, we have what we want to do with Vivec, and it was a very tough decision indeed, everything had to be considered. We could either make it like it was in Morrowind, which you seem to be very adamant about. That is - a bunch of cantons which look exactly the same, are extremely easy to confuse with each other, closed and pretty empty. Yes they had an interesting design, but to be fair... Even though Vivec had its charm over time I find it pretty underwhelming to what MK has envisioned.
On the other side, we can basically have the Venice of Morrowind. Thriving port City, the capital of Dunmer Fine Arts, quite busy. Open cantons (MK's idea), each having own style to not only make them more recognizable, but also easier to identify. Each of the House cantons will now be corresponding to their organisations in style. All cantons will be full of murals painted by fine Dunmer artists, as Kirkbride also envisioned, and beautiful statues of the saints which were already modeled. With the cantons being open we can have NPC wander all around the city giving it an actual feel of life. Hell, maybe even animated gondoliers, we'll have to see about that. But all of that comes with a price, a price of performance. So to have all this we would need to make Vivec a closed city. That requires a wall. We're working on a transition much smoother than in Skyrim anyway, so if you levitate in and hit an invisible wall you get a loading screen as if you entered it normally. The way the wall was designed is actually the very least harmful way we could do it. At first I was really against the wall, and I didn't like how it looked on the sketches. But after Roman redid one of my scraps it now looks pretty good if you ask me. I can promise you that Vivec will not lose its feel, the feel will be multiplied by 10, when you get inside.

Now, about the Cliff Racers. I'm sure they were your favourite creature in Morrowind, weren't they? Everyone just loves them, the way they would kamikaze swarm you. On my first playthrough I actually built my character to specialize in killing cliff racers. I was a warrior but I learned destruction spells to be able to wipe them out with one spell.

Now try to envision this: Cliff Racers have legs, so they can land and make nests. In Azura's Coast there are those big spiky rocks. We will place Cliff Racer nests on these rocks. Not too exciting... But what we will also try to do is use the animations of frozen lake dragons from Dawnguard, to have the Cliffies fly off their nests, dive down into water, catch fish and fly out again. Using a dragon skeleton not only saves us long days (or even months) of making new animations for them, but also gives us lots of cool things to play around with. You still think that the legs are so insufferable?

My advice is to not be so criticizing until you see the finished product, it's very unjustful to do so. Some stuff is necessary and we're keeping as close to MK's vision as possible. Skywind will actually contradict the lore much less than Morrowind did, since we're working to fix and add stuff that was not made in 2002 due to tech limits. It's not a mod "inspired" by Morrowind, it's Morrowind re-interpreted. We're keeping the best stuff in, but adding a lot of what was missing and improving a lot of what was not the best. People don't realize how much thought goes into this stuff and sometimes they think that we're just adding things at random. Now that makes me angry, and that's where my outburst came from.

@andrey im am not basing my arguments on eso personally i feel that eso is an abomination myself it took away from the lore and playability i guess i was showing how ideas in the direction in artistic styles changes

Whoa, looks like Justafan is more than that! He couldn't have said it better how we all feel about critique. It's welcomed, yes, but not always like this. Anyways, I'm not offended, there's a thousand other people out there who are the same way. 

This thread has been resolved, I suggest it be locked :)

He clarified in the chat that it was more about graphic design than lore and sorry... But graphic design in ESO is mostly appauling and I'm not changing that opinion. Also Dunmer eyes damn it! That's a lore issue.

Tracker i am not one of the modders i am here just because i am looking forward to see this recreation of morrowind...

I can understand some matter are very touchy for the one that loves morrowind like you or even me.. But keep in mind those guys also love morrowind like us..I suggest you to check some video even if unfinished you will be able to see how the ambients are much more detailed and also a bit different but even recognizable those guys are working hard to make this vision come true just give them a chance... Also they are working hard for free... And why? because they loved morrowind... Have faith on them just wait untill skywind will come out or feel free to ask to some of them if something concern you.. They will be glad to answer eventually how they did with me... And i assure you i stressed them with 1000 question...

You will see.... To me is not a problem if Vivec have wall... i am sure they will be able to merge those walls in to the city in a manner that the walls will improve the city sight....

About cliff racers...Have leg is not an issue to me add a bit of realism since i always wondered how they can land... 

As long as the thread is still open I feel like throwing in my 2 cents. If it's a mechanicle issue sure I get the walls around the city as their kind of required or larger cells. It should allow for more npc's to exist and put a little less strain on the system. As for lore, walls don't really make sense. When it came to the imperial city, windhelm, and all the other hold capitols yea walls make sense as they sit on land. As it stands the great city of vivvec sits on the water and each cantons walls are high above it. It in itself is designed in such a way to prevent invasions. Just poking at that one point.

I already said walls aren't for defending cantons, but docks. They're not going around the whole city after all, they just close the canals inside. Read up before you post.

I may be wrong Deadman001 but I believe the walls would function as a guard from waves, to protect the ships. Not as a defence from attack. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong however.

Not to mention the vulnerability of the cantons due to levitation, water walking, and water breathing.

Not to be emmmm rude but..

• The elder scrolls online should be no considered canon they utterly destroyed the lore per se even more than oblivion did for sure can be a nice mmo game but is not a true tes and never bee.
• I can hardly see an artstyle in TESO but instead i  see an attempt of zenimax to make the game more mmo possible giving evrything a bland generalistic boring looking design. Elves eyes i still played TESO after launch and yes indeed dunmer eyes are still not lore friendly since even in npc i seen dunmer with silver (those ar common in teso) pink or even purple eyes and yes those are facts sadly...And yes sadly elves don't look like like the TES mer but look more like human with pointy ears

Denevir

If a TES game is insulted, then the lore is insulted, and by extension, I am insulted. And that shit I won't let slide.

Is not about being elitist my dear...calm down....

So you are telling me even the black rock mechants are soulless? Because is common even see around on npc even in vendors dunmer with eyes different from red...As i already told you i did play the game after the release date....So it was not the beta but final...

Bland..Generic...Are words used to describe the generalistic design in case of TESO very very similiar to other Mmo around...I am sorry if you don't toller who claim this but just compare teso overall look with other mmo around you will notice the design is pretty much the same..Not even mentioning that there is not effort to potray places distincion between the region aside some places.

And not.. TESO is not at the elder scroll is made by Zenimax not even bethsheeda and also in gameplay and in the rest don't feel like a TES more like a mmo theme park... We are going of topic here...

No one is insulting or nothing.... The TESO criticism i did or even other did is legitimate and prof by fact...

Blindly defend a title just because carry the TES brand is wrong by principle it have no sense... Is like defending a garbage sequel like dragon age 2 because is part of the franchise dragon age....

Let's not make it another war over ESO. I'll just say that

If a TES game is insulted, then the lore is insulted, and by extension, I am insulted. And that shit I won't let slide.

Sounds pretty stupid to me. Beth (yes, I know Zenimax is making ESO) has many times shown that they don't care that much about the consistency between their games, as well as even keeping to their original spirit. Yes, there better and there are worse TES games and we have every right to express our opinions on that, or criticize them. If you forbid to criticize something you can be sure as hell it will never progress. For that matter... I don't care if it insults anyone :P

Besides, there are different types of lore breaking. There are obvious asstard moments like making Cyrodiil a moderate climate forest Disneyland, then asking Kirkbride to fix it ASAP so he makes up a story of Tiber Septim transforming it, and then AGAIN they show it wrong in ESO (which takes place before Tiber) and tell us it's been a mistake of translation all along. I mean come on!

Then, there is painful lore bending, like the unlikely alliances in ESO, or making most of the armours look like Power Rangers props. But really, if you keep taking it personal you have some pain coming up. I don't like ESO for what it is - and that is mmo. All the other stuff I don't know, so I won't judge. But what I've seen is enough for me to not want to play it.

If a TES game is insulted, then the lore is insulted, and by extension, I am insulted.

Are you Bethesda's writer? Because if not, this statement makes no sense.

And honestly, the only person here who is insulting others is you.

Aaaand the shit flinging begins in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

No, it doesn't. I'm locking this thread.