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[Soadreqm]

I care about the lore. :|

[Syraine]

Damn it, I want to be able to use the dark flesh of cultists in a potion like in Morrowind.

[Africa]

As far as leveled monsters/items are concerned, I don't think any of that should be necessary, even by Morrowind standards. In my opinion, having to scale things to the character's level means that you've failed to provide an interesting world with varied and workable challenges in it. Granted, in Morrowind it was fairly unobtrusive, but you still had things like leveled loot, which I hate; if I have a character who (for an example) specializes in taking high risks at low levels and using illusions, cunning, and sneaky skills in order to infiltrate difficult areas, why shouldn't he be rewarded with amazing stuff instead of punished for it with lousier stuff than he'd get when that area is a cakewalk? The answer, of course, is that game design is haaaaaaard and that would require areas that aren't easy to get into and loot even at low level due to balance and AI issues.

I don't think Morrowind really had a problem in that respect. Plenty of good loot was hand-placed and was always there. More of it would appear randomly once you hit a certain level, sure, but if your level 3 thief wanted to be badass and sneak into some lair and pick up some phat lute, there was never a problem with that. The fact that you weren't guaranteed to find good stuff, if anything, is what makes it worth raiding caves over and over. If you know every time you sneak into some mine shaft that you're coming out with a sick item, pretty soon it gets old, and there's no pleasure in finding cool stuff anymore. Once you're high enough level, enemies are getting tougher and the game supplies you for that by having more powerful stuff show up in more places, sure, but it's still a crapshoot every time. I think that's a fine system.

[3]

I have a hard time believing that anyone who played Morrowind relied much on random loot. There was so much overpowered stuff scattered about (I actually developed flowchart behaviour when figuring out where I wanted to go next, since all the good stuff was guaranteed to be in specific places) that any loot that did happen to be random/levelled was entirely superfluous. The only thing that stood out was Saints/Dremora/etc always using Daedric weapons at PC level ~20, but by then you wouldn't need them.

Of course, this is more a balance issue than anything; pretty much everywhere short of vampire lairs and areas with Ascended Sleepers in confined quarters was completely nonthreatening once you hit level 5 or so. The cause of concern is that Bethesda implemented a near-perfect fix for the issue in Oblivion, and still managed to get it wrong. Anyway, this has already been discussed (even here, I think), so there's little point in me continuing.

[Soadreqm]

I'm reminded of that one Khajiit who had a crush on you. Ahnassi. She had a couple of quests of the format "I heard there's this bitchin' item in this well-guarded dungeon", and then you'd be sneaking into the Imperial commission or something. I think leveled loot is fine for the random caves, but it would be nice if there were some more fixed-level areas you could sneak into early if you wanted to.

[Africa]

I have a hard time believing that anyone who played Morrowind relied much on random loot. There was so much overpowered stuff scattered about (I actually developed flowchart behaviour when figuring out where I wanted to go next, since all the good stuff was guaranteed to be in specific places) that any loot that did happen to be random/levelled was entirely superfluous. The only thing that stood out was Saints/Dremora/etc always using Daedric weapons at PC level ~20, but by then you wouldn't need them.

Of course, this is more a balance issue than anything; pretty much everywhere short of vampire lairs and areas with Ascended Sleepers in confined quarters was completely nonthreatening once you hit level 5 or so. The cause of concern is that Bethesda implemented a near-perfect fix for the issue in Oblivion, and still managed to get it wrong. Anyway, this has already been discussed (even here, I think), so there's little point in me continuing.

Yeah, the balance was pretty screwed in Morrowind. You could crank up the difficulty and keep things going a while longer, but by level 30 or so you had to either start a new character, install difficulty mods, or go to the expansions.

[Sordid]

Plenty of good loot was hand-placed and was always there.

Namely that crazy dude wearing ebony armor in the Daedric ruin up north. I always made a beeline for him when starting a new game.

[G-Flex]

I don't think Morrowind really had a problem in that respect. Plenty of good loot was hand-placed and was always there. More of it would appear randomly once you hit a certain level, sure, but if your level 3 thief wanted to be badass and sneak into some lair and pick up some phat lute, there was never a problem with that. The fact that you weren't guaranteed to find good stuff, if anything, is what makes it worth raiding caves over and over. If you know every time you sneak into some mine shaft that you're coming out with a sick item, pretty soon it gets old, and there's no pleasure in finding cool stuff anymore. Once you're high enough level, enemies are getting tougher and the game supplies you for that by having more powerful stuff show up in more places, sure, but it's still a crapshoot every time. I think that's a fine system.

Yeah, I agree that random loot wasn't a huge deal. But in that case, 1) Why level it at all? and 2) Leveling loot obviously didn't solve the problem of woefully overpowered/expensive shit being trivially available to high level characters.

Yeah, the balance was pretty screwed in Morrowind. You could crank up the difficulty and keep things going a while longer, but by level 30 or so you had to either start a new character, install difficulty mods, or go to the expansions.

Difficulty was horrible in the expansions too because it was all falsely inflated. Even the tinier dudes like goblins and rieklings (sp?) had insane amounts of HP even compared to some of the harder stuff on Vvardenfell. It was obviously designed for post-main-quest characters, yet even the parts that would reasonably be easy for them were made difficult by extremely artificial monster (and monster weapon) stat inflation. Seriously, goblin footsoldiers had as much HP as a storm atronach, and 1.25 times the HP of a dremora.

[GamerKnight]

Morrowind was a little bit unbalanced when it came to loot. I always set Medium Armour because I knew that I could find enough cash for a full set of Bonemold armour by selling shit from the crates around Balmora within five minutes of starting the game. Oh, did anyone else get that glitch in Oblivion were you can't ever drop certain items? At least it better have been a glitch. I loved the ash wastes in Morrowind and hope they do something like that, but ice-themed, like blizzards. Oblivion beat Morrowind on the whole map thing, but maybe some of the kind of thing you find in Fallout 3 and NV where some loot and lore-based goodies are outside as well as inside. I like finding nice loot and secrets outside. I loved the Morrowind factions. So much variety, something for every character. But if they bring back Morrowind's enchanting system and/or something like the FUCKING CLIFF RACER I WILL KILL EVERYONE AT BETHESDA!!!!

[Farseer]

FUCKING CLIFF RACER I WILL KILL EVERYONE AT BETHESDA!!!!

Dragons, man.

How do they work?

[GamerKnight]

Dragons? DRAGONS? Can someone tell how common these are before I bring back pterodactyls Jurassiic-park style and use them to murder the entirety of Bethesda in beautiful irony.

[Duke 2.0]

 Don't worry, a joking part of the lore was that there were too many cliff racers for dragons to handle so they never went to Vvardenfell, or at least never stayed there. Seems there would be less than the Cliff Racer numbers.

[GamerKnight]

Very wel... The irony must wait. Well, logging off. Try not to make it impossible to catch up tomorrow.

[Africa]

Difficulty was horrible in the expansions too because it was all falsely inflated. Even the tinier dudes like goblins and rieklings (sp?) had insane amounts of HP even compared to some of the harder stuff on Vvardenfell. It was obviously designed for post-main-quest characters, yet even the parts that would reasonably be easy for them were made difficult by extremely artificial monster (and monster weapon) stat inflation. Seriously, goblin footsoldiers had as much HP as a storm atronach, and 1.25 times the HP of a dremora.

How else is difficulty supposed to be inflated? The alternative to goblins having shit tons of health is goblins having not a lot of health and getting one-shotted, thus not being difficult. Well, or there being a whole crapload more of them at once, but MW was rough on top of the line computers when it came out, and adding swarms of enemies would have about the same effect as as fortress full of dwarves having running water added.

Plus, I found the difficulty slider, if you chose not to use it cheesily, could be adjusted to keep things at a reasonable level of challenge.

[Sordid]

Dragons, man.

Like cliff racers, only bigger.
And breathing fire.
Oh yeah, this is going to be fun.