But the dice rolls are what make the character stats more impactful, without them you could do a Skyrim and use whatever you pick up. They help simulate a more frenetic fighting than can be displayed within the game, with enemies dodging and parrying blows.
That last sentence I kind of made up but it sounds good, and I like the dice rolls. Also the leveling is good, minus the incentive to never not jump for acrobatics strength buffs.
The dice rolls just meant that if you have a weapon skill below about 30 you don’t hit anything ever, it didn’t simulate anything. If you want to show blocks and parries in a video game, then show them it’s not tabletop.
The level system sucks in that you essentially want to build a character backwards and have major skills you didn’t actually use. Otherwise you leveled quickly but didn’t gain stats effectively.
I mean, if you have a weapon skill below 30 I don’t know why you are using that weapon. The leveling system in vanilla Morrowind has a bunch of weird stuff that might even be bugs, like endurance not giving you extra hit points for levels before you raised the stat. I would never recommend playing Morrowind vanilla though.
As LiquorFan said, a weapon skill of below 30 is probably a good sign not to use that weapon. I also don’t think that efficient leveling is really that important in a totally offline game, and would rather set a character up for roleplay or fun purposes, but I understand that for some people the fun is in the efficiency, which is fair.
Really I just think that Morrowind is a better game in terms of the roleplaying and world, and the mechanics are either better, no worse, or just different to the later games. The magic system is clunky though, but the ability to craft spells and enchantments beyond what you could in the other two makes up for it.
Not every game needs to be for every person though, and I will admit game design has changed since Morrowind came out. I still think it’s superior, but I can see that some people will not want to play it as it is. I would rather no remake than one with oblivion/Skyrim mechanics, then if people are interested they can check out openMW.
In all honesty, Skyrim Requiem gives me a good Morrowind gameplay experience without the dated gabbage (bar some sandboxy Morrowind mechanics that I’d like to see again), and I say this having liked the experience of playing Morrowind a couple years ago. There are much better ways to generate the feeling of character progression than dice rolls.