Elder Scrolls peaked at Daggerfall and has been going downhill since

[Monoriu]

The fact that we are all talking about the games years after they were published and that we all seem to have played at least a bit of Elder Scrolls are indications of their huge success

[Monoriu]

Didn't play Daggerfall. Morrowind was totally awesome, especially in terms of mood, weird environments, music etc. I only played a little of Oblivion, it was too generic and boring. Skyrim was very nice, but no Morrowind.

I think the reason Morrowind received such a good reputation is because the *transition* from Daggerfall to Morrowind was very substantial.  It was a big improvement from randomly generated dungeons.  Once that transition was completed, the subsequent improvements from Morrowind to Oblivion seemed less dramatic.  Morrowind raised the bar a lot. 

[Valmy]

The fact that we are all talking about the games years after they were published and that we all seem to have played at least a bit of Elder Scrolls are indications of their huge success

I mean it is my genre. I could easily talk about lots of shitty games from that era as well

I think they are very flawed gems. I almost always win every game I start but the fact that Morrowind only held my attention that long, but I still got the others regardless, speaks to a lot about those games I think. Presuming they don't totally screw up ES6 I will get it, play for awhile and get bored but be glad I did...or at least that is what I expect. If it actually grabs me for the long haul I will be presently surprised.

[Valmy]

Didn't play Daggerfall. Morrowind was totally awesome, especially in terms of mood, weird environments, music etc. I only played a little of Oblivion, it was too generic and boring. Skyrim was very nice, but no Morrowind.

I think the reason Morrowind received such a good reputation is because the *transition* from Daggerfall to Morrowind was very substantial.  It was a big improvement from randomly generated dungeons.  Once that transition was completed, the subsequent improvements from Morrowind to Oblivion seemed less dramatic.  Morrowind raised the bar a lot. 

Yeah but by 2002 most people had forgotten about Daggerfall except for a small hardcore. Morrowind was great in the context of 2002 games, not just compared to its predecessor. It still does a lot that no other game since has really done, at least as far as setting.

What worries me a bit is that Bethesda just fell in love with their shitty crafting systems, which have always been really tedious, boring, (at least to me, I realize I am in the minority about that) and unbalanced as hell. I mean it is very hard NOT to break the game using their craft systems and as we go along they seem to just want to do more of it.

[Syt]

I've been putting some hours into (modded) Skyrim recently, and while I will keep it installed, it's also a game of which I tire quickly. I love the setting and locations, but the stuff to do wears me out fast.

I've been struggling with why that is, and I think it's because it lacks some of the whimsy of the earlier games.

Morrowind had a lot of weird, lighthearted stuff. Mushroom trees and crab houses were one thing. But there was a lot of random, weird crap besides it. The mage near Seyda Neen who falls from the sky because of bad planning. The naked Nord tricked by a witch. The mudcrab merchant. Crassius Curio, writer of The Lusty Argonian Maid, who makes you undress for him. The mage who hired an airship to get an item that makes him irresistible to the ladies. And many more. One of my favorite little details was that the log book of the airship stated that they had to throw the corpse of a crew member overboard and that he landed on the rocks on the SE coast of Solstheim. And lo and behold - if you travel there, you can actually find it (it has no special loot, it's just there).

Oblivion still has some of it. The village where the people have been made invisible because of a nearby mage's spell. The subversion of the basic "rats in the basement" quest. The paranoid wood elf. The painter who disappeared inside his own painting.

Skyrim seems severely lacking in that (outside of Daedra quests).

(I think it also doesn't help that in Morrowind you might come across a story about a location and you can decide to investigate and figure out if it's true, giving you a sense of exploration. Whereas Skyrim will immediately put a quest in your journal )

[Josquius]

My troubles with skyrm and oblivion probably say a lot about my psyche :

1: I try to do every sub quest and completely lose the path of the main quest and get bored.
2: I try to be time efficient. When the fate of the world is on the line I can't be resting for days.
3: Inventory Tetris rapidly becomes a problem as I don't know which items to sell and how, and which one of a kind items I should keep. Degrading items don't help here.

Fallout NV met the same fate.

Morrowind of course didn't get that far.

[chipwich]

How many hours have you played of Daggerfall since Skyrim's release?

[Valmy]

How many hours have you played of Daggerfall since Skyrim's release?

Well until pretty recently playing Daggerfall was not a straightforward endeavor so it has been much more since Skyrim's release than prior. It used to require dosbox and all kinds of crap like that.