Morrowind Development Update

Lead Designer of Morrowind, Ken Rolston, strikes up an equally informative and intriguing Q & A session with Jonric of RPGVault about the balance and design of Bethesda’s RPG gem-to-be. Here’s a glimpse:

Jonric: Many Daggerfall players apparently felt some classes such as the Spellsword, Knight and Ranger were easier to play than others like the Bard, Healer or Nightblade, at least in the early to middle going. To what extent do you feel this perception was accurate, and what steps are you taking to address it?

Ken Rolston: Hmm. I don’t recall the Nightblade being feeble in Daggerfall. But the Nightblade looks VERY sweet to me for Morrowind.

I believe some classes in Daggerfall were easier to powergame up advancement ladders than others, and I believe that will also be true in Morrowind. Players interested in maximizing the efficiency of powergame advancement will probably find help in our Very Fine Hint Book™. I believe other classes, like the Healer, will continue to be difficult to powergame, because they are built to exploit certain role-playing-specific features of Morrowind. And role-playing options may often provide more complex and satisfying gameplay options while being comparatively less efficient, advancement-ladder-wise.

For example, I can’t wait to playtest the Healer class, because he favors the hand-to-hand skill which renders opponents unconscious rather than kills them. Sticking to that no-killing strategy will not be a very efficient way to climb a powergaming ladder, but it excites me because it fits my PC persona and because I can’t do it in any other game.

Further, the Morrowind Bard and Healer have Speechcraft as Major skills. In Daggerfall the speech skills and the role they played in the game were minor, and probably unbalanced compared to a good rip-the-meat-off spell skill or a popular spill-guts weapon skill. But in Morrowind, speechcraft is a big feature of gameplay, so Bards and Healers will get more of what their role-playing portfolios appear to promise.

Most of our pre-designed classes are specifically designed to provide superior advancement-ladder-climbing efficiency while at the same time insuring Beefy Roleplaying Goodness. A few are pure, powergaming-efficiency designs, a few are roleplaying-heavy designs. For Sensitive Artistic Reasons, I don’t want to mark them in the manual with “Best Powergaming Package” or “Best Roleplaying Package.” The best way for a hard-core powergamer player to ensure efficient custom class design will initially be personal gameplay analysis and trial-and-error, and later by reference to boards, web guides, and hint books.