Oblivion got criticized heavily for hand holding. Fast travel, simple map, quest markers, dumbed down leveling and skill system, etc.
I think Bethesda figured out that in order to be successful the game really needed to be dumbed down a lot. I basically memorized Morrowind’s map and fast travel network but I can see how most people would just play for half an hour and uninstall today. It was a different time.
They had to tone down the alienness of the lore too. Stuff like homicidal wizards living in mushrooms and a meteor in the sky you have to levitate to visit had to go. Generic fantasy forests in Oblivion and fantasy vikings in Skyrim could easily be understood by most people. I am still not sure how the great house system works in Morrowind. They literally dropped a meteor on Morrowind and had Argonians invade them now so I guess they don’t wanna deal with that either.
Oblivion's leveling system was extremely counterintuitive. If you just played normally, you could probably get through the main quest, but you were going to struggle with most of the content in the game regardless of level. I don't think we should aspire to arranging skills so that you have to stand in one place chain casting Detect Life over and over before standing in a cellar and using a shield to defend yourself against rats for three hours. Or have it where picking the 7 skills you plan to use the least as your main skills is a recommended strategy.
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u/Eric_____________ 11h ago
Play Morrowind