Vanilla Morrowind dungeons were well-designed but mechanically simple: no door obstacle couldn't be solved with Open Lock and Levitation. Tribunal addressed this. Vanilla Oblivion's dungeons were mechanically superior but not as well-designed or unique. Shivering Isles addressed this.

Personally, I think most of Skyrim's dungeons are superior at least on par with Tribunal's and Shivering Isles' dungeons.

maybe i'm just old with poor sight, but i get surprised (not all the time) as im plodding along.

though i will say that there are times when fighting an enemy (seems to happen with bosses) where they just stand there, not attacking AFTER combat has started.

trying not to give away spoilers.....so not sure how to be specific... but one was a quest out of falkreath to go to a cave nearby. the main baddie was named Hirogerth or something. the other was a werewolf. sorry if i just gave everything away. but they literally just stood there and let me whoop ass. was kind of disappointed.

also - i play 360 so no mods for me - sad face

the only thing they are superior in is graphical detail.

*covers ears* No! Nothing can ever beat Morrowind. Lalalalalalalalalalal! I'm not listening! Lalalalalala

I don't ever remember walking through an Ancestral tomb that felt like it was copy and pasted from another tomb. Ever. In 2500+ hours. The only thing I can remember ever seeing as "copy and pasted" was the tombs that had the domes on them, and thats only because theres only so many ways one could do up a dome shaped building interior. And hell, the only reason I even remember that is because I had to sit and think about it.

And yes, Skyrim's dungeons aren't factually copy-paste, but when you couple unique dungeons with the utter lack of variety (in virtually every aspect) and the sheer number of them, they lose their uniqueness quite fast. We were all impressed by Bleak Falls Barrow the first time we made our way through. Walking through Skuldafn on the other hand was about as interesting a wet rag for all the difference it had compared to the past 60 draugr dungeons I fought my way through.



No, it was Blackreach. And its filled with nothing. Pretty visuals do not make a dungeon more than what it is.

Read in between the lines. In no way are the dungeons in Morrowind overall better than they are in Skyrim. And he didn't even mention the VAST improvements from Oblivion or even Oblivion at all. There are lots of threads like these. The OP is simply struck by Morrowind Nostalgia, otherwise most people would agree with him.

The nostalgia card is a worthless argument, and you should feel ashamed for using it.

It's not that much nothing. I mean there is a Dragon in there after all...

Oooh wow a dragon! Thats so unique and interesting for more than 5 seconds!

All you said in this post is that you don't know what linear means.

Another person who doesn't know what linear means?

You can't create a maze in which each room only has one entrance and one exit. It is no longer a maze by definition.

If the treasure would have been looted long ago, then the zombiemonsterdraegur would have been killed long ago.

If you haven't played the game then you don't really have any business posting here, much less disagreeing with people with over 600 hours logged.

Apparantly so, because I am playing Oblivion right now on weeknights and Skyrim on weekends. While Oblivion's dungeons all tend to look the same and I prefer Skyrim's dungeons for their flavor, Skyrim's dungeons lack the looping and intersecting passages that were rather common in Oblivion's dungeons. In Oblivion, most of the dungens that had multiple cells had at least two, sometimes three, entrances/exits for each cell. In Skyrim it is typically one entrance/exit per cell.

So don't go look up the locations of the hand placed loot online.

To further your anology there, then you have Skyrim where there are no upgrades in random loot dungeons, so there is no reason to do them at all.

Though I do LOVE Skyrims dungeons, I was hopeing for some EXTREMLEY Disturbing and empty Dungeons with Extremley dark Atmosphere, And was Symbolic for someones decent into darkness.

The layout and design of all the pyramids in Egypt are the same, the difference is who is buried in them and what treasure they were buried with. Just like the dungeons in Oblivion.

FAIL.

If that is true, then they should have put in less dungeons so they would have been done by the time 200 hours was reached.

In Skyrim dungeons each room has 1 entrance and 1 exit. This is what linear is.

In Oblivion dungeons each room may have multiple entrances and multiple exits. There are dead ends, loops and shortcuts. This is not linear.

in morrowind, you can get lost in city HOUSES.

If your sneak is about 75, you can walk up to the bandits in daylight without being seen, stab them without them noticing their friend die, and continue on. I've killed people in mid conversation without being detected.

Right. That's what I said, isn't it?

In Oblivion they had maybe 10 room layouts for dungeons that were applied across maybe 50-100 dungeons. So you saw one layout maybe 5 or 10 times, and ideally saw 9 other dungeons in between. Loot was random and you never knew were it might be. You had to check every chest in every dead end and maze in case it was there. There is always a chance to find new loot that is an upgrade.

In Skyrim they have 50-100 room layouts for dungeons that are applied across 50-100 dungeons. You see each layout once. You know the only valuable loot is on the last NPC and in the last chest. There are no dead ends to explore, and no point to look in chests. You can purchase the exact same loot from a vendor if you hit the RNG lottery or max enchanting. There is never a chance of finding new loot that is an upgrade.

Most mazes have one entrance & exit , some have more than one. I have rarely seen a maze that was not one long winding path amidst many 'dead ends'... and not one with many paths leading to the end.

I'm going to assume that the dungeon (most of them) is not styled as an actual maze, but rather an outpost, mine, vault, or shelter. If it was designed for refuge, then I can see there being convenient paths to & from the various major rooms, but if security was the intent, I would expect a linear controlled path that was easily defended.

IMO only a few places besides a shelter should realistically have a trap door out at the end. It speeds gameplay sure, but the common thread with TES seems to be the attempt at realism (within context); a "live in that world" sort of experience, and realistically if you climb down a hole you usually have to come out the way you went in.

Diablo (town portals aside), had a hidden exit to the church yard cemetery ~but it was 4 or 5 levels down.

Can't know that, and seeing as the dungeons in TES seem to repopulate every month or three... I don't buy it. However, I can easily believe the monsters returning to the warrens before I'd believe the loot did.

Knowing the series formula is enough, and technically you don't even need that to post ~(or to disagree; though it's good to mention that the comment is not based experience, just on what was seen or read or how it appears.

Um, what? Did you play Oblivion? The loot in Oblivion was the most leveled it's ever been in an Elder Scrolls game. There were no places in the entire world, dungeon or otherwise, that contained any loot not automatically scaled to your level. You never saw any glass until a certain level, and after that you never got iron in a chest again. There was not a single dungeon you could go to that would have glass earlier than another.

In Skyrim there are a number of dungeons which contain hidden mega-chests that contain better loot in both quality and quantity than the average fare. There are also statically-placed level+ loot that scales to be better than what you're leveled for, which are the only places to stumble upon Daedric equipment.

Edit: Nix that on the entire world of Oblivion part. There were the fixed-quality Akavir swords to be found in Pale Pass. Whoo.

i actually like the dungeons the dungeons with druagr are of course linear as they are just a tomb so unless they are building egyption style they arent trying to loose you. But the caves and bandit hide outs are pretty sweet. I like them better than OB but not sure about MW both are good to me and the loot placement isn't really dungeon design flaw but beth getting lazy in the world crafting dept.

Every dungeon has been different, eh? How many of them had the "loot chest" somewhere other than just past the "boss npc"?

Hint: Answer is zero.

Consider that for the old nordic tombs they (at the time) were not simply tombs. They were mausoleums in which you could visit the honored dead. It makes sense in that case that there is a "hidden" exit, since most crypts were familial and it would make it convenient for you to reach your most hallowed ancestor (the draugr death overlord or what have you) easily and with speed.

Remember the culture of the people building these crypts. They weren't meant to be pyramids protected from graverobbers. The dead themselves can protect against such intrusion and if they can't then they don't deserve the riches they guard.

Other styles of dungeon tho.. Well it's debatable.

If that is true, then nothing would be lost if Bethesda went out of business. If amateur coders in their free time can do better work than the coders you pay, you might have some serious problems with your company.

Yeah, that's a bald-faced lie, and indicative that you haven't actually done any exploring to know what you're talking about. I've found a number of high-level loot chests in offshoots from the main path. The devs particularly favor putting them under trees and behind bushes in the "green" dungeons that contain animals and spriggans, probably because the flora provide more natural ways to hide them.