Everyones mentioning Blackreach xD But I loved Pinewatch man! I just stumbled across it and found the note, looked for the button and I was like o.o

You know, if someone where to stumbe upon the tomb of the Dragonborn (and I think it's safe to assume the Dragonborn is a legendary figure - wins the civil war, defeats Alduin, saves the world, etc.) in 1000 years, what would they find? A generic sword with some enchantment, some destroyed armor, and a few coins.

This is spot on. The dungeons are mostly fantastic in design but the loot svcks and there are way too many draugr enemies. Mods to put some unique, powerful items guarded by high level NPCs/monsters and replace a bunch of the draugr with different foes would make exploring these places more desirable. I never thought about making the big caverns into dragon lairs. That would be awesome. After all, all those dragons attacking Skyrim have to have somewhere to go after a long, tiring day flapping around the sky. Modders take note!

And Morrowind dungeons weren't that great. The quest cave you had to retrieve the bow for the Ashlander dude was incredible. So was the first dwemer ruins you encountered for the puzzle box quest. After that, they quickly got repetitive and tedious, especially the daedric shrines and ancestor tombs. I think the biggest problem in this area with all TES games is the designers feel the need to put way, way too many dungeons in the game. The dungeon developer's creativity probably starts to run a bit dry when designing bandit cave #103.

As for Oblivion dungeons being better, all I can say is...

The issue here is loot inflation.

If you have half a dozen other magic swords with some elemental enchantment, they become generic.
Either we shouldn't be getting such weapons at all, outside of rare finds in dungeons, or the stuff we find in dungeons has to be noticeably better.

However, if we find the noticeably better stuff in every other dungeon...

There are a few more "interesting" things to be found, scattered all over Skyrim, but they are rare (e.g. Daedra artifacts, The Legend of Red Eagle Sword).
I think it's hard to keep a balance in that kind of game. There are simply too many possibilities to find loot. Then add enchantment on top of it. Keeping it from becoming generic is a challenge.

could not have said it better totaly agree

Skyrim's dungeons are the weakest of the past 3 games?

LOL nope!!! they are probably the best of the past 3 games

i think FO series especially FO:NV did this greatelly there where a fair ammount of unique itens most of them had preaty even stats to theyr generic counter parts fully upgraded but the small retexture unique look give them made me go out and find them verry few itens in Skyrim makes me whant to out there and dungeon diving to find them

Skyrim's dungeons were mostly good/great . I do agree that there are too much Barrow-type dungeons. What I'd really like to see is that there would be somekind of unique dungeon loot list. A bunch of randomly spawning special loot that would only be found in the boss chests(weapons, armor, rings and even some special miscallenious items). I'd also liked to see unique bosses in each of the dungeons(maybe a little like in Zelda-games). Also some special main puzzle for each of the larger dungeons would be nice(again influenced by Zelda-games). Maybe modders can do something about it.

Well, esp. FO3 had a similar problem in a way. You just found so much weapons, ammo and meds that the whole survival aspect was gone after playing a few hours. NV was better, although the focus was also very different.
I do agree on the unique weapons, they have been a nice addition.

Hm, I once started a thread in the Skyrim forums about unique loot people found in Skyrim. Didn't recieve much attention though, probably because there isn't that much to begin with. Still, there are a few nice things that can be found, like Red Eagle's Fury, although it is connected to a mini-quest.

Yes, the Morrowind dungeons were far superior.

Do you find anything as detailed and beautifully crafted as these in Skyrim? :

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_IihlvQBAqf0/TU8pgDj4z-I/AAAAAAAAAP0/edBlTqQYWUw/s1600/Morrowind+2011-02-06+17-16-59-70.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mJI6zBdSad0/TWgdQqkliZI/AAAAAAAAApg/WA2O_J7TKGs/s1600/Morrowind+2011-02-25+13-32-05-62.jpg

I sense sarcasm....

Hardy-ha, not every ruin in Skyrim was awesome incarnate either.

Troll.

Nothing svcks more in an open-world game than hand-placed loot. Why? Because you have no incentive to explore those dungeons which you know don't contain any loot that interests you. So you quickly learn to make a circuit to pick up all the overpowered crap and break the game. With random loot, every dungeon gives you a chance at an upgrade, so you are completely free to explore.

i don't even concider Red Eagle's Fury to be a unique wepon it's a ancient nord sword the enchantements on it are fairelly easy to get earlly game

I know. I played Morrowind the year before last and I loved it. But most of the dungeons really weren't very interesting.

Skyrim has its faults, but I really do like the dungeon design. Of course the tilesets get a bit tiresome once you've visited a lot of them, but that is part and parcel of any game.

Agree with this.

Overall, I think the dungeons in Sky are the best. You can't help but see similar layout patters. Those dungeons were built at a certain time and follow the same patter because that's how those factions built them back then.

That's like saying the pyramids in Egypt are all the same, why didn't they have a different layout each time they build one.

The only problem I have with dungeons, especially Blackreach, is that there are not enough enemies to fight you. You go in, you have a fight, walk around for a while, have a fight, walk around some more, etc.

Blackreach is really disappointing that way, at least to me. I think I walked around for 20-30 minutes before I found some enemies. As big as that is, it should be crawling with enemies - especially in the darker areas - they should be jumping out at you.

And just increasing the game difficulty doesn't do anything to increase the numbers of enemies - it only increases the health and amount of damage the enemies do.

This, people play 200 hours and naturally start to get a bit bored. Then they look around the game feeling bored and say to themselves "Oh this could be better, that could be better, then I wouldn't feel burnt out".

I have to agree. FO:NV, second playthrough, "quickly, spam security, I can haz the Gobi!". or leave sewers, fast travel to Anvil, get Fingleam, I don't see what is so wonderful about knowing exactly where to go to get things.

There are different types of pyramids f.e step pyramids, bent pyramids with different kinds of interiors. Not to mention other kinds of graves like mastabas or the various types of rock tombs.

Whuh?

I'm a veteran of the Thief series - it's the game that ruined me for Morrowind. I did play Oblivion quite a bit, and later went back to MW. But Skyrim is by far the most thief-friendly of those three TES games - not just in the way Sneak works, but in dungeon layout, AI behavior, and ability to make use of the environment.

I have a thief character who found himself in a Dwemer ruin. Had to sneak past a couple bandits to get inside, and after moving down a corridor he found himself at an apparent impasse: a brightly-lit area with bandits camped out right in the middle of the room. There were some shadows around the walls and in the corners - just enough, it turned out, to hide him after he shot an arrow against a far wall as a distraction. He was able to slip past ultimately undetected.

Had I been playing a warrior or a mage type, that encounter would have gone down totally differently.

So the design *does* generally give you the opportunity to use shadows and cover, but you have to be a little creative to do it.

Then there's the ability to douse torches by plucking them off walls, or shoot pots of oil to cause a pool of fire to erupt. As for obstacles to use for protection, I've found plenty of columns in Skyrim's dungeons. And chokepoints are often conveniently located near some traps - or at least a doorway that you can easily defend from one foe at a time.

I love Skyrim's dungeons. I guess some of the layouts are similar, but remember Solstheim? Every 20 feet you'd come upon a bear or berserker or rickling, and *all* of those barrows looked practically identical. Ditto for several places in Morrowind. Vivec City I recall as a pretty uninspiring smear of brown.

They are worse than Morrowind's dungeons IMO but are much better than Oblivion's copy-paste/linear dungeons.

What? The dungeons are THE brightest point of the game. Skyrim carries over MANY of the failures of Oblivion but the dungeons are top notch. It is THE one sole reason I played Skyrim for 500 hours. I certainly didn't play it for its indepth character development or NPC interaction. Exploring the dungeons were pretty much the greatest and most entertaining thing this game offered. They were great.

Oblivion dungeons were so generic that I found the game unplayable.

Skyrims dungeons are better in most cases, but I get your point of always having a secret exit at the end. That's more to quell the complaints on the forums of having to run all the way back thru the dungeons when they get finished. But each dungeon has a different layout. And you would expect from one ancient culture there would be pretty much one consistent design or feel. Just wish there wasn't as many Draugr dungeons and more monsters in game. Right now it seems like they are either Draugr, Falmer, Bandit, Mage/Necromancer, Forsworn, Vampire and that's pretty much it.

I have one minor complaint though: In previous games you could find skill books on bookshelves, etc.... In Skyrim they seem to be placed on display on tables, right out in the open in case you are too stupid to actually look for them. I don't recall finding a single skill book that was on a shelf. They seem like they are always alone, in the open just in case you are too stupid to find them elsewhere.

So.... Your saying that seeing and exploring a copy-paste Ancestral Tomb every 5-10mins is better?..... *not sure if troll....*