I found myself less likely to fast travel in Fallout 3 then I do in Skyrim. In Fallout 3 they reward you and encourage exploration by handing you a few points. There are two issues I have with Skyrim's exploration:

-I'm not encouraged or given enough incentive to do so; this is due to the lack of both Oblivion style exploration with dud dungeons made completely for the aspect of dungeonc crawling without any question attached to it and because like Fallout 3, if we are going to go with a perk system in Skyrim, there should be some award for being the adventuring type and not fast traveling.

I wanted to find locations in Fallout 3 because I at least was given an incentive in both aspects, random exploration of buildings and figuring out what happened and two I got an award for being an adventurer.

This is of course my opinion though.

Couldn't disagree more. I find exploring Skyrim way more satisfying then Fallout 3. It's bland and boring at best.

I agree. Fallout has always been better with exploring then TES

Skyrim is bland. The fact that half of the dungeons are attached to some sort of quest makes them bland and boring.

Fallout had an open world and buildings that you could go in and out of that had nothing to do with quest, but for the sheer fun of exploring.

Lots of dungeons not tied to quests.

I think he just like to disagree with everyone, no matter if he criticizes BS in one thread and praises them in the next... I guess it just make's him feel special.

I find the exploration to be equal to Fallout 3, just less preset items which is both good and bad. Both games are miles ahead of Oblivion in this department although Oblivion runs circles around both games in different areas such as a better RPG and better character creation (Yes over Skyrim). New Vegas has all three of them beat in terms of exploration since you will get rewarded in New Vegas for exploreing.

Agreed Terror. We should be comparing it to New Vegas if anything.

I still would like more expansion on exploration.

I've found both equally facinating

How do you find dungeons always attached to quest fascinating?

I don't understand this at all. That isn't fascinating nor interesting. You get less exploration. LESS.

Imho the dungeons in Skyrim are not always quest related it is just made to seem that way because of radiant quests(which I appreciate) I think if a person avoids misc. quests and went dungeon crawling it wouldn't seem like they're all tied to quests and tbh I have seen plenty of areas and caves that I've heard no mention of in game and chose to avoid(knowing that it may get tied to a radiant quest eventually) or check it out if I'm in the mood.

I do agree that exploring for me is a bit more fun in fallout 3(not really NV tho) but honestly I think that has a lot to do with the setting, at least for me. I like how familar fallout is and prefer 19th centuary buildings to caves, plus if you give me a gun and tell me there is a crahed ufo out there... it. is. on.

I will never get why people love fallout 3 so much. It was a good game but geez. Exploration in fallout consisted of me hoping and praying that a gaint debris wall wouldn't force me into yet ANOTHER subway tunnel. Oh yea that was great :-\.

And as for the dungeons attached to quests... they all are. The game randomly picks a dungeon everytime you do one of those bounty missions or any of the other radiant quests.

I Disagree.
I fast traveled pretty much in fallout 3 x) And i felt soo.. how do i say.. claustrophobic in some places
Also dungeons in skyrim is a huge step in the right direction,Much better then in oblivion
More unique dungeons/caves in skyrim
And maybe its just me being a big really devoted fan of tes that thinks like that,i just love to explore lands of tamriel

Sometimes you just want to load up on ammo and rip apart a rider camp like playing an FPS.

Because of Experience points, it does seen a bit more rewarding than doing the same in Skyrim which, despite Bethesda's best efforts, rewards leveling efficiency to "grinding" methods than actual combat.

I love both systems. If I have my way, we will have both. Character experience would level character levels and stats like health and give 1 character perk points every 10 levels to spend on racial perk tree. Skill experience would level skill levels and provides skill points every 10 levels to spend on skill trees.

In fallout 3 I never fast traveled. At one point toward the end of the game I had to go clear across the map for something stupid and I forgot that I could fast travel.

With Skyrim I was always afraid to go into any dungeons or places due to breaking quests. This made it so I just fast traveled everywhere.

Fallout 3 invited you to walk everywhere, Skyrim does not. I've played for over 500 hours in Skyrim and I loved every minute but Skyrim is missing something. Now that the initial Christmas morning feeling is gone I can't help but to feel annoyed with the game. It got boring. I'm not complaining, I got my moneys worth and more but it kinda svcks it's lost it's kick for me. I don't go into chests or anything anymore because I have everything I need.

Skyrim's exploration is one of the things that I think Bethesda actually got right (for the most part). It's not the same type as Fallout 3, but still just as rewarding...now New vegas' exploration...well, that wasn't so rewarding, but fortunately it blew away FO3 in just about every other aspect.

There's more that I like about Skyrim than dislike, but they seem to outweigh the good points.

Getting rid of randomized loot and putting in more unique items would help exploration greatly. You can only find so many "Dwarven maces of fire" before they start getting old. Finding the uniquely named weapons in Fallout 3 and New Vegas were very rewarding. You don't get quite as much of that in Oblivion and Skyrim. Morrowind did even better than FO3 and NV in this regard.

Other improvements:
- Named NPCs (enough with "Bandit" or "Marauder")
- More backstories (Skyrim did better than Oblivion in this regard), goes hand in hand with Named NPCS

Now, the work required to do all of this would probably require less dungeons. And I'd be perfectly fine with that. 100 unique dungeons beats 250 bleh dungeons.

Nothing will ever compare to the text-based game in the Vault-Tec headquarters in D.C., sorry.

Fallout had many incentives with the little hidden stories contained on random slips of paper, xp for finding new locations, truly UNIQUE weapons to be found, etc.

Many people are going to retort by claiming Skyrim has an equitable amount compared to the FO games. This just isn't true. The Abandoned Prison is about the ONLY dungeon with a written story that isn't related to some type of quest. I like the glimpse into the past that isn't related to a quest, not the "these people died during an expedition shortly before you showed up" Skyrimisms.

If you think the Abandoned Prison is the only unique story not tied to a quest then you haven't played this game.

Exploring for its own sake is like the one thing Skyrim does almost flawlessly. Much better than Fallout 3, which was amazing in its own right.

I just wish they augmented that "Exploration" With more tangible rewards. There's a punishing lack of unique items in this game that simply exist for the player to find. All too often they're tied to some overblown faction, or some weird quest. Why can't people just have interesting items because they're interesting?

I disagree too. I couldn't stand the dreary landscape that was FO3. I know it goes with the territory and all, but damn, it was so depressing I couldn't wait to beat that game. At least in Skyrim the environments are pretty to look at and I don't feel like committing suicide

Now I have to disagree with you on that last point. All exploring did for me in NV was break quests. Besides you didn't need to explore in NV. If you did the main quest the game automatically took you to nearly every area in the game. There were a very few areas on the outskirts that were not included but there was nothing of interest at any of them. In FO3 there were a ton of areas not included in the main quest. I was still discovering new locations on my 3rd and 4th play throughs. For NV I explored everything in 1 playthrough and that was a very short game too. It was well executed but overall I got a lot more play out of FO3. I've gotten a lot more play out of Skyrim than I got out of NV too.

I am just glad that it is so much better than Oblivion. Morrowind was one of my favorite games of all time because it was the first game I played where I felt I could do anything. I didnt even finish the main quest until Tribunal came out and I felt I needed to do it before doing expansion content.

edit: I do think fallout 3 is oddly amazing for exploration. For quite a while I just kept making new characters and going off in different directions for hours.

i'm more likely to explore random dungeons in skyrim, the quests attatched to them are some what interesting. I just wish that i could radomally find some awesome weapon like you could in fallout 3, i can remember finding the Lincoln repeater at a low level and thinking how awesome it was