The Taint Reaper posted:Bethesda hired 18 guys to work on the dungeons for the next elder scrolls I thought they had 18 in Skyrim? And every dungeon was a lazy loop de loop in that game. WINNERSH TRIANGLE posted:It's a shame - the Tamriel Rebuilt crew came up with a lot of hella cool Art of Morrowind style material for this:http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/files/TR_Artbook.pdf That Lutemoth dude really likes to draw frog eyes on all of his stuff. Frogs are p cool though  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBkWhkAZ9ds SunAndSpring fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 01:27
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dickmonsters are canon, see: the "biters" in the 36 sermons
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Jul 26, 2014 01:50
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SunAndSpring posted:I thought they had 18 in Skyrim? And every dungeon was a lazy loop de loop in that game. I never really got the problem with this. It wasn't like the design was actually affected by it in any capacity, since generally you just get spat out behind a secret wall that wasn't actually a loop in the map. It was a great way of saying "this dungeon is over" and saving the time going backwards through the big empty tomb you just walked through.
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Jul 26, 2014 04:24
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also the layout for the dungeons was fine, it was the fact that all of them had one of 3 art styles that was poo poo. Is it a fort, ruin, or cave? Like A lot of the dungeons had p cool poo poo but that doesn't keep me from noticing that I am killing draugr in a nordic ruin for the thousandth time. Man Whore fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 05:09
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i unironically want a coda game dont even care cant get enough of that weird poo poo
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Jul 26, 2014 05:24
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Upmarket Mango posted:i unironically want a coda game dont even care cant get enough of that weird poo poo Trainwiz's stuff is probably the closest thing to C0DA that we'll probably ever get. Which is probably a good thing because his stuff is better than vanilla Skyrim.
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Jul 26, 2014 05:58
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Upmarket Mango posted:i unironically want a coda game dont even care cant get enough of that weird poo poo Here you go, a mod made by Michael Kirkbride and Trainwiz
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Jul 26, 2014 06:01
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Man Whore posted:also the layout for the dungeons was fine, it was the fact that all of them had one of 3 art styles that was poo poo. Is it a fort, ruin, or cave? Yeah pretty much. They really nailed the Dwemer ruins and the Falmer caves but the forts and normal caves are about as generic as they get, and the tombs being well-done only really makes them interesting for the first five or so rather than never.
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Jul 26, 2014 08:51
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Heavy Lobster posted:I never really got the problem with this. It wasn't like the design was actually affected by it in any capacity, since generally you just get spat out behind a secret wall that wasn't actually a loop in the map. It was a great way of saying "this dungeon is over" and saving the time going backwards through the big empty tomb you just walked through. Just the idea that you need an quick n' easy escape route from your dungeon probably means it was so poorly thought through/uninteresting in the first place as to render the whole exercise utterly absurd. You can pretty much expand this to every element of the later Elder Scrolls games, a mountain of slightly more bland than before garbage trying desperately to be 'innovative' while really repackaging the same old thing again and again. Actually pretty much just life in general. Flaky fucked around with this message at 09:29 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 09:26
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Flaky posted:Just the idea that you need an quick n' easy escape route from your dungeon probably means it was so poorly thought through/uninteresting in the first place as to render the whole exercise utterly absurd. So dungeon crawling in general is a terrible idea then, got it.
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Jul 26, 2014 09:40
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Heavy Lobster posted:So dungeon crawling in general is a terrible idea then, got it. It just suggests a kind of roboticism in the construction. Like go here, spend 25 minutes that is all beep boop your fun time is over. Like why not surprise me, and have a dungeon that is  50 minutes long? Isn't that kind of the whole point of open world RPGs? To let the player explore? Why would you explore a dungeon that wants you out the door 10 seconds after you beat the boss (not like you could miss him, as you are railroaded into him by design). I mean what demand was this responding to? I don't recall ever feeling like I needed an emergency escape from any of the dungeons in Fallout 3? I mean the subway was confusing, you might even get lost heaven forbid, but at least the dungeons were interconnected in interesting and realistic ways. How many dungeons in Skyrim actually linked up with other dungeons? I feel like we can expect simple stuff like this now.You can't really tame game design that is that uninspiring with any amount of work-arounds, best to just switch off the life support and start over. I mean it is ridiculous, this was a AAA title there was no way anything was going to be left to chance here. Just the type of 'safe' game design that the market seems to love. Flaky fucked around with this message at 09:51 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 09:43
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Flaky posted:It just suggests a kind of roboticism in the construction. Like go here, spend 25 minutes that is all beep boop your fun time is over. Like why not surprise me, and have a dungeon that is You didn't play Dawnguard. The friggin outside dungeon area with all the teleporters and falmer cliff village and poo poo was a maze. And it was made more confusing because if you wanted to do the secret orb quest and the killing of the 6 ice giants you had to know exactly where to go and see pictures beforehand because there was so much entrances and exists that lead back to the same area it ate up a ton of time. The ice giants have no quest markers either and this is ontop of all skyrim maps looking like poo poo. It was exactly like playing an old RPG with the lack of sense of direction. But calling down the dragon to clear the village beforehand was cool so as you try and navigate the area the dragon is blowing up falmer for you. So yeah I liked the quick exits because that meant I could move onto the next dungeon. The ending to the quest was kinda cool though, the snow elf dude who was evil I fought him on the balcony and wound up falling over the ledge with him. The Taint Reaper fucked around with this message at 09:56 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 09:52
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Flaky posted:Why would you explore a dungeon that wants you out the door 10 seconds after you beat the boss (not like you could miss him, as you are railroaded into him by design). I mean what demand was this responding to? I don't recall ever feeling like I needed an emergency escape from any of the dungeons in Fallout 3? At that point they might as well just give you a bunch of loot automatically and teleport you out.
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Jul 26, 2014 09:58
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Flaky posted:It just suggests a kind of roboticism in the construction. Like go here, spend 25 minutes that is all beep boop your fun time is over. Like why not surprise me, and have a dungeon that is Okay, if you're arguing that time investment is a differentiating factor, that still exists in the game because, shocker, the dungeons come in different sizes! There are tiny little one-ledge-with-bear caves, forts like Faldar's Tooth where there are a few different ways to get through the dungeon to the bandit chief in the tower, Brittleshin Pass which is a tiny little cave that actually does spit you out somewhere different, "event" dungeons like the ones for the Gauldur Amulet quest or Ragnvald where you can take on either wing before the main hall's boss, and then the megadungeons - Blackreach and Labyrinthian - that you come back to a few times for various quests. Having a way to get you back to the entrance without having to meander through empty space isn't any more robotic than having a dungeon end in a loot chest and then have you go back out without it. If you're more concerned about the impressions of sameyness it gives I think you're looking to the wrong design choice because there is a whole hell of a lot of stuff wrong with Skyrim that's samey and "saving time walking through empty space" isn't one of them.
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Jul 26, 2014 09:58
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Just let TES:VI have mark/recall so you can teleport out of the dungeon. And have levitation so you can fly out of a dungeon window. Or enter through a window. With climbing. What I'm saying is devs making nice dungeons are like parents making sand castles, and then giving their kids a bucket full of tools so that they can smash it in whatever way they like. 
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Jul 26, 2014 09:59
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hailthefish posted:At that point they might as well just give you a bunch of loot automatically and teleport you out. *Kills necromancer in fancier robes and takes things from chest behind him, casts Recall* Ahhhh another great day of dungeon crawling in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind! *Kills necromancer in fancier robes and takes things from chest behind him, walks through door that leads to dungeon entryway* HOG'S poo poo GAME DESIGN
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Jul 26, 2014 10:03
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I want a follower resurrection spell in the next one since they kept getting in the way and I was dicking around with kinetic arrows near those cultists ontop of the mountain and I wound up shooting my follower off the mountain going a billion miles an hour and I eventually found the body near a tree 15 minutes later. then I had to type the console command to resurrect. a real bad idea is to have kinetic arrows and then shoot your horse while you're riding it. an even worse idea is to have enchanted werewolf arrows with kinetic shots that turn anything they hit into a werewolf.
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Jul 26, 2014 10:05
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The Taint Reaper posted:an even worse idea is to have enchanted werewolf arrows with kinetic shots that turn anything they hit into a werewolf. Pretty sure this is a power in E.Y.E.
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Jul 26, 2014 10:07
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The loopback passage after the boss isn't the only problem, it's a frustrating symbol of the problem of all the loving Nord dungeons being the same, differentiated only by how many rooms full of Draugr you had to kill and where the traps were along the path the player is railroaded along. Get to the final room, look at which set of symbols the same old puzzle uses in this dungeon, door opens, kill boss, next door opens, loot chests, pull lever, gate to main room opens, leave through front door. And you could use Recall/Intervention whenever you wanted, not just after the boss of the dungeon is dead. hailthefish fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 10:07
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Heavy Lobster posted:Having a way to get you back to the entrance without having to meander through empty space isn't any more robotic than having a dungeon end in a loot chest and then have you go back out without it. If you're more concerned about the impressions of sameyness it gives I think you're looking to the wrong design choice because there is a whole hell of a lot of stuff wrong with Skyrim that's samey and "saving time walking through empty space" isn't one of them. I am sure this is the exact thought-process that went on at Bethesda. My point is that this is responding to a largely imaginary problem. Like I said, no-one complains about endlessly retracing their steps in earlier games. As far as I know, it is impossible in Morrowind because the distances are impractical, there is no fast travel, and Mark/Recall type spells exist. If it really was instead intended to offset the perception that oblivions dungeons were too samey, then it was merely inappropriate. The answer to that was and is to build interesting dungeons, rather than levelizing everything. Disclaimer: You are right I didn't play Skyrim to anything like completion, or any of the expansions. Guess why! ed.2: In fact I am not sure you are entirely right, because the transport carts was Disco Infiva posted:Just let TES:VI have mark/recall so you can teleport out of the dungeon. And have levitation so you can fly out of a dungeon window. Or enter through a window. With climbing. this guy gets it Flaky fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 10:09
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Flaky posted:I am sure this is the exact thought-process that went on at Bethesda. My point is that this is responding to a largely imaginary problem. Like I said, no-one complains about endlessly retracing their steps in earlier games. As far as I know, it is impossible in Morrowind because the distances are impractical and Mark/Recall exists. If it really was instead intended to offset the perception that oblivions dungeons were too samey, then it was merely inappropriate. The answer to that was and is to build interesting dungeons, rather than levelizing everything. Retracing steps was literally the third biggest complaint about Oblivion dungeons, right after the terrible loot and general boring design. Oblivion dungeons would be enormously long slogs through identical passageways that ended in a wet fart dead end, oftentimes without any 'boss' style creature, and almost never ever with any end-of-dungeon loot chest that wasn't the same wooden chest tucked in the corner of some rocks you've been looting the whole time, containing level-appropriate daggers and stamina potions. If you could figure out that this was supposed to be the end, you'd have to go all the way back through the long and lovely thing to get back outside. Literally the only thing differentiating Oblivion dungeons from the overworld was that there was a forced dead zone of backtracking after clearing out the enemies, since the loot was entirely indistinguishable. I guess mob density was a bit higher in dungeons, which is to be expected, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if just wandering the wilderness was a faster way of leveling in Oblivion than dungeon crawling. While Skyrim's dungeons are certainly nothing to aspire to, they're all several orders of magnitude more interesting and creative than literally anything in Oblivion. More often than not I'll wander out of a Skyrim dungeon largely unimpressed, but every once in a while I'll think of something neat it did, or be heading to the next step of the quest it introduced me to, and I can't remember that ever happening in Oblivion, a game I've probably spent more time in than Skyrim. Also, the carts were definitely in at vanilla because I've been using them almost exclusively since launch day. You can also take ships from Windhelm (and I assume Solitude) leading to any of the cities that can be reached by water, if you're so inclined. Basically, what I'm hearing so far is that loop-endings are a symptom of a lot of other problems, which I will agree with, but I still haven't heard anything convincing that says that the looping itself is bad other than "because it reminds me of other reasons." e: Like, seriously, if you can ever sum up the energy to play Skyrim again, I dare you to just walk all the way back whenever you kill the boss and tell me how quickly you get sick of it. Or, more accurately, cast Mark every time you go into one of Morrowind's larger-than-a-bandit-cave dungeons and then Recall when you're done with it and think about how convenient it is. Heavy Lobster fucked around with this message at 10:29 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 10:25
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Heavy Lobster posted:While Skyrim's dungeons are certainly nothing to aspire to, they're all several orders of magnitude more interesting and creative than literally anything in Oblivion. More often than not I'll wander out of a Skyrim dungeon largely unimpressed, but every once in a while I'll think of something neat it did, or be heading to the next step of the quest it introduced me to, and I can't remember that ever happening in Oblivion, a game I've probably spent more time in than Skyrim. This may come as something of a surprise but I also didn't play much of Oblivion, maybe there is some similar reason why this was... The reason is they both had terribly designed dungeons. Including an escape hatch so that you don't have to retrace your steps did not improve the overall quality of dungeons. In fact, logically, if they were indeed interesting or significantly interlinked like in the Fallouts, it would have subtracted from them. Fortunately (?) they weren't that interesting to start out with. Flaky fucked around with this message at 10:41 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 10:37
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Flaky posted:This may come as something of a surprise but I also didn't play much of Oblivion, maybe there is some similar reason why this was... Heavy Lobster posted:Basically, what I'm hearing so far is that loop-endings are a symptom of a lot of other problems, which I will agree with, but I still haven't heard anything convincing that says that the looping itself is bad other than "because it reminds me of other reasons." You keep saying Skyrim Is Bad and I keep agreeing with you. This doesn't mean there can't be quality of life improvements in bad games.
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Jul 26, 2014 10:39
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Heavy Lobster posted:You keep saying Skyrim Is Bad and I keep agreeing with you. This doesn't mean there can't be quality of life improvements in bad games. My point is though, that by including a shortcut exit, you are fatally compromising the quality of the dungeon before you even start. Because, therefore, once you have reached the end, that is indeed, the end, and not the beginning. Of something interesting. Which you could have made. If you hadn't had to conform to some idiotic criteria like "people can only handle 25 minutes of dungeon at a time, give them any more and they may suffer a brain haemorrhage."
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Jul 26, 2014 10:44
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Flaky posted:Because, therefore, once you have reached the end, that is indeed, the end, and not the beginning. Of something interesting. 
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Jul 26, 2014 10:49
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If the loopbacks were more varied in their forms, and weren't in every single loving nord dungeon, I would be less annoyed with them. It's like they started out with a grand plan for how they were going to make such interesting and varied dungeons with real puzzles and everything and it degraded from there. Have to make sure the player goes through all the puzzles and traps and other ~unique experiences~ in the right order, so gotta make sure they can't take a wrong turn or get lost or take a shortcut. Gotta make the dungeons long enough to feel worth it but not too long or players will get bored. Gotta make sure there's lots of stuff to fight, but nothing too hard. Gotta make sure the loot at the end is good enough to incentivize going all the way through, so make sure there's no good loot in the rest of the dungeon. Oh well we ran out of time after making one puzzle, some corridor pieces, and the draugr crypt pieces, so we'll just call it good and release!
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Jul 26, 2014 10:54
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I guess at the end of the day I literally cannot understand why anyone would ever be annoyed or frustrated or anything other than positive about a game cutting out pointless loving busywork for me. Preemptive: But Heavy, ALL Skyrim dungeons are pointless busywork!  No poo poo that's why you're mad at a convenience feature.
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Jul 26, 2014 11:06
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The game staples your scrotum to a table and then hands you a staple puller. Yes the staple puller is a convenient way of removing the staples, but it's entirely understandable to be miffed about your scrotum being stapled to a table, especially when it seems like the stapling was done mostly to justify the existence of the staple puller. That's a bad analogy but you know what I meant.
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Jul 26, 2014 11:17
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Heavy Lobster posted:Preemptive: But Heavy, ALL Skyrim dungeons are pointless busywork!
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Jul 26, 2014 11:49
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Anyone who goes into skyrim's dungeons is a loser anyway.
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Jul 26, 2014 11:58
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hailthefish posted:Anyone who Guilty as charged
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Jul 26, 2014 12:01
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Sorry I was decidedly unchill about people pissing on Skyrim, a game which deserves to be pissed on. Instead let's revive the Thread Tradition of shittily arting our favorite characters from Morrowind, a much better game. I chose Rollie, the best drat Guar in the world.
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Jul 26, 2014 12:45
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hailthefish posted:The game staples your scrotum to a table and then hands you a staple puller. Yes the staple puller is a convenient way of removing the staples, but it's entirely understandable to be miffed about your scrotum being stapled to a table, especially when it seems like the stapling was done mostly to justify the existence of the staple puller. dont fakepost
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Jul 26, 2014 12:49
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lmbo if you don't get off from stapling your nuts to things and then pulling them out (the staples not your nuts
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Jul 26, 2014 13:32
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this is a morrowind dungeon map it is short if all you are doing is running through it, but it is long if you dip into each of the rooms and loot everything/look for loot. it comes with a key to another tomb, which, if for some reason you are not able to pick locks, might be helpful. this is a skyrim dungeon map  this is that haunted manor in ald-ruhn 
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Jul 26, 2014 17:22
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One of the best parts of Morrowind for me came from the lack of fast travel (except by boat and silt strider). It meant that by the time I finished playing I'd developed an elaborate system of items and shortcuts for travelling that revolved around a pair of soiled pants that let me fly, amulets of Divine and ALMSIVI intervention stolen from the poor, and a patchy assortment of those insanely hard to find propylon indices. It's one of those things that probably sounds awful and tedious today, but it was great that actually getting to a destination was a process in itself.
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Jul 26, 2014 18:41
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I never actually used any of the propylon chambers because they were rarely close to anywhere I wanted to go, involved actually getting all of the indices (and before the Master Index was added their non-zero weight was annoying), and remembering/writing down the circle. It was always easier just to throw on my amulet of CE levitation and boots of blinding speed, fly up about 100 feet, and just aim myself in the direction I wanted to go and hit autorun.
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Jul 26, 2014 18:55
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Flaky posted:My point is though, that by including a shortcut exit, you are fatally compromising the quality of the dungeon before you even start. Because, therefore, once you have reached the end, that is indeed, the end, and not the beginning. Of something interesting. Which you could have made. If you hadn't had to conform to some idiotic criteria like "people can only handle 25 minutes of dungeon at a time, give them any more and they may suffer a brain haemorrhage." Then they'll just make a port out of dungeon spell or some poo poo like Zelda does and a billion other games have. Nobody likes having to backtrack through a cleared dungeon.
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Jul 26, 2014 19:39
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Karl Rove posted:It was always easier just to throw on my amulet of CE levitation and boots of blinding speed, fly up about 100 feet, and just aim myself in the direction I wanted to go and hit autorun. Fortify Restoration to the point that getting retardedly high acrobatics skill as a spell is castable @100%, then just jump wherever you want to go. Faster and more fun.
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Jul 26, 2014 20:51
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what was the difference between having high acrobatics and having high Jump cast on you i mean the scroll of EEAAARRRGHAAYEHUU was Fortify Acrobatics for some piddly duration so i figure that was better
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Jul 26, 2014 21:19
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