Morrowind was massive decline and should be considered as such

[Lemming42]

Nice shift from "Morrowind's dungeons are handcrafted and full of detail!" to "Morrowind's dungeons are meant to be short, generic and boring!", dickhead.

Again, all your defences can apply to every other Bethesda game - Fo3's metros/Oblivion's ruins/Starfield's outposts do look like realistic locations and aren't designed to be "mega theme parks". This doesn't stop them from being shit for many of the same reasons Morrowind's short, restrictive, generic dungeons are. You make excuses for Morrowind that you wouldn't make for subsequent games made by the same company on the same engine with virtually the same design philosophy, and many of the same resultant problems.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

There is an incredible ammount of secret areas, hidden items and various details. And the best part is its all optional and up to you

Yeah, but for every Urshilaku Burial Caverns, there's plenty of worthless shit like this (and this is a quest dungeon):

.

no

not every dungeon should be a mega theme park, dont be dumb

that one looks exactly like an actual tomb

Most of the ancestral tombs in Morrowind is just a bunch of copied and pasted rooms filled with same generic enemies. They are so generic they could just as well be procedurally generated. They don't have to be maga dungeons but there should be something interesting about them, even if that would mean reducing their number. I don't think any RPG ever suffered because there was not enough copy-pasted garbage out there.

 

[luj1]

Nice shift from "Morrowind's dungeons are handcrafted and full of detail!" to "Morrowind's dungeons are meant to be short, generic and boring!", dickhead.

the shift happened only in your diseased head

like i said, not every dungeon needs to be a theme park. thats objectively poor design

Dunmer ancestral tombs are essentially dynastic crypts so yes, sometimes its gonna have 3 rooms, just like in the real world

if u want bigger dungeons, then find a dwemer facility or something, you absolute butt plugged prostitute

 

[Lemming42]

Dunmer ancestral tombs are essentially dynastic crypts so yes, sometimes its gonna have 3 rooms, just like in the real world

Oh yeah, the real world Dunmer ancestral tombs that the level designers were beholden to.

I know it's just the nature of Todd-era Bethesda games that not everything is going to be on an even level of quality simply due to the scope of the world, but it's still a pity that their approach, going back to MW and continuing to this day, is to fill half the map with generic samey crap that has basically no gameplay value. It recurs over and over again - a lot of the wasteland locations in Fo3 are completely phoned in, Oblivion has countless generic caves that do nothing but waste your time, and now Starfield has these outposts that exist purely for the sake of giving the player something to do, but the devs being too lazy and/or rushed to make something worthwhile.

Saying "it's a shame that so many of the dungeons in this game are generic, copy/pasted, offer nothing gameplay-wise beyond trash combat, and lack anything unique or distinctive" isn't the same as asking for everything to be a theme park. I really like all these games btw, including MW, which is why I'm so perpetually disappointed in their failings.

 

[Old Hans]

i once got so lost in a daggerfall dungeon I coudlnt find my way out and I had to make a new character. I think I may already mentioned that in this thread, but its my only war story

 

[luj1]

Most of the ancestral tombs in Morrowind is just a bunch of copied and pasted rooms filled with same generic enemies

well then if u liked daggerfall that sounds perfect?

this is proof u guys have no criticism, only impotent screams of "Mw should be like daggerfall"

well its not. and thank god. just deal with it

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Nice shift from "Morrowind's dungeons are handcrafted and full of detail!" to "Morrowind's dungeons are meant to be short, generic and boring!", dickhead.

the shift happened only in your diseased head

like i said, not every dungeon needs to be a theme park. thats objectively poor design

Dunmer ancestral tombs are essentially dynastic crypts so yes, sometimes its gonna have 3 rooms, just like in the real world

if u want bigger dungeons, then find a dwemer facility or something, you absolute butt plugged prostitute

There's nothing realistic about building a dungeon in the middle of nowhere and filling it with shitmobs. Not only makes it a pain in the ass for the family to visit their dead relatives, it also makes it easy for any potential grave robber to plunder it without anyone noticing.

Most of the ancestral tombs in Morrowind is just a bunch of copied and pasted rooms filled with same generic enemies

well then if u liked daggerfall that sounds perfect?

this is proof u guys have no criticism, only impotent screams of "Mw should be like daggerfall"

well its not. and thank god. just deal with it

On the contrary, Morrowind should be less like Daggerfall. Daggerfall had enormous world. Part of this world were factions which sent you on quests. Since the player is totally free and can go to any city he wants quests need to be randomly generated in part. Since it would be weird for every NPC to send you to the same 10 dungeons they needed a lot of dungeons, which means that they as well needed to be procedurally generated. Morrowind doesn't have any of that so all these tiny copy-pasted dungeons are just a waste of time and nobody would miss them if they were cut.

 

[skaraher]

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/anyone-addcited-to-morrowind.3075/

just browse that thread if you want to know true Codexers grognards opinions on Morrowind and not the rambling of some post-2016 join date fanboy.

MW is en empty game, I don't understand how somebody can get addicted to it, but that's just my opinion. The game is pretty and big and... that's about it. It gets boring very quickly.

I could replicate the Morrowind gameplay experience by looking at screenshots and entering random fantasy sounding words into Google

lol, good point, playing with Google is more fun

To sum up, it's a kinda fun game but in the end, after a few weeks playing and realising that everything is the same (Oh yay, yet-another-egg-mineâ„¢ or yet-another-daedric-ruinâ„¢ or yet-another-smugglers-denâ„¢ or yet-another-tombâ„¢), combat is boring and dialogue is uninteresting, all I can say is "meh".

... and I did used to be addicted like you. Just another 10 minutes... and then 3 hours later... Just let me finish this... another 3 hours later... Maybe I don't need sleep tonight?

luj1 did you even play the game ? Your passionate plaidoyee sure is sorely lacking about concrete arguments based on actual gameplay elements.

 

[Harthwain]

There's nothing realistic about building a dungeon in the middle of nowhere and filling it with shitmobs. Not only makes it a pain in the ass for the family to visit their dead relatives, it also makes it easy for any potential grave robber to plunder it without anyone noticing.

Actually, it made me think of ancient Egyptians. Their tombs were supposed to be inaccessible and their designers created traps and fake chambers to mislead and ward off grave robbers. It also makes sense for necromancers to raid tombs for material for their practices.

Morrowind doesn't have any of that so all these tiny copy-pasted dungeons are just a waste of time and nobody would miss them if they were cut.

As many other things in Morrowind, they exist to fill space in a "realistic" way. Because you can't just have empty space somewhere and call it a day. That's the downside of having a huge open world.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Actually, it made me think of ancient Egyptians. Their tombs were supposed to be inaccessible and their designers created traps and fake chambers to mislead and ward off grave robbers. It also makes sense for necromancers to raid tombs for material for their practices.

There's a couple of notable differences compared to Valley of the Kings. First of all the graves were mant to be hidden and unaccessible. The graves in Morrowind are sometimes located near major roads. Not close enough to be convenient, but not far enough for them to be hard to find. Also people didn't go to visit dead Pharaohs but people of Morrowind to go to visit the graves.

As many other things in Morrowind, they exist to fill space in a "realistic" way. Because you can't just have empty space somewhere and call it a day. That's the downside of having a huge open world.

I don't know. There are plenty of open world games that did without random time-wasting dungeons and I never head people complaining about these. Witcher 3 for example had a lot of random time wasting activities but there wasn't a bunch of small dungeons. There's also Fallout Nev Vegas which had just a couple of vaults but each had an unique story.

 

[Lemming42]

As many other things in Morrowind, they exist to fill space in a "realistic" way. Because you can't just have empty space somewhere and call it a day. That's the downside of having a huge open world.

All these games really strain between being "realistic" and being heavily abstracted. The tombs are an obvious example - there's one like right across from Pelagiad that travelling traders (not that any exist in the game) would surely be passing numerous times on a daily basis. The Silt Strider network goes right past it, assuming they follow the roads. Simply travelling on the main road requires a person to walk right past the entrance. In clear weather, people from Pelagiad can probably see the tomb, and it'd be a hotspot for adventurers. But it's still overrun with undead and filled with loot until the player, as the only person who ever actually does anything in Vvardenfell, decides to go in and clear it out.

Oblivion went on to recreate the same thing with the forts - bandits have overrun forts that are literally in eyeshot of the Imperial City walls, and which guards dumbly walk past on a regular basis.

This isn't a problem in itself; I don't think it's unreasonable for the developers to ask the player to accept the abstraction that while the tomb shouldn't really exist in the state it's in, it does anyway for the sake of providing the player with gameplay. But then since that's the case, those dungeons might as well at least try to be fun, unique and memorable, rather than just a couple rooms stitched together with a shit trash mob and partly level scaled loot.

 

[JarlFrank]

pretty much every single dungeon in Fo4

Fallout 4 is far from a good game but most of its dungeons are genuinely good tbh

They have plenty of verticality, multiple avenues of approach, etc.

EDIT:
It was specifically the main quest dungeon "Corvega Assembly Plant", an old car assembly plant taken over by raiders, that made me realize the game's dungeons are actually good, especially after the painfully linear donuts of Skyrim.

It's a large factory with an extensive exterior, where you can climb up scaffoldings while getting shot at from above and below. There are multiple entrances to the factory, and the central hall is large and open, the perfect place for a wild shootout.
Good stuff.

 

[skaraher]

Fallout New Vegas had its lot of pointless trash dungeons and in a true gameification fashion, you could find one Star bottle cap in most of them to keep them as point of interest. It's a trait shared by all Gamebryo games.

Problem with Morrowind is that a lot of the factions storylines are tied to these trash dungeons. Notably Mage Guild.

 

[luj1]

Problem with Morrowind is that a lot of the factions storylines are tied to these trash dungeons. Notably Mage Guild.

except no game did factions better than morrowind

you are in massive cope mode

 

[Harthwain]

There's a couple of notable differences compared to Valley of the Kings.

Oh, I didn't mean to say that Dunmer grave culture is comparable to that of the ancient Egyptians. Just that not in every culture graves were accessible for visitation purposes. Egyptians had separate burial chambers (filled with stuff that wasn't even supposed to be seen!) and above ground mortuary chapels for rites and offerings. So it would make sense for a video game to make a dungeon-like burial ground full of traps, false corridors/chambers and secret areas.

I don't know. There are plenty of open world games that did without random time-wasting dungeons and I never head people complaining about these. Witcher 3 for example had a lot of random time wasting activities but there wasn't a bunch of small dungeons. There's also Fallout Nev Vegas which had just a couple of vaults but each had an unique story.

The problem with Morrowind's dungeons isn't limited to tombs. It is a result of having not enough time/manpower at the time to do dungeons properly for the world the size they ended up with (which is still smaller than originally intended). That said, even with better interior design you would still run into the issue of dungeons (regardless of their type) not being unique in some way due to how many of them there are. Unless you had the time and manpower to create some quests specifically for them. Even so, you should keep in mind that when you get into some random skooma smuggling den, kill everybody, you shouldn't really expect to get more out of it than what's on the tin (skooma plus items worn by some every-day enemies). Morrowind is that kind of game.

All these games really strain between being "realistic" and being heavily abstracted.

True.

This isn't a problem in itself; I don't think it's unreasonable for the developers to ask the player to accept the abstraction that while the tomb shouldn't really exist in the state it's in, it does anyway for the sake of providing the player with gameplay. But then since that's the case, those dungeons might as well at least try to be fun, unique and memorable, rather than just a couple rooms stitched together with a shit trash mob and partly level scaled loot.

Amen to that.

 

[Funposter]

pretty much every single dungeon in Fo4

Fallout 4 is far from a good game but most of its dungeons are genuinely good tbh

They have plenty of verticality, multiple avenues of approach, etc.

EDIT:
It was specifically the main quest dungeon "Corvega Assembly Plant", an old car assembly plant taken over by raiders, that made me realize the game's dungeons are actually good, especially after the painfully linear donuts of Skyrim.

It's a large factory with an extensive exterior, where you can climb up scaffoldings while getting shot at from above and below. There are multiple entrances to the factory, and the central hall is large and open, the perfect place for a wild shootout.
Good stuff.

Fallout 4 represents a pretty huge leap in terms of the quality of dungeons and combat encounters compared to previous Bethesda entries, which have all pretty much operated in the same way since Morrowind. It's also worth noting that the improved AI plays a large role in this, since they will actually do things like take cover. It's still less complex than a combat encounter in the original Halo, but Skyrim was operating on two distinct behaviours for humanoid NPCs which were just "run at the enemy and hit them" or "backpedal away from the enemy and shoot them".

 

[anvi]

And the original Halo was less complex than good PC shooters. :/

 

[Lemming42]

This is making me want to retry Fo4 but I feel like it's a trick and I'll end up going "oh god i'm bored" by Super Duper Mart and uninstalling as usual.

 

[Butter]

Hardware Town is a pretty good dungeon (even if the quest that sends you there is retarded). The raiders are clearly trying to ambush you but you can dodge them all if you go in through the back. However a lot of FO4's dungeons are just Skyrim slop where you walk down a straight corridor and kill all the enemies, before it conveniently loops you back around to the entrance.

 

[NecroLord]

pretty much every single dungeon in Fo4

Fallout 4 is far from a good game but most of its dungeons are genuinely good tbh

They have plenty of verticality, multiple avenues of approach, etc.

EDIT:
It was specifically the main quest dungeon "Corvega Assembly Plant", an old car assembly plant taken over by raiders, that made me realize the game's dungeons are actually good, especially after the painfully linear donuts of Skyrim.

It's a large factory with an extensive exterior, where you can climb up scaffoldings while getting shot at from above and below. There are multiple entrances to the factory, and the central hall is large and open, the perfect place for a wild shootout.
Good stuff.

Fallout 4 represents a pretty huge leap in terms of the quality of dungeons and combat encounters compared to previous Bethesda entries, which have all pretty much operated in the same way since Morrowind. It's also worth noting that the improved AI plays a large role in this, since they will actually do things like take cover. It's still less complex than a combat encounter in the original Halo, but Skyrim was operating on two distinct behaviours for humanoid NPCs which were just "run at the enemy and hit them" or "backpedal away from the enemy and shoot them".

Please tell me you just didn't praise Fallout 4?