Ok, im sure this has been brought up before, but I'm too tired to do a search.
this is a general suggestion to fix a major flaw i saw in OB. Morrowind not so much.

Caves.

Why are there doors on cave entrances?
Why are caves in the middle of a flat forested area instead of a more logical area?
Why are all the caves inside of boulders?
Why do they look like stony glowing mazes?

i know a bit of the reasoning - bugs+time restraints

I have a few suggestions

one-if you have to go through a loading screen into a cave then make the entrance of the cave NOT A DOOR,
make it convincing- like the entrance to an oblivion gate only instead of fire it is a black void.

two- make the exterior area of the cave more convincing. like where a cave SHOULD BE...not in the middle of nowhere. rocky watery etc.

three- make the interior more cavernous, take example from SURE-AI's NEHRIM mod. which creates an amazingly REAL feel to the dungeons and caverns.
create skill based movement throughout the cave in order to traverse it faster and safer- skills involved would be mostly acrobatics and athletics-possible future survival based skills.

four- REMOVE AMBIENT LIGHTING!
i dont want my caves looking like a glowworms toilet--unless they are glowworm toilets!

any other thoughts.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/largest-cave/peter-photography

I need not say anything...

wow maybe you should send these pics to Bethesda so they can make some not so lame ass caves this time around.

try putting a door on that one

Ba dom dish :flamethrower:

Great thread! Yeah I agree with you on everything. Oblivion felt so random, lets place caves all over the place, and they did that without making good locations for them. Another thing the caves look so much alike and becomes so boring that after a while, that I feel walking into a cave makes me stressed, I don't enjoy it att all, I just want out again as fast as possible. This is so sad :/ Another very very important thing, without the levitate spell that was in Morrowind there are no hidden places ( a cave in the roof of a cave, a door high up in the cave wall and so on) I loved to explore caves in Morrowind because of this! and Oblivion tossed it away...So yeah, make the caves better this time Bethesda, not just make them random and boring. Handplace stuff like you used to in Morrowind!

Imagine the following scenario:

You walk over a frozen platform..whether it be a frozen plane of lake (whatever)..the surface beneath your feet start making a cracking noise and before you know you fall down through a hole, into a mysterious cave. There you discover a frozen mammoth/ogre/dragon, whatever. Anything that is compliant with the lore. Perhaps a rare artifact? But make this spot where you fall down completely unnoticable, and nobody ever mentions about it. Pure chance. Wouldn't that be awesome? And maybe AFTER you fall down and somehow manage to escape you ask around and some people tell you about a legend blabla. Im just sayin. Would be immersive, no?

I want caves with lakes. Lakes that are home to monsters!

ooh..pretty.
yes this and others.
skyrim is home to a tribal race of warriors. i think of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qGuI-3RjSQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvK8WYfZIuY

I do agree that the caves could use some work, the whole doors on cave things really needs to go. I suppose you might say that some of the caves had doors installed by their residents, but that only works for the ones with intelligent inhabitants. I find it hard to believe that some cave inhabited by nothing but dumb beasts would have a wooden door on it, unless it was originally inhabited by bandits until new inhabitants came in and drove them away, doors don't grow naturally, you know, and even if you explain it that way, I'm not sure that bandits would put a door on a cave they're using as shelter, it seems to me like that would be like putting a sign outside your cave saying "Someone lives in here! Come in and loot the place!" If the same interior loading system is still in use, then they should do something like New Vegas with the cave entrances, it may not be completely realistic, but it looks more natural than every single cave having a door at its entrance.

While Morrowind was just as guilty of the above as Oblivion, one thing that I liked about Morrowind's caves that was regretably absent in Oblivion was that there were actually multiple different types of caves in the game. Admitably, I didn't notice it that much at first, but when I started using different textures, it became quite apparent that this was the case, and it helped to make caves feel just a bit more varied, it was also good for realism as not every cave would look the same in real life, they can actually look pretty different depending on the geological composition of the area, and other factors, but in Oblivion, no matter where you went, it was just the same cave tile set.

And yes, they definately need to do away with the ambient light, for all types of dungeons, not just caves. In a dungeon, if there's no source of light nearby, it should be dark, in both Oblivion and Morrowind, even in dungeons that were supposed to be devoid of any light sources, I could see clearly, maybe if they fix this, I'll actually have a reason to use torches or light and nighteye spells, in Oblivion, they were really just decoration.

man you reminded me of the ancient burial caves of the Dunmer those were epic, some pretty nice vertical environments.

I guess that's on of OB's biggest mistakes, it did not have... elevation, while morrowind felt more dimensional which was really great.

omg YES PLZ

YES!!!
this is REALLY what we need.
vertical intrances/HIGHLY unique
and PURE CHANCE!!! i love you!

It's cold. Freezing. Everything is preserved. Deep inside the glacier you find:

maybe a cave that has already been discovered and stabilized for entry
http://jezzbean.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/01-ice-cave-rhone-glacier1.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4013/4525569212_456595e94e.jpg

A cave, where, once you get there by boat, only darkness prevails.
http://image04.webshots.com/4/9/7/36/70490736bGTESy_fs.jpg

I agree with all your points.

But concerning point 1)
It would be even better if Bethesda didn't seperate exterior/interior cells at all. This counts for caves and houses etc. It makes it a lot more believable... instead of a loading screen. It also svcked in Oblivion, because of this seperation between exterior/interior cells, that when you were chased by enemies and ran out the cave, they would spawn so ... uh what's the word. They would spawn so ... unbelievable. They "faded" from nowhere.

Much, if not all, of the seperation between exterior/interior cells was due to performance issues (Gamebryo partly... ...). Many other games have done no real seperation between exterior/interior cells though, making it much more believable to walk in or out of them.
Unrelevant to this topic, it would also make thieving a lot cooler in towns...

I usually hate dungeons and avoid them unless they are quest related but what you described there is awesome! That's the kind of underground that would svck me in.

Maybe it was an X360 and PS3 fix but I have the games on both systems, on a Samsung 1080p 120hz LCD TV and if i don't either jack up the brightness of Oblivion or my TV, it really is pitch black. I use torches in basically every cave, ruin or fort that I enter. I have played my X360 Oblivion on everything from a Phillips 1080p LCD, a Vizio 720p TV, a 22in Acer VGA Monitor to my current set up, and all of them were inherently dark when I entered these situations. Torches were necessary. That may not be the case on the PC version or on your television, I'm just commenting that torches and light or nighteye spells/potions were actually of great use to me.

Remove ambient lighting, no.

Im a bit fed up with games that are totally dark. I find them very hard to play. I had to give up silent hill IV because that tiny flashlight only slightly illuminated a very narrow beam, and the rest of my screen was pitch black. Unplayable.
And a cheap trick, at that.

I used torches in oblivion and those were nice, a bit annoying having to constantly switch from them to sword.

Never used nighy-eye as I really disliked the blueish hue it gave everything, apart from being an immersion killer it didnt make it easier for me to see at all, because chests were the same colour as the background.

Low ambient lighting, maybe.

But I would like to see a return to Morrowind night eye, where it actually increased the light level, instead of distorting everything to monochrome.

In order:

1) Well, realistically, it probably has to do with the separation of interior and exterior cells. Nothing inherently wrong with putting doors on the cave entrance though. If it is supposed to be a hideout for bandits or something out in the wilderness, it'd make sense they'd put something up to keep the elements out. Granted, if said cave is semi-close to civilization, the door seems a little conspicuous. But then again, it also raises the questions on how guild leaders, or even residents of a city, know that the nearby cave is a bandit or smuggler hideout, and they wait around for me to do something about it. That's another topic though.

2) Ok, This one I'll agree with. But as someone who has been spelunking before, a cave is not always a giant hole in the side of a massive rock wall. I've been in one cave that was little more then a hole in the ground near a small hill. Some variation in the cave entrances would be nice.

EDIT: I should clarify, this wasn't even a big hole. Crack in the ground is more accurate. It was... well, from memory, I'd estimate about 2 feet wide.

3) Again, probably engine limitations. Given that the entrances that cue a cave is a door, it makes more sense that its in the side of a boulder then... say a door lying on the ground. More variation would be nice though.

4) I'd argue for hidden natural light, or even torches. Realistically, Beth probably wanted to give you an option to see without saying "no torch? Well, hope you've got spells, because its [censored] dark inside".

Fallout NV managed to do caves without doors. Hopefully they will take some queues from Obsidian.

A Kveldulf already mentioned, I'd also really like to see other entrences than the simply door/door shaped hole. Some caves should have huge openings, some should be cracks..

There was a cave in NV that had nice ambient lighting in it. You could actually see where the light was coming from holes to the surface. Instead of being totally dark, I think some caves should look like this.

With 10 plus months 'til release I am pretty sure they are done world building. Maybe these suggestions would be appropriate in the next speculation thread or maybe the suggestion thread.

All I see are a load of they should do this, threads. They do get old after a while you know.

what else exactly do you expect when we have no information yet?

like Gothic , man that game was EPIC, finding a cave at night was scary as hell, I still remember in Gothic 2 I was trying to become an apprentice at the monastery, and in that mission I had to find a cave and I looked for hours then as night fell, I whipped out my torch and then I stumbled upon it hidden behind some heavy vegetation, man that was so cool, and I freaked out when a Mine crawler suddenly rushed at me from inside XD

EXACTLY!!! I was thinking the same thing but you beat me to it.


P.S.
Queue is pronounced like Key, and basically means a line. Cue is pronounced as Q, and means a hint.