it seems that most modern TES fans never actually played daggerfall. Back in daggerfall there was a really awesome feature in the game in that the regular/non quest dungeons were actually randomized. Yes, every time you played a new game you would get a TOTALLY different dungeons, from creatures to treasure, to... everything.


Unfortunately, sometimes the dungeons were so massive and crazy that it felt like you could be lost in them for days -- real time days. Most people didn't like that. I loved it. It made the world feel so gigantic, and each dungeon was almost a new game in and of itself.


AThen they ditched the idea of randomized dungeons. And this awesome feature has been lost in the sandsof time. I think it would be awesome if they could cook up another randomized dungeon feature., maybe even one that re-randomizes after you are done with the dungeon. Maybe some kind of ancient dwemer technology or something. You explore the randomized dungeon, head on out, then flip a couple of switches of multiple settings -- one swtich for difficulty(easy, moderate, diffficult), one for size(small, medium, large-- this would include how many floors are on it), another switch for enemy density ( solo, occassionally group, always grouped). Well, you get the idea. For me, I'd love the hude sprawling dungeons that make you wonder if you will ever find your way out. For other who hated that aspect of the randomized dungeons they can remove it entirely.


Obviously it adds incredible repay value to the game, too.

I think it probably got less feasible as the dungeons and the tools for making them got more advanced.

That would be interesting to see randomized dungeons again. However, I could see the possibility of dungeons being more generic if they aren't hand made (this can be solved with tons of unique things to put in dungeons, though).

I'd doubt they'd actually put that in Skyrim, but things such as loot, enemy types, and perhaps even Radiant Story could make things within dungeons be "randomized."

I didn't like the randomised dungeons
Random mazes without rhyme or reason as to why their inhabitants lived there or to their layout
Mot a feature I'd be excited about

The only way i can see this being done is by having many individualized "Cells" that have both an open entrance and holes to fit other Cells with it...

Kind of like a jigsaw puzzle, except you would need a large quantity of individual rooms and check that whey all would fit evenly with one another.

Actually, the dungeons weren't randomized each time you played. The dungeons were made using a randomizing procedure, then burned to the master. Every copy of Daggerfall had the SAME set of random dungeons. Most of the dungeons looked like they were made by worms on crack anyway...

JimC

I'm playing daggerfall right now, and it's pretty awesome. One of my all time favorite games , but i have to admit that the dungeons weren't that...fun. Getting lost in a dungeon in daggerfall was by far the worst thing that ever happened to me. So, no.

I think I would prefer if the Elder Scrolls team really designed every cave seperately in a unique manner. I barely played Daggerfall, though I can say the randomized Dungeons were better than the silly dungeons in Oblivion, being designed by like, two persons. I heard they are putting more efforts into making dungeons now though, so I'm really looking forward.

everytime it was different but each looked exactly the same

considering all u had to tdo back in those days to make a dungeon were to make alot of hallways and a few shrines inside blah blah blah it makes it very easy. u cant do that these days. things are waaayyyy toooo complicated now to where that wuld never work and u wuld probably make dungeons that u culd get trapped in or make impossibly hard to navigate dungeons. thats a horrible idea for a game this advanced and u may like getting lost in real life days in a dungeon. but i will have too much to do considering this game comes out while i'll be in college.

I just started playing Daggerfall, and although an awesome game still, it'd be much better if the dungeons were (atleast) half their size. The game would flow much more fluently.

Kind of made you afriad of wandering flippantly into any old deungeon you saw, huh, without a plan to get back out, eh? Absolutely perfect. You should be afraid. You should be prepared,


And it seems many people here did not read my post fully. This would be ONE dungeon that you could set the parameters up on some switches near the entrance. Press the intiate button/switch and viola your new dungeon is created. People could use ot shun it, it would simply be one feature of the game. The rest of the world would remain OB/MW style.

I'm so happy Skyrim won't have anything randomized. Hand crafted any day of the year please.

Todd has said in very early interviews that radiant story kind of pays homage to those classic randomized daggerfall quests, but in a more catered to your play style kind of way.

I thought you said dungeons were always random?

That kicks immersion in the balls, eh? No amount of weasel lore explanations could make that sensible.

Alos, I play the game to enjoy it, not design it...

Uhh, you forget about portals in oblivions? Other planes of existence are already part of TES lore, and so are the Dwemer.

He's talking about random dungeons, not random quests.

Fully aware.

I'm just trying to appease his sense of patronage towards daggerfall.

I always thought dungeons and caves in Oblivion needed more stories; not quests, but just recognizable themes. A bunch of times I'd go into a cave and see cougars and trolls hanging out which never made much sense. You continue down this dungeon to reach nothing at the end.

Imagine you entered a cave, stepping over a bunch of goblin corpses in the beginning. Eventually, you catch up to a bandit group who are trying to clear it out for their own, or looking for the treasure.

What if a dungeon you were crawling ended up attached to another dungeon and eventually to some guys basemant. I loved the smuggling and slave trader caves in Morrowind.

Stuff like that.

So are dungeons always random, or they are the same everytime everybody for everybody?

Who are you talking to, and what are you talking about?

You said everytime you enter a dungeon it's different. Someone else said they used a random generator to create the dungeons, but they are the same all the time for everyone.

The technology and algorithms developed to make great procedurally generated dungeons were not available back at the time of Daggerfall, so it had some simple in context, but complex in implementation, dungeons that sometimes became like a dish of tossed around spaghetti.

Technologies and algorithms tend to develop over time, and hopefully some day we will have great procedurally generated dungeons in games like the future elder scrolls.

I, for one, have been looking into that concept for years.

And where the realism goes?

So, you're saying that I will enter on the same dungeon I entered yesterday and it will be COMPLETELY different? What the hell?

This system works perfect on hack n' slash games, like Diablo, but not here, atleast that's what I think.