I'm not talking about crossbows and spears or darts and throwing stars, there were more unique weapons and there were more of each kind of weapon. Now refer to the bolded bit, open your eyes, and show me where I said Oblivion was "lesser because....". The guy I was replying to stated that Oblivion did everything 10x[ better than Morrowind. But of course, here I am defending Morrowind, so I've got to put up with straw men.

lol broken.

Who cares if Daggerfall did it better, do you actually understand what we're talking about here? He stated Oblivion did everything 10x better. People say Morrowind gets too much support here :facepalm:

Good for you, you know why they didn't have open cities? SO? It's not 10x better to have cities closed, I would argue the other way.

You are aware it's a game and they are limited by size? Because Oblivion had forest, forest, forest, forest, snow. Who cares if you think it's unrealistic? It still did terrain diversity better.

Ignoring the other bit. Morrowinds dungeons were more individually designed. Once again, this is why Bethesda has directly addressed this issue for OBLIVION, the same can be said for terrain diversity.



Point out where I flamed the guy. Point out where I said Morrowind was the 'end all be all'. Point out where I even said Morrowind was better than Oblivion.


Don't point them out, I don't want a Morrowind vs Oblivion debate. Your bias is obvious. I think Oblivion was a better game, that doesn't mean it did everything 10x better, in fact, it did some things worse. There, I said it.

I am so tired about people lying to themselves saying morrowinds dunegeons were better...no they were not... they had only a few different types just like oblivion with a few differences in each one. one thing above all the dungeons had no personality tho in morrowind. at least in oblivion they had a little. morrowind had ugly ugly caves full of nix hounds... mines...full of kawama... drewer ruins full of robots, daedric ruins, and shrines. but they all looked pretty much the same. no drewer ruin was that much different from another. in oblivion they have ayleid ruins, caves, mines although a little diferent, oblivion gates, and forts. morrowinds dungeons were no better. u got the same stuff. i hate how people seem to cheer on everything about morrowind just because it came first. i went through morrowind from top to bototm. its a better game then oblivion but not better dungeons. the only difference is that morrowinds had a little better loot. but i definitely liked the creatures in oblivions dunegons and caves like spriggans and goblins etc.

Many of Morrowind's dungeons had character and story that were not tied to a quest. Because of this, even though most of them were small and somewhat uninteresting, you still felt as though you had a compelling reason to delve into them. Fallout 3 also managed to replicate this with the highly hand-placed layout, content, and design.

Oblivion had dungeons that were tied to quests, and dungeons that were not. There was no reason to ever go into any dungeon outside of quest requirements. You would never find anything cool because there was nothing cool. Shivering Isles started to repair this, but the Vanilla game had no dungeon appeal whatsoever. The only reason one would ever even go into a non-quest dungeon in Oblivion was if you simply wanted to beat on some enemies, and that isn't a valid reason since you could just beat on enemies outside for the same effect.

Well see, here's my thing: I've got no problem with the limitation and repetition of flavors; it's actually a good thing IMO that dungeons should have some common theme linking them together so the player can begin to learn what to expect within that theme. And while I'm always game for more themes, I don't fault Oblivion for having limits in what themes it presents.

What I fault Oblivion for is in taking the vast majority of their theme-related clutter and non-room statics, pre-constructing it in the warehouse cells, and then directly copy-pasting the literally-exact-same theme-conglomerations where they fit.

To do an off-the-head comparison...

In Oblivion's caves, I could usually expect to see quite often that little cave-room with the table w/ coins and the plates, and the sacks of grain and torn-up crates across from the opening, the chest below the hole in the ceiling w/ light streaming down, and the bedroll tucked away in the corner. It was literally the exact same room, with the exact same stuff in the exact same positions, copy-pasted over and again. Or, in conjurer's dungeons, there were always the stone slabs, which always had the hourglasses and crystal balls and novice alchemy equipment on them. Again, exact same stuff, exact same positions. And these kind of things (of which there are a lot, even in the precise ways the roots grow out of the ceiling in a LOT of caves) add up to where the dungeon experience is full of direct apples-to-apples deja-vu. Except it's not just a feeling I've seen it before, it's a direct remembrance of "this entire dungeon piece, not just the sum of its elements, has been presented to me elsewhere."

In Morrowind's 6th house bases, you were always guaranteed the 6th house bells, the shrines, the tapestries, the corprus meat (yuck), the big stone tub-like repositories that held all the nice shinies for the dungeon, etc, etc. And that's OK, I would expect to almost always find that kind of stuff there. But where they were in relation to each other in the dungeon was different. What the dungeon had in variance of amount and variance of placement was different. Some dungeons had a crap-ton of those ash-statues, maybe all tucked in their container-pedestals in the shrine-room. Some had just a handful. Some had corprus-meat everywhere. Some had it only on ceremonial plates. Some put all their corprus where the treasure would've normally gone. No two 6th house bases, that I can recall, had noticeably copied clutter-environments. Or, to put it differently, there was enough uniqueness and change in the minute details, on a scale that was small enough, to offset any copy-pasting that was done in those dungeons.



Perhaps we were looking at different things when we looked for what it meant to be a 'better' dungeon.

Morrowind's dungeons always had enough quirks and little design choices that conveyed its own unique story separate from any other story. They begged me to investigate what was going on beneath the surface of the obvious "oh, it's a [X-type] dungeon infested with [Y-type] monsters of size [Z]. And that investigation was made possible through the little things the designers tweaked throughout the level. When you don't copy-paste parts of dungeons into existence, you have to come up with some form of design-ideal to justify why some clutter goes where and why other clutter doesn't. In other words, the dungeon has an inherent account for why it is EXACTLY the way it is, on a scale that is much less discrete than simply repeating piece-conglomerations. That is what Morrowind's dungeons offered me that Oblivion's dungeons lacked. As mt_pelion has said, FO3 has revived this facet of the game, to my happiness.

The thing I liked about FO3 vaults and ruins was the way the worked short stories and themes into them. Reading broken terminals and the like made each vault feel more unique. Definitely a step in the right direction. I hope we see some great side stories and adventures unique onto the dungeons themselves in Skyrim.

Edit: to the guy above me and others talking about how OB's dungeons were "copy pasted". Go open up the CS and take a look at the dungeons and ruins, they didn't copy/paste them. /sigh It's fine to irrationally not like OB, its practically this forum's favorite past time, but at least don't just make stuff up to try and support your bias.

Go into the CS and take a look at these warehouse cells:

WarehouseAyleidRooms01
WarehouseAyleidRooms02
WarehouseAyleidRooms03
WarehouseAyleidRooms04
WarehouseCaveBandit
WarehouseCaveBeastLair
WarehouseCaveConjurer
WarehouseCaveEntrance
WarehouseCaveNatureMythic
WarehouseCaveSmTombNecro
WarehouseCaveTombNecro
WarehouseFortRuinsEntrances
WarehouseFortRuinsHALLCrypts
WarehouseFortRuinsHallPITUnique
WarehouseFortRuinsHALLRooms
WarehouseFortRuinsHALLSQuickStuff
WarehouseFortRuinsRooms01
WarehouseFortRuinsRoomsLarge
WarehouseFortRuinsRoomsMedium
WarehouseFortRuinsRoomsTransCave
WarehouseFortRuinsxxxCLUTTER
WarehouseFortRuinsxxxCLUTTERarrangements
WarehouseFortRuinsxxxCLUTTERarrCrates

... and then come back here and tell me that major facets of Oblivion's dungeon design (i.e. rooms, clutter, etc) weren't copy-pasted into discrete combinations. They're there for a reason.

I don't bash Oblivion simply for the pleasure of irrationally bashing Oblivion. I give it credit where I judge (or others convince me) that credit is due.

:facepalm: Jesus, you're talking about the prefab building blocks. Seriously?

Here, since you have the CS open apparently, Scroll up a bit from there and go to Vilverin. Tell me where or from any of that is copy/pasted to or from anywhere else in the game.

This is about the most disingenuous argument I think I've ever heard about OB.

Then your argument counts as such too, because Vilverin is the very first dungeon in the game. It is unique in ways that others lack.
Perhaps, with more time, such personality could have been added to other non quest ruins, but they werent.

Fine, pick any cave, ruin, or fort you want and tell me which other cave, ruin, or fort it was copy/pasted in to. I'll wait. You OB haters are hilarious at times.

Has been mentioned several times above.
Any bookcase. Any alchemy equipment. etc etc.

The poster who mentioned those things was correct. It does jar when you see the same slab for the fiftieth time, with the same worthless alchemy stuff on it, in exactly the same place.

It is one thing to defend what you perceive to be Oblivion's positives from attack, but to deny that something is a flaw when the developers have admitted that it is a flaw is madness.

Also, IB4 "This is Sparta"...

oblivion had a dungeon like that in shivering isle... it's a sacricial chamber for thoose goblin look alikes. i pressed a button and the floor caved in under me, sending me into waters guarded by a giant fish (with teeth)goblin look alieks were guarding the exit so it was a thrill the first time to escape.

This. I was writing my post and then you stated this, I wouldn't want to cover up your reply.



You're being disingenuous.

They never said it's copy and pasted from one to the next, they're saying set rooms and item sections are copy and pasted into them, roots and such.



Here you are doing what's called 'muddying the waters', you're attempting to tar the people critisizing Oblivion in a bad light by dismissing them as 'haters' and it's really telling.


The only people I see in this thread doing what can be called 'hating' are the select few knee-jerk reacting people that can't take a single negative point about Oblivion.
Honestly, why are you arguing this issue? It's obvious there's a problem with Oblivion dungeons, that is why in the marketing for Skyrim they are specifically expressing that instead of the one disigner Oblivion had, Skyrim will have 8. A lot of people had this issue and that's why they're addressing it.

I liked Oblivion and I'm sure others here critisizing it liked it, doesn't mean it's flawless or that those flaws can't be addressed.

I never said they didn't have flaws, just trying to figure out where these wild accusations from some folks come from. Poster above mentioned book cases or alchemy equipment. As absolutely knit picky as they are getting at this point (we've gone from "ZOMG OB has copy/pasted dungeons!!" to now "they reused a bookcase mumblemumble"), I'm still willing to see what proof they have. Find me 2 cells in the game with a straight copy/pasted bookcase and I'll pop open the CS and check it out. If indeed there is one, I'll concede the point that yes, some meaningless clutter arrangements were copy pasted. I'll still find it pretty laughable, but whatever....

Wow really.

Ok. Go to the Blackwood company, where each and every bookcase is a clone. They are standing right next to each other, its quite jarring.

As I've said earlier in this thread, I don't care as much about the raw physical room-structures as much as I do the clutter clusters or the less wall-ceiling-floor related statics, which are things I feel quite literally define the subtleties of the dungeon experience. So if you're including those into 'prefab building blocks,' already connotating that they're their own discrete packets where nothing is lost in constructing with them, we're already at a wide difference in perceiving the problem.


I'm already placed at a disadvantage, seeing as you've picked a dungeon that's sure to have gotten hand-picked attention. After all, I'm not trying to claim that ALL dungeons are completely copypasta. The main quest dungeons for instance, seeing as how the player is guaranteed to be spending time there, will have gotten more unique attention, and as Vilverin is practically the official starting dungeon seeing as it's the first one the player sees, it's also going to fall under that category of getting more unique attention. So bad example.

But I'll bite:
Virtually all the room-structures in Vilverin are warehouse-rooms.
Vilverin's clutter, that I can see, is all seemingly hand-placed.
In-room architecture details, such as the room with the ayleid cask pedestal in Vilverin03 surrounded by the 4 welkynd stone pillars, are repeated ad nauseum from other dungeons, but that's because they're constructed as the room prefabs in the warehouses.
Placement of traps in relation to room details (such as the spike trap in corridor w/ welkynd pillars) are repeated from other dungeons, but again coming from the room prefabs.

So in terms of clutter and the dungeon's own unique storyline, congrats, you've picked a hand-detailed dungeon.
In terms of trap and architecture placement independent of the actual room, things are repeated verbatim. I know those rooms and the traps relative to them whenever I see them, independent of dungeon. So it becomes a disgreement with how Bethesda chose to implement traps as part of prefabs, rather than prefabs with the multitudinous possibility for traps.
In terms of rooms themselves, everything is just a combo of repetition.

But don't tell me you think it's the case for the majority of dungeons out there. Vilverin's design style is not the rule.

And, just to note, I don't make the ultimate distinction that a copy-paste dungeon is an inferior dungeon. It's when enough copy-paste is present to offset whatever hand-placement they've done that makes things problematic.


Then you should probably look harder, even if we assume my argument is disingenuous.

Hah, took me a few minutes to find it since they are actually on different floors on opposite sides of the building, but yep, looks like the same bookcase. So I'll concede the point that a bookcase was copy pasted. You still haven't shown me a dungeon that was copy pasted. So we're really hanging OB out to dry here over a copy/pasted bookcase? Really?



Pick any one you want, your choice. Show me a copy/pasted dungeon. If the whole complaint is just about clutter? Well fine, I think that shows the level one has go to to find something to complain about in the OB dungeons.

For an immediate example, go in the CS and look at the Belda02 cell. Scroll down through the in-cell objects window and find the first alchemy equipment and double-click so the window focuses on it. You'll see an ayleid stone table, with a calcinator, alembic, retort, and mortar/pestle on it, with a welkynd stone in the middle.
Then, go to Ceyatatar03, look for alchemy equipment in the object window, and you'll find literally the exact same table, exact same items, exact same placement.

As a particular ready-offered example.

EDIT: Also, there's another stone table in Belda02 with calcinator, retort, alembic, mortar/pestle, hourglass, and soulgems. If you find that one and then go look at cell Beldaburo02, you'll find that exact same table yet again.
EDIT2: Also, Beldaburo02 yet again contains the exact same table the Belda02 and Ceyatatar02 contains.

The issue is that dungeons were designed in large blocks which were then assembled in different orders to make "different" dungeons. Also, a lot of the clutter was copy-pasted (the bookcase being one example) making it appear that all the denziens of Cyrodiil had read the exact same Feng Shui book. These two actions were taken by Bethesda because they had 1 guy building every single dungeon in the game. He took his time on the important ones, but the rest were just quickly thrown together because they were just going to be randomly filled with leveled items (i.e. they were map filler).

You want more unique non-quest related dungeons in Oblivion?

Here:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Veyond_Cave
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Sideways_Cave
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Rockmilk_Cave

The argument is not that they're not present, aka it's not that there aren't dungeons whose unique aspects outweigh the repetitive aspects.
The argument is that such dungeons are the exception as compared to the rule in terms of overarching broadly-applicable dungeon-design.

So linking unique dungeons is like pointing to Vilverin; it only shows what's already been acknowledged. Things are still problematized despite that acknowledgement.

So that is your argument? That alchemy equipment is placed the same? Man, Beth must have really done an amazing number of things right with the dungeons in OB for that to be the complaint. I mean seriously, if you have to use the CS to find corresponding matches of clutter arrangements you have to be looking really hard for something to complain about.

That is not his argument. That is an example demonstrating his argument.

I'm attentive to detail. So sue me. And I provided you probable cause of a multitude of such instances spanning all such dungeon design, by providing you an example that was easy to find, double-check, and post in a matter of about 5 minutes.

I mean, it's not like I spent 5 years playing Oblivion by attentitively writing down the names of all the places in which I encountered architecture or clutter or environment-detail where I said, "I've seen this before." I'm sorry I can't right now give (and am likely not going to take the exhaustive time to compile) an extensive empirical listing of all the times where repetitions occur. I am telling you, however, that to my experience (and apparently to a LOT of others' experience), there was enough repetition of dungeon design elements in Oblivion to render vast swaths of dungeons as the sums of things already seen-and-done, at least in how they presented themselves to me.

EDIT: Also, I didn't have to rely on the CS to already know what elements would be repeated; those I knew from playing the game alone. I already knew that there were stone tables (btw, the Fort ruins have their own version of repeating alchemy-slabs) that repeated alchemy equipment. Just as I know of the room I described earlier in caves. Just as I know about iron weapon racks. Or bookshelves that hold the exact same books. Or rooms that have the exact same broken chests and barrels lying around in the exact same locations.
And even if I can't recall other examples in specifics right now, whenever I encounter something in a dungeon that I've quite literally exactly seen before, it comes back. So in other words, the list I'm giving you now is by no means the exhaustive list of things that get repeated.

Most of them seemed handcrafted and customized, unlike in Oblivion. And wasn't a horrifying maze like in Daggerfall.