i think that there should be a person who you talk to and you get the option to go "treasure hunting" with them, where your transported to a randomly generated, rather large, dungeon where at the end (after some enemies that are supposedly at a much greater power than you) there is some kind of reward at the end, mabey lots of gold, or a nice sword or armour. who else thinks this would be awesome?

No, I don't like anything randomly generated in my games.

but wouldnt it get old going through the "same old caves" after 200+ hours? with a random generator, at least you get some variety, even though its random

I'd rather just revisit a dungeon than have a random generator. They're evil.

Random generation was in Oblivion and it was garbage just like the randomly generated landscapes.

there was a generator in oblivion? i never came across a cave/enviroment that was any different the second time i played

He's probably just joking. Or mistook the question. I'm pretty sure there isn't randomly generated stuff in Oblivion other than leveled items and monsters in some areas.

There were randomly-generated dungeons in Daggerfall; perhaps that's what JaisonJones was thinking?

I personally don't care either way - either one can be good if it's well-done, or annoying if it's not - but random dungeons were one of my husband's favorite parts of Daggerfall, and lack of them was the biggest reason he never got into Morrowind or Oblivion. So I say, go for it, as long as you do it well. I really like the OP's idea of keeping it optional, so if you don't have to go through an extensive, random dungeon to move the story along, and can avoid them altogether if you are the kind that doesn't find that sort of thing appealing.

I heard that the whole environment for oblivion was randomly generated, minus the buildings.

Nope. You got your facts wrong. :rolleyes:

After spelunking through all of the lovingly hand-crafted dungeons, I'd probably look down on any randomly generated ones. The idea of being able to simply embark on a journey to a dungeon whenever I want with the promise of training skills and gaining loot doesn't exactly appeal to me: it sounds like something instanced you'd find in an MMORPG or Diablo. Everything in the Elder Scrolls world should have some permanence to it - it shouldn't be as simple as saying "I want some loot, instead of exploring for dungeons or searching through peoples' homes I'll just press this button and be instantaneously transported to a new area guaranteed to have stuff for me."

awesome, i never played daggerfall, but i remember hearling a rumor about random dungeons in skyrim, and i started thinking that it would be great to have an optional sidequest without tampering with story

They use a tool to generate some content, but that's besides the point.

With random generated dungeons they mean a procedure that generates new dungeons on your own system, not on a developers computer.


edit: and no, I don't want anything to look random in Skyrim. It just doesn't fit in.

Handcrafted > Generated.

Isn't it obviouse?

Indeed, and no TES game had that.


Don't expect to see it in Skyrim either. Besides, 200 dungeons (or whatever the number is) is plenty, especially if they're interesting (Fallout 3), I don't really care for the super generic dungeons a random dungeon generator would be able to make.

Not me. I find it rather lame myself. I want more hand-placed treasure in handcrafted dungeons, if I want randomly generated dungeon crawling I can always fire up Nethack.

thats a great point. i guess its all based on opinion, what you say makes sense, but in a long term, say 500+ hours, youve had probably enough time to explore every dungeon, and do pretty much everything, this is a way (although perhaps not the best) to keep things a little fresh. heck, they could even make it to where most of the time there is no reward at the end, just a bunch of enemies and wasted supplys

The developer diary http://elderscrolls.com/community/brief-history-cyrodiil/ reveals that the game's landscape was generated via heightmap, although I wouldn't exactly place that in the realm of random generation as the heightmap itself was carefully laid out by the developers. I think the trees and grass, at the very least, were placed procedurally. In the Making of Oblivion video, the landscape artist mentions how he likes to start out by placing rocks in places they'd be expected to naturally form: but I believe he never mentions how the game came to have the trees where they are.

Still not randomly generated - but yes, I'd definitely prefer if everything were lovingly hand-sculpted as it were in Morrowind. I think Todd's already confirmed that they are doing that this time around.

People complain about Oblivion's dungeons all looking the same? Use a random dungeon generator and people will be missing Oblivion's dungeons.

I've got a 1000+ hour Morrowind save that still hasn't visited every dungeon in the game.

well yeah, i mean thats obviously better, but im talkin about a small sidequest. if you plan on playing 500+ hours, your probably going to see about all there is too see, so it adds something fresh (not nessisarily "great") but a way to squeeze in a little more content

ive got a 350 hour save in oblivion that has vistited all but perhaps 5 or six caves/ruins/settlements

Then given what's been confirmed about Skyrim's dungeons already, expect a repeat. :thumbsup:

Do you mean something like this?:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeJOcigS31M