(If the mods feel this doesn't merit it's own thread, just lock it.)

With the advent of full voice acting in Oblivion and Fallout 3 came less content due to the volume in data that all of the v/o's took on the disc. With the advent of the navpoint in Oblivion came the ability for players to finish the game (all quests) in record time which left players with little or nothing to due in terms of questing.

With the advent of the Random Dungeon Generator, players will always have a new challenge ahead of them.

The RDG isn't mean to be game wide as this would defeat the purpose of what most TES Fans want, a unique handcrafted world. Instead it would be a few select dungeons which are clearly marked.

My idea is to have a new Arena in which the spectators in the arena can watch the player by 'newly devised magical means', what those means are I haven't figured out yet.

Each dungeon will have a randomly generated set of connecting rooms all tailored to the same theme. Those themes could be, using Oblivion in this example: Fort, Aylied, Cave, Mine etc. Each theme will have an enemy them, again using Oblivion as an example: Bandits, Marauders, Goblins, Undead, Daedra, Necromancers, Bandits vs Marauders, Goblins vs Goblins etc. Dungeons may even chain together for more advanced spelunkers.

The premise is that the new 'mages guild' has found a way to open a portal to Hircine's realm. Hircine, being a rather sporting man/daedra/whatever, agreed to allow the guild to conduct their new Arena here in the name of sport. He may even bestow a prize upon the best treasure hunters for their performance.

Hircine is the guy who decides the layout of the arena and what enemies spawn there all in the name of sport.

At the end of each dungeon will be a treasure chest which can spawn anything in the game excluding artifacts, quest items and things of that nature. The player may also find enchanted items that won't appear outside the arena or would have to make him/herself through enchanting.

I was thinking of around 15-20 different interiors for each theme, all of them interconnect-able.

What are your thoughts on this?

The ability to get randomly generated quests/dungeons like this could be neat. However you'd certainly need far more than 15-20 interiors per dungeon theme and I don't think you should limit a dungeon to just one theme - although if you have two or more they need to be distinct but connected areas.

I think for something like this to work well it needs to be a major feature of the game. That doesn't mean that all dungeons need to be random but if making something like this work well would require a lot of resources and that sort of inherently requires making it a prominent part of the game. As such while entering these through some sort of magic/daedric portal makes sense I'm not a fan of this being an arena type situation with spectators.

One idea would be having a few major locations with known labyrinthine dungeons. These would each have a 'standard' hand-crafted dungeon but if you receive a quest there when you enter there's the option to go to one of these randomly generated sites. I'd say the factions/guilds should be the best source of these quests (certainly the most consistent) but certainly some other NPCs should give out such quests.

This is very advantageous for factions since it allows a central storyline of quests similar to what you see in Oblivion (which would no doubt send you to hand-crafted dungeons) but also the option for more run-of-the-mill adventuring (the randomly generated ones).

You made some good points there HD. I didn't consider the resources that would be needed to make this which would make confining it to an arena style area inefficient.

I would still like to see Hircine take a more prominent role as was explained in the OP. It's right up his alley to provide a challenge and offer a reward at the end just for a chance to see a would be hero fail and die.

If they made the game huge again, like Daggerfall, this would be ideal, of course.

Imagine a map like Mount & Blade's, but bigger. Add, to the castles and cities, dungeons and temples and inns and a main quest with unique dungeons.

The game should just be massive like Daggerfall. It took two real life weeks to walk from one end of that game to the other. I could care less if I have to swap discs every once in a while... OR, better yet, just make it like Forza 3 and have a second, (third, fourth, etc.) disc that you have to install right off the bat so there is no disc changing. All I can say for sure is that TESV needs to be at least bigger than Oblivion was. Fallout 3 had about half as much to do in it as Oblivion did and I would hate for them to make the game even shorter than that. Hopefully they will just keep The Elder Scrolls massive and they can let Obsidian do whatever they want with the Fallout series. Best case scenario they would both be giant, but Oblivion had about 150 hours of gameplay while Fallout 3 had 75. While 75 hours is still about 7 times as much gameplay as every other game out there, it is not on par with Bethesda's previous games. I think the goal should always be to try to improve upon previous games in every aspect, including longevity .