In Oblivion, you had the Ayleid ruins and such, and these were supposedly their cities, but they sure as hell didn't seem like it. There were no places for anyone to live or anything that would make you think that. And they made so many traps. I can just imagine an ayleid miner, heading off to work and suddenly the floor in the city square rises up from beneath him and crushes him against the roof. What's the point in that. Then again, you need traps for a fun dungeon... would just like an explanation as to why they're there. Do you think they should add some stuff to make it seem like the Dwemer actually lived in the ruins in Skyrim?

i guess if a eskimo came to australia he would think it's strange the same way you think an alieyd ruin is strange too

I actually found the Ayleid ruins very believeable, some of the traps were created after their fall by bandits and such, some places were cursed and ghosts and such roam the places. Naturally, the ayleaid ruins would have needed a defence system against invaders. When the place was in it's golden age, the traps could easily have been manipulated by their powerful magic, same goes for dwemer engineering. The lack of dwemer engineers in the ruins will cause the traps to always be active. Traps = defence system.

Fair enough, but where did they live and what did they do?

All the rooms in the ruins were once decorated and must have had all sorts of stuff like tables, chairs or what not. Not usre though, I'm no lore expert. But it would make sense that it would have vaporized once their magic got weakened and the place got older. The varla stones in the ruins must have wielded the whole power in the ruins and the ayleid knew how to use that power to get everything working. In the ruins the probably didn't do much at all, other than the usual stuff kings and queens do in their castle.

I always figured the 'ruins' were more of a Castle for "nobles" to live in. Housing may have sorrounded the ancient cities and have simply deteriorated much quicker then the ruins.

According to the lore they were cities, guess you just have to use your imagination and populate the place with Altmer-esque elves with wooden stalls, guards, imperial slaves ect :confused:

I'm not saying we should see that, because obviously, they're long gone. I was thinking more of less biodegradable utensils and furniture, or houses. I dunno. It just seems hard to imagine that they are used for anything more than killing marauders.

I wasn't saying we should see that either, hence the word 'imagination'.

By that, I thought you meant "make do with imagination rather than actually seeing it since we can't, even though these things should be in" since I was talking about the places seeming like actual ancient cities and how they didn't but should have.

The cities serve as sewers for some of current cities probably (like IC). There is just no way to enter them.
The ruins seem more like forts and warehouses to me then cities... with many building destroyed (peasants probably needing stone... often happened to abandoned and unprotected forts in Europe). The furniture and such was most probably looted during all those centuries.

The last reported sighting of an actual Ayleid/ Ayleid community was over 1000 years ago in the lore, and they were even rare then.

Its akin to saying 'hey have you noticed a distinct lack of places to sit or half a floor in the Colosseum.

Fact is we're lucky to be even seeing the working traps of the ruins.

Oblivion did have this issue, I agree, though aside from Ayleid ruins, I think it was also pretty bad in fort ruins, maybe even worse, because for Ayleid ruins, you might at least argue that maybe they were more functional in their time but eventually deteriorated to the point where they're no longer recognizable asplaces people live in, or maybe the homes were mostly in surface structures that have largely crumbled and the underground places are crypts and temples, which they'd make more sense as than cities, I think. It's perhaps a flimsy justification, but hey, you can make it, there's little explaination for the fact that Imperial forts were apparently built more like tombs than actual forts and have no sign of anything indicating that soldiers actually were once stationed there, and let's not get started on the fact that there's not a single operational Imperial fort in all of Cyrodiil. I mean, I can buy some of them having be abandoned over time, but it seems like every fort in the province is now abandoned and full of bandits, goblins, undead and other such threats. No wonder why you can't go anywhere in Cyrodiil without the risk of being attacked...

It seems like Morrowind's Dwemer ruins were better at this, though, and I think that the presence of things that actually indicated that the original inhabitants once lived normal lives helped a lot. You'd find Dwemer cups, bowls, coins and such, and you'd see beds, chairs and closets obviously left over from when the places were still inhabited, it really helped to make them feel like they were built to be homes for people, people who had a culture and society quite different from anything else in Tamriel, but people nonetheless, other types of dungeons, while not showing much in the way of clutter unique to that dungeon type, also helped to convey this to an extent. Take Daedric shrines, for example. They were sites where people worshipped the Daedra, and you could see this, usually they were inhabited by Daedric cultists and Daedra, and you'd see statues of Daedric Princes in them, and at times fairly valuable offerings, but the Daedra they were dedicated to would not always let you take them freely. Then there were ancestral tombs. These were tombs, and you could see this, the bonemeal in the many urns you'd see in them was presumably the remains of the dead, and the undead that inhabited most of them were justified by the fact that the Dunmer were known to use undead to protect their tombs. You'd also occassionally find items that the people buried there were buried with, and offerings to these people. Overall, this is part of what I liked about Morrowind's dungeons that Oblivion's lacked. I wouldn't be surprised if Bethesda tries to improve on this in Skyrim, though, as they seem to be putting more attention into enhancing the individual character of different places. I also seem to recall reading somewhere about them taking into account when places were built, so it wouldn't feel like all ruins were built at the same time.

No sign of people living in the forts ? Bah ! What about the 3-6 bottles of Shadowbanish Wine ! lolz

I would have thought they all lived in that big tower in the middle of the Imperial City. Wasn't that built by the Ayleids? It's like some kind of ancient 1960s communist tenement block, that I guess was later converted to storage for Blind Moth Priests and Elder Scrolls.

They did build it, the imperial city was just they're greatest city. How could they enslave all men in Cyrodil from one tower ?

I seem to recall a good many forts that had beds, tables with pots etc. on them and plenty of other things that made me think they were once inhabited. I do see your point though about all of them being abandoned.

It would be cool if in Skyrim you could go into a dungeon or ruined city and maybe in the last lvl of the dungeon, you had these carvings on the wall. And as you read them you find out the history of the place. Because I remember in one dungeon in Oblivion there was some stone tablets that described people running away from horror that happened there. There should definitely be more history to the ruins. You also have to take into account that there were battles in Skyrim's history so we might find ruined cities from past battles or sieges.

Even Dwemer ruins left a little to be desired. I know most were strongholds, and thus, not heavily populated - but at least a few were intended to be cities. Those should have had rooms that were obviously kitchens, barracks, etc.

I know they are really just dungeons at this point, but it would have been nice to have had an almost Fallout-esque experience in ruins - where it is clear that a large number of people lived there, and that there were specific rooms just for boring stuff like sleeping or eating. It would have been a nice touch to have found tables still set with plates with the dirt remnants of food.

Before anyones call it, i m not defending morrowind.

But bethesda thinkering with dungeon and the capacity to adjust them to lore has always been lame. In Oblivion due to the lack of dungeon builder people it gets extremely striking how poor the dungeon design where.

Now they have dungeon designers, but do they have dungeon designers that have read enought lore or absorbed enought of it ?

I think this answer will only be seen when the game isrealeased.

Even The Temple of the Ancestor Moths dungeon left a lot to be desired and it was inhabited.

Exactly this. Oblivion's forts and ayleid ruins (the ayleid ruins more so than the forts) don't look like they had a purpose in the past. They're not abandoned cities, they're your typical dungeon with monsters and traps and loot.

The dwemer ruins felt like... well, like people actually had lived there.
It makes dungeons a lot more realistic, than just being a dungeon like a big cave with stones and enemies. That's really cheap.

If things have been inhabited, I want to see it.
If things are ancient, I want to see it.
Etc etc.

It's a common misconception that the Ayleid Ruins we see in Oblivion are supposed to be the actual entire city itself. That's not really the case. The bulk of the Ayleid cities were the parts that we typically see above ground. It's mostly been broken to tiny pieces after thousands of years. The ruins we explore are the catacombs or crypts of the Ayleid cities. The traps were most likely implemented to either protect from graverobbers as well as added later to keep out Alessia's army.

Agreed, similar to vaults in FO where you can learn about what happened in the vault through the computer terminals. I always found that to be a nice addition and made exploring the vaults more satisfying.

In OB I did occasionally wonder how people actually lived in those places, but not to the point that it ruined them for me. It would definitely be nice to see a more logical layout of the ruins in Skyrim with evidence that someone had actually been there at some point. I have high hopes for this area of Skyrim.