The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Of course Bethesda want to hype dungeons as being more interesting than they were in previous games. They might be overly exaggerating, but it might be that the dungeons are a lot more interesting this time around. But, whatever. I don't think this is all that helpful - unless all you're trying to do is persuade us that we should be a little more pessimistic than we previously were. :shrug:

I think they are more interesting in Oblivion. Morrowind had some fantastic dungeons and the dwemer ruins were great but i think Oblivion's were slightly better, the thing is there were just too many.

This is a deal breaker. I will not buy the game if the lame level scaling of Oblivion or anything close is being used.

I pre-ordered Oblivion and played it constantly until the boredom became too much (about a week). I will not make that mistake again. When I know for a fact that Skyrim is not a total wast of time like Oblivion, I will buy it and love it. If the developers repeat the disaster that was Oblivion, I will check in here once in a while and hope that there is a mod making the game playable. If the worst does happen, I will just start playing the greatest game of all time again, Morrowind.

I can't see what's wrong with that, Oblivion's dungeons were nothing like morrowinds, were different, did feel more unique, and Skyrims dungeons probably wont be like Oblivion's and feel even more unique and different :shrug:

Especially since they have like 8 people working specifically on dungeons.

I will not say I am not wrong about some things as I may well be, as for where I get my info the same place any of you can get it, read the post of foreign magazines, watch the videos and listen to all the pod casts, I will not go chasing down the info for those too lazy to do so themselves, those of you who would rather moan and groan about problems which you dont even know exist yet.

you are blowing this out of proportion.
this is only how the radiant AI quests will work. enemies will still have static levels, and npcs won't level up with you. its going to be nothing like oblivion, this is just a clever way of setting up quests by making them a challenge. besides, who says that you can't advance two levels after you got the quest so you can come back and own everything in the dungeon? the rpg elements are still there in full. i don't see the problem.

i hated oblivion's level scaling, but skyrim won't have that.

There will not be level-scaled dungeons in Skyrim... in the sense that they get scaled to your level no matter what. (ala, Oblivion)

As been mentioned several times in this thread, and is worth mentioning again, they will be more or less random.... which is a very, very good thing when it comes to the sense of exploration.

Say that you're level 1 standing in the woods. There's a dungeon on the left, one straight ahead, and one on your right. The one of your left could be a lv 1 - 4 dungeon. The one straight ahead could be lv 30 - 35. The one on the right could be lv 16 - 20.

If you go into the left dungeon, it will lock at level 1, and you'll encounter things you can handle. If you go into the dungeon straight ahead, it will lock at level 30, and you will get your ass kicked. Come back later.

If you return when you're level 28 and go back into the dungeon on the left, it will still be inhabited by rats and other level 1 things. If you go back into the center dungeon, it will still be level 30 and now you'd have a fighting chance. If you decide to pop into the dungeon on the right, it will lock at level 20, and you'll probably be able to plow through it with a few cuts and bruises.

So as you can see, dungeons will not scale to you in the purest sense. They'll only scale within their predefined ranges, depending on what level you are at the time you enter then, at which point they'll lock at that level forever... or until you open the console and type in some command to change it manually

There was a huge thread all about how the dungeons will work, and that's what I remember from it. No telling if everyone's understanding is 100% accurate, but we'll find out eventually.

the only way to play is a completely unlevelled game with roads and the area around major settlements being the exception; its assumed patrols would keep them fairly safe. you should encounter any level of critter and any level of loot with more powerful items being rarer. people that want scaling of any kind apparently also are adverse to any kind of challenge in their games. after playing TIE and WAC its impossible to go back to levelling. new vegas had a decent system were some areas were completely off limits to low level characters and im hoping that they do something similar in skyrim.

if it is like the above poster said i would be very happy with that system. its still be a bit nicer if whenever you cleaned a dungeon out that it would repick its level so that if you playing a very long game with hundreds of hours you wont get too bored.

I've heard Todd say that before and not really understood what he meant, but you have worded it in such a clear manner that even dolts like me can understand- and it sounds rad.

I wanna be able to go into a dungeon and stumble upon some big cave within a dungeon. Anyone remember the tomb in Morrowind with the large maze and the middle cave with a nord on a boat and waaaaaay up at the top was a chest with a Deadric hammer and one of the only Deadric helmets in the game. I want that type of experience again.

Just to be fair, the dungeons in Morrowind were not as unique a lot of the times as one might hope (One room ancestral tombs) and would respawn any destroyed enemies if you recalled back to it. They tended toward a few styles..Ancestral Tomb, random levitation/non levitation daedric ruins, randomly levitating or non-levitating telvanni structures, The Cave With the Ledges (Where you had to superjump up to a ledge with no other way of access. Items were here a lot.) Dwemer Mazes, The Cave Without the Ledges (Usually a mine of some sort.), The Grotto, The Bandit/Wizard-Daedra cave, and occasionally, the astoundingly unique.

Im pretty sure every dungeon in Bloodmoon was exactly the same as the others, except for that castle which the game would randomly not let you into (thanks for that, btw.), and Tribunal..I hated those endless series of caves with randomly encounterd "One hit kill" enemies. (see: black dart)

So there werent really that many more, its just that what was there was more unique. This uniqueness seems to stem wholly from the expanded magic Morrowind possessed; a telvanni s tronghold in a game without levitation would be a bit annoying.

Personally, the only dungeons i really found godawful in oblivion were Max-Level Goblin Dungeons -- you dont lose but it takes damn near forever -- and the Oblivion zones. My god did I hate those. A couple of them were horrible and forced you to trek thorugh almost the entier place (the one that spirals up a mountain), whereas others you could make a leap of faith and health potions to run across the lava. The third is the one with the extending platforms that has two different levels, both inaccessible from the other in the same chunk of the tower. You could subvert this by wiggling onto an edge and jumping -- about 30% subverted. That they didnt ever make clear the oblivion gates can connect to multiple places at once made me think it was a bug.

My other major problem with those dungeons is that they're extremely limited in duration. Solve the main quest, gone for good. And yet they are probably one of the most lucrative areas for both valuable stuffs AND skillup chances. But its also because these Oblivion zones encouraged you to wait until the highest level tier before hitting them in real numbers; the Sigil Stones are next to useless at low levels (especially with low armorer..) and are insanely useful at the highest levels. At the same time, waiting til highest levels meant youd encounter the horrible Spider Daedra, and their little cheatbot. I tried to take out their ability to summon their cheatspider in the CS, but all itdid was make them stand still trying to recast.

Now this is what I'm hoping for in the game but for a given area with some exceptions of course to avoid becoming predictable in the sense that any given area is all for a certain level for players. Oblivion that while I played for months gotten to be a lot less fun after dealing with the marginal level for level scaling system.

Based on Fallout 3, I think people are over estimatmating the amount of "high level dungeons" and the underestimate the dungeon ranges. There were not that many higher level dungeons in FO3, and in Skyrim I would imagine Dungeon could have ranges like 1-15 or 5-25,etc Not 1-4 or 16-21. FO3 was based on 20 levels, SR is based on 50, so I think 2.5 times the ranges of FO3 makes sense for speculation purposes.

This. THIS. Thiiiiiiiis.
PLEASE Bethesda.

THIS.

This is exactly what I want in dungeons.

Fair enough i can't be bothered to look either but to be honest i think i read most of the mags and I remember reading 1 guy to design dungeons in OB and nothing about "TODD" saying dice rolls would determine loot. I think i would have remembered something as important as that. Can anyone else shed light on this? I'm sure we all read the mags :goodjob:

THIS !
I want unique items that make you feel really rewarded. Powerful items should be rare, hard to find and not necessary quest related.
There should be some tips written in books that may help to find them.

This pool is a bit biased. "Hell yeah, I don't want to get my [censored] handed to me! I want to be able to steamroll through those dungeons. Let the player win!" That's how I felt in Morrowind when they weren't leveled. Every dungeon was a cakewalk. Oblivion's leveling system would work, if not for the HORRIBLE combat system late game. If Skyrim can fix mashing-with-one-button-until-the-person-with-the-higher-health-pool-wins gameplay mechanic, then it would all be fine. Basically, dungeons have svcked thus far in the ES series.

The major problem with Oblivion was the level scaling of the items, and that defiantly needs to be addressed in Skyrim. In Morrowind, it was great finding unique artifacts in seemingly obscure dungeons. If they added some level scaling of creatures to that, it would be even better. Because face it, you became untouchable around level 20 in Morrowind, and finding the awesome loot felt less deserved near the end of the game because of how easy it was to get through those dungeons. Hopefully Skyrim does creature level scaling correctly coupled with unique items.

I think the problem stems from expectation of hoping to have dungeons made like Hollywood movie settings, but instead we got cookie cutter randomosity.

When Tomb Raider came out, for its time, the games offered the real feeling of exploring frightening locations with ancient mysteries in place waiting to be discovered ... by YOU. The game was so cool for a while, but then they started to lose their focus for a while, eventually nearly dying. But then the franchise was reborn because they went back to what made it fun: ancient runes full of traps, strange artifacts and monsters, amazing visual scenery, and more mechanical operation of ancient devices bordering on almost alien. Elaborate puzzles involving replacing some missing eye in its proper location and then causing the sunlight to shoot in, strike the crystal, and explode in a starfield of wonder and mystery that, if the right star has been identified, causes a low-level machine to slowly open a massive stone door behind which is a lost treasure trove. You felt like it was such a special place, mysterious, expressing the genius of some ancient civilization now long gone, whose spirit somehow remains to guard over the place.

Most of the dungeons in Oblivion reflected no genius, only holes cut in an underground area with some rudimentary construction of a period equal in age to the one on the top surface world, such that all the stonework and such appeared consistent with the above ground world's timeline. Everything seemed to have been built at the same time. And there was no variety even WITHIN the same dungeon, as if to say the same construction team (inside the game's reality) had all the contracts to build said dungeons and no part of it was offered to a competitor with a different style of building. In ancient times everyone tried to do their own work, or they hired different people, and thus a city could look quite unique with every house having it's own genius and flaws, contributing to a perfectly unique sensation of being there, because you knew nothing else could look that way. (I'm saying this because I'm in China and I'm travelling around these ancient cities and I'm seeing this very thing for real that I've taken these pains to describe!)

So if you want to create variety, you have to make 3 or 4 DIFFERENT PEOPLE all contribute their own piece of ONE SINGLE DUNGEON so that it actually feels like different people built each city. Combine the genius of the MANY into a uniqueness of the ONE. Then you will have that sense of wonder that continues to suspend your disbelief and keep you enthralled with where you are, and what you're doing.

Thanks.

A lot depends on the breadth of range dungeons have on on average. If they really typically have a range of 4 levels, it could work. If the range is very much broader, it won't feel that different than Oblivion. I like everything hand-placed and thought out. You should be able to find really cool or unique items if you look exceptionally hard or fight well, even if they are above your level, though nothing truly game-breaking. Even if most players never find the rare stuff on their own, the knowledge that you *could* keeps it fun. Morrowind was great about this, as well as having places you just shouldn't go unless very well prepared indeed --at least until level 15 or so--would have been better if it kept this feeling throughout).

Some people will always cheat and go and get the best items right away--fine, let them do that. Doesn't ruin it for the rest of us. Wizardry 8 was pretty good about this except for the randomness (and very small chance) involved in the rare item drops that could occur only in particular places--that was really frustrating and begs people to reload save games in order to get something cool.

I just hope item abilities aren't completely tied to the spell system like in OB---that made everything feel very generic. Unique stuff that clearly breaks with the rest of the items in the game is so much more fun, though it has to be limited. And, items that really only work well when you have something else rare, for a nifty, unlikely combination, is also fun.

I don't want to feel like levelling myself is a futile effort if enemies are just going to get stronger as I do. In Morrowind, level 20 or so was really endgame for the main game. There really isn't content designed for players much higher than that (until you get to the expansions). Level scaling enemies higher just accomplishes two things: 1) generating unfathomably strong enemies (you killed 1, maybe 2 gods by the end of the MQ; you shouldn't really be having trouble with bandits or "simple" daedra), and 2) reduces the effect of your levelling, as the effect of you becoming better will be lessened by the enemies also becoming better. Also, depending on how you level, the enemies can become stronger while you don't (eg, if you level because of speechcraft or other non-combative skills).

When you reach high level, you should be mowing down enemies. That's not something that needs fixing, it's supposed to be the proper way of things.

50 levels 140 dungeons, this will give you 2 or 3 level 50 dungeons, around 25 who is over 40, the rest will be far to easy for a level 50 character, also 2-3 level 3 dungeons

with the new system with level locked dungeons a high level dungeon will be level if then you enter it at level 50.
Agree with location of easy and hard dungeons.

You have some good ideas bro. rezpect

Yes I so want high end weapons and armor at fixed locations, it add so much to the replay value of the game. Getting good weapons in Fallout 3 felt like the mage guild recommendation quest in Oblivion, however it has to be fair, you could steal glass armor in Morrowind at low level but not daeric, this was unfair for the heavy armor users.

Now you can protect them with high end enemies this way clueless noobs have to read a guide on how to get them in addition to the location. Remember to bring some invisibility potions, to get to the end level boss unseen, a bow lots of arrows and poison, think killing umbra at level 7.

I believe the important thing to remember is that it adjusts WITHIN LIMITS.

This is how I understand it, except that I assume most low end dungeons would be close to the starting town and most high end ones some other place. If they get the balance right it should work as good as possible.