Personally, I like mostly linear dungeons:
a] I "have to" explore every part of a dungeon. I guess it's a character flaw, but some of the 'larger dungeons' in this game almost caused me to have a nervous breakdown .
If I turn left and 12 minutes later find the exit, I have to go all the way back and turn right to explore every inch that I missed. I've optimised how I do this, but it's still painful.
b] Dungeons are repetitive. With the best designer in the world, there's only so many times you can use the same room with the same mobs and remain interesting.
c] Dungeons enforce a specific gameplay type (short range combat mostly).
d] Dungeons are (or should be) claustrophobic.

I love angband/dungeons of dredmore/diablo I etc, which are nothing but single, massive, dungeon - but in an open-world game I'm perfectly happy with a large world containing linear dungeons.

In expert, you HAVE to do that, so you got the upper hand.

The eerie deathlike audio. Hearing the creepy wind in the tombs feels as if am actually buried alive. Then theres the unearthly chanting when nearing a Dragon wall containing a new shout. Listening to the sudden soft rustling of undead rising from their crypts and their feet starting to move about in the distance as i fearfully draw my weapon to the approaching danger. The swinging sound of pendulums. The death cry of a nearby bandit after just setting of a fatal trap out of my sight. The opening and closing sounds of urns and chests.

The huge variety of traps as if concieved by some maniacal master trap maker.

The evil supernatural ambience of dungeons where death is very alive.

The interactive webs all over dungeons that can be cut sometimes revealing hidden treasures aswell as hinting at possible types of dungeon denizens watching and waiting.

The corpses of past explorers who became victims of their curiousity and greed.

Having crypts in cities just like the good old days of Tes 2 Daggerfall.

The very rewarding satisfying loot to be found.

The sense of reverence of many dungeons being a resting place for the dead.

The otherworldly music making me feel as if am about to travel to where all the dead dwell.

The grisly gruesome ghastly ghoulish breath gasping gore.

The different sizes of dungeons and varied numbers of enemies. Not every one is a gauntlet. Not every one is a cakewalk. They are all to be feared.

The realistic decay of dungeons. It was pretty cool walking up to a collapsed ceiling area and seeing some skeletal corpses in their final resting place inside of wall slabs.

The candles and memorial like displays.

The books to be found.

The environment that can be manipulated during combat to set off fires and explosions.

The many different pictures and carvings on walls and urns.

The dungeons in this game are very convincing I love them. I hated how in Oblivion there was only tiny copy and pasted set pieces above ground. Now the above ground parts of the dungeons are also amazing. I particularly love the Dwemer and cryogenic in this game. They are simply stunning. Ky only complaint is the puzzles are very simple.

I wish the puzzles would be harder to figure out. You don't even need to think for five seconds to solve them. It's just tedious and not fun at all when it's that easy.

all the people saying that the puzzles are too easy are forgetting something...this isn't a puzzle solving game, not everone likes puzzles in the first place let alone having to be an expert puzzle solver just to play skyrim, just be happy there's puzzles at all, cause quite franky, i could do without the puzzles all together, i don't mind there being some secret switches or things you push or pull on etc, hidden here and there, but the puzzles are just enough to give you the impression of having to figure something out without it being overly difficult, so they are implemented just fine.

Some of the dungeons are fairly 'stock', and others show some creativity.

I loved the short dungeon where you go into the Dwemer tower, fall some 100 floors, and come out (eventually) in a Bandit cave through an opening in the underground stream. The cinematic approach to the falling was pretty cool. I didn't expect that.

I do wish that you had to fight your way out of the dungeon instead of 'clearing' it on the way in. There's a few where you come out a different entrace, but most have that barred door near the entrance where you know you're gonna come out.

You'd think a smart Nord would just come back with a crowbar and just open the barred door straight to the loot.

THIS!
Too bad they're too bright and traps are like mosquito bites.

Some of the puzzles were alright, like the one where you had to run whirlwind sprint to get through, and the one where you had to read the book felt interesting, but the majority of them were just "look for the signs and turn the statues to look like them". That puzzle was overused to the extreme. Some of the situations were interesting, where the signs were in one room and the statues were in another, but most were a matter of just match the picture to what is on the wall behind it.

I guess they were limited because they didn't know what shouts you would or wouldn't have, but come on. They could have made the dungeons at the end of quest lines give you a necessary shout early on and had you use it, say you needed to slow down time to understand what a machine was saying very quickly, or you needed to knock some distant object off a pedestal, or a seal outside a dungeon wouldn't activate unless it was raining. Maybe you have to lead animals into pens (two possible solutions, let it aggro on you and lead it to pen and then kyne's peace it, or animal allegiance it and lead it to the pen). Etc.

I love everything about Skyrim's dungeons. The only (extremely minor) gripe I have is how conveniently circular their layout is. Yeah it's convenient to find a secret way back to the beginning at the end of the dungeon, but it doesn't always seem logical from a "realistic" perspective.

Compared to previous Elder Scrolls games, these dungeons are incredibly awesome.

I agree with all of this except the loot. The loot just kind of seem generic other than that everything about them is amazing.

Yeah, they look nice, but I liked them better in the days when you could get lost in them. Now it just seems like "enter here, exit here" - granted, it makes backtracking much easier, but I miss the whole "Did I take a wrong turn somewhere?" thing.

EDIT:

this pretty much says it all

Not for a sneak archer! Up close and personal is rare if you play it right... one enemy at a time, one arrow at a time, then duck and run away til they lose track of you... then back to one arrow, run away... sounds monotonous, but I find it fun to mess with the baddies. Oh, your buddy just took an arrow to the head? You gotta lay off the ale.... you're starting to see things!

Game design doesn't work like this. Gameplay elements are designed first, then justification/story, not the other way around. This is especially the case for dungeon design.
The puzzles aren't meant to be a challenge, they are designed to create pacing, tension, and relief, so that there's rising and falling action instead of monotony, and segregates the dungeon into discrete areas so that NPC's can't just have the run of the entire place.

The claw puzzle locks reflexively signifies to the player that there's some serious crap ahead, as it is a seal, and bad/good things are sealed within dungeons. It's a good use of a trope without being annoying.

The claustrophobic Dwemer ruins are usually enough for me. Although I know there's an elevator waiting for me at the end, you do go pretty far into them that you are wondering if you are going to come out at all. I went through Aftland before I even had the key to opening up a certain level, and that one was really long...

I think the Dwemer ruins in particular are VERY well done. Being a Morrowind-lover, hearing they'd be re-doing Dwemer ruins in Skyrim I was at first excited and a bit nervous. I was afraid they'd botch it and totally ruin the feel established in Morrowind (and also Redguard actually). But they got it just right. The intricate carvings, the kind of eerie statues of giant faces staring at you, the dancing shadows from the still-working lights, the steam/fog/mist everywhere, and of course the unnerving clanking/banging/rumbling of the still-working machinery. Even at level 50, Dwemer ruins still kind of give me the willies.

Kavya, yeah. The sheer size of the Dwemer ruins was kinda intimidating. Especially in places like Alftand, where if you weren't on a particular quest, it became kind of a challenge just to get back out...

The variety is great, although I am taking it slow so I don't see them all too soon.
The puzzles could be more challenging, and hopefully there will be some good puzzle mods.

I was just sneaking in a place that was dark and had a lot of mist. I thought I saw a figure of a bandit up ahead sitting against the wall. I then shot an arrow and it bounced off.
It turned out to be mold or moss on the wall that was shaped like a person. oops, the bandits nearby were alerted.

Puzzles were awesome first time I saw it

Once I realized that the same "snake, fish, bird' puzzle and the claw puzzles were going to be used time and time again, I was pretty disappointed.

All of the dungeons lacked enemy variety. It felt like all the dungeons were filled with nothing but Draugrs.

I enjoy them overall but feel torches almost unnecessary.

Not all of them. "Gee, let's just make red lights to seem important."

Not if you are playing master.

I love that dungeon. I had a nerdgasm, then called in my housemate because I felt it was too good to keep to myself. There wasn't really anything like that in Oblivion. I love how Skyrim's dungeons give me the opportunity to feel like I may experience something completely new. I already have tons of stories and I haven't seen anything close to all of them.

I totally agree with you! The dungeons are a vast improvement over Morrowind and Oblivion. The puzzle/lever aspects do add mystery to the dungeons, but I'm glad that it's not overly difficult to find the solution, my main motivator is exploration, not figuring out how a puzzle works for hours on end. LOL

Btw. I highly recommend Blackreach... best dungeon in game IMHO. You can get there by talking to Septimus Signus (his outpost is located on a small island below the Mage's Guild in Winterhold) or by doing the main quest.