I don't care if there are separate cells for dungeons (seriously, people? The loading screens weren't even that long in Morrowind or Oblivion.) as long as beast-inhabited caves don't have doors again, that was just dumb. Although, bandit caves with doors could make sense since they could have easily just built a door to keep the elements out.

Link?

yeah but what to you propose instead? a flat black surface?

maybe the entrance appears to be part of the open world but once you take few steps in then it loads

What exactly do you mean by "different cells"?

:facepalm: Morrowind had the same system as Oblivion. The only difference is that in Skyrim the cities are open. Like Morrowind...

I was quite serious. But I wasn't talking about land size. I'm not even sure how you arrived at that.

I am talking about the implementation of open cities and how believable they are within the game world.

Oblivion:
Oblivion's lack of open cities was bad. It really couldn't be helped given what Bethesda had to work with at the time. But not everything about Oblivion cities was bad. What Oblivion did right was having walled cities with specific points of entry. Unfortunately the gates did not lock as you would expect in a land where daedra are attempting to overrun your world.

Morrowind:
Open cities, yay. Problem is, the cities are far TOO open. Morrowind is (was) locked in an ongoing civil war between the great houses. I can understand shanty towns like Hla Oad being undefended. I can even understand Balmora, being more open to western influences having an open door policy. But Ald'ruhn? Allowing anyone to freely come and go as they please? With assassins running around? Sadrith Mora? Where it's illegal walk around town without hospitality papers? Most towns have walls, but these walls do nothing. What you see in game conflicts with what's happening according to lore.

Daggerfall:
On the other hand, we have Daggerfall. An ongoing war between Daggerfall, Wayrest, and Sentinel necessitates the use of walled off cities. But these walls have purpose! They lock at night to keep vampires, were-beasts, highwaymen, invading armies, door-to-door salesmen, etc., away. The average citizen cannot levitate on command, or scale walls. But these do not hold back our intrepid adventurer.

As it pertains to Skyrim, simply doing what Morrowind did is going to lead to another unbelievable, under utilized instance of open cities. Again, another civil war is rocking Skyrim, but none of the cities have gates? Or lock them at night? Ridiculous. What we need is open cities as seen in Daggerfall. Minor unprotected cities like Hla Oad. With big, powerful cities (like those at war with one another) should have high walls, gates, and most importantly, be locked at night. This would give levitation a real use, even if scaled back from the Daggerfall/Morrowind implementation of free flight. To adjust to the lack of climbing, cities could be entered by drainage areas, or by intelligently placed boxes, wagons, and other such things.

Having NPCs with believable schedules, where they travel during the day, and get inside by nightfall would do wonders for believability and make infiltrating a city at night for thieves and assassins that much more enjoyable.