So, after playing Oblivion for quite some time, I've had some mixed opinions about the number of map locations in the game. Don't get me wrong, I love that Bethesda made such a massive amount of dungeons, caves, forts and ruins available. But with quantity comes the lack of quality, and a few of the sites in Oblivion almost made me feel it was randomly generated and not unique locations.

Another problem with having so many locations - and here comes the main point of the thread - was that the world map felt a bit too cluttered. It also made it a bit too rigid for dungeonmakers (like myself) to find a good enough spot to place that playermade dungeon entrance (without some serious modding of the environment around it). The locations were sort of cramped up. Imagine if Battlehorn Castle could be place closer to the center of the map, or that a modder could find a spot on which to easily add a huge site (e.g. a haunted town or other large exterior).

I am actually one of those that praise Bethesda for reducing the quantity of dungeons in Skyrim. Hopefully, they've understood that it's better to have a few less dungeons and instead make each dungeon feel even more epic. Additionally, the side effect of this is that modders will have more room to place their stuff without risking conflicts with others' mods.


My questions:

How much "open" (site-less) terrain will Skyrim have, compared to Oblivion, and how does the community feel about the lower total number of dungeons for the upcoming game? I mean, without comparing it to Oblivion, isn't 130+ dungeons a rather big number? Even if it is much lower than Oblivion's 300+ (if I'm not mistaken)? Especially if each location is much grander than the Oblivion places ever was?

What are the biggest problems, in your eyes, of having fewer locations in a game? What are the biggest benefits?

Discuss!

the map is going to be just as big, literally not the feel, as OB. I am pretty sure its been said that there will be the same number of dungeons, and because there will be more mountains and not just around the border I am thinking its going to be more crampt. this I why I wished they made the maps bigger, (not with more dungeons but more open space between them) so that I don't walk for 5 secs before bumping into another dungeon.

and it would not be over time consuming because you would have horses which would actually be practical rather than astetic like they were in OB.

But wouldn't that just screw up the interface?

Just the other day in a Thread of mine i Complained about Oblivion being to Open Spaced with Allot of Grass Areas that could have been used for More Ruins or Farms or Mines, so i dont think Oblivion was cluttered at all.

Meh. I like the clutter. Seriously, when walking to a location, I run past plenty of things, but only occasionally do I trigger location events like the unicorn or some goblins attacking me. If anything, I'd like to see a return to Morrowind's feel of only discovering things when you really discover them. I mean, if I walk right past a camp in Oblivion but don't even look at it, it'll say "You found Blackwood Camp" even though I never even saw it. In Morrowind, I might walk past a door a thousand times and never recognize its significance. That, I feel, should be improved. It would make the map feel less cluttered while still having the same amount of content.

Thats actually a good idea, let me discover something, instead of the "Magic Map" pick it up like a GPS

more open space would actually benifit modder's, infact that open space you did not like was most likly not to please you but people who make mods.



ooooooooor... they could man up and make more content.

This. My gut feeling is that Beth have become too attached to their 'magic compass'. They regard it as a staple of their rpg build, and are probably loathe to ditch it, despite the criticisms from fans that it stripped all sense of 'discovery' from OB (or added an artificial one as you say).

As far as less clutter dungeons go, I welcome the move. But they need to ensure that these new empty spaces are filled with other stuff. Herds of Mammoths, packs of Wolves, trade waggons, travellers on roads. Yes, Skyrim should be about having a wide open wilderness, but I don't want it to be too 'bleak' just for the sake of it. Population centres in major cities is all very well, but I want 'life' to exist out there, inbetween the sparsely flung dungeons.

I would be satisfied with only about 60 dungeons. I'm thrilled about the reduction from Oblivion's number, and with the announcement that there's 8 people instead of one poor guy to design and build all the dungeons.

I've never felt that there was a dungeon shortage in Oblivion, but the game world was too small for the sheer number of dungeons in OB. Dungeons were everywhere.
I would've loved more secluded and hidden dungeons than the obvious massive forts in the middle of nowhere. I've always found it amusing that the forts that are located right on a major road between cities are controlled by lawless bandits - do the Legion and the Cyrodiil population just trek through the forest to avoid those outlaw nests?

I really hope that dungeons, at least some, are more hidden and located far out in the wilderness. And that less dungeons are right outside the major cities. A small, hidden cavern filled with bandits I can understand, but a fort right on a major road?

I went off the subject a little there, I know. Back on clutterness - If dungeons are more hidden and if you need to stand right outside of the opening (no more doors to a cave filled with wild animals, please :teehee: ) to "find" it and have it marked on your map, coupled with the fact that there's about half the amount of dungeons compared to OB, then you wouldn't "find" as many dungeons by just walking through a forest, and have your map cluttered with hundreds of them.
Also, with the reduction of quantity comes a boost in quality. OB's dungeons weren't bad, and that makes me sure that Skyrim's dungeons are gonna be epic, because of the lower number. More traps and puzzles FTW! I love to activate or avoid traps and other interactive, Havok-powered stuff in OB's dungeons.

I see no problem with the fewer dungeons, only good things.
I can't wait for the 11th November.

Did you even read my post? It was all about how they already have enough content and I suggested they make the location discoverer better at only discovering things you actually look at and get close to so that the game feels LESS crowded.

What you said is the equivalent of someone walking into a crowded room and joining a conversation about how the room is crowded by saying "ooooooooor... they could man up and push more people in".

It just makes no sense in the context of the conversation.

Map Marker Overhaul
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=26389
No more cluttered map markers in Oblivion

If UI still editable such mods can be done for Skyrim, but nice if developers will take some nice features from this mod.

One thing I kinda hated in Oblivion, was when I moved to a given site and then it got "Explored" but with no difference between whether you had actually entered the dungeon or not. For Skyrim, I really hope they can improve on the location flagging and make it more flexible for the player. With 200+ locations flagged as Explored, it's kinda boring to try to remember which handful of dungeons that you just passed by without entering them. Flags should be:

- "unmapped" (invisible marker)
- "mapped" (visible marker, but hasn't visited)
- "visited" (visited location but haven't entered the dungeon (when applicable))
- "explored" (visited location and entered the dungeon (when applicable)).

Maybe "explored" should even be a flag placed on the map by the player. I'd love to have some kind of player-controlled flagging system on the world map. I.e. full freedom to flag the map markers to his/her heart's content.

it makes sense if your like me and think that there wasn't even close to enough content. you mentioned MW, which had well over twice as much. with out the magic compus you would never find half the stuff because it isn't there.

Oblivion wasnt too cluttered really. From the trailer, there looks to be a lot of open space.

Wait since when is Bethesda outright trying to please modders specifically? Yes, many mods are awesome and greatly improve the game, however a very large chunk of Elders Scrolls fans play on a console (including myself) and I would be pretty pissed off if the reason Oblivion was so boring in terms of wide open spaces was because they were catering to PC modders. Modding is great, but the point is to use what you are given and expand on that. The game shouldn't come out just waiting for other people to fill in the empty spaces, those spaces should already be interesting in their own right.

They've already demonstrated this can be accomplished with Morrowind, which had open areas (space for mods) but also was chock full of unique places.

Oblivion felt pretty open to me. However, I am fine with it dropping the number of dungeons, as long as it is 130 dungeons + camps + inns + small towns or settlements.

I'm not going to complain about the smaller amount of dungeons, because together with the larger amount of dungeon designers, I expect it to do wonders for enhancing the uniqueness of the dungeons, which Oblivion could certainly have benefited from, and really, 130 dungeons still sounds like quite a few to me, there are lots of dungeons I haven't explored in Oblivion to this day, I wouldn't be surprised if I've never been to half of the dungeons in the game on any playthrough, so even with the smaller amount in Skyrim, I don't expect it to feel like there's not enough. Not sure how this will effect how much free space there is for modding, though, considering that Skyrim's terrain is pretty different from Cyrodiils, and the mountains are likely to impact what places are actually suited to adding in large modded locations. Not to mention fewer dungeons doesn't mean fewer locations as a whole, maybe we'll get an increased number of farms and settlements, or camps or other such locations. I'm not sure about that, but I at least hope small settlements are larger than they were in Oblivion, I mean Weye was just one house on the side of the road, I'd say it's a house and an inn, but since Wawnet Inn had its own map marker, I can only assume we're meant to think of it as a seperiate location, one single house does not constitute a village, and if something is supposed to just be someone's house and not a village, just call the place Random NPC's House, there's no reason to give a random farmhouse a name that sounds like some village.

Personally, I wouldn't really want Bethesda to worry too much about leaving space open for modders, they'll figure something out, as they did for Morrowind and Oblivion, and I wouldn't want Bethesda to leave certain sections of the map suspiciously empty in the off chance that some modder will want to put something there at some point, Bethesda should focus on making the unmodded game as good as it can be, when it comes to supporting the mod community, they should provide the tools needed to create mods, but they don't need to limit the game itself for their sake.

Fewer locations benefits as I see it are:

1. You can afford (time-wise) to make bigger landscapes, while having dungeons and such more spread out.
2. World won't feel as cramped up.
3. More time can be spent on each dungeon, making them really really cool/nice/unique.
4. The world will feel more realistic. You don't come across caves every 30 sec when you walk in real life

The benefits above are ranked by how important I think they are. So what's most important for me is that the world can be bigger more easily.

its not that they are exclusivly catering to PC modders, its that they are giving them what is abosolutly and entirely needed in the game if you want to make certain kind of mods. Modders have to have open spaces or they can't mod new dungeons or whatever. they could make new spaces but thats more complicated and a little lore breaking (since making new ground area requires crossing into other provences)

besides, TES is a PC series, the fact that console copies sell more does not mean it was made with consoles specificly in mind. its the other way round, when any thing is added into the game Modders are always taken into consideration since every aspect of the game will be (almost garuanteeably) modded. which again, isn't to say that the games are modder's only, this is just the reason why there are suddenly empty spaces in their games. IMO there are not enough empty spaces, a huge problem with mods is that they bump into each other.

While personally I'm ok with the magic map, I'd rather see the magic compass be removed.

Ahh thats old sweet times when most of all try to put an new house in Balmora :teehee:

I totally agree with the bolded part. I want the game to be as great as it can be without any mods. The goal of this game shouldn't be to cater to mods.

Here's an idea: Keep half the number of dungeons, and make a lot of the dungeons have doors that can only be opened later, but act as a completely separate area. This way a single dungeon can have up to 3 dungeons-worth of content.

open space isn't just for modders, its for every one. would you really enjoy the game if it was just dungeons stacked on top of each other? OB was not quite like that but you were always bumping into dungeon after dungeon every few seconds and it becomes annoying if you aren't dungeon diving at that moment. SK will have way less space with the mountains + the same number of open spaces so I slightly worried about how much space there will be for modding. Besides, TES was meant to be more than just mindless dungeon diving.

You're right in that it shouldn't be necessary to create new space in order to mod. The real problem with Oblivion was that there were lots of dungeons that weren't unique. I'm all for the idea of more limited dungeons as long as they are more compact/detailed and are actually interesting. If the space is utilized correctly no one should have complaints, modders and non-modders alike.
And I understand the roots of TES are with PC's, but when Morrowind came out on the Xbox that changed. The fact is that some avid TES fans have never played it on the PC, and besides that, some PC users don't use mods. Mod use isn't necessarily as universal as it might appear on these forums.