Filling the void

[Nomadic1]

I've played Oblivion for a couple of weeks now. I've finished three of the guilds, done a shitload of the MQ, and have travelled across all the roads between towns, closed countless gates, and gone through the wilderness for a bit of adventure.

But I also realised just how repetitive things were. All mines and caves eventually just look the same. All the gates are the just same rehashed and repeated and I now have 20+ sigil stones, more than I know what to do with since you fill up with so much loot that you can't even afford to carry Dremora weapons out to enchant with them. The wilderness was so overrun with bandits and so forth, and so empty of settlement (especially outside Colovia) that you could be left wondering if anyone lived there at all.

(This isn't a full whinge. I mean there have been some things that have completely taken me by surprise, like that chapel near Fort Grief).

I haven't seen any mention on this in TR. There probably is a thread around I've missed, and probably another somewhere I can't see. But I was wondering what TR would do to fill in the wilderness. (Please tell me adding even a few new Deadland portal things to give some variety is one of them).

[Gez]

I haven't seen any mention on this in TR. There probably is a thread around I've missed, and probably another somewhere I can't see. But I was wondering what TR would do to fill in the wilderness. (Please tell me adding even a few new Deadland portal things to give some variety is one of them).

From time to time, my little bro let me play Ob on his laptop (he had the chance of getting one with a nVidia chipset, so it works).

I've set him up with a FranOOOMMM+Bob+OWC installation, to bring more variety and richness to the game, and it really changes the game (especially OOO) because now, when you approach a camp, you don't necessarily have to kill everyone, they may be friendlies.

I was thinking, however, about how darned repetitives the caves and forts and tombs are. And I remembered one thing:

Morrowind's vanilla dungeons were of several kinds:
-ancestral tombs
-velothi towers
-dwemer ruins
-old stronghold
-caves & derelict (mineral) mines
-blighted eggmines

And here we had a lot of variety. Sure, velothi towers and ancestral tombs used the same tileset, but they were still built in different ways, giving them a clear and separate identity. That's one thing to remember. Likewise for caves and eggmines. The tileset is the same, but the ambiance can vary a lot.

So, first point: use ambiance and architecture for greater variety.

Now, let's look at the dungeons' inhabitants. A cave, tomb, stronghold, or dwemer ruin could be inhabited by many different sorts of critters: smugglers, vampires, undead, daedra, dwemer constructs, or sixth house baddies. This too gave them a clear identity. Most faction had its specific "memorabilia" (sixth house furniture and "mood lighting", makeshift camps and ramshackle platforms, scenes of torture and slaughter, etc.). This added a lot, too. When you entered a stronghold for the first time, and you were greeted by red candles and stacked chairs and bloody paintings (6th), it was a different impression than if you were greeted by skeletons nailed to the walls by arrows and spears (Daedra) or by a barbarian wielding a two-handed weapon (smugglers). That's the other thing.

So, second point: give a history to each dungeon. Who built it, why, who owns it now, and how did it evolve; those are the points that will give it its identity.

The last point will concern the caves more particularly. While there was one tileset as far as models were concerned, Bethesda used several different textures. The most common were mold and mud, but you also had several py and lava. The bone set wasn't used in the original game, and Bloodmoon introduced a few Glacier pieces though ice caverns mostly used its own set of meshes.

The last point is thus retextures. There's only one cave texture in Oblivion. Hammerfell should use different textures according to the region and varying geology.

[Orix]

I agree with Gez on dungeons, character and history of each dungeon, while not absent, was a bit lacking in Oblivion. We have some cool potential for interesting dungeons in Hammerfell. Dwemer ruins, dry sand-wridden caves (could use traps like sinking sand?), anciant Yokudan, Giant Goblin(?), Orc, Breton and Nedic outposts/forts, "Alik'r shade-temples" (pocket guide).

As for filling the wilderness:
- Definately more minor villages than Oblivion,
- Quagmire gates have been discussed,
- There was a huge WSG on ruins that would be found in the wilderness,
- With the Alik'r and desert in general there could be plenty of cool geological/wierd phenomena things like sandfalls and that strange red mist thing in the Alik'r.
- Satakal Nomads/Dune Dwellers camps/travelling groups
and other things

[Morgoth]

The thing to get around is that Cyrodiil was an urban province. Cities took up most of it, leaving little room for interesting environment. In Morrowind, you had an out-of-the-way, backwoods province. Some of it was still tribal, lot's of abandoned and ruined places were scattered about, and it was largly vast, empty, badlands. This is an ideal setting for an epic adventure to take place. The cities, rather than small villages, are what made Oblivion seem a lot less interesting to me.

(Not to mention it had Vivec, and they lived both in giant vine pods, and hollow bug shells. Then there were the blight storms, the inhabitants, and the mushroom trees. Alien, but original. Hammerfell has some great potential, here.)

As for wilderness, some unique things, like the small cliff Eyeball is venturing to make, or gullies and springs, that canyon for Vulnim Gate, etc. would add immensely. I'm doing some video footage for my own project, of some really nice, inspiring types of wilderness landscape. Once it's quicktime'd, I'll put it here, too.

[El Scumbago]

Actually, the wilderness is overcrowded. I just can't stand the fact that the player is unable to walk for 10 minutes without stumbling on a ruin/cave/village. Imo, there are way too many villages, I was hoping for true wilderness, and perhaps some diversity as far as caves go. Gez is absolutely right, the several different categories of residents must have something characteristic to 'sign' their presence.

[Morgoth]

Actually, the wilderness is overcrowded. I just can't stand the fact that the player is unable to walk for 10 minutes without stumbling on a ruin/cave/village. Imo, there are way too many villages, I was hoping for true wilderness, and perhaps some diversity as far as caves go.

True. Again, Morrowind: Lot's of abandoned and ruined places were scattered about, and it was largly vast, empty, badlands.

Emptiness and solitude can also be a place from which springs adventure.

[Zalzidrax]

I don't think the two are so different as far as ruin/cave density, but in Oblivion, you get a big symbol on your compass when anywhere near any sort of mine, cave, or ruin.

As for the villages, I really didn't think the place was populous enough for an imperial province. I agree there should be wilderness,but the cities should have had, in my opinion, far more outlying farmsteads and houses, the common people not rich enough to live inside the city walls. And the Imperial city was really quite wussy. I wanted to see an entire island down to the water with grand docks and enough houses to get lost in.

[Morgoth Bauglir]

I agree with zalzidrax, the imperial city is way to small. It should be bigger than vivec, what it isn't by my feeling. I don't think that the caves and dungeons are the same. Morrowind was something more of an adventure, but this is probably by the compass (wich makes some quests much better to do, no endless searching for that stupid place).
I've been playing Oblivion for 350 hours now and I'm still not really bored. I love to live off-land: travel the wilderness with an empty inventory, search for food and enjoy the landscape. I don't think you'll ever get bored, there's always another, unique, dungeon to clear.

Agree with the tiresome oblivion gates (I closed 16...)

BTW, why SHOULD there be settlements in the wilderness? it's the wilderness, right?

[Nomadic1]

IMO the Imperial Province was unpopulated. I didn't notice that Oblivion was more crowded than Morrowind was (before all the gates appeared it seemed to be emptier, and when they appeared slightly more crowded) it is just that the things appear on the compass so you can just walk pass things all that easily.

[Morgoth Bauglir]

Cyrodill didn't appeared as empty to me, but just a peacefull land with green forests and beautifull cities.
A bit like the Shire perhaps.

P.S.:What's IMO???

[Gnomey]

BTW, why SHOULD there be settlements in the wilderness? it's the wilderness, right?

Yes, a nice big wilderness with lots of place for settlements. I think that for the most part a feeling of Hammerfell being fairly crowded all over would be good, that way places like the Alik'ir (sp?) will seem really empty. And in Morrowind the thick coat of ints covering the land never bothered me, because between their being hard to find, having a lot of variety and also each having an unique look to them they just seemed to fit in to the wilderness. Of course, with Oblivion it sounds as though it would be pretty glaring every time you pass an int, but I wouldn't know.

Edit: Oh, and IMO means "In my opinion".

[Sload]

This is the most important thread on TR at the moment.

Answer this question, and you win:

• Why did Morrowind's dungeons feel so much more diverse and how can we make this happen again in Hammerfell

I have some ideas, but I wants yours.

[Haplo]

They were more/better modular and there were more types. And there was generally more space, as I recall, to run around and do cool stuff. In my opinion they were not as awkward to traverse as Oblivion dungeons, and in my opinion they were less cluttered with not-preferable clutter. And most caves had some kind of NPC instead of just goblins. And they were very creative.

I thought you didn't like people editing your post, Haplo? ~Sload

[Rockwell]

I think Gez pretty much summed it up: there were more dungeon sets to use. And also previously mentioned is that they were modular, so that way you can come up with a bunch of different combinations to create a truely unique looking dungeon. And I agree with Haplo in that the dungeons were more spacy than the ones in Oblivion. So basically, the essestials for dungeon making in Hammerfell in my opinion are:

-different themed dungeons, eg Old forts/caves/dwemner ruins etc.

-modular pieces

-open, spacy pieces

[Morgoth]

Tileset variety, space, modularity, inhabitants, history, and lighting.

[Sload]

What if I told you I didn't think it was that simple and that you've ignored the second and more important part and also mentioned that all dungeons are modular in Oblivion.

- You misinterpret what Morgoth said about modularity. A little manners goes a long way. - Haplo

- When did I ever say that? And it's a waste to make a new post, and not important enough to send a PM. And editing has one 't'.

[Thrignar Fraxix]

I liked the thought that there may be an artifact hidden in the dungeon I was visiting. I think the dungeons in MW felt more alive, there were slaves to free, every bandit/wizard/smuggler had a name, sometimes there were even secret obscured paths that you would sometimes stumble upon.

[CleverClothe]

On villages, I thought there were just the right amount in Oblivion. There needed to be many more farms though.

In Hammerfell, we will have less space and more crowding of the cities. I think we should have fewer villages.


Oh, we definitely need new kinds of traps.

[Nomadic1]

Woohoo. Some discussion Here's my thoughts on what we could put in Hammerfell.

Cities should be a little larger. Each of the cities has 25 inhabited buildings in them, except for the IC which has about 100. The problem is that it is a little too few count-wise to fully develop them properly. If we bump it up to 30 or 35 each (or up to 50 to make a super big city like Sentinel), we can then create more specialty shops and give each city a more clear style. I'll admit that the cities were very well designed and built, and they felt larger than they were.

Villages should be a little more populated than Cyrodiil had too. HF is a smaller province, but it still runs the risk of feeling uninhabited even if we do make villages in Cyrodiil's 2 - 5 range. 5 - 10 is better IMO.

For Inns I reckon we should just do what BS did. They did these well IMO.

Camps. Along with the standard bandits camps, and the Dunedweller camps for the A'likr and possibly Dak'fron, we could also have labour camps in forestry, quarrying and mining regions. We could also have military camps, like Nord invader camps in the occupied region of the northeast.

Temples, Chapels, Academies, Manned Fortresses and Monasteries. In the wilderness, there should be these kinds of things around to give more life to the province. We should have legion fortresses, Redguard fortresses and a few warrior monasteries to hammer in the martial side of Redguards. And they should be counterbalanced with Temples and Chapels to show a softer side.

Ruins of the above. TR has always known how to make good ruins so there's no good in suggesting anything IMO.

Dwemer Ruins. At first I thought there should be a real few number of these. But then I realised we could probably add a few more (maybe up to 15 or so). We have two clans, Rourken (Stros M'Kai) and Kragen (Fang Lair), to work with. While the Rourken seem the more famous and important and we should primarily focus on them, we might also want to try and develop the Kragen a little more and give them a unique style later on if we have a modeller (or two) putting their hand up.

Caves and Mines should have some purpose and history. TR has done these very well in Morrowind so we should really just do in TES4 what we did in TES3.

Landmarks are good to have. It would be nice if instead of saying in a quest "Go to Fatso's Lair which is here", we said "Go to Fatso's Lair. We don't know where it is exactly, but we have rumour that it is west of Big Ugly Rock". The compass rocks, but it sucks arse if it used again and again and again and the PC doesn't have to find anything for themselves.

Oblivion Gates. We have some Quagmire levels to add some flavour to the Dragontails, but we should leave the rest of the province with the same old same old. If TR members could design a few more deadlands and we add those in to a special TR random gate thingy with BS's, people might enter them to try a new challenge.

[Macar]

This is the most important thread on TR at the moment.

Answer this question, and you win:

• Why did Morrowind's dungeons feel so much more diverse and how can we make this happen again in Hammerfell

I have some ideas, but I wants yours.

For me the difference is leveled creatures vs. planned monsters that appear to have a story about them.

It was really stupid in Oblivion the way you'd go into a cave (at low level) and find that it was filled with wolves and imps... What are wolves doing hanging out underground? Why are they in legue with the imps? What's going on here?

In MW, however, you went to a cave and discovered that it was, say, a smugglers cave. You would see thier goods, thier living quarters, and you felt like you where interupting something when you came in.

So- Lets really limit the use of nonsensical leveled lists- Use them more like MW did.

[El Scumbago]

Should we do that, we break all consistency with the vanilla product. To be honest, I liked the fact that in Morrowind you would clear a dungeon, literally. In Oblivion I can't get the feeling that I accomplished something, since the same folks will reappear after 3 days or so. But leveled lists are more likely to stay the way I see it, so we'll probably focus on the caves and ruins themselves, rather than the very NPCs which will be inside.

[Morgoth Bauglir]

Perhaps it's possible to create a creature that, as soon as you killed it, reapears in a whole other form after three days. for example: a zombie > kill it > 3 days > a bandit > kill it > 3 days > a minotaur > ... etc.

This way you get the feeling that some bandits entered the empty cave, wich you cleaned, to do whatever bandits do.

I don't know if it's possible but it doesn't seems that unrealistic.

[Morgoth Bauglir]

This is the most important thread on TR at the moment.

Answer this question, and you win:

• Why did Morrowind's dungeons feel so much more diverse and how can we make this happen again in Hammerfell

I have some ideas, but I wants yours.

BTW, "win"???

[Gez]

This is the most important thread on TR at the moment.

Answer this question, and you win:

I lose then, because I answered it before you asked.

[Lady Nerevar]

there was more over all divestity in the way the tilesets were used. the smugler's caves for example had scafolding nad the like, whereas ob's are just caves with smuglers. same for the mines. all in OB were abandoned and goblin invested.

i realy think that its the way that the tileset is used cretively that makes the read difference. i MW you could identify a cave or ruin solely by its physical characteristics.

[Hemitheon]

Well I know I stopped going into the caves and mines in Ob. cuz I figured there was a 0% chance I was gonna find something interesting or perhaps an artifact. If you look back to Morrowind, the majority of artifacts or artifact related sites are in tombs, i.e. Ring of Phynaster, or in caverns, i.e. Goldbrand, or in the middle of BFE, i.e. Umbra Sword. Perhaps for Hammerfell, there could be a mix of inspirations. For instance, for the desert a Diablo II, Lut Gholein looking ruin, instead of those dull as dishwater forts with nothing but necromancers in them. All that is needed is a few well placed ruins perhaps in an abandoned Yoku style. I mean seriously, which of the following would peek your interest, and intrigue you: 1. a cave called Abandoned Cave, or a half sunken Yokudan version of the Egyptian ruins of Philae?v ooooh or a Yokudan version of Abu Simbel!!!

[Eraser]

It's all in how we use the space. In OB, it seems everything is leveled in containers, the only real unique things could only be bought or obtained through quests.

More and different oblivion gates are a must....

Modularity.

Villages and inns, definitely need to be more populated. I've been concerned with the density of places before, during and since the scale wars. One thing particular to hammerfell I feel population should be pretty clustered being an arid and rough environment. The major cities should be pretty crowded. But we also have to downgrade a ton of big cities from daggerfall into smaller villages. There was typically a large city for each kingdom in DF, a capital. Those each should be made as villages, but a little bigger than OB villages, and leave the dense cities with their own space for the major cities that are on the larger maps.

landmarks, I love it, just like MW again!

Mines, they need to be populated with miners. They're all taken over by creatures in OB.

Most of all: Better naming of locations. Old bridge, flooded mine, abandoned mine, derelict mine, for nomore, fort empire etc.....lets get back to creative names individual to tamriel's cultures.

[Eyeball88]

If someone wants to go through the old Morrowind modular cave pieces and take screenshots (with wireframes) of all the old pieces they used, I think we can make more modular dungeons for Hammerfell. Modularity is easier when you don't have to worry about any interiors matching exteriors, like with housing. Seams are harder to notice, much more can be accomplished with textures, etc.

What I remember thinking about Oblivion is that the dungeons were infinitely more impressive to look at than Morrowind's on the first run through. Seeing light gently filtering in through holes in the cave ceiling, or seeing the goblins in the first cave out of the Imperial prison sequence, was very impressive. But once you've seen that cave, you have seen them all. Outside of a few examples like the Goblin Jim cave (if I remember correctly, that one had a lot of character to it) all of the caves were just a deja vu "I hope I find a bandit with the piece of glass armour I'm missing" experience.

I believe that the more pre-made dungeons allow for a greater initial aesthetic experience, but become redundant after two or three viewings. As someone who has barely touched the CS for both MW and OB, I don't know how much different the modularity between the two were, or just how much more can be achieved with a modular set as opposed to a pre-made dungeon. It would seem to me that for unique dungeons, a pre-made less modular but more detailed piece would be more effective.

Someone with more experience in the CS can point out where I'm wrong, I'm sure. I think modularity is very strong for dungeons/caves/forts, and I might be completely mistaken in thinking that pre-made dungeon sets can have more attention to detail.

Edit: Leveled loot killed a lot of the sense of adventure as well. I got a full set of glass armor and knew there wasn't anything to upgrade it, and I had a ton of money. If at all possible, kill the extreme leveling and give each cave a story/sense of purpose. I find the opportunity to free slaves is much better incentive to search a cave than a bandit band covered with daedric armor.

[Noirgrim]

I think some people need to go play Morrowind again, then play OB right after...

So many things said in this thread are backwards:

-there are MORE tpyes of dungeons in OB than in MW

-there is MORE wilderness in OB between dungeons than MW. Probably doesn't seem that way because they appear on your compass

-OB dungeons are just as modular as MW ones

-(IMO, the coolest dungeons in OB are far more interesting than the best MW ones)

-we shouldn't be changing the gameplay of OB when we construct HF (talking about leveled lists). It is the best way to make sure the PC doesn't get too powerful too fast. The problem with MW is that you could get way too powerful, and actually beat it in 8 mins (search for the vid) because of it.

I think most of these comparisons that are being made is besed on what people remember MW being, and not what it actually was; people were younger, had a better imagination, just don't recall correctly, or have been reading too many ESF posts, who knows, but most of them are just wrong.

Also, this thread is sort of useless atm. There is so much more to do before we even get to these things. Yes, it is good to talk about it, but this thread will become dead and forgotten about by the time any of this is relavant.

[Sload]

-there are MORE tpyes of dungeons in OB than in MW

Blatantly wrong. Even using tile-sets only, and only things I remember for Morrowind:

Daedric, Dwemer, Tombs, Caves, Ancient forts.
Fort ruins, Ayleid ruins, caves, Gates to Oblivion.

Ignoring how many more things they did with each tileset on Morrowind than Oblivion, that's 5 versus 4, and I may be missing something on Morrowind.

-OB dungeons are just as modular as MW ones

Yes, though Bethesda wasted this by building all of their rooms beforehand, so it might as well not have been modular.

-we shouldn't be changing the gameplay of OB when we construct HF (talking about leveled lists). It is the best way to make sure the PC doesn't get too powerful too fast. The problem with MW is that you could get way too powerful, and actually beat it in 8 mins (search for the vid) because of it.

Everyone who isn't 12 agrees that Oblivion's biggest flaw was levelled lists. My concern is that every cave in Oblivion used the same levelled list, so every cave had imps in it when you were at low levels and ogres and so forth at higher levels. Further, you obviously didn't want that video because it was 7 minutes and they did it by abusing the alchemy system.

Also, this thread is sort of useless atm. There is so much more to do before we even get to these things. Yes, it is good to talk about it, but this thread will become dead and forgotten about by the time any of this is relavant.

You're right. There are so many more things we need to decide on before we decide on what we're putting in Hammerfell. Like, uh, umm, uh.. Actually, I can't think of anything that we haven't already decided on that's really more important than this.

Now, to my post.

Everyone in the administration but me agrees that Dwemer ruins need to be extremely rare. Ironic, because I think that was my idea. But anyways, this means that the only ancient civilization that lived in Hammerfell does not have ruins across the province. I have been convinced that it is exceptable as long as someone can think of other dungeons.

Right now, I want dungeons that can fit into Goldmoor and at least one other region. Here's a short list of ideas that have entered into my brain internally or externally:

-Caves. These would have to be rather flat and very wet and cramped. Could be good, but shouldn't be the main thing for the place.
-Tombs. Possible, but they might not work very well.
-Burrows. This could really work. A creature that burrows into the ground and has a really simple tileset would be good for just the tiny dungeon.

Something else to think about: These are not going to be hugely large totally awesome interiors. They're going to be average in size and interesting. They're going to be unique. But they aren't going to be even 2 cells, probably. We're going to have a few totally awesome dungeon crawls in certain places.

[Eyeball88]

I think some people need to go play Morrowind again, then play OB right after...

So many things said in this thread are backwards:

-there are MORE tpyes of dungeons in OB than in MW

-there is MORE wilderness in OB between dungeons than MW. Probably doesn't seem that way because they appear on your compass

You are right technically, but I think that there are still problems with this. The addition of the compass made the game seem smaller, everyone acknowledges this. We can't change it. But the addition of the compass coupled with the shallow, pointless dungeons meant that there was no incentive to explore other than for loot. I may just be nostalgic, but I remember stumbling upon some very memorable dungeons in Morrowind, out in the middle of nowhere. There was the one with an Orgrim and his throne decorated with skulls, preparing to cook and eat some prisoners. The only memorable random dungeon I remember from Oblivion was the one with the hidden pirate ship, and I had to be told about that one because I wouldn't have explored it on my own.

This isn't to say that Morrowind didn't have it's absolutely monotonous dungeon crawls; I think most of the Velothi Tombs got to be very boring after the first few. But I was still inspired to wander the countryside looking for dungeons. If we have the same amount of dungeon-types as Morrowind but with the depth to keep people interested, we'll still come ahead of Oblivion I think. Less can mean more.

-OB dungeons are just as modular as MW ones

As someone who hasn't touched the CS long enough to design any interior for either MW or OB, I couldn't tell the difference here. I just recall seeing certain landmarks more frequently in Oblivion than in Morrowind. This, however, is not something I would necessarily fault OB/Bethesda for.

One of the ironies of modern video game development is that the more detail you have, the more redundancy you have. An entire dungeon in Diablo could have been tiled with 4 or 5 different tiles. In Diablo 2, with the ability to add more clutter to the ground, suddenly you needed more tiles, because if those cracked tile with the root coming through is placed too closely together, and people can see the identical pieces, the immersion is destroyed.

I think this happened a bit with Oblivion. For example, they put a lot of detail into beautiful stalagmites/stalactites, only to have them be "Oh, it's that formation again." I'm not sure how much modularity can do to fix something like that.

-(IMO, the coolest dungeons in OB are far more interesting than the best MW ones)

Coolest aesthetically? Or just coolest concepts? I've heard a few dungeons mentioned from Oblivion that sound very cool, but like I said earlier I was never gripped with a desire to go spelunking in Oblivion, because I had a sense of deja vu with every cave.

This may just be me aging, though.

-we shouldn't be changing the gameplay of OB when we construct HF (talking about leveled lists). It is the best way to make sure the PC doesn't get too powerful too fast. The problem with MW is that you could get way too powerful, and actually beat it in 8 mins (search for the vid) because of it.

The 8 minute video isn't really a strong point to argue from, because it involves sitting in one spot making intellect potions, buffing your intellect and then strength up into the thousands, travelling to the mountain, jumping over top of it and rushing in to kill Dagoth Ur before he even has a chance to blink. You would have to be playing with the sole purpose of speed-running the game to be inspired to do that. Another example, I saw a video of Half Life beaten in ~40 minutes, start to finish. It involved using trip-mines to make a ladder to jump over obstacles that would take 30 minutes (and a new part of the story) to get around.

Again, you may be right in pointing out the age/nostalgia thing, I am more biased towards Morrowind than Oblivion. I spent far, far longer in Morrowind than Oblivion, playing long after I beat the campaign to decorate my house, explore dungeons I hadn't seen yet, etc. As a matter of opinion, Oblivion couldn't hold a candle to the amount of replayability I got out of Morrowind. My disappointment with Oblivion's gameplay doesn't really affect my modding, though; graphically it is a far superior game to be modding for, and I am glad to be doing this province on this engine with this project.

So I guess the tl;dr version of this post is:
Fast Travel made Oblivion seem smaller
Dungeons were undeniably more redundant, even if the modularity was the same.
Fast Travel + redundant dungeons = no incentive to explore a cave, other than for loot.
Leveled lootlists meant that everyone, everywhere has the same armor, scaling with the player. Once you hit the right level, you can suddenly finish your entire armor set in one dungeon run/Oblivion gate.
Fast Travel + redundant dungeons + identical loot = absolutely no incentive to explore.

Edit to reply to Sload without making a whole new post

Yes, though Bethesda wasted this by building all of their rooms beforehand, so it might as well not have been modular.

This is something I just touched on, but you condensed it down into a sentence. We can identify the problem; how do we get around it? The more detail we put into a tileset, the more apparent the repeated tiles become.

Everyone who isn't 12 agrees that Oblivion's biggest flaw was levelled lists. My concern is that every cave in Oblivion used the same levelled list, so every cave had imps in it when you were at low levels and ogres and so forth at higher levels.

Quoting to agree, this really killed the sense of adventure.

Everyone in the administration but me agrees that Dwemer ruins need to be extremely rare.

Do you remember the first time you went through an Oblivion gate, how your jaw dropped? Sure, it was just hell. But nobody has ever done hell so well. It looked absolutely amazing.

Now, do you remember how many Oblivion gates you cleared before you decided "That is it, enough is enough, I am never entering another Oblivion gate ever!" Too much of a good thing, as was said in the Admin forum.

Right now, I want dungeons that can fit into Goldmoor and at least one other region. Here's a short list of ideas that have entered into my brain internally or externally:

-Caves. These would have to be rather flat and very wet and cramped. Could be good, but shouldn't be the main thing for the place.
-Tombs. Possible, but they might not work very well.
-Burrows. This could really work. A creature that burrows into the ground and has a really simple tileset would be good for just the tiny dungeon.

Goldmoor seems like a bit of a bland zone, due to it's proximity to the Gold Coast. There is no reason to believe Ayleid / Imperial advancement stopped on a fictional border between provinces, so I imagine we can fill some of our immediate region with both of those. It isn't exciting, but it makes sense. Here's a question: How much of the Corten Mt. are we counting as "Goldmoor" when they are all put together. It is fairly small to be considered its own zone, and would seem like a natural place to add caves and mines which could count towards Goldmoor.

I realize that this doesn't do much to give purpose to the wide open spaces of Goldmoor, though, so it's kind of a moot point. Tombs I don't really see happening, but Burrows and Caves seem like they would work well. Because of how wet it is, underground running rivers in cramped caves would probably make sense and could be very cool to look at. What would hide out in these caves, I'm not sure. But having additional sources of water stream down from the ceiling as the river passes under a pool, would make it very unique and interesting to look at.

[Noirgrim]

A list of things more important than this discussion in order of importance:

1: Stirk Quests
2: Map 9 Ints
3: Map 9 NPCs, AI, Dialogue
4: Finishing GM meshes and textures, and everything relating to Architecture of GM cities
5: Generating GM
6: After generation, detailing landscape, making cities...

And no, these aren't duscussion areas, but they all need to happen before this discussion will mean anything.

...then we can talk about the dispersion and types of dungeons we put in GM. Yes, the tilesets preferably should be done by the time we get to this point, but the more we choose to have, the more that will have to be actually created. And on top of all the meshes that are still in the works and have priority over dungeons (Arch) they are a long, long way off. This thread seems like a big "oh wouldn't it be cool if" thread.

We all agreed that we would finish off one area of the project before moving onto the next. There are way too many things unfinished at this point to even consider what is be discussed here.

And the 8 min vid was the extreme, and I did watch it. There is also another video (15 min vid) where he doesn't abuse Alch. and just goes around getting all the cool shit from the start. From all of this conversation, it seems that people just want to go mod for MW again, go for it.

[Sload]

Since we've discussed all of those, its time to discuss the one we haven't discussed. Wowza!

In fact, I would think you would be all for discussing this. It is something we need modelled for Goldmoor, which we're always ignoring and everything.

[CleverClothe]

-there are MORE tpyes of dungeons in OB than in MW

Off the top of my head.

MW:
Egg mine
Ebony mine
Smuggler Cave
Tomb
Velothi Tower
6th House cave
6th House Stronghold
Shipwreck
Dwemer Ruin

Ob:
Cave (wolves, imps, ogres, oh my!)
Mine
Goblin Cave
Fort Ruin
Aleiyd Ruin
Oblivion Gate

[Noirgrim]

I didn't clarify well enough, yes, those things have been discussed, but before any of this gets put into effect, that list needs to be completed first.

And because execution of this discussion requires mass amounts of new meshes, I am hesitant to come to any conclusions on it because there are so many meshes to be made before any of these do.

And as I mentioned before, by the time we are ready to execute any decision made here (next year is my guess) we will have changed our opinion of what will exist here or forgotten about this post, or both.

@CC: half of those MW ones aren't tile sets, or are reuses of the same tilesets with different things put inside

[Haplo]

Noir, point blank there is more diversity among MW dungeons than there is among Oblivion.

Or did you dig up your copy of Morrowind and install it to try and create those numbers?

Also, since uh, everything you listed is being worked on by those people who can work on it, I think the rest of the people who didn't get to work on it or don't have the ability to would enjoy spending their time productively, by discussing things about the project. Anyone can take part in a discussion.

[Noirgrim]

I don't know what you mean by 'point blank' but no, there was not more diversity in MW dungeons.

To add to Sload's list on the OB side, 'Mines.' Mines and Caves are actually two different tile sets.

And sure, discuss away, but, well, nm, just read my previous post, it's pointless to even discuss this at this point in time.

[Sload]

Having actually been involved in the making of a mine for our mod, I can say confidently that no, it is not a new tileset. It is as much a tileset as the platforms that smugglers use in the caves are a tileset. And, no, this isn't pointless, so everyone just ignore what Noirgrim has said except for that Morrowind probably wasn't as good as you remembered it. That's completely true, but it's not a problem, because what you remember is KICKASS and we want our mod to be KICKASS.

[Noirgrim]

Damn [snaps finger]... but wait... isn't there a tile set where there's a 'cave' but more man-made?

And no, everyone don't ignore me, there's something more to this mod than endless discussions. Find out what's important to completing this mod, get good at it, and go work.

[Eyeball88]

Come on guys, this doesn't need to be a witch hunt. Noirgrim does have some very solid points. Some of it is opinion, and some of it is looking back in time through rose-tinted glasses. At the time of Morrowind's release, I enjoyed it far more than I enjoyed Oblivion at it's release. Does that mean I could go back and play through Morrowind again, and still love it as much? I don't know, but probably not.

Mesh-wise, there is a lot to ask to create one or two new dungeon tilesets for each region. All of the tilesets combined will be less work than all of the architecture for the regions combined, but not by a huge amount. Depending on what we decide for the Dwemer, that could be like it's own mini-architectural set.

If we're looking at a few dungeons that are province-wide, such as Dwemer or Orsimer ruins, then an additional two dungeons for every region, it becomes a bit more work. If we're willing to stick with texture changes to differentiate between Totambu cave and Dragontail cave, then just have a few different cavetypes scattered throughout (a softly curving sandstone cave for the desert, etc) it is a little more manageable.

Thinking of stuff is always more fun than implementing it, to be sure.