Please do not copy the dungeon style from Daggerfall, it was terrible

[Atlas32]

The dungeons in Daggerfall were absolutely terrible. They were mostly huge, uninteresting mazes that stretched on for tens of minutes if not an hour at a time and were too hard to navigate. Also, quest items were usually located in some obscure location and were hard to locate due to no map markers in the game. I do understand that some people enjoy a challenge or an old school feel, but really who has time for that these days. Maybe still make them big but simplify them a bit more and make them more interesting.

Take a note from Skyrim, some of those dungeons were just nice to get through. Maybe you could populate them with puzzles, inhabitants, mining nodes, different beasts depending on terrain, etc.

[lizrdfishr]

Mix it up. Throw it all at us. With no linear quests, there won't be a mandate to do the dungeons you don't want to do.

[Azure Toroto]

Yeah, they were complicated, though I for one would like to see some big dungeons, maybe some dungeons of varying size. I liked skyrim to some degree with it's dungeons, though there were some that were very short and not as interesting, outside the quest ones that is. I actually liked oblivion's dungeons a bit more as there were some deadly traps that can easily surprise the player, such as those floor raising ones. I feel they had fair length, lasting about 30 mins to over a hour if you look through every nook and cranny.

It would be nice to stumble across some deep cave network filled with abandoned treasures in it's bowels, potentially left by some bandit gang being overwhelmed by creatures such as spiders. Though it's moments like that need to be debated over whether delving into each dungeon is worth it at face value, especially if some NPC quest giver describe it as such, only for it just to be a death trap with spiders.

[oncelostgames]

Dungeon design is something we plan to give a lot of attention to. We are aiming for more variety and layouts that make more sense depending on what type of dungeon it is. There will be room for some labyrinthian dungeons, but they will not be the standard.

[Samantha Raven]

Originally posted by oncelostgames:

Dungeon design is something we plan to give a lot of attention to. We are aiming for more variety and layouts that make more sense depending on what type of dungeon it is. There will be room for some labyrinthian dungeons, but they will not be the standard.

I hope there will be hand picked designs in some of the dungeons to give them more personal touchs with fun lore and fun surprizes.
I never played the daggerfall games and elder scrolls before oblivion and skyrim but one thing i didnt like in oblivion and skyrim is doing a dungeon with no lore/quest surprizes or purpose to the dungeon other then exploring it cause then it just feels empty like opening a gift with nothing in the box basicly to me. =P
I really love well thought out storys and lore surprizes and make it so u wonder what surprizes will pop out or you will find in the next place you explore. <3

[T.Oddity]

Originally posted by Samantha Raven:

I never played the daggerfall games and elder scrolls before oblivion and skyrim but one thing i didnt like in oblivion and skyrim is doing a dungeon with no lore/quest surprizes or purpose to the dungeon other then exploring it cause then it just feels empty like opening a gift with nothing in the box basicly to me. =P
I really love well thought out storys and lore surprizes and make it so u wonder what surprizes will pop out or you will find in the next place you explore. <3

Go play Dark Messiah. Hand-crafted dungeons will likely exist in Wayward Realms, but most will be procedurally-generated simply due to the scale they're working with. Daggerfall had over fifteen thousand total locations with plenty of space left over, and they're aiming for a game world of around the same size; to make everything handcrafted would take an impossible amount of man hours.

[DistantFluxSA]

I'd like to see dungeons that do things to affect the locality like spawning roaming mobs, if the dungeon isn't suppressed. :)

Would also be cool if dungeons could get resources and level up. :)

[Aggrocore]

I think variety sounds great. I'm sure whatever the devs have in development will be fantastic, there's no reason to copy Skyrim or Oblivion.

[EvilReFlex]

I liked the dungeons in Arena much more than in Daggerfall.

[matsrats]

Originally posted by oncelostgames:

Dungeon design is something we plan to give a lot of attention to. We are aiming for more variety and layouts that make more sense depending on what type of dungeon it is. There will be room for some labyrinthian dungeons, but they will not be the standard.

That sounds good. Whatever you do. Non-handcrafted dungeons won´t make any sense imo. If a player enters a location, whatever that may be, the worst thing that can happen is, if the player has the feeling, this location was created by a routine and not by the "living" beings, which live there or did in the past. Therefor it has to spread charme, character and most important, individuality.

But how will you achieve such a thing, while having this far too huge and vast world map, you are advertising?

Keep in mind, that things, locations, NPCs, items only have a chance to be unique...if they actually are unique and not just a variation of thousands other similar things.

Just some constructive thoughts.

[oncelostgames]

Sorry matsrats, but the procedural nature of the game is one of our key design pillars. This doesn't mean it is all nonsensical, as we do wish for it to make some sense within the world, but you won't get specifically hand crafted dungeons in the way modern TES does. Our aim is to do it like Daggerfall, but to add more variety and nuance to the systems.

[Atlas32]

When are we going to get a demo brother?

[matsrats]

Originally posted by oncelostgames:

Sorry matsrats, but the procedural nature of the game is one of our key design pillars. This doesn't mean it is all nonsensical, as we do wish for it to make some sense within the world, but you won't get specifically hand crafted dungeons in the way modern TES does. Our aim is to do it like Daggerfall, but to add more variety and nuance to the systems.

Thats all okay. Finally it´s your game after all. I appreciate the honest answer. What in your opinion will than be the main attraction/ inspiration for players to enter the twentiest plus dungeon? To get more gold, armor, weopons, same of everything plus seeing more of the same for "endless" times?

I don´t mean that in a sarcastic way. Truely I just want to understand what your end-goal is to motivate players to actual experience and explore the world. Is it an adventurous journey or will it be the same bone mill- mechanics that already drove Daggerfall?

I´m asking as I wan´t to be sure this game could be something for me, without being disappointed in the end.

Thank you.

[Ratt]

I agree with the OP in principal, but I would add: Please do as much as you can, if possible, to avoid the "Linear Challenge Courses" philosophy of Skyrim, I always found Morrowind had the high point of Dungeon design, feeling as much like possible like real places. Obviously, I trust with the Procedural Generation you'll have variety, I just want the layouts to feel as natural and open as possible, no matter the size. (More traps are also nice.)

[CoLS Firestar]

I appreciated Skyrim's dungeon design where it looped back on itself and when you made it to the end, it was actually really close to the beginning so you didn't have to trudge the whole way back through.

[oncelostgames]

There is a case for both kinds of dungeon design, for us the sheer size of the world necessitates procedural generation. Why make the world so big then? Because we want a truly epic adventure, set in a believable world. If Frodo had to march across most RPG game worlds, the adventure would have only been an afternoon hike.
We certainly want dungeon variety to keep the player from facing the same dungeon each time. The reason for dungeon delving will be your own though. We want to cater the gameplay to what you enjoy doing, so dungeon delving should not be a chore, but enjoyable because you get to do more of what you like doing, or get more rewards that you prefer. Besides that, there will be plenty of factions and stories that will send you to these places, where you will discover the next plot point.
And as for a demo Enpro112, that will still be a ways off unfortunately. Our game is very systems heavy, so the focus right now is the systems that create and drive the game world and not the combat yet, though we do have the very basics of those gameplay mechanics in place. So, we still have a long journey ahead, but love having you guys along for the ride.