Is there any way to play this game without bugged random dungeons?

[Ratconned]

You know, passageways isolated in vacuum and inaccessible without command console float command. Pet retrieval missions where the objective falls off a height (and dies) after you have triggered who knows what by passing a particular part of the dungeon (even monsters do not fall off places but this objective does). And so on.

Daggerfall Unity does not fix this, and apparently cannot fix this. Is there any way to play without that?

[lonetrav]

Never seen this happening, neither in DF nor in DFU (but I played DF much more than DFU). You play DFU, don't you (DF doesn't have a console). Do you happen to use a DFU mod?

Please provide more details about the quest (for example, how did you get it, and what "pet"). I'm not aware that the original DF game has a quest where you have to retrieve a pet (but I can be wrong). Could it be a quest from a mod? Is the issue with the pet reproduceable?

There is one major bug (some call it exploit) in DF (which seems to have gone with DFU), the "void bug". Your character may fall through the floor of a dungeon into the "void", black, empty space, where you can move around and have a look at the dungeon structure "from the outside" (this is why it can be used as an exploit). You can go back to the dungeon by using alt-f11.
It's possible that you see seemingly inaccessible passageways when moving through the void. How did you find out about "passageways isolated in vacuum and inaccessible without command console"? More precisely, how do you know that they are isolated and inaccessible? DF has teleporters (and DFU, too).

[lonetrav]

Thanks. It's the "Runaway Pet" quest of original DF - I had overlooked it, sorry. That the stupid beast fell to death off a ledge is odd, but not really game-breaking, and hardly reproduceable, I suppose. "Save often" applies to DF and DFU, too.

DF's dungeons are randomly generated (during game development), but persistent - always the same dungeons in all games. DFW just took them and included them in DFU.

I still don't understand what "unconnected passages" are. Passages characters can't reach or escape from, or passages which are not visibly connected with anything else. I've seen the latter in DF, yes (while floating around after falling through a dungeon floor), but, like I said, there are teleporters in DF. And it's also possible that they are just garbage left over from development. I've never found places in DF I couldn't get away from, nor places I was supposed to reach but couldn't.
At any rate, I can't understand why the existence of such passages is considered a "bug". Or how does it affect gameplay?

With that said, it can happen indeed in classic DF that you get stuck in a dungeon. It may happen when you use the cheat codes "[" and "]", which teleport you to 3 or so "interesting places" of the dungeon, among them the quest location. When you arrive there, there is no guarantee that you can get back to the exit (closed doors or one-way teleporters) - unless you use mark / recall spells. This is not a bug.
I like this challenge in DF - lost in a dungeon, without knowing how to get back (and if it's possible to get back at all). Just use [ to teleport to one of the locations ... :-)

No need to take anything to DFW. I'm not a "blame-gamer" looking for culprits. Sometimes it's difficult to tell (but useful to know) where a problem comes from, DF or DFU - it may help solving it, if possible at all.

Finally, going back to your thread title: I'm not aware of any "bugged random dungeons" in DF (and not in DFU - they are exactly the same ones, except that DFU doesn't have DF's void bug or exploit). I suppose the "suicidal pet" issue has more to do with general path-finding than with the dungeons (you find them elsewhere, too), and is probably rare - and minor in my opinion (although it can be annoying when you have no recent save).

By the way, I don't know if DFU has its own path-finding algorithms, or uses DF's. If it's the latter, you could get the same issue in DFU, and if it's the former, the issue may not exist in DF. I don't know.

[lonetrav]

- Unconnected passages: I think your worries are unfounded (but no guarantee).

- The "cheat codes" are for DF only. If you'd wanted to experience this kind of thrill, you would have play DF :-).

- So the problem is reproceable for you. I searched the internet for "daggerfall tiger killed" and found a reddit thread reporting a similar issue (tiger killed while fighting with other enemies). No solution there. But I saw reports of others who managed to get the tiger back alive - so no general problem.
I'm afraid I can't help you, nor can I say if this is a DF or a DFU problem. You could use the console to set the quest to "complete", I suppose.
Raise the issue on the DFU forum? Or try to contact Jay H (but I don't know how), the guy who created huge quest mods for DFU, and certainly understands DF and DFU quests better than most others?
Have you tried to find out what happens when you set the dungeons to "small" in DFU? Your savegame may be unplayable for this setting, but you can always change it back to normal.
Unlikely to work, I guess, but at least easy to try.

- My personal experience with DF and DFU is that I haven't found anything frightening me off from playing - no really game-breaking problems. Sometimes my inability (or impatience) to navigate the dungeons successfully - but I've always managed to get where I wanted to get eventually (Daggerfall dungeon logistics is an interesting topic).

[lonetrav]

How many dungeons did you play, and how many bugs did you find? I don't know how many I played over the years (quite a lot), and I don't remember any severe bugs (preventing me from completing the dungeon quest - I don't count the ones where the enemies were simply too strong, which is part of the role-playing experience). I may have forgotten a few, but if, they didn't leave a lasting impression in my memory.
I wished the original code of other games would be fixed - Daggerfall is near the bottom of my list.

[Zsrai]

The dungeons in DFU when set to small are still pretty large; you can easily spend an hour clearing one out, maybe two (or more, if it's hellish with a ton of teleporters and switches). The only "4 room" dungeons are the Mausoleums in the Graveyards.

It sounds like a lot of what you think are bugs are just the obscure switches and teleporters in action. Switches aren't just an actual switch but sometimes tapestries, random skulls, torches, etc. It's just how the game is designed (or at least, built).

[lonetrav]

Originally posted by Ratconned:

... In the second dungeon, there's a pyramidic plateau which is hollow. Inside are 4 doors which are magically locked. Thing is, there is no way out of the place unless you have a levitation spell.
I was also pretty frustrated because the objective of the second dungeon, a prisoner, was inside a statue. Literally. And the switch to get him out was a doom 1 episode 1 style button on a side of a pillar. ...

Originally posted by Ratconned:

No, got confirmation in daggerfall workshop forums. They were bugs. ...

All this sounds like Daggerfall as I know it - be prepared for more of this kind. And why would it be "bugs"? Whatever people in the DFU forum say (or do you have objective criteria to distinguish between "bug" and "feature" :-)?).

By the way, the manual gives a clear warning (and does mention the convolutedness of the dungeons elsewhere):
"If your character dies, gets locked in a dungeon, or some other truly catastrophic event takes place, by all means retum to your last saved game and replay it."

It's classic role-playing - don't expect the world to be fair or nice to you! If you fail, try again, and you don't always have to be successful with whatever you do (includes fighting and questing).
Have fun! :-)

[Zsrai]

Originally posted by Ratconned:

Originally posted by Zsrai:

It sounds like a lot of what you think are bugs are just the obscure switches and teleporters in action. Switches aren't just an actual switch but sometimes tapestries, random skulls, torches, etc. It's just how the game is designed (or at least, built).

No, got confirmation in daggerfall workshop forums. They were bugs. I thought even the man in a statue was a bug but they pointed that out after I provided the save files in every case.

So no, they were not obscure switches and the like. Bugs.

What threads are you talking about? I don't see any about this issue there.

Originally posted by Ratconned:

Originally posted by Zsrai:

The dungeons in DFU when set to small are still pretty large; you can easily spend an hour clearing one out, maybe two (or more, if it's hellish with a ton of teleporters and switches). The only "4 room" dungeons are the Mausoleums in the Graveyards.

DFU's own setting explanation in game gave that 4 room detail. That's all I said. I actually want the winding sections of the dungeons, it is pretty fun. And that surely goes away—all those unpredictable parts.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what they mean by "rooms". It's not dungeon rooms, but dungeon BLOCKS, which can hold a bunch of rooms and hallways that all connect together. You can see the blocks, in a little +, on the left side of the map screen. If you are in a story dungeon or don't have smaller dungeons on, then it'll be a few +'s together, which is why they are much bigger (and, often, have things unconnected).

[lonetrav]

@Ratconned:
Just a few notes:

- Bugs: For me a "bug" (of software) is something not working as designed, for example a crash (caused by the software), or a feature (contained in the specification), missing or not functioning, etc.
"Perceived" bugs are an entirely different story. If the question bug or not is decided by game forums or individuals, more or less everything could be a "bug". And "doesn't work as expected or supposed to work" is always subjective, regardless by how many it's shared.
Just let's make a clear distinction what kind of "bug" we're talking about. For me it's always the first category.
That players are not always successful and call this a bug belongs to the second category.

Your experience with the tiger falling off a ledge reproduceably sounds like bug indeed. It's just not clear where it comes from (many players have completed the same quest successfully): DF? DFU? Or for player- or configuration-specific reasons?

I quoted the DF manual to say that the developers knew that their game would have bugs, warned players, and suggested to save often. I found bugs, too, but never game-breaking ones (for the only one I experienced, the void bug, the developers provided a work-around, together with a patch). And not more or more severe bugs than I tend to find in most other games. All this is based on personal experience and judgment, of course.

- Role-playing games: I never said that role-playing games (with or without computers) started with the first TES games. CRPGs implement rules and simulate the "dungeon master" (DM), the person who decides what's going on. There is no rule (I'm aware of) saying that a DM must be fair, or make it easy for the players, or that a DM has to ensure that the player characters are always successful, or survive the game.
If you (any player) don't like the DM (which is perfectly acceptable), explain why, or voice your opinion, or stop playing the game. But don't blame the game, or call it "unplayable" (unless it really is, not just for you, or "many others") - just because there is a mismatch between your expectations (again, regardless how many agree with you) and the game as it is designed to be.

DF - MM1 comparison: To call MM1 a "turn based elder scrolls" is very far-fetched in my opinion (a bit like saying "a cow is a horse with horns" :-) - you'd have to focus on a few similarities and ignore the differences). And to say that DF is "casual" compared with MM1 is really odd: The comparison criteria are unclear, "what you mean by "casual" is unclear, and you know MM1 quite well, while you've scratched the surface of DF at best (yet - correct me if I'm wrong).
By the way, I know MM1 reasonably well, too, and I agree with you: MM1 "is not that hard, it is just very deep and large and enjoyable." Just very different from DF, too.

PS: - I know the context of the "bug or feature" saying. But the question itself is a very valid one in many cases. Why not ask it?

[Zsrai]

Originally posted by Ratconned:

I could link the post directly

Then you should?

Originally posted by Ratconned:

The second part of your comment is understandable. Standard aggressiveness from your side aside, it is understandable and I might be willing to give it a try.

Nothing I have said has been aggressive, but please go on.

Originally posted by Ratconned:

DFU takes random generation out of daggerfall is my understanding. Kindly prove me wrong (if you care to).

How did you ever come to this conclusion? If your previous posts weren't warning enough, this right here is a sure sign that you are, at the least, arguing in bad faith. More likely full blown trolling though. You don't even know what DFU does, and are saying things you don't understand are bugs.

[Zsrai]

Originally posted by Ratconned:

Bad faith actors do not go into as much detail as I did in the comments at the start. If anyone hasn't gone into details though, it has been you here. You could say anything and everything in counter, but it is so vague that a few meanings can be taken from them. It is easy to say I don't know what a bug is, I don't know what Daggerfall Unity is (and tbf I'm just a first time player trying to configure it to be best of my liking). I'll just go to Daggerfall Workshop Forums instead, their replies are detailed. So they're actually helpful.

Forget it though, post unsubscribed. I won't be posting in this discussion board ever, that will probably be satisfactory to you. The original question is answered anyway, there's probably no way for now to play the game without the unconnected passages, and most likely quest objectives do not spawn in unconnected passages so it will not be a problem for me. You may continue to give incorrect statements to me and other players, but how is that my problem now.

@lonetrav I never really mentioned it before because it was never taken to this degree as here. But in the Arena discussions a lot of the advice you've given is plainly incorrect and not as in the game. I saw no reason to directly counter you whenever it has happened, choosing to merely give the actual solution with detailed descriptions instead, but there's no good thing about spreading what you haven't verified yourself. That game was a wonderful mess of wrong things said and accepted. I have clarified too many things there which just weren't as they appeared in the game there, and I may have done the same here in time. It had only helped players back then, and you know it. I have no desire to continue to do such a thing. Resolving problems that others have, the solutions which I know easily because I understood them by playing them myself, that is.

The space belongs to you gentlemen now, but that had never really mattered to me. I was just chilling and helping with questions where I could. I will predict however that these first two games will have a lot of issues people have which will remained unresolved. At least as far as the first game goes, if the detailed answers given are drowned out by incorrect solutions again.

This is all very believable. I'm still waiting for that DFWorkshop link, but alas; it doesn't seem to exist.

You will certainly be missed.

[lonetrav]

Originally posted by Ratconned:

@lonetrav I never really mentioned it before ... But in the Arena discussions a lot of the advice you've given is plainly incorrect and not as in the game. I saw no reason to directly counter you whenever it has happened...

You should have - now it's just bad style.

I give two kinds of advice:
- Advice based on personal experience. Has worked for me, but may not work or for others or be applicable to their problem (as may happen when you have incomplete information). I hope you didn't mean to say that I made this up.
- Advice I have from other sources. In this case I tend to make this clear, together with mentioning the source, or with a quote, or at least saying that it's not based on personal experience. This kind of advice may be wrong.
I'm not aware of exceptions, but I'm not perfect.

If advice I give is misleading or wrong, it would be in the interest of both other players and myself if the advice is criticised.

I hope you feel better now.