What do you consider to be a dungeon?

[anvi]

Unless you have been to Lower Guk or Sebilis, you have never seen a real dungeon.

Hidden in this barb is a lot of truth. As someone who really dislikes MMORPGs, some of the original EQ1 content rivals anything we've seen a single-player RPG deliver. Not just Sebilis (and the requisite quest for access), but a lot of the velious dungeon zones whose names are escaping me right now.

I don't mean ivory-tower shit like the temple of the sleeper, that was pretty standard as far as dungeons go, but dungeons like skyshrine, siren's grotto, velketor's labyrinth, etc.

Yeah. I lived in all those dungeons for months at a time in each one. Camping stuff in each room of them. Imagine how shit it is for me to play something like Elder Scrolls.

 

[Neanderthal]

I think New Vegas has one o better dungeons i've ever played, though most'll disagree it is one, in shape o village surroundin Sierra Madre at beginnin o that dlc. You're locked in, have various impediments, mist, alarms etc, an resources are fuckin scarce. I'd consider that a bloody good example of an outdoor dungeon. Some o vaults in vanilla game aren't half bad neither.

 

[Master]

Holly shit i just started Dead Money and thats exactly what i thought - this is a dungeon. That bearded guy is a Dungeon Master
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Master thats exactly what he does. He explains the rules and tells me to make a party so we can go inside the casino filled with traps and monsters to get his money. Then hes gonna let us all go:D A classic dungeon.

 

[Blaine]

A proper (game) dungeon, in my opinion, has three qualities:

It must have a complex and challenging layout. I refer to this as "environmental challenge." Multiple floors/levels interconnected at various points, portions of some floors accessible only from certain sections of another floor (and optionally, individual levels/floors sharing various elevations as opposed to being completely flat), dead ends, branching forks and intersections, switchbacks, one-way exits, single exits that can lead to multiple destinations, pitfalls and trap doors, portcullises or portholes allowing vision but not immediate passage, secret doors, ladders, teleporters, et cetera.

It must also have rewarding and challenging interaction. I refer to this as "not being designed for retards because they 'just want to relax after work'." Cryptic messages and clues, various kinds of environmental or self-contained puzzles, needful key items to uncover, levers to pull, hidden buttons to push, pressure plates, traps to avoid (and maybe disarm), hard-to-spot reward items or equipment, and observational mysteries (i.e., observe some creature or character's behavior to figure something out; just for example, following a mouse back to a crack in the wall).

Finally, interesting monsters or creatures with varied traits, behaviors, dialogue if applicable, and needful loot implemented in the dungeon via thoughtful encounter design can't hurt.

 

[DraQ]

I define a dungeon as a place built with the intention of giving the player lots of loot and things to murder.

Whereas New Vegas' locations are part of its worldbuilding. That's why there's so little loot and enemies. Most of its caves are devoid of raiders of any kind, it's just a few ants and not much more.

So they are only dungeons if the game has shit worldbuilding?
'k.

 

[deuxhero]

One of the egg quests for the arena took you to a cave that had a bunch of fire ants in it. That place served literally no other purpose but to be a dungeon crawl. I don't think it even had a map marker or name.

 

[Zombra]

And what the fuck exactly is wrong with a dungeon crawl?

 

[Xathrodox86]

A place where no one will hear the screams of my victims.

Or, in RPG terms, a place where there is loot to be had, monsters to be slain and wenches to be freed.

 

[Sigourn]

Whereas New Vegas' locations are part of its worldbuilding. That's why there's so little loot and enemies. Most of its caves are devoid of raiders of any kind, it's just a few ants and not much more.

So they are only dungeons if the game has shit worldbuilding?
'k.[/QUOTE]

I just find it funny a Baldur's Gate dungeon is in the same category as a location made to make the game feel a little more alive. One is a very gamey thing, the other isn't.

One doesn't exist in real life (dungeons in real life are actual dungeons and nothing else), the other exists a plenty.

 

[DraQ]

A proper (game) dungeon, in my opinion, has three qualities:

It must have a complex and challenging layout. I refer to this as "environmental challenge." Multiple floors/levels interconnected at various points, portions of some floors accessible only from certain sections of another floor (and optionally, individual levels/floors sharing various elevations as opposed to being completely flat), dead ends, branching forks and intersections, switchbacks, one-way exits, single exits that can lead to multiple destinations, pitfalls and trap doors, portcullises or portholes allowing vision but not immediate passage, secret doors, ladders, teleporters, et cetera.

It must also have rewarding and challenging interaction. I refer to this as "not being designed for retards because they 'just want to relax after work'." Cryptic messages and clues, various kinds of environmental or self-contained puzzles, needful key items to uncover, levers to pull, hidden buttons to push, pressure plates, traps to avoid (and maybe disarm), hard-to-spot reward items or equipment, and observational mysteries (i.e., observe some creature or character's behavior to figure something out; just for example, following a mouse back to a crack in the wall).

Finally, interesting monsters or creatures with varied traits, behaviors, dialogue if applicable, and needful loot implemented in the dungeon via thoughtful encounter design can't hurt.

So, basically a proper game dungeon does not exist?

Your vision is undeniably attractive, but too idealized to be a workable definition of not just ideal but *any* in-game dungeon.

Anyway, my definition would be a structured (so that it cannot be traversed freely) hostile area that is somewhat isolated from broader outside world. Usually, but not necessarilyv indoors.

In a grid-based blobber, an outdoors environment constricted by hedges, trees, cliff faces, and the like may functionally serve as a dungeon level. Unlikely to have an outdoors dungeon in other kinds of CRPGs, though.

There is no reason why a technically outdoor environment can serve as dungeon in any kind of cRPG or game in general, as long as it's cut off from broader overworld.

Hell, even Skyrim has outdoor "dungeons" (for example Deepwood Redoubt) that happen to be its best dungeons because unlike its more traditional ones they aren't linear corridors.

 

[anvi]

EverQuest had all of those things. And in 1999... and with a low budget, and online, so harder to do. They were also not instanced too, which made them unique in the world of MMO's. There are only a few other games which have non instanced dungeons but even those don't work as well as EQ did. I don't think it had lever puzzles but it had all that other stuff and it did it really well.

There was this dungeon called Gukta. You travel to a swamp and find a cave entrance and go inside. It is a really big dungeon, and it is called Upper Guk. You could spend 20 levels just in this one dungeon, and that translated to a month of hardcore playing, much more for casuals. This is the map of that dungeon, but bear in mind the scale makes it look manageable when really it is huge.

At first it seems very mazelike, you don't know which path to take and some paths lead back to where you started, some are dead ends, most lead deeper and deeper inside. There are hidden rooms, fake walls, slippery floors you glide on, narrow bridges to cross, areas you have to crouch into, many hundreds of mobs, many places to drown, etc. There are also multiple exits.

The most interesting exit though leads to a whole other dungeon below, called Lower Guk. It was one of the highest level areas in the game and had some of the best loot at the time. It was just as big and just as complex, and with more traps and more mobs. The players thought of the zone in two halves, the live side, and the dead side which was all undead. It was all in one dungeon but it was so big people thought of it in two halves and the mobs in both sides were on opposing factions too.

The game was really tough, just fighting 1 enemy was a dangerous fight and the mobs also took a while to kill, so when you can get jumped by several enemies in a place like this, you really needed a good group. Not only that balancing mana was really important, you couldn't just nuke like crazy in every fight because mana was serious business, and at the end of the fight, everyone had to sit and meditate and it took 5+ minutes to recover all your mana. So screwing up and getting too many mobs or getting a roaming mob attack you while you were trying to meditate was really dangerous and could wipe the whole group and they would have to travel all the way back, wasting maybe an hour or more. You couldn't really do a "dungeon crawl" because it was just too big and took too long. A really good group could maybe do it if they had a good few hours to do it all in one go but it would be hard work and they would likely all end up dying at some point. Instead of dungeon crawls, people would "camp" special boss mobs in the zone. Some rooms would have a mob with a special name and it would drop special loot that everyone desperately wanted. So one room had an assassin that dropped a fancy mask and his buddy dropped a posh backpack. Another room was the Sage room who would drop a caster belt and hat etc. People would camp in one room for hours.... sometimes several hours in one session or even more. Night after night they would go to that same room and kill the stuff as it respawned (and sometimes grab other stuff nearby for exp while waiting for respawns), and they would stay until the item they wanted finally dropped. So that one dungeon may have 8 or 9 different groups all fighting a different area.

There were huge outdoor zones in the game too which had maybe dozens of groups doing more things, but this was a real dungeon. You could do it solo if you were uber, or with a few friends or with a whole group, or several groups could do it all at the same time. And later expansions had even bigger dungeons, maybe even better.

I've never seen an RPG or MMO that had dungeons even close to as good as that game.

p.s. At the end of that second dungeon there was the King who was badass, and behind him was a mirror that was going to teleport people to a third level of the dungeon, but it never made it into the game. But in the next expansion there was an enormous zone that is basically the third level of that same dungeon. It is maybe 3 or 4 times the size of that already huge one, and more complexity, more traps, and a huge dragon at the end for raiding. The zone requires that you do a quest to get a key to enter it, and even once you are inside there is a huge area of the zone that you can't even access unless you have a rogue to pick the lock of a door.

 

[anus_pounder]

 

[anvi]

Lol

 

[Lhynn]

Dungeons are places where the player can murder and get away with it.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

anvi the reason Everquest wasn't instanced was simply because it predates instancing, not some higher level of dungeon design. There were few MMOs then and none had instancing that I recall. That one Funcom made may have been the first to have instancing.

Even then instancing is not a design win, it was a way to keep dungeons from feeling like a packed subway and to allow all players a chance at the loot and bosses.

 

[Thonius]

- Dungeons are places of decay where the tendency is for things to go to worse, they mostly had a glorious past and are now in complete decay.

Sounds like Russia.

On a serious note I think Glow is my favorite dungeon with a twist at the end there is only dead (if you're not paying attention or ill prepared.) Going down trough all those levels beating crap out of robots and die because of radiation - classic.
So - dungeon the place for action activities, hostile environment and requirement for preparation in skill(plan) and supply. Important thing is preparation for descent so some random vases with 10 wolves don't count.

 

[GuiltyofBeingTrite]

An rpg dungeon has to be dangerous, either when it was active, or for the player/party that is currently exploring it, but I think we have to be a bit more specific, at risk of an overly general definition. If we look at the original intent of the word it is a specific built place to house prisoners, so it wasn't easy to escape without careful planning, brute strength, or some sort of manipulation. We should use this same rubric when evaluating what is an RPG dungeon. There should be some sort of challenge to either get The Special Item, beat the special boss, or to simply escape. It can be hordes of enemies, that boss, a puzzle, or the "best" conversation path.

A lot of good RPGs start in dungeons, like Baldur's Gate 2 and Planescape Torment. I would not call the opening of Arcanum one, the only reason that area is dangerous are a few wolves (nature), and because you just so happened to crash there. Vault 13 in Fallout isn't a dungeon, but you could argue that Vault 13 in Fallout 2 is one.

 

[anvi]

anvi the reason Everquest wasn't instanced was simply because it predates instancing, not some higher level of dungeon design. There were few MMOs then and none had instancing that I recall. That one Funcom made may have been the first to have instancing.

Even then instancing is not a design win, it was a way to keep dungeons from feeling like a packed subway and to allow all players a chance at the loot and bosses.

Yeah but pretty much everything since then has been instanced so it still remains a unique experience. And because of how the combat works. (If there is no downtime like most games, then it really dumbs things down). Also Vanguard which was kind of its spiritual successor purposely did no instancing again for all dungeons, even though it was long after everyone else did. And Pantheon in development by the same people at the moment is also going with no instancing. The reason is that it makes people play together, makes the world feel more real, and causes a lot more danger when someone nearby has a wipe and it ends up on someone elses group through no reason of their own. It changes a lot about how dungeons work.

 

[DavidBVal]

EverQuest had all of those things. And in 1999... and with a low budget, and online, so harder to do. They were also not instanced too, which made them unique in the world of MMO's. There are only a few other games which have non instanced dungeons but even those don't work as well as EQ did. I don't think it had lever puzzles but it had all that other stuff and it did it really well.

There was this dungeon called Gukta. You travel to a swamp and find a cave entrance and go inside. It is a really big dungeon, and it is called Upper Guk. You could spend 20 levels just in this one dungeon, and that translated to a month of hardcore playing, much more for casuals. This is the map of that dungeon, but bear in mind the scale makes it look manageable when really it is huge.

At first it seems very mazelike, you don't know which path to take and some paths lead back to where you started, some are dead ends, most lead deeper and deeper inside. There are hidden rooms, fake walls, slippery floors you glide on, narrow bridges to cross, areas you have to crouch into, many hundreds of mobs, many places to drown, etc. There are also multiple exits.

The most interesting exit though leads to a whole other dungeon below, called Lower Guk. It was one of the highest level areas in the game and had some of the best loot at the time. It was just as big and just as complex, and with more traps and more mobs. The players thought of the zone in two halves, the live side, and the dead side which was all undead. It was all in one dungeon but it was so big people thought of it in two halves and the mobs in both sides were on opposing factions too.

The game was really tough, just fighting 1 enemy was a dangerous fight and the mobs also took a while to kill, so when you can get jumped by several enemies in a place like this, you really needed a good group. Not only that balancing mana was really important, you couldn't just nuke like crazy in every fight because mana was serious business, and at the end of the fight, everyone had to sit and meditate and it took 5+ minutes to recover all your mana. So screwing up and getting too many mobs or getting a roaming mob attack you while you were trying to meditate was really dangerous and could wipe the whole group and they would have to travel all the way back, wasting maybe an hour or more. You couldn't really do a "dungeon crawl" because it was just too big and took too long. A really good group could maybe do it if they had a good few hours to do it all in one go but it would be hard work and they would likely all end up dying at some point. Instead of dungeon crawls, people would "camp" special boss mobs in the zone. Some rooms would have a mob with a special name and it would drop special loot that everyone desperately wanted. So one room had an assassin that dropped a fancy mask and his buddy dropped a posh backpack. Another room was the Sage room who would drop a caster belt and hat etc. People would camp in one room for hours.... sometimes several hours in one session or even more. Night after night they would go to that same room and kill the stuff as it respawned (and sometimes grab other stuff nearby for exp while waiting for respawns), and they would stay until the item they wanted finally dropped. So that one dungeon may have 8 or 9 different groups all fighting a different area.

There were huge outdoor zones in the game too which had maybe dozens of groups doing more things, but this was a real dungeon. You could do it solo if you were uber, or with a few friends or with a whole group, or several groups could do it all at the same time. And later expansions had even bigger dungeons, maybe even better.

I've never seen an RPG or MMO that had dungeons even close to as good as that game.

p.s. At the end of that second dungeon there was the King who was badass, and behind him was a mirror that was going to teleport people to a third level of the dungeon, but it never made it into the game. But in the next expansion there was an enormous zone that is basically the third level of that same dungeon. It is maybe 3 or 4 times the size of that already huge one, and more complexity, more traps, and a huge dragon at the end for raiding. The zone requires that you do a quest to get a key to enter it, and even once you are inside there is a huge area of the zone that you can't even access unless you have a rogue to pick the lock of a door.

Man, I solo-grinded so hard there. But that crown was good resist gear up to the higher levels.

 

[CyberWhale]

A proper (game) dungeon, in my opinion, has three qualities:

It must have a complex and challenging layout. I refer to this as "environmental challenge." Multiple floors/levels interconnected at various points, portions of some floors accessible only from certain sections of another floor (and optionally, individual levels/floors sharing various elevations as opposed to being completely flat), dead ends, branching forks and intersections, switchbacks, one-way exits, single exits that can lead to multiple destinations, pitfalls and trap doors, portcullises or portholes allowing vision but not immediate passage, secret doors, ladders, teleporters, et cetera.

It must also have rewarding and challenging interaction. I refer to this as "not being designed for retards because they 'just want to relax after work'." Cryptic messages and clues, various kinds of environmental or self-contained puzzles, needful key items to uncover, levers to pull, hidden buttons to push, pressure plates, traps to avoid (and maybe disarm), hard-to-spot reward items or equipment, and observational mysteries (i.e., observe some creature or character's behavior to figure something out; just for example, following a mouse back to a crack in the wall).

Finally, interesting monsters or creatures with varied traits, behaviors, dialogue if applicable, and needful loot implemented in the dungeon via thoughtful encounter design can't hurt.

Lordran basically.