Elder Scrolls Daggerfall - Procedural generation is not the issue

[LarryTyphoid]

It's often said that Daggerfall's biggest issue are the randomly generated dungeons. I disagree. On my current playthrough I've gone through about 10 or so random side quest dungeons and have had little issue finding my way. If you know how to properly use the map, then you can clear it out pretty easily. I could probably go without the Recall spell, even, though it is a big help.

No, what's really pissing me off are the hand crafted dungeons of the main quest. These dungeons possess an insidious nature impossible for a computer to replicate. Just take a look at this walkthrough on the UESP: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Soul_of_a_Lich

There is a lever at the bottom next to the elevator, but don't pull it or a door further along will be blocked.

This is the SECOND proper dungeon of the main quest. I would have been in this bitch for ages if I hadn't just looked up the walkthrough. And don't say I'm a cheater or a stupid zoomer or whatever for doing so, because this is what Shithesda WANTED you to do. They made it like this so you'd be forced to buy their gay fucking cluebook.

Take a look at this fucker, the quest that made me decide to just follow a walkthrough for the rest of the main story dungeons in the first place: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Mynisera's_Letters
I wandered this dungeon for two hours, painstakingly scrolling through every inch of the dungeon with the map. For me, the letter spawned in location 6.

See that skull? You have to get close and click on it. This skull, floating over a fucking pit, is actually a lever that opens a trapdoor in a room in a completely separate and otherwise unrelated room on the other side of the dungeon. By the way? Not all trapdoors can be opened, so you wouldn't even know whether or not you had to look for a lever, even if you saw that trapdoor, and even assuming you did, you certainly would NOT fucking know that a SKULL floating over a PIT on the OTHER SIDE OF THE DUNGEON would be that lever.
I would have better luck digging in my back yard to find a real life fucking dungeon before I figured this shit out. If you put someone in prison and told them they only could leave after beating Daggerfall's main quest without a guide, then you just dealt out a life sentence.

I am confident in saying this: NOBODY living on this earth has ever, EVER beaten Daggerfall without looking up an online walkthrough or buying Bethesda's official cluebook.

 

[NecroLord]

The tomb of Lysandus is even more labyrinthine.
That's just the way Daggerfall is. Successfully navigating those gargantuan dungeons can be a herculean task,compared to the lilliputian sized dungeons in Skyrim,for example.

 

[Alex]

I don't remember Daggerfall all that well. I mostly ignored the main quest when I played, but I do remember that during some of the crazier dungeons, I would try to fall through the cracks between the floor and the wall, use a levitation spell and search the dungeon from outside until I found anything that could be the quest objective.

Edit:

The tomb of Lysandus is even more labyrinthine.
That's just the way Daggerfall is. Successfully navigating those gargantuan dungeons can be a herculean task,compared to the lilliputian sized dungeons in Skyrim,for example.

I think Larry's point isn't about how maze like the dungeons are or how big, but rather how little sense their (handcrafted) puzzles make.

 

[NecroLord]

Honestly,getting access to the Levitate and Recall spells should be a top priority for any player. They are invaluable when navigating dungeons.

 

[thesheeep]

It's often said that Daggerfall's biggest issue are the randomly generated dungeons. I disagree. On my current playthrough I've gone through about 10 or so random side quest dungeons and have had little issue finding my way. If you know how to properly use the map, then you can clear it out pretty easily. I could probably go without the Recall spell, even, though it is a big help.

You are not completely wrong, but I'd still say that the dungeons are the game's biggest problem.

Yes, you CAN navigate them, but they make absolutely zero sense, neither on their own nor in relation to their surroundings. You can enter a small hovel but find a maze in there that'd make the minotaur envious.
You wouldn't need such a good map feature if the dungeons were not so completely batshit insane in their layout.
You can enter a rock cave and suddenly find yourself surrounded by what looks like ancient architecture.
Dungeons (almost) always have a wild and nonsensical mixture of themes and styles applied.
Dungeons are always gigantic. If there is a small dungeon, I have not found it.
Quest objectives are placed 100% random with no thought put behind the placement whatsoever (not even something like "put this some distance away from the entrance") which can make you spend way too long in a dungeon or find your objective in the very first room with no obstacle whatsoever.

From a technical standpoint, Daggerfall's dungeons are an early masterpiece of procedural generation.
But from a design perspective, they are just terrible.
Even just a bit of a leash on the crazy RNG to attempt a wee bit more reason in what gets created how would improve the dungeons a ton.

That the game's manually created dungeons are even worse (or very bad in different ways) is one of the funnier things about the game