Dungeon design lazyness

nidriks

Like I said in the thread where the Tom's Hardware review was discussed (this picture is from that review), there is a limit to what a team of designers can do in the time it takes to make a MMO.

If they'd made every single minor dungeon to be different then they'd still be in pre-alpha putting the dungeons together. They're the not the first MMO design team to do this. The folks over at Bioware did the same for SWTOR.

There are limits to what is possible in an MMO. This isn't a small single player adventure that should take a player 20-40 hours to complete. It's not a 4X game with randomised maps. It's an MMO, a genre of games that can take 5+ years to make. People need to understand reality a bit more and stop nit-picking the little things.

I suppose a compromise might have been to have randomly built dungeons, but that wouldn't have worked with the megaserver technology. And I do believe, in all honesty, that amount of different dungeon designs they have is pretty good for something that is merely an offshoot to levelling in the open world. It gives the player a slightly different focus from time to time.

And like @PBpsy said, these aren't even the serious dungeons. They are all beautifully designed and varied.

Elvent

It's the Oblivion dungeons all over again, all the dungeons looked the same. I wish it could have been Skyrim dungeons all over again where every dungeon looked different =\

There was probably 1 or 2 that maybe looked the same but they pretty much all looked different.

Xionar

I think it'd be nice if that image, and the article it came from, decided to include all of the dungeons, instead of delves. Which are designed as basically a public mini dungeon. There really isn't a whole lot of innovation you can do with a dungeon that short. Especially when there is 104 of them.

I enjoy how the article makes statistics about dungeon copying. Yet even admits it didn't take the real dungeons in the game into account.

Shimond

Xionar wrote: »

I think it'd be nice if that image, and the article it came from, decided to include all of the dungeons, instead of delves. Which are designed as basically a public mini dungeon. There really isn't a whole lot of innovation you can do with a dungeon that short. Especially when there is 104 of them.

I enjoy how the article makes statistics about dungeon copying. Yet even admits it didn't take the real dungeons in the game into account.

Yea it isn't even talking about dungeons. It's basically complaining about bonus content most MMOs don't even have (instead just having an overworld and then instanced dungeons).

nidriks

Xionar wrote: »

I think it'd be nice if that image, and the article it came from, decided to include all of the dungeons, instead of delves. Which are designed as basically a public mini dungeon. There really isn't a whole lot of innovation you can do with a dungeon that short. Especially when there is 104 of them.

I enjoy how the article makes statistics about dungeon copying. Yet even admits it didn't take the real dungeons in the game into account.

Because it was a badly biased review from a site that ought to stick to reviewing hardware, and let the game review sites so the game reviewing. I don't understand what possessed them to review ESO. It's the only game review in 7 pages of news on their site.

Blackwidow

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

I really don't feel too strongly one way or the other, but stop using Skyrim as the only barometer of what an Elder Scrolls game is. Oblivion was notorious for copy/paste dungeons.

Why lower the bar for excellence?

Shouldn't they try to be as good as the best example?

Elirienne

Actually, there is a very simple way to look at this. Do you ever go into buildings that are similar? In real life? Do you see architecture patterns in certain places of the world? There you go. Imagine you are the "Dwarven Construction Company". You build a fortress. People like it, the layout works. Why not duplicate it somewhere else?


I actually really don't mind. Keeps things simple. Makes me feel like since I already explored parts of the game with similar dungeons, I now know what to expect. Just like the fact that I've already been to the british building of parliament, i now know what to expect in terms of layout when i enter the hungarian buildings of parliament. Cus the latter is basically the copy of the former's style, inside out.

Csub

Blackwidow wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

I really don't feel too strongly one way or the other, but stop using Skyrim as the only barometer of what an Elder Scrolls game is. Oblivion was notorious for copy/paste dungeons.

Why lower the bar for excellence?

Shouldn't they try to be as good as the best example?

Because we are still talking about an MMO and not a Singleplayer game.

Blackwidow

Csub wrote: »

Because we are still talking about an MMO and not a Singleplayer game.

So, they shouldn't try to be as good as possible because it is a MMO?

Want to explain that bit of logic with the rest of the class?

sevcik.miroslaveb17_ESO

I was in few in coldharbor and those are original. I already sent feedback that layouts of the rest of dungeous are copy paste and that it is unacceptable.

Sorry to bring it up, but look how many dungeons WoW has. None are the same!
This needs to be reworked in ESO. There even is no exploration. You know exactly where will you find boss and skyshard just by seeing layout.

Yakidafi

Left out a big portion of the dungeons and as one earlier said these are more delves.
Fortunately they are varied enough in style and art because I hav not noticed a duplicated dungeon/cave when I have played. Looking at a map from above without 3d perspective is just that, one way too look at it.

Csub

Blackwidow wrote: »

Csub wrote: »

Because we are still talking about an MMO and not a Singleplayer game.

So, they shouldn't try to be as good as possible because it is a MMO?

Want to explain that bit of logic with the rest of the class?

Sure. As you probably know, developing content costs money and it also needs developers. Now, if they custom make all the delves to be different, they either take a lot of resources from elsewhere, which would lead to complaints on those fields.

You can say they don't have to make all of them completely unique, but of course they would have to, people would still find reasons to complain. Even now, many with similar layouts having different interior designs you can only recognize them if you are desperately looking for the similarities.

And most games copy paste the optional caves and mines too, often even the ones you have to go through, I don't see why it is not a problem there and why is it here. Or, as someone said, they are left out in many games as a whole.

Yes, we can find a lot of smaller negatives if we want to, if you really have nothing better to do then to complain about some minor optional things then go ahead.

Salsadoom

No big deal, great thing about dungeons, you can remake them at anytime.