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Elder Scrolls seriesHave Arena/Daggerfall aged well?(73 posts)(73 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted August 30, 2015
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HunchBluntley: The [url=http://uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Dungeons]"Dungeons" page[/url] on The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages wiki has some interesting info. Particularly relevant to the discussion about dungeon design and randomness is [url=http://uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Dungeons#Assembling_of_Dungeons]this section[/url].
Thanks for the link.

That page has words:
"While most dungeons may appear to be a random conglomerate of different modules, they were hard-coded in the release media and thus are never-changing."

Anyone can confirm it? I don't mind dungeons which are generated randomly, but never ever change in their layout in any session on any character. I am not much into totally random dungeons each time.

Edit: after googling more on this subject, seems that dungeons in Daggerfall don't have randomized layout (thankfully). They were all procedurally generated, but that's very different thing from being "randomly generated".
Post edited August 30, 2015 by Sarisio
Posted August 31, 2015
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Sarisio: Anyone can confirm it? I don't mind dungeons which are generated randomly, but never ever change in their layout in any session on any character. I am not much into totally random dungeons each time.

Edit: after googling more on this subject, seems that dungeons in Daggerfall don't have randomized layout (thankfully). They were all procedurally generated, but that's very different thing from being "randomly generated".
It's a common misconception that I've seen repeated even in this forum. I guess it's just hard to tell one overly-large dungeon thrown together out of spare parts from another overly-large dungeon thrown together out of spare parts -- especially when there're hundreds and hundreds of them in the game. =P

(And I can personally confirm that none of the locations are created randomly for each install or each new character: I've spent several hundred hours in Daggerfall over the years.)
Posted August 31, 2015
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HunchBluntley: (And I can personally confirm that none of the locations are created randomly for each install or each new character
But most of the time you are going to be sent to a random dungeon, aren't you?
Posted August 31, 2015
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0Grapher: But most of the time you are going to be sent to a random dungeon, aren't you?
As far as which dungeon (or town, or tavern, or whatever) is selected as a quest location? Yes. Or randomized, anyway -- if a quest calls for a quest location to have a specific facility (such as a town having a Mages' Guild), or fulfill some other criterion, then obviously that will shorten the list of valid locations the game can send you to by quite a bit.
Posted August 31, 2015
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0Grapher: But most of the time you are going to be sent to a random dungeon, aren't you?
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HunchBluntley: As far as which dungeon (or town, or tavern, or whatever) is selected as a quest location? Yes. Or randomized, anyway -- if a quest calls for a quest location to have a specific facility (such as a town having a Mages' Guild), or fulfill some other criterion, then obviously that will shorten the list of valid locations the game can send you to by quite a bit.
I think I remember reading about some version of the game sending you to a town does not have the facility required for the quest. Obviously that's a bug, but remember that this game was nicknamed Buggerfall (and the company making the game nicknamed Bugthesda) for a reason.

If you are really brave, you could download Daggerfall from Bethesda's website and deliberately not install the patch. You *will* encounter a lot of bugs if you do this. (I haven't tried this yet.) (I think someone posted something about the main quest being impossible to complete in unpatched Daggerfall.)
Posted August 31, 2015
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dtgreene: I think I remember reading about some version of the game sending you to a town does not have the facility required for the quest. Obviously that's a bug, but remember that this game was nicknamed Buggerfall (and the company making the game nicknamed Bugthesda) for a reason.

If you are really brave, you could download Daggerfall from Bethesda's website and deliberately not install the patch. You *will* encounter a lot of bugs if you do this. (I haven't tried this yet.) (I think someone posted something about the main quest being impossible to complete in unpatched Daggerfall.)
The version from Bethesda's Elder Scrolls site is also the most up-to-date version (2.13); I believe I read that the problem with not being able to complete the main quest line was in an earlier version (probably fixed by 2.12, but I can't recall).

That being said, yeah, there are still quite a few bugs -- I don't recall specifics, as it's been a few years since I played it regularly, but I think I got some broken quests at times.
Posted August 31, 2015
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HunchBluntley: The version from Bethesda's Elder Scrolls site is also the most up-to-date version (2.13); I believe I read that the problem with not being able to complete the main quest line was in an earlier version (probably fixed by 2.12, but I can't recall).
I remember the Bethesda site's version being the original with a patch included. The directions say to install the patch, but there wasn't anything preventing you from skipping the patch and ending up with the original, ridiculously buggy, version.

(Of course, I wouldn't actually recommend playing the original unpatched version unless you're curious about the state the game was originally released in.)
Posted August 31, 2015
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dtgreene: I remember the Bethesda site's version being the original with a patch included. The directions say to install the patch, but there wasn't anything preventing you from skipping the patch and ending up with the original, ridiculously buggy, version.

(Of course, I wouldn't actually recommend playing the original unpatched version unless you're curious about the state the game was originally released in.)
Hmm, interesting. You seem to be right about the official download from elderscrolls.com being version 1.00 -- at least if the READ.ME file in one of the folders in the .zip is anything to go by. Strange. It's not as if they didn't have access to the official patches. I wonder what the reasoning was, there?
Posted August 31, 2015
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HunchBluntley: As far as which dungeon (or town, or tavern, or whatever) is selected as a quest location? Yes. Or randomized, anyway
That's what I meant.
Well, don't you get a random ("random" as in "a 'random' number between 1 and 10") dungeon if you randomize the dungeons?

The reason why I asked is because for many people who dislike randomly generated dungeons randomly selected dungeons might be just as bad. -It may be even tough to tell the difference at times. ;)
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HunchBluntley: Hmm, interesting. You seem to be right about the official download from elderscrolls.com being version 1.00
That might very well be true because I was experiencing bugs like a town not having the guild it should have (that one probably only once) and really strange issues with broken dialogue.
Post edited August 31, 2015 by 0Grapher
Posted September 01, 2015
Arena is a curiosity at best. It's neat to see where The Elder Scrolls series got its start, but it's never had my interest long enough for me to get anywhere in that game.

Daggerfall, on the other hand, is sort of a beautiful mess and well worth taking a look at. Not because it's the great Ur-CRPG some would have you believe, but its scope and ambition is still impressive to this day even if half of it is still broken. It's a massive sandbox-y open world filled to the brim with procedurally generated insanity, be it the eerily empty countryside or the confusingly labyrinthine dungeons. It's worth looking at for a couple of hours at least.
Posted September 01, 2015
I haven't played Arena, but as far as Daggerfall is concerned, I'd say it's worth a try (you can get it for free from Bethesda's site if you don't have access to GOG's copy).

That being said, in my humble opinion, it really hasn't aged all that gracefully compared to similarly aged RPGs. Sure, it offers near endless options and on paper sounds like a roleplayer's wet dream, however, it's frankly too big for its own good. The randomized towns and dungeons feel artificial and generic after a while, and there are numerous clone NPCs
that function mostly as information hubs rather than feeling like actual people. While still not perfect, I believe they struck a good balance between scale and depth with Morrowind.

Also, check out Ultima Underworld for a similar, but much tighter and more refined experience.
Posted September 01, 2015
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0Grapher: That's what I meant.
Well, don't you get a random ("random" as in "a 'random' number between 1 and 10") dungeon if you randomize the dungeons?

The reason why I asked is because for many people who dislike randomly generated dungeons randomly selected dungeons might be just as bad. -It may be even tough to tell the difference at times. ;)
Randomly generated quests (are they? amount of towns is gigantic, maybe they are also procedurally generated instead of random?) are different things from randomly generated dungeons.

And there are just a lot of dungeons in Daggerfall, probably more than in any other game (even MMO). I just wish tiers of monsters and tiers of loot were as many as dungeons :)

I already got 2 maps from Privateer's Hold for:
1. Bedard Laboratory.
2. The Fortress of Mastersmith.
Can't wait to explore them (I must to catch up in "Dungeon Hack" first or I'll never finish it...).
Posted September 01, 2015
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ArbitraryWater: Arena is a curiosity at best. It's neat to see where The Elder Scrolls series got its start, but it's never had my interest long enough for me to get anywhere in that game.

Daggerfall, on the other hand, is sort of a beautiful mess and well worth taking a look at. Not because it's the great Ur-CRPG some would have you believe, but its scope and ambition is still impressive to this day even if half of it is still broken. It's a massive sandbox-y open world filled to the brim with procedurally generated insanity, be it the eerily empty countryside or the confusingly labyrinthine dungeons. It's worth looking at for a couple of hours at least.
Which half of Daggerfall is broken? And have you been curious enough when playing Arena?
Posted September 01, 2015
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ArbitraryWater: Arena is a curiosity at best. It's neat to see where The Elder Scrolls series got its start, but it's never had my interest long enough for me to get anywhere in that game.

Daggerfall, on the other hand, is sort of a beautiful mess and well worth taking a look at. Not because it's the great Ur-CRPG some would have you believe, but its scope and ambition is still impressive to this day even if half of it is still broken. It's a massive sandbox-y open world filled to the brim with procedurally generated insanity, be it the eerily empty countryside or the confusingly labyrinthine dungeons. It's worth looking at for a couple of hours at least.
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Greywolf1: Which half of Daggerfall is broken? And have you been curious enough when playing Arena?
"Curious enough"? Is that meant to be condescending? Arena is interesting from a historical perspective, but what I played of it wasn't interesting enough for me to want to play more. It has the curse of being an early 3D game and controls pretty awkwardly. If I'm gonna play an old-school CRPG, I might as well stick to ones I find mechanically interesting.

The half of Daggerfall that is broken is that it's mechanically very easy to exploit. Some of the skills are worthless (The language skills, Streetwise/Etiquette), some are dubious (Lockpick is avoidable unless you want to join the thieves guild, since you can bash down doors with your fists to avoid damaging your weapons) and some are made invalid with spells (being able to jump and climb is nice, but a cheap levitation spell does the trick much better). And there's the part where it's janky as shit, even with all the bugs fixed. Procedurally generated quests from generic NPCs in procedurally generated towns sending you to procedurally generated dungeons that I've heard described as "mating octopi" in search of a procedurally generated quest objective that might've been placed in an area that is impossible to reach, or maybe it just clips through the wall! Don't get me wrong, I like Daggerfall because it's crazy, but it makes Morrowind look straightforward and accessible by comparison.
Posted September 01, 2015
ArbitraryWater: No offense intended - and I definitely did not intend to be condescending. I simply picked up your own words.
And thanks for the clarification. I really have difficulties with statements like "half of Daggerfall is broken", and asked because I wanted to understand your point of view - which I do now.
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Elder Scrolls seriesHave Arena/Daggerfall aged well?(73 posts)(73 posts)
(73 posts)