ludgerarnold: About the dungeons, what did the developers think when they created this kind of dungeon and automap. When I play RPGs I want to concentrate on developing my character, not finding the bloody exit.
Honestly I feel like a rat running a maze, not like a hero...
The development of the Elder Scrolls dungeons is an interesting subject. Arena had 8 fixed not-too-big dungeons which were essentially 2-dimensional (with several levels), Daggerfall 12 fixed huge and an unlimited number of random 3-dimensional dungeons of varying sizes, Morrowind's dungeons were tiny, Oblivion's somewhat bigger, etc.
For Daggerfall, the developers created a construction set plus a dungeon construction software which could compose various elements of the set to a random dungeon in 3 dimensions (today you would call these dungeons procedurally created persistent dungeons), and they also offered an automap showing 2-dimensional horizontal slices with vertical shifting.
The result was "overwhelming", in the truest sense of the word :-). Most players never managed to cope with the challenges these dungeons presented, lost orientation, were frustrated because of the Void bug and other problems. There was also a second (smaller) group of players who were fascinated with the dungeons, enjoyed crawling around, discussed various approaches to understand the structure of the dungeons (they are structured indeed, by the way) and methods to explore them without getting lost or miss important spots (remember Ariadne in the Lair of the Minotaur?).
Today I feel the Daggerfall dungeons are "manageable". If you want to explore every single corner of the dungeon, you can do it, if you fall into the Void, you can jump out, and if you want to get to the quest object as quickly as possible, you can do this, too. There is also the Recall spell which creates an anchor point and later teleports you back to this point. It's not perfect, but if you want to focus on the plot, it's acceptable.
On the other hand, stat (you call it character) development without a certain degree of dungeon crawling is certainly not easy - unless you are happy with killing thousands of monsters infesting town buildings :-).
I myself admire the developers for what they have created, and I regret that they didn't develop the concept further (for understandable reasons, given the general reaction to these dungeons). The system has many flaws, but a lot of potential, too. The biggest issue in my mind is that dungeon elements repeat themselves inside one dungeon. When you see something familiar you never know whether it's a place you've seen before (in that dungeon) or not.
On the other hand: Why should your opponents make your life easy :-)?
I can understand that you feel like a rat in a maze - for you are :-). You have lots of opportunities there to prove that you are indeed the hero you want to be. That's role-playing! :-)
