Improving Dungeon Crawling

[AndrewBuck]

Recently the "smaller dungeons" option was added, which I think was a really good idea. The original dungeons are crazy big and complicated (at least some of them), so the reduced size makes it at least feasible to do some of the dungeon crawling quests, instead of only doing "guard the mages guild" and "kill rats in a house" kinds of quests that I previously limited myself to.

However, I think it would be good to maybe go a bit further and explore the idea of improving dungeon crawling a bit more fully. Although the smaller dungeons option makes the quests easier, it is a limited approach to make dungeon crawling easier by just making "less of it"; instead what could be done to make it more interesting -- either on the new smaller dungeons or the original complicated ones.

So that is what this thread is about, ideas to improve the overall experience of crawling, beyond simply doing less of it. I will start things rolling by listing a couple ideas I had.

First, and easiest to implement, would be to add some kind of "notes" or "signs" that the player could leave as they travel through the dungeon. Leaving notes on levers, or at intersections to indicate things like "already explored" on one side of a fork in the road, or "exit this way", to keep from getting lost, etc. I really like how a use was added for lanterns and oil, taking original game elements and giving them a use. This approach could be used again with the "Parchment" item, allowing something like 10 signs to be made from a sheet of parchment before it is used up. When you walk past where you left a sign, it could print the sign text at the top of the screen like the "You feel somewhat bad" text when you are poisoned. Maybe a sign, like you find in town should be added as well to indicate visually to the player, with the text being printed at the top of the screen, or above the sign, or something. Not sure on the implementation details exactly, just exploring the basic concept right now.

A second, and more gameplay changing idea, would be to either add a new skill called something like "dungeoneering" or use some combination of existing skills/attributes to do a "dungeoneering check" at certain times in the dungeon. Checks could be done when near a hidden door for example, to trigger a message at the top like "you feel a slight draft" or something like that to let you know a secret passageway is nearby. Also when you approach a junction in the dungeon you might get a hint (if you pass the check) like "you're senses tell you the item you seek is to the north", etc. Basically make dungeoneering a skill that players could roleplay. Someone who is a rogue or a thief type character would make sense to be good at this, with fine senses for detecting hidden passages, traps, and just generally finding their way around dungeons.

Anyway, these are just a couple thoughts I had to make the experience better overall. I look forward to hearing people's opinions on these ideas, especially the second one as I think it is more controversial due to its changes from the original game design. Not sure if this would be considered to radical for the base game, or if this would fall under QOL improvement, or adding a feature the game really should have had, like was done with the lanterns.

[legion]

I disagree with making any kind of helpful hints or markers. This is what I dislike about newer games, it's the excessive handholding and feeling that you are on rails.
If I play a new RPG and I see these yellow exclamation points and pointer in the mini-map telling me where to go all the time I get bored and exit the game.
All games have become painfully easy and instead of the natural rewards you get from overcoming something difficult, we have addictive fake rewards like "achievements", cosmetics and fluff.
The endless random dungeons were my favorite thing about Daggerfall. You're on a simple mission to kill some orc, then come across an old forgotten door that you weren't supposed to open, but you walk down a hallway and fall down a broken elevator and find yourself trapped in an underground system of tunnels full of ancient vampires that can 1-shot you... it takes you weeks to barely get out with your life, you fail your mission and get fired by the guild... and life goes on. You might not get the paltry 256 gold for the quest but you did loot a nice magic weapon off a vampire that will serve you well for a while.

If anything, I hope they make the game more unforgiving and punishing.
The creativity with creating spells and magic items can actually "hack" the game with recall/resistance/immunity effects and whatnot, and provides a nice counterbalance to the difficulty of the game. The sheer open-ended nature of the game can make it too difficult or too easy but the customization aspect is what I enjoy the most and I hope they fully flesh it out with this remake, because the original 1996 game has such vast potential that can now be fulfilled with this project.

Besides the Recall spell easily neutralizes any of the problems you may have with getting hopelessly lost in dungeons.

[King of Worms]

I think leaving notes in a dungeons is ok. We were able to write notes in the maps in the early 90s dungeons, so its not something like this "new age dumb down" approach.

Also, things like a msg if a skill check pass so you have a hint on a hidden doors is very 90s and was in the most hard core dungeon crawlers....

And I like both ideas.

[Nystul]

in vanilla it was possible to click on dungeon segments on the automap and add a note. Not many people knew of this and even fever used it. Due to the bad map mechanics in vanilla this feature was pretty useless anyway imo
custom markers on the map could be a thing in the future for dfunity

[Narf the Mouse]

@legion: Making secret doors invisible on the minimap makes the game *harder*, not easier, even if replaced by a vague message when you're somewhere in the vicinity of a secret door. As it is now, I almost never miss a secret door.

Your post seems kinda knee-jerk. I don't see how scribbling a note on a wall has anything to do with compass markers or exclamation points above important NPCs.

[jayhova]

I'm very much in favor of more immersive dungeons. I think secret door discovery should be an option through a mod or whatever. Basically keep the door concealed (on the map) until the PC discovers it. As the PC gets closer to the door the chance of discovering it goes up.

In the case of making notes on the map this was only not included because it's more difficult to do with 3D dungeons.

Putting notes on walls is a thing you can certainly do in a pen and paper RPG so why not in Daggerfall? Actually I can see potential for this in quests. Let's say there is a quest to go to a particular dungeon where some guy scrawled a message in 4 different places in 4 different languages. You go there and find the 4 locations in the dungeon where the messages are written. Perhaps at this point there is a skill check and if you speak one or more of the languages you can read all or part of the messages. Once you have all the messages written down you are able to determine where the thing they point to is located. You could go get the thing or return for your reward. Maybe both.

[BansheeXYZ]

I really like how a use was added for lanterns and oil, taking original game elements and giving them a use. This approach could be used again with the "Parchment" item, allowing something like 10 signs to be made from a sheet of parchment before it is used up. When you walk past where you left a sign, it could print the sign text at the top of the screen like the "You feel somewhat bad" text when you are poisoned. Maybe a sign, like you find in town should be added as well to indicate visually to the player, with the text being printed at the top of the screen, or above the sign, or something. Not sure on the implementation details exactly, just exploring the basic concept right now.

One thing to keep in mind before assigning a purpose to parchment is that with torches/lanterns/oil (and bandages for that matter), we have a good idea of how they were going to work. Parchment isn't so obvious. Most likely, it was an ingredient to craft spell scrolls. But it could've been something to write notes or recipes on. We dunno.

A second, and more gameplay changing idea, would be to either add a new skill called something like "dungeoneering" or use some combination of existing skills/attributes to do a "dungeoneering check" at certain times in the dungeon. Checks could be done when near a hidden door for example, to trigger a message at the top like "you feel a slight draft" or something like that to let you know a secret passageway is nearby. Also when you approach a junction in the dungeon you might get a hint (if you pass the check) like "you're senses tell you the item you seek is to the north", etc. Basically make dungeoneering a skill that players could roleplay. Someone who is a rogue or a thief type character would make sense to be good at this, with fine senses for detecting hidden passages, traps, and just generally finding their way around dungeons.

Baldur's Gate and Divinity do stuff like this. It's usually called "Detect traps" or "Perception". The only somewhat hidden things in Daggerfall are secret doors. There are no invisible traps or treasures, so the mod would have to add them.

These skills generally show up in RPGs big on party management for its gameplay, so you can just give one member perception for the others. It's harder to implement in a solo game because you can't just kill the player with invisible things he chose not to detect. Players would feel coerced into getting this skill at the expense of others.

Besides the Recall spell easily neutralizes any of the problems you may have with getting hopelessly lost in dungeons.

Does being sent back to the start really help you in a maze? I really don't think people get lost so much as lose track of bypassed areas. Daggerfall dungeons are like trees that keep branching out as you're climbing them. Oh, and that Barbarian char can't cast spells and there are no potions of recall. So even if you think setting anchors helps, well... that's only true if you made a mage.

[Rytelier]

The main thing to improve the dungeon crawling is implementing level design.
Daggerfall uses ancient techniques of procedural generation and it's just bad. Corridors are repetitive, no variety, no points on interests and exploring is pretty unintuitive.

Dungeons need major overhaul mod in terms of procedural generation to follow modern standards of level design.

[charlieg]

I disagree with making any kind of helpful hints or markers. This is what I dislike about newer games, it's the excessive handholding and feeling that you are on rails.

I don't think what AndrewBuck suggested was excessive though? I mean, it accounts for things in real life that are omitted in a game, the draft being a great example.

[Narf the Mouse]

Daggerfall does have traps, including invisible traps - they're just very rare.

There's invisible traps which damage you if you walk on the floor, and there's invisible traps that damage you if you pass through them. And probably others. And in one of the demos, there was a trap door which dropped you down a long fall; I don't know if that made it into the game.

And also some of the red doors can kill you if you touch them. I think they hit you with disintegrate?, so it is theoretically possible to resist them?

Anyway, for better procedural dungeon generation, looking into Roguelike development resources would be a good start.