As many people have realised throughout the elder scrolls series, caves have been a constant bore, and now the question beggs, do people want them to be remade? I'm sure there are people that enjoy going into a cave, killing some average enemies, and getting some average loot, but does anyone want it better than that? Or do we simply port over the same cave to sky wind? How would you make caves better?
Quality of quantity in my opinion. I brought this up awhile back how I'd rather have some of the more boring and meaningless dungeons removed entirely.
I could work on improving some if I have the right assets, I've been doing that for the Bloodmoon dungeons
SquallyDaBeanzI see your point, but I don't think.removing content is a good idea. Keep them in. It doesn't hurt anything with them being there at the very least. There mere existance doesn't take away from the quality of the rest of the game. I would say if anybody is willing to do it, allow them to remake what they can. The rest just leave as is. If somebody doesn't like the non quest related caves they can simply ignore them. I like the random ones though. Not everything has to be an epic adventure. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks this way.Quality of quantity in my opinion. I brought this up awhile back how I'd rather have some of the more boring and meaningless dungeons removed entirely.
Yeah, I remember Squally bringing this up, and I agreed that quality is much more important. There are just so many caves that have no good/unique treasure and don't relate to any quests - we could be cutting it by more than 20% if we took that route.
Don't remove anything. Having them in causes no harm, and if someone wants to remake them, well, let them. At least they have some creative freedom when remaking them.
Well then the meaningful caves will have to be just as good, which is harder to achieve considering the layout has to pretty much be the same.
Sigh. Really? The argument before still stands. If every cave has magical treasure and epic loot it's just as bad as none of them having anything. A mix is needed to encourage exploration and for the good stuff to be rewarding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwI210wTbyI
You ever been to the Pointless Forest?
Ever mess with the bees?
You ever kill a strawman?
"Unique" interiors does not equal over powered loot. Not all caves need to be interesting, but too many of the vanilla Morrowind are similar and BORING even if cluttered. Many, or at least some, of the layouts should be modified or completely redesigned for variety.
I could do some "boring dungeons". Maybe remake them or whatever. I think we should worry about these caves later, though.
Doesn't need to have magical treasure, maybe just some cool sights. And easter eggs/jokes from us!
Actually guys, it gives some of the rest of us new places we can use for our own mods for Skywind. I don't want to give you a quest to go into a cave that is already used and have to worry about breaking another questline. If I can send you into an empty/boring cave, it is safer for me as an add-on modder.
We keep them. Remaking (improving them) them is lower priority than important ones for sure but they are needed for the all arguments already listed above.
What should be low priority are armor and weapons. Interiors and landscaping cant really be completed at this point, because we are still lacking required assets. I understand that armor may be more interesting than making scrib pies, bottles, rocks and more pillars, but these things should be made on an as needed basis as much as possible - and there are a ton of needs. Lack of armor isn't holding up progress on much of anything.
If say I did want to write up a scenario or general story behind a cave/dungeon where could I go? Most of the creative writing threads are purely concerned with dialog but I'd like to maybe write up a background story for some of the caves and their tenants and so give them if not powerful loot or treasure, than at least a distinctive memory and feel from all the others. Me or others could maybe give a general story and some elements to be used design-wise and then people with the creation kit could attempt to emulate what is described in our creative vision after of course it is reviewed and approved by others.
Sort of building a relationship between writer and level/cave designer as between concept artist and modeler.
For example:
Take a random cave like say this one and make it unique, perhaps the slaves killed their masters and now it is a cave consisting purely of Khajiit/Argonian bandits that murder or rob dunmer merchants. Within, you could find letters of condemnation from the twin lamps, their former masters in cages, slaves braces strewn about/re-purposed, or maybe slain/tortured Dren bounty hunters. Such could add variation to the world which is typically cast to evince a one-sided condemnatory light towards Dunmer culture and could show rather a continuous relationship of tension and deceit between the two instead of either side being a crude manifestation of simply good or evil.
It seemed like most Skyrim caves had some kind of back story, however small, and I think to forget that aspect of our renewal efforts would be a step backwards.
OcieeIf say I did want to write up a scenario or general story behind a cave/dungeon where could I go? Most of the creative writing threads are purely concerned with dialog but I'd like to maybe write up a background story for some of the caves and their tenants and so give them if not powerful loot or treasure, than at least a distinctive memory and feel from all the others. Me or others could maybe give a general story and some elements to be used design-wise and then people with the creation kit could attempt to emulate what is described in our creative vision after of course it is reviewed and approved by others.
Sort of building a relationship between writer and level/cave designer as between concept artist and modeler.
For example:
Take a random cave like say this one and make it unique, perhaps the slaves killed their masters and now it is a cave consisting purely of Khajiit/Argonian bandits that murder or rob dunmer merchants. Within, you could find letters of condemnation from the twin lamps, their former masters in cages, slaves braces strewn about/re-purposed, or maybe slain/tortured Dren bounty hunters. Such could add variation to the world which is typically cast to evince a one-sided condemnatory light towards Dunmer culture and could show rather a continuous relationship of tension and deceit between the two instead of either side being a crude manifestation of simply good or evil.
It seemed like most Skyrim caves had some kind of back story, however small, and I think to forget that aspect of our renewal efforts would be a step backwards.
Radiant quests are lame.
SmitehammerRadiant quests are lame.
In one cave we can add as easter egg our concept book (of course when it will be done) for example, maybe some skeletons next to it of some our devs :P There is so many ways to use them without adding loot or powerful stuff.
They do no harm being there and they make the good caves seem all the better. If you can redesign one, that's great. But there is no harm in having them there. And if you go around removing caves, someone might like one of the caves you removed because it was a nice hideout or whatever and be disappointed to see it gone.
None of the caves are pointless if you ask me. :)
I'd say put the choices in a poll and let everyone decide. For that matter everything that seems to get threaded. Put all these items in a poll instead of everyone trying to one up everyone else. Example for this thread:
Should there an adjustment of how many caves are in Skywind?
1) No, leave them as they are.
2) Increase the value/need of items in a few (or % such as 20%).
3) Cut the number of redundant caves.
4) Add an easter egg in non-lore cave. (hidden crest, door or items mixed in clutter)
You can think that caves is just was carved by water. It's just stone.
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They don't need any sense. Actually i will be pleased to meet some empty, mossy, dark caves without humans, items and stuff.
IRL i see mostly empty caves. It's luck if it will be 1-2 slugs or beauty stones in there.
Jump ingame, go to seyda neen and enter addamasartus cave. Very simple changes, stunning comparison.
Just to add to this conversation. Granted, I'm not doing the work, so the senior devs can take it for what you think...
Keep all caves. Part of the fun of Morrowind was the exploration - some caves and tombs were small and meaningless, but their mere presence and exploring them, not knowing what lurked within, was part of Morrowind's charm.
Let me tell you a story... I first played Morrowind on Xbox in the summer of 2004. I had just graduated and a buddy had left his Xbox and Morrowind at my house. I had never heard of the game, but loving J-RPG's, I decided to play it. At first I hated the open world structure, the first-person primary viewpoint. To add to this, I died roughly a dozen times just outside of Seyda Neen (darn mudcrabs and nix hounds got me - I didn't know how to heal) within my first few hours of play. But then...
I finally learned the ropes of the game. I spent several real-time days just traversing the Bitter Coast region, combing each and every corner of the region to find places to explore. I would constantly open and check my map, exploring each foggy, black, unexplored space with the small glimmer of hope that I'd see the familiar yellow square indicating a cave or tomb entrance.
And I was immersed, pulled into the world. I never looked back at J-RPGs, my worldview was permanently changed.
Part of the appeal of the Elder Scrolls series is the open world where, like our own, many locations are meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Even if it was just to get beaten down by Greater Bonewalker, I loved exploring and witnessing new things off the beaten track.
In the spirit of Morrowind, I encourage you to consider keeping all caves present. Even if many of them do not play a role in the game, the exploration element is what drew many of us to Morrowind to begin with. Morrowind had much more to offer than either Oblivion or Skyrim (in my humble opinion) and I'd love to see that remain.
Thanks for reading... :)
Btw. On the each ending of cave should be exit "door" like in Skyrim. Just to save time.
Kia ora
I been looking at what I could do to help, maybe working on those cave would be a good start, could try putting the odd twist on them to spice em up a bit, a trap here and there that sort of thing
Completely agree with thegentlemancaller's last post. I would also really like to see all caves remain. When you think about it, they're simply part of the Morrowind experience (their importance varies for each individual of course) and I don't want to see Skywind lose that...
Yeah caves should remain. As people have said the exploration factor is important. Also, its darn annoying looking for a cave you remembered in morrowind for some quick loot to find its gone.
Kiwi-Hawk I say go for it, I'm sure everyone would appreciate it and you could add some minor story elemets via in-game notes in the caves and new traps to keep things interesting for yourself.
Thank you Asus for clarifying this, as many of my playthroughs of Morrowind was purely about exploration even if the rewards of the dungeons and caves were for naught. Skywind for the most part is about restoring the nostalgia and introducing new players, so to remove those caves just for having a lack of rewards feels like selling that feeling out. However if any devs feel like adding new rewards or reasons to enter the "pointless" caves go ahead it can't hurt anything to expand on them.
Honestly the way to make them "not pointless", is to make them a visual delight, unique, something special. We desperately need people cluttering and and navigation meshing these. http://tesrenewal.com/forums/cluttering-and-navigation-meshing-interiors
Simply if people don't do them then we will just cut them out, a rock will replace the entrance. So its not a decision of a team but rather the community as a whole. Same with everything, if the man power doesn't support it, then it gets cut out.
People saying to just "keep the caves" and that cutting them will break immersion and lore need to realize that empty Morrowind-standard caves with no clutter and navmeshing are more immersion breaking than having them not there. Like Happy said, if you want the cave, it needs work. It's an easy thing to learn and for the community to do.
But the thing is with cutting caves it isn't necessarily cutting immersion but it's cutting away from the original game. Which I don't think is a good idea. Cutting away from the original game will take away some of the DNA of morrowind that I think we need to keep. Even if you don't want to work on it right now Squally I'm sure we will get someone willing to do them later. But that might be just me.
I'm not a productive member of the team and am only a forum-goer (hey, I'm a family man with a full-time job) but when I have some free time I obviously feel challenged to help work on these caves, courtesy of HappyChappy and Squally. If that's what it takes to keep vanilla non-quest caves/tombs intact, then I will attempt to answer their call to arms.
It does seem sort of weird to me, however, that non-Morrowind components take precedence over this. Skywind has already been working on new armors (or multiple variations of the same type of armor), the crafting system overhaul (there are, what, six or seven different types of crafting stations now - not to mention dying clothes different colors), the Ghostgate catacombs, etc. Those are all great and dandy and I can't wait to try them all out (they will be fine improvements), but if the manpower is so lacking, it sort of seems like a misallocation of resources. Just a logical observation; I am a project manager in my non-Tamrielic life, so I often see things in a resource-oriented manner. If organization and resource allocation is a problem, I may be able to help.
That being said, do we have a list of caves that are not quest related? I did a Google search and didn't see anything on the first few pages, but surely such a list already exists. Having such a list will at least jumpstart the opportunity to have easy work completed, and some caverns/tombs can be cluttered and navmeshed by volunteers who can't necessarily do more complex things (I fall under this bracket).
A checklist would help with this process. I did a quick search here on the forums and didn't find anything of the sort.
So, step #1: Find a list of caves, tombs, etc. that are not affiliated with any quests.
People work on what they want to and their skill set. You can't get a 3d modeler to stop working on armour variations and to start cluttering caves.
...and the fact that there is a forum topic around "should pointless caves be remade", means that obviously its not exactly a favorite feature of Morrowind to start with.
Making models seems to be the highest priority. Interiors, navmeshing, cluttering and lighting appear to be the lowest atm.
I don't think it would be a cheap imitation without them. Enough with the melodrama. There's no reason not to have them, though. Even if we (for the moment) put them in as a standard cave layout. Just have all the useless caves lead to a cookie cutter cave interior for mow as a placeholder and replace them with fully mazed out and cluttered versions as people make them.
I do believe the argument of, 'we don't have the resources to make the caves' has been put to rest.
Once it actually gets done by a person, then it gets put to rest. Otherwise its merely an abstract idea, floating in the Aether of non reality.
Frankly, I agree with Smitehammer. Personally, just leaving them as placeholders was fine for me when I played it. Like Sasquatch said, cluttering is not the utmost priority right now.
The same can be said for anything that has not been done. I see no logical counterargument here.
I guess the difference is that developers make decisions on what going to be included or not, then we actually do it. I'll give you an example, I'm just deleting a random cave at the moment...done...and now I'm removing the entrance...done...
See we have the resources to do that :)
This is 100% derailed, nonissue and borderline troll topic. Had I the power to lock threads, I would this one. Caves are gonna get done. /thread.
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Yes, many of them should be
Yes, many of them should be entirely remade. Having more unique caves would make exploration interesting. Most Morrowind caves are also extremely narrow this can only be resolved by a full redesign of the interior.