Count me in your boat also. Though I agree with the OP that walking out of an entirely empty dungeon is boring, for me the solution isn't to teleport the player out of the dungeon, but to make the dungeon exit lead back to the world in general, or to make the way back interesting.

Which I think Skyrim does in most cases, which in turn is why I think the original complaint was a bit strange.

[...]I'm also in favor of making dungeons long enough (but still content-dense) to give players a feeling of hopeless and dread that they aren't going to make it through it alive until, suddenly, they do - with the sun shining and the birds chirping. I don't want dungeons stretched out and watered down, but I want them to be challenges of long-term survival as enemies gradually wear me down.

I loved old games like The Bard's Tale where your mana would be depleted underground and once that's gone, so is your method of healing. Some parts of the dungeon would allow you to teleport back to the surface, and some would not. When you were 3 or 4 levels deep and running low on mana, making your way back to the surface could quickly become an epic undertaking. But that was partly because of random encounters, which don't exist in Skyrim in that form.

I am going to guess that you aren't a big fan of "walking simulators," either...

how did you know? <g>

>> Many of us don't want the sort of streamlined experience you're talking about. If I'm deep in the dungeon then being able to find my way out safely is part of gameplay.

most games have automap and a compass with the next quest waypoint always showing the exit, so no "finding your way out"

most games have hard coded spawn points that don't respawn for a while or at all, and do not have periodic random encounters, so "safely" is a given.

>> I might have to make a difficult decision between pressing on or turning back

you've already decided to turn back, cause you're mining the dungeon for loot, and you've reached max encumbrance - time to go to the store and sell it all off.

>> and maybe between ditching some loot in order to be able to continue

you've already passed that point. you dumped the junk and kept the good stuff. its time to leave. but you're half way through the second or third level. going forward, you just have to kill more stuff, loot the bodies, and immediately drop everything. you can't just smash and grab and go. one soul gem fragment and your over encumbered. so now you kill, loot, drop - paying attention to what will be easy to find later (big stuff like armor), and what won't fall thru the ground mesh due to whacked physics (hmm... maybe dropping armor in oblivion's not such a good idea...., or purified water in the lobby of the 38 casino in new vegas. it respawns at the door, rolls, then falls thru, again an again).

while soldiering on, or dropping all loot then continuing is one strategy, you're still left having to come back later and walk to pick it up again. plus more time futzing with inventories. time and motion studies: the most time efficient way to get loot to the store is to kill, loot, then leave, do not drop at any time anywhere. you just waste more time in inventory menus. and extra travel. and more load screens!

>> Same with exploring - if I wanted discrete encounters I'd play a game with a world-map mode rather than a continuous world. I enjoy scanning the horizon to see where to go next, climbing the hillsides to get a better view, feeling more immersed because it takes time to get from one place to another.

i can get into that too. but i come from the flight simulator demographic. sometimes you just want to accelerate time and get to the action. games have this capability, but don't typically let the user use it, or limit how much you can accelerate the game to the point its little better than real time.

there are times i want to explore, and times i just want to finish some quest. when i want to finish a quest, i should be able to call up the game map, click on my destination, and it will move me towards it (via fast travel) until i encounter something (IE come within X of an un-triggered spawn point, or undiscovered landmark). at that point it should stop fast travel, and let me deal with the encounter. then i can click on the map again and continue my journey. that would be so easy to do, and then you would not have to manually a walk to undiscovered locations when you didn't want to. and when you felt like exploring, you could. Caveman does this.

>> I think this is more a consequence of game players thinking they want humougous worlds,

well, you really have two things going on here, indoor and outdoor settings.

i personally don't care for short or linear dungeons. that's where I really get into exploration - is in dungeons. and having to manually traverse back out of an explored and cleared section of dungeon.... all i have to say is thank god for the SGTM console command in bethesda games! talk about architectural walk through. and these will be dungeons that i may be cleaning out for the 5th or 10th time with the same character. "don't need no walkthru - i saw it the first hundred times". and it was only cool for about the first 3 or 4 of those. so i would like to see even bigger dungeons in games. but i don't want to only be able to traverse them manually. in Caveman you can travel cross country with accelerated time from any place to any place on the world or local maps. and it automatically stops cross country travel on encounters. if i can do it , they can do it (i would hope <g>).

as for outdoor environments, you have simulation games (based on real world maps or at least real world scales), and you have non-simulation games (everything else - IE anything goes). in sims, you have little control over how far things are from each other. if its a 1 hour flight through friendly airspace from the player's base to the target in Aces of the Pacific - its a one hour flight. all you can do is accelerate time. in games you have much more leeway. big worlds / levels may seem cool, but big = more travel time between action (unless it has something like cross country travel and accelerated time like Caveman). "condensed" is a solution, but too dense and it seems unrealistic and breaks immersion. terrain can be used to force the player to travel more and not always in a straight line (skyrim - mountains - its AWLAYS on the OTHER side of the fricking mountian!) in an effort to get more "size" out of a level, but as you can tell from my side comment, this can become annoying.

>> Though I agree with the OP that walking out of an entirely empty dungeon is boring, for me the solution isn't to teleport the player out of the dungeon, but to make the dungeon exit lead back to the world in general, or to make the way back interesting. Perhaps one 'inspiration' as a designer would be to try and make the way out of a dungeon be even more enjoyable than the way in. If your entrance route got caved in, now you have to locate a different exit entirely out of this cave network

fully encumbered, when you want to avoid encounters, and are just trying to get the f out, maybe you're low on HP and healing potions too - that would REALLY suck! Glad you were never my DM ! <g>.

>> Or a mini-boss you beat earlier gathered some friends and is waiting to jump you on your way out...

if i beat them, they're dead. you can't leave loose strings to bushwhack you later when you're laden with loot and low on health. dungeon adventuring 101. what really sucks is that spawn point you didn't quite trigger on the way in. murphy's law - you know you (or a follower) is going to hit it on the way out.

it seems periodic random encounters are the only way to inspire true fear in the player. if anything (within reason) can pop up anywhere (within reason) at any time, that dash for the exit takes on a whole new meaning. and Kylotan's careful calculations - which i too do and relish - become even more important due to the added uncertainty - which is the source of the fear, if the player has perhaps gotten in a bit over their heads.

>> One thing I dislike about the 'teleport out of the dungeon', is that some games force that teleportation on you after beating a boss, but as a player, maybe there were side-routes I hadn't finished exploring yet.

that and "can't get back into the room or area once you leave" - especially when they don't tell you before hand. bad designer- no Twinkie!

>> This "tunnel-dungeon" is actually something I feel open world games could benefit more from.

almost every dungeon in a Bethesda game is linear with a shortcut from the end back to the entrance, or a separate exit right past the end. IE a tunnel, or a tunnel bent into a loop so the two ends connect at/near the entrance / exit to the world. the "quick exit when done" is a nice dungeon design feature (about their only good one if you ask me), but only useful when at the end of the dungeon.

>> Or if I know that there's a shortcut that might be a bit dangerous, like that area in New Vegas infested with Deathclaws north of Goodsprings, I ask myself if maybe I'm strong enough now to get through it without having to rely on some navmesh pathing quirk to save me.

Hey man! you're giving away all my secrets! <g>

ever done deathclaw valley at level 1? its pretty interesting.

aside: anyone have trouble in new vegas with loading the levels when fast travelling to vault 3, the steel place (forget the name), or other areas near there? i can load the motel, but have to walk to the rest. i need a better PC.

>>>> for me the solution isn't to teleport the player out of the dungeon, but to make the dungeon exit lead back to the world in general, or to make the way back interesting.

>> Which I think Skyrim does in most cases, which in turn is why I think the original complaint was a bit strange.

yes, the exit leads back, or often has a final treasure room before it leads back, but you must first be at the exit to use it. what if its 2.5 levels ahead, and you're already 2.5 level deep into the dungeon, and its time to go? continuous move, sgtm 5 or so, and steer your way back to the entrance. for years i played such scenarios at normal speed until i learned of the SGTM console command.

without using the sgtm console command, there's no way to go back over already traversed sections of the level whose spawn points have already been triggered - except manually in real time. "fast travel back out" in such cases seems to be called for. you already explored it. there are no encounters. why deny fast travel? its just being inconsiderate of the player's time.

>> making your way back to the surface could quickly become an epic undertaking. But that was partly because of random encounters

i've always felt that the lack of random encounters in most games are a fundamental design flaw. games need spawn points to model NPCs that are associated with particular locations. but they also need random encounters to model NPCs on the move running about the game world doing their thing.

Sometimes lack of options is important in giving the player the time to think about things they otherwise wouldnt (because the game doesnt force you to do so in order to make immediate progress). If you are constantly focused on the current activity, you wont think so much about what you are doing long-term in the game, or get some creative ideas, or reflect on something (like think of a new strategy for some common challenge in the game, or prepare for a potential threat).

It is important for that downtime to allow the player to focus on their thoughts (like automatically walking from A to B), instead of some repetitive grinding that takes all their attention for no reason.

Of course the game should have enough decisions you can make on your own initiative, for there to be need for time to make those decisions.

you're mining the dungeon for loot, and you've reached max encumbrance - time to go to the store and sell it all off.

I feel like this issue is just as easily solved by getting rid of encumbrance as a game mechanic.

One of the most frustrating elements of playing Diablo is town-portaling back every 10 minutes to sell off your loot. Or sorting your inventory at similar intervals to manually sift out the junk. Torchlight worked on this by introducing a pet you could send back to sell your stuff, but the travel time took longer the deeper you journeyed, to the point where you could refill your inventory before the pet returned.

Either automatically convert all items below my current level into gold, or provide me with a portable treasure smelter / pet furnace...