Morrowind: GOTY. for the XBox. While I was disappointed at first with Morrowind (basically the old "it's not Daggerfall" feeling), I eventually got into it and spent vast amounts of time doing the addons and side things and eventually wanted to start back on the main quest, and then the XBox decided that it had enough: after a certain amount of time spent in the game, any saves would become unloadable and the game eventually crashed. No amount of backtracking/doing things differently would let me really do anything any more. And, since it is the XBox, I couldn't even extract the saves and retry it on the PC version. I eventually got the PC version, and even rebought it a third time on GoG (mainly because my PC version media died in a fire), but I just can't get into the game any more.

The problem for me for the dungeons is that they are so twisty, and the automap is close to useless (in trying to understand in which direction to head to search parts of the dungeon where you haven't been yet). I had no such problems in e.g. TES Arena, even if its dungeons were usually quite huge as well.

I recall some Daggerfall FAQ suggesting some kind of systematic way to search the dungeons, like "always turn to left (or was it right?) when you can, and only change direction when you can't turn left anymore", or something like that... but I didn't really understand how that would help navigating the twisty dungeons and finding my objective.

A few times it also happened that I searched the lower parts of a dungeon extensively, only to learn later that the person/monster I was supposed to find (and slay?) was all the time in some of the rooms in the upper parts of the dungeon, that I had just missed when going further and further in the dungeons. God damn it.

Also there is this odd small, was it yellow, "scanner map" where there are two colored dots. I am not quite sure what that is supposed to be, are those two dots representing something, like one is you and the other is your current objective in that dungeon, or one is exit and another is the objective, or whatever...

I think I can much more easily find my way out (just generally trying to get higher and higher in the dungeons, then you get closer to the exit), but it is the finding of the objective that is usually the problem for me (in the dungeons).

I don't remember that being a problem for me, probably because I was fighting my way down to get to the objective. I only remember that a couple of times it took me a very long time to get out because the 3d map was so useless. It was such a pain I would not play without that teleport.

I don't know if it is different with main quest missions, and e.g. the guild missions. As said, sometimes the objective (e.g. a person you must meet or slay) isn't even deep in the dungeon, but on the upper levels. So I might be fighting my way all the way down the dungeons until I hit the corridors which are filled with water (I can't go there as my diving skill is too poor for now; is there anything important in the water tunnels anyway?), and then later I find out the person/monster was in the upper levels in some room I just happened to miss, when I was going deeper in the dungeons.

You can't normally even tell if some person or monster is your objective, until you have killed it. Then you get the note that you have succeeded in your objective, wheee!

Like now, for months I have been stuck in mission (I seemed to remember wrong it was a mage guild mission): I have been wandering in that Marinxullah Cavern dungeons for ages now, killing whatever I can find, and constantly realizing I must be running in circles or something because I all the time revisit corridors and rooms where there are monsters I've already killed before.

No idea whatsoever where that "messanger" is supposed to be, I am just aimlessly wandering in the cavern. I already got my hopes up once when I found a room which looked like some kind of small church with an altar, and also another room which seems to be for some kind of sacrifices, but no sign of any "messanger" there either, or anyone else for that matter.

I just keep looking, keep looking, for hours and hours in real time. And then yet another quest with exactly the same problems (if it is a mission where I have to visit some Cavern, and not a simple "go to city A to building B").

I felt mostly the same about Outcast. I bought it at some point because it was cheap, many people praise it, and I still remember seeing it in video game magazines long ago. I however quit not that long in the game. For the most part I thought it was plain bad. It just reminded me of an XKCD comic where he draws a graph stating the more words a fantasy author invents the worse the story.

I was constantly reminded of that when I was searching for some Zu in the Taknan of the something something in Outcast...

Oh yeah, absolutely. The twistiness was part of what made the dungeon so crazy, beyond just the sizes in general. What an atrocious, clunky map. Arena was much easier because it was block-based and dungeons were separated by floors.

Yes, I believe it told you to go left as much as possible. Never tested it out for myself. I just tried to keep the map from looping over itself whenever possible. You can also click on segments of the map to make them blink, which helps a little to distinguish where points of interest are.

Haha, a couple times I was in the objective's vicinity and they would be stuck in a wall or just out of the way so that you couldn't see it. Not to mention some dungeons having places that are literally impossible to get to by normal means.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the scanner with the yellow dots showed where you were and where your objective was. Not that it was helpful in any way, but it's there.

If you were curious to try again though, I highly recommend downloading Daggerfall with the latest community patches here (should be the download at the top): [url=http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Files]http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Files[/url]

It's got a whole slew of fixes and upgrades, from increased draw distance to changing erroneous character models (e.g. Barenziah originally looked like a Breton when she is supposed to be a Dunmer) to even fixing some of the litany of bugs. Also--and this is the part that may get you to try it again--it allows for a few "cheats." If you make a slight edit to one of the file lines by changing "CHEATMODE 0" to "CHEATMODE 1" there are a few features you can use, including cycling through several parts of the dungeon. And most times this includes putting you right at the objective. It saves a lot of hassle.

No, they aren't.
I'll probably never play through System Shock 2 again, and it's certainly not my favorite game, but it really achieved what its designers set out to do...it's a unique, really intense gaming experience.
Anyway, a lot of hate here for games I really enjoyed, like Outcast or the Inifinity engine games...what's wrong with you people?
In my opinion Kotor gets too easy once you get a lightsaber...the opening planet actually is the most challenging part of the game, and that's just wrong.

I never said they were shit hand job, I said I think they are shit. There is a difference.

Now if you meant to tell me that, no I (tineyE) don't think they are shit, well that's a whole other matter and one that I think requires your immediate allocation to a padded room. :P

That's pretty excessive if you think I should be institutionalized just because of my opinion about video games.
But anyway, I didn't enjoy System Shock 2 that much, because I'm not into constant tension and dread...but if you want something like that, the game is fantastic. And the setting of that huge spaceship is pretty impressive.
The game has flaws (supposedly the psi path is much harder than the path I took...I was quite overpowered at the end with my assault rifle), but it's called a classic for a reason.

That's not what I meant. :P I suggested you should be institutionalized IF you were trying to tell me how I should feel.

Yeah, but I'm not doing that. I just wanted to point out some of the positives of System Shock 2.
Anyway, odd that there's so much dislike for many classic games...but de gustibus not est disputandum, I guess.

XD

I'm not having this argument. Goodbye.

A ton of games are like this. There's even things built into games that'll convince you, with a nice big juicy carrot, that you should grind through this boring part of the game.

No Man's Sky at launch
The Division
ET on Atari

Yeah that's the one I was playing, and I still have it installed, just in case I want to try it again for some reason. I actually did run it again yesterday to see in which quest I was stuck currently, some quest where I was supposed to find an artifact from some necromancers in one dungeon. During that small testplay, I managed once again to drop outside the map in the dungeon, by dropping between big stairs I was supposed to climb, lol! So even this version still has lots of bugs you have to avoid. I recall I usually used the levitate spell or such to avoid dropping between the stairs..

That certainly sounds interesting, maybe I will try it, thanks! I'm pretty sure I'd end up using that "put me to the objective" cheat quite a lot in the damn dungeons...

I kinda feel similarly about SS2. It was just quite painful to play and I have no urge to ever replay it again. Maybe it was partly related to me playing it on the hardest difficulty level, but god damn some of the enemies were insanely irritating.

For the first System Shock, the only thing I'd personally complain about was its awkward controls, but the mods (mouselook etc.) fixed that for me. I still like the first game (with that mouselook mod) quite a bit, I've played it through twice (the first time was the original CD version with the clumsy controls, the second run was with the mouselook mod).

Oh yeah, and I kinda hated Thief: Gold. Some of the enemy types and the stupid level design sucked all fun out of that game, but the atmosphere and story was still great. Thief 2 had better level design, there the levels felt like real places.

Oh and the first Baldur's Gate game was a boring shitfest (forgettable generic story, you were locked to quite low-level spells etc.). BG2 was more interesting (you started getting more powerful spells in it too), as was Icewind Dale. IWD didn't have much of a story either, but its combat system was golden, even better than in BG2 IMHO.

I quite like the first Baldur's Gate, but it's very dated now, and frankly, as an RPG it's pretty primitive. You really do nothing apart from fighting and walking around (at tediously slow speeds), there's no complexity to the quests, no consequential decisions to be made, and no depth to the characters. I've played through it several times and enjoyed it, but wouldn't really recommend it nowadays. Baldur's Gate 2 has lots of flaws as well, but is much more playable.
Icewind Dale 1 was quite good as a pure combat game. Its sequel however really disappointed me, started out interesting (the prologue and first act were great with their war setting and locations like the Orc fortress), but later on the design became progressively worse, the story was stupid and there were many irritating elements (like those incredibly frustrating challenges in the monastery).