If anything small caves, caverns, quarries, mines, and other sub terrainian places could be added. I dont think they should be too deep or complex either. In most cases cities are the dungeons.
Now if they had material production like mining in which affected another city or villiages means of producing armor or something and raiding it cut their resource flow that would be cool.
Okay, I’m a little late to the topic, but if you’re still reading, I’ll write something up.
Firstly: I dislike grinding, if you define “grinding” as “do repetitive tasks, like killing enemies, to gain levels”. To be honest, I dislike repetition in general.
Here’s the rub, though: I love exploration. To bits. Exploration is why I play: I have to know what the next level looks like, if there’s a new armour, or new architecture, or story elements.
That is where I love dungeons (or really any gameplay environment that isn’t part of an open world, but restricts my movements): If there’s something new in there.
Some examples: I generally loved exploring the various vaults in Fallout, because every one was unique in the story it tells, the challenge it offers, the things to experience in it. Same goes for Morrowind’s dungeons, crypts and whatnot.
I hated the dungeons in the first Witcher game. Why? Because about 90% of them had the same layout and art style, the same enemies, and only little breadcrumbs of new story (if any at all). I also disliked Oblivion’s dungeons: They all felt samey to me: Let some algorithm make a dungeon, fill it with random creatures and random loot in random spots, done. That most of those lists were levelled just made things worse, because it meant even less variety in the enemies you would encounter.
And let me tell you: Players do notice how much work you put in a dungeon. I loved finding little touches, like gems or coins being laid out in particular patterns, or flowers on some grave sites. Those are all little stories in themselves, and while they may lack the emotional impact of “Khaaan!”, they fill the world with life: They show us, the players, that there are people in this world who do people-things - like hiding away a romantic book behind a few serious ones. Or like braving a crypt to lay fresh flowers on the grave of a loved one.
Plus: If the combat system is good, I might enjoy a dungeon romp a bit more, and might be more lenient towards long dungeons, because while exploring, I do something that I enjoy. If, on the other hand, combat is frustrating, I start hating on such a dungeon a whole lot sooner.
Example from Fallout: New Vegas would probably be the DLC “Dead Money”: While the over-all combat in FONV feels very visceral and rewarding, in DM, it starts to get annoying: There is one type of enemy, that enemy doesn’t feel satisfying to kill, and you suffer a shortage of “cool” weapons. Oh, and those enemies are numerous. And will get up if you do not dismember them. Which becomes a tedious ritual after every single kill (and I had taken the Bloody Mess perk already, which dismembers enemies upon death quite often already).
Add to that that -outside the Sierra Madre- the environment was very samey (which made finding your way a chore) and full of hard-to-see traps (that really hurt)… Yeah. Not a very enjoyable experience for me. Though it did redeem itself with the aforementioned presence of story bits all around the place -for example, Dean Domino’s hidden stashes, or the apocalyptic logs that let you find out what happened. In the end, if those had not been, I would have re-loaded a save before Dead Money and just uninstalled it.
I don’t mind a good crawl, but it has to fit in the game. I play a lot of different games, so wasting time on filler irritates me. I prefer to just blow through the story and move on to the next. There are only a few games that I will even bother to 100% or replay.
Realistické dungy jako tajné chodby z hradu do kostela apod proč ne.
There is a difference between real dungeons and game dungeons, Game dungeons have historically been over sized. Such as some in Skyrim.
I think including real world dungeons like a torture chamber size dungeons or something that would be found under a castle would be fun. Maybe some small mines, but nothing like a subterranean city.
Other underground sites which would be fun would be like cellars, basements in large houses, like storage cellars.
Maybe even escape routes which could be found as an alternate path out of an underground basement.
A lot of caves in Europe can be quite large like miles deep but I think it may take away from the game since there wouldn’t be anything in there anyways.
Some sites have minor underground living abodes like on the side of a mountain, like Hobbit lore. This would be nice. In Europe I think the dirt homes where it is built into a hill would be pleasing to the eye.
a tam schovaní kumáni co unesli dceru Racka Kobyly eeeh jupí 
I think some dungeon crawling is good, but too much can be over bearing…
Generally, i agree with you.
Putting some dungeons in a game is the easiest way for the developers to prolong a game with comparatively low costs.
But i think that “Wandering in the Dark” or “Witcher 3” at all is a bad example.
This quest entertained me in every second, because it told a story - and in my opinion a good one.
And every step in this dungeon made some sense for this story.
So this dungeon wasn´t just ok for me, i really liked it.
But generally you´re right. In my opinion is especially “Dragon Age - Inquisition” an unnecessary prolonged game. It´s a nice game, too, but there´ve been too much quests, which obviously just existed to keep the player busy. And this is a “no go” and the reason why i uninstalled the game after the first playthrough.
That´s a good point. Why there are creatures that wait 24/7 in the same room ? And why are there so many players that accept totally silly collecting of otherwise useless items ? It really is only a cheap way of enhancing game time with not so much fun involved.
The problem with RPGs in general is that you can´t make them too realistic. You wouldn´t be able to carry a full grown armour around all day for example. And you couldn´t carry all your stuff. Try to carry 5000 pieces of gold 
you must see that abstract: what is a dungeon?
its a time intervall where you dont have connection to a safe home, trader and free healing.
the same could be achieved in KCD if you you are shunned as a thief and had to live in the forest and at night - until you found the real robber.
its absolutely not needed to have a dark cave in order to have a “dungeon”.
understand?
I like dungeon crawling and grinding and story
I absolutely hate the grind. But i am addicted to finding every thing. The result is that i havnt finished any game in a loooong time.
i think one vital flaw of game design is that story and time are linked to space / geography. Rarely does one have a central place that is relevant and evolves through time.
For me in a good designed story / world the main playground should evolve. i hate “finishing” questhubs and moving on.
I absolutely hate dungeon grind levels. I like story and progression, and would prefer a shorter game over a longer one due to filler nonsense like that.
Dungeons frustrate me, and I don’t play a game to be frustrated.
Just to put things in perspective for you; I’ve clocked 80 hours on Witcher 3 currently and I haven’t even made it to Skellige.
@Hellboy:
I really don’t like dungeon crawls being padded with filler content ad nauseum as you describe as in “Wandering in the Dark”. Not only is this an artificial way of claiming higher amounts of gameplay time, but it turns something that is supposed to be entertainment (playing a game) into work (mindless repetition that you can’t avoid).
Also, and IMHO the worst thing about such filler, is that it breaks my suspension of disbelief. What do the scads of enemies in the dungeon/ruin/whatever eat, where’s the sewage plant, etc? If I’m always meeting large gangs of bandits on the roads, why haven’t they conquered the region for themselves already? And how do they keep recruiting more bandits to come here—surely they know by now that I’ve killed 200-300 of them already :). How can the peasants raise livestock here if the country is so full of lions, tigers, and bears?
In a fantasy game, you can always say all these things are possible due to magic or whatever. However, that doesn’t work in a game based on real life such as KC:D. There, you can’t have ridiculous situations. The only “monsters” are humans, we all know how they live, what they require to live, and how many people a given land area can support. Going beyond those limits will really be obvious.
That said, this is a time of war so armies have increased the population temporarily. And there will be stragglers turning brigand in the neighborhood. But armies are a finite size that’s always decreasing due to short-term feudal call-ups, desertion, disease, and casualties, and they can’t remain in the field very long due to needing supplies, especially if the other side burns the crops and villages. So even in wartime, there are still limits to what realistically should be in the game world.
I think this is a really great article, it’s not bashing Fallout 3 or Bethesda, it’s pointing out how it breaks the cliche dungeon crawling with a game essentially full of dungeons.
Damn near all of my favorite games start you out going through some kind of cityscape or similar for a while; this part is always exciting to me, but somewhere along the line they all feel the need to plunge me into some long reaching dark cave or catacomb and that’s where my interest usually dwindles.My re-plays of these games tend to stop at that point, as I find myself without the drive to continue.
It depends on the game for me.
If the dungeon is a big part of the story and has a boss that is really important to the game I like it to be a huge undertaking to enter and finish the dungeon. Of course it helps if the dungeon is detailed and maybe even has multiple layers of different styles to it.
If the dungeon is not really important and does not have new enemies or different looking locations in it then it starts to feel tedious. i felt that way in skyrim a lot of the time.
You’re missing one option:
I love dungeon crawling when it’s about exploration, adventure, puzzle solving, story driven, with just the right amount of enemies and looting. Leave hack&slash&grind&infinitelooting to Diablo.
