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.
