Aside from the occasional imperial guard on a horse, you never find someone on the road. No traveling merchants, adventurers, or just standard people walking somewhere. It makes the world feel sort of unpopulated.

Anyone else agree / disagree that this is a problem in TES games?

They could likely fix it well enough by having more people just outside cities, and changing the npc's staying at countryside inns. If there was a system of inns or guard posts a day or so apart, you'd see a good flavor of people when you stop at those places.

Not so much bothered, but yeah, it does make the world seem emptier, less lively. There are mods to add more people wandering the highways, more guards (which can be helpful) and also traders, which can be very handy. Also a mod that makes the roads a bit less troublesome if you stay on the road, so that you don't get pwned by a mountain lion or a boar every 15 feet.

I think more traveling on the roads as far as NPC's goes would make the game feel more alive and real, because that's how it is in real life.

I agree, mainly because you could wait in bushes for someone to walk past than stab 'em and take thier stuff

This would be even better by rich merchants travelling with their goods on a cart along the road, surrounded by guards. Throw some fireballs about, loot the cart and run off

Agreed. Random events similar to those in Fallout 3 would be nice. The only 'random' thing that happens to me is I often find two Imperial guards in the throws of an archery battle to the death.

Wouldn't mind seeing a set of Gypsy vardos travelling the roads or perhaps a merchant's caravan. Also pepper a few odd things like vultures or birds of prey to feast upon those that you find or you leave behind. Roadkill and all that.

Yes, it is confusing and a bit depressing.

Tangential to this, not everyone that owns a tent is a bandit.

I can't say it really bothers me, when I'm playing games, usually I don't go paying attention to details like whether there are people on the roads unless it's really jarring, like if you're in a big city and there's not one person walking around or driving. With the country roads in Cyrodiil or Morrowind, not seeing any other travelers on them doesn't actually bother me, in fact, Oblivion having guard patrols on the roads was already pretty impressive.

Though if there were more traffic on the roads, it should mostly consist of randomly spawning NPCs that don't have any unique dialog or quests, kind of like the guards, though if Bethesda doesn't want to use nameless NPCs (which I actually don't mind at all, after all, you don't automatically know the name of everyone you see walking by in real life.) as given the way things tended to be in Oblivion, if unique NPCs were to travel on the road more often, they'd probably die constantly, potentially breaking questlines or denying services to the player through something completely outside of the player's control.

In Oblivion, I always rationalised this as resulting from all those gates opening up everywhere , hence nobody wanted to venture too far - although the odd wary traveller or trader certainly would be appreciated!

The roads are full of bandits, trolls and other foul things... if I was a NPC id stay the hell off the roads too.

Theres no reason they cant have names.

Black And White 2 names every single person in your village, all the guards and peasents, women and children, everyone gets their own unique name.

You are mistaken. Imperial guards are not the only NPCs who travel in Oblivion.

if you have the pc version theres a few mods that address that. tamriel travellers by corepc, TIE by veratos has the former mod included, and there eas another one but im blanking on the name of it. something with roads.

I'm a bit annoyed by it too, but they shouldn't fill the roads as I felt Rockstar did with Red Dead.

There should've been traveling merchants with unique or rare items along the roads, causing the player not to always want to Fast Travel.

I would indeed like more people walking the roads. That's something that I feel every TES game is lacking.

I like the way it is, stay off the roads. I don't need to save people on the roads when I am in a hurry. I also like no one getting involved when I am fighting a bear. Too many cooks ruin the soup.

I don't know, I think something like the mod Tamriel Travelers would be nice.

I looked it up, looks great. High rated and lots of downloads. I tried looking for a video, but didn't find one. I also bookmarked it just in case.

Thanks.

If you have OB for your PC I highly suggest getting it (the mod). It adds so much atmosphere. If only Morrowind had a mod like that. (I guess MCA could count, but I don't want hundreds of NPCs in my towns)

I would like to see more travellers and merchants wandering the roads in the next game, however if not added, will not bother me too significantly.

It's rare in vanilla Oblivion, but I have encountered normal citizen NPC's on the roads. Somewhere in the Strategy Guide I think it says that they do this. I've also run across their dead bodies in some strange locations. I remember one near the entrance of a dungeon. Amantius Allectus, from the first Thieve's Guild quest, if I remember right. Can't remember which dungeon, though. Always thought it was kind of stupid walking out there with no armor, armed with their fists or maybe a dagger. This is on the 360, so no mods are in play.

I think it'd just add so much more in terms of atmosphere and opportunity if there were people out and about - caravans, travellers, pilgrimages, hermits. If only to add a real possibility of being a road-side bandit; or the opportunity of going around talking with people or really just giving you further reason to be out and about exploring.

Yes there was a strange kajit(?) lady who wandered the roads, I remember trying to assasinate her but, she punched me to death haha.