A discussion on all aspects of cities from size, open cities, housing, etc.

So, based on what we know from the lore, and our wishlists, give us all a run down of how you would like your city. Would you like a city to the size and capacity of Assassins Creed, or would you like it smaller, but a place for everyone and everything in its place?

I would like to see bigger cities than OB with more NPC's (and places for them), open markets where there is a vibrant air.

In regard to the poll:

A) 1 - Winterhold - Because it holds the Ysmir collective and college of winterhold. ^_^
B) 2 & 3
C) 1

I always felt that the cities were too empty. It would be nice if they could at least make them look a little more inhabited. Imperial City felt like everyone was hiding indoors. Cities in general looked pretty dead. Hopefully they'll change that. Fallout New: Vegas was definitely on the right track if not already there, so the new engine might just be able to pull off a city that feels alive.

nice, iv been wondering if anyone was going to ask this.
its been covered a bit but i dont think there has been a thread...not sure.

Whiterun, its central and close to the mountain.
i want it to be much bigger than cities in ob, but open like mw.

Large castle with an external gated rampart. separating the town from the castle.

large town with many districts.

• market,
  
• Crafts and guilds
  
• town square with housing and local government buildings for the nobles and clergy.
  
• this would also be near the local place of worship
  
• military barracks
  
• housing [divided by class.]
  
• seedy district
  
• warehouse district.

and a gate around the city.
stables and farms within a mile or two from around the gate and walls.

Hopefully the cities in Skyrim will be like http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16513 or but better.

No favorite city yet
Help Create a city/village and Kill an owner, his house is up for sale, maybe even a random NPC will buy it after some time.Also Housing that is always for sale, so you don't have to kill anyone.
Open cities, only if it doesn't come at the cost of performance.

Oh I love the idea of buying houses from the dead. It actually gives me an incentive to kill people (other than blood-lust).

My favorite town is Winterhold. I just don't want them to remove Snowhawk from the major cities list. Some of the recent maps of Skyrim have show Markarth Side like it was a major town, and I find that ridiculous. Play Arena sometime.

I'll leave everything up to the devs. I would prefer bigger, open, more lively cities. But I'll accept anything if the reason is being able to cope with the load. Anything except Imperial City and Vivecs rather extreme cell structure - I can't stand navigating those. Now I'm able to run OB at highest quality, but that was certainly not the case when OB (and MW) was just out. I'm betting there are reasons for the limitations we saw, and that may be the case in SR too. I certainly don't want "everything" if that means it's unplayable unless you have the most recent hw.

As far as OB is concerned, I think it did the trick for what I expected back then. Even now I don't feel it is lifeless, far from it. Infinitely better than MWs AI system Maybe the same will happen now, but I'll leave it to the devs to decide how far things have to go.

Well as a mage, I would like to purchase a nice house in Winterhold by the docks and close the college, so long as i can get that I will be happy

If there are no houses for sale by the dock, I will kill the most annoying person in the nicest house there and informally live in it (Not a fan of killing someone to then buy their house)

I really would like to see every piece of property in the game purchasable if the owner dies. If you don't want to live there, you can rent it out and collect money for it (or open a business if that's what the building is). Sure, that is strait out of Fable but man... I always hated all those empty houses and virtually dead towns at the end of my games in Oblivion. Its a great idea, and one that would work just fine in Skyrim.

As for open cities, I would love to see open cities for smaller and mid size cities... with walled/gated methods only used for very large cities (hopefully much larger then Oblivion cities). However, I don't know if its at all a question of desire or rather a question of reality. Depending on a whole lot of factors such as graphic detail, view distance, and city size... it might simply not be possible to do open cities for anything other then small towns (3-6 buildings). Remember, Skyrim needs to run good on 6 year old hardware, so the developers have to cut corners and make tough decisions in terms of graphics and performance, and its easy to go back to something that worked well in the last game (walled cities in this case). Lets face it, most people didn't like walled cities but the world didn't end because of them... so the odds are Bethesda is going to stick with them for performance reasons. I could be wrong and all, and I hope I am... but it seems unlikely.

It should also be noted that both Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas used walled cities, and neither of them had to render large detailed forests. So again, open cities for all cities seems extremely unlikely.

Even the Imperial City felt like it was so sparsely populated when it was supposed to the crown jewel of the empire! I wouldn't mind some extra "Imperial Citizens" walking about every day to make it feel more populated. I did feel like I was actually in a city, though. In the other cities, I felt as if I had just walked into a village. I know the game engine was limited, but they were not big enough for my taste. Chedynhall (probably spelled wrong - sorry) was an adequate city, the others felt so small.

Ehhhhhhh. Not a fan of "X Citizen". At the very least they should have a name generator, or just come up with a random name for them.

Morrowinds cities were open and its a much older game than oblivion. If they could do it in morrowind then they should definately be able to do it now.

We should be able to buy every house in the game and rent them out for more cash or just move in

Well let's see... Civil war going on... Dragons rauaging the country... The Empire has collapsed...

I don't think there is going to be a whole lot of housing projects being put up in a time like this lol

Except maybe a few quests to gather resources, find iron ore deposits and such, to rebuild or build a fortress.

Edit: Oh and yeah for my favorite city it's Solitude, because I had a dream about it once lol I know.. It's weird.

What I want for cities is certain places which increae the depth of gameplay. For example several houses for the rich could be connected to the sewer system allowing easy access.

Other ideas could be resevoirs for wells wich you could poison with potions wich affect the npcs living in the city. For example a sleeping potion could knowck out everyone in the city for a few hours meaking thievey or assasination easier.

Tunnels under city or castle walls allowing you to avoid guards.

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I'd also like it if cities are dynamic. For example killing the lord of the city could temporarily render the city in chaos. Guards would out in force. Npcs would riot. Buildings would be damaged, etc.

Stealing from the cities treasury would lowr the quality of the guards. making crime easier.

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I'd also like it if npc ai was dynamic. If there is an increase in crime people would do certain things depending on the crime ie a serial killer could cuase npcs to lock their doors and not go out at night while the number of guards increases. Someone stealing from rich npcs could cuase them to hire extra guards, etc.

I hope there will be some unending catacombs below at least one of the cities...by unending, I mean HUGE.

If Bethesda doesn't reset the Lore there are currently 9 cities. Solitude is my pick but I really don't know at this point.

Keep them closed like Oblivion that way you can't use it as an escape method from the Nord Guards.

lol a dream huh?

Well yeah, I think there might be an opportunity with the civil war going on. Like you said, perhaps building/ helping to build/repair a fort of some sort. But with that, they two factions would need to gain ground on each other (Depending on if there is a geographical split as well as a political one) and a town could be built across the border of each factions sort of "area".

@Terror of Death: According to the lore prior to MW I think there was like ... 6 cities/towns? Whereas there are (I don't know the number) quite a number of sizable towns in MW. Maps can be changed easily (In regard to towns and cities.)

I agree though, I hadn't taken teh civil war into account. it's just with the success of Raven Rock among fans, Beth would be a bit remiss not to have something similar/ more evolved and better.

What if there were BOTH open and closed cities?

I think my favourite city will be Dawnstar or Markarth Side, just sound like cool places from the limited lore available.
With housing, I think Oblivions system was fine, and if anything I would like another couple of houses available. I didn't like it how my Noble couldn't live in the IC because you could only buy some decrepit shack.
And I hope for walled cities, it feels more medieval, and it sounds like there's a civil war going on, so it would make sense.

I think perhaps Solitude should be walled in retrospect. If they legitimately can't have large open cities, I could stand a few of the bigger ones being walled (So long as the majority were open).

Windhelm of Riften will probably be my favorite for bordering Morrowind. Hopefully despite this being the land of their former arch-enemy, some of them will migrate to those cities if I'm lucky which will let me see the plight wrought from Infernal City.

And neither game did so because they couldn't. Opening Megaton and Paradise Falls would have been technically easy as pie, but pain in the ass due to the way navmeshing worked. No reason to suspect F:NV was any different.

They didn't do this because of performance reasons on the PC. They did it because XBox's are crippled half-computers with no guts, and the only true part about Open Cities being a performance issues was on an XBox. Gamebryo simply couldn't handle it on those machines, and it was way easier for Bethesda to provide a single unified version of the game from a data file standpoint.

I have high hopes that Skyrim's new engine will have the capabilities of other modern RPGs using engines that have demonstrated beyond all doubt that not only are open cities possible, but entirely open interiors are as well with fully implemented weather that doesn't intrude indoors.

Yes, keeping in mind we are using a new engine now so there is a greater chance of sophisticated open cities in SK.

However, no really devoted fan/ console bashing in my thread please.

Edit: lol Fan-boi = A really devoted fan now?