I would at least like the possibility to get to know an NPC more if I could. You really wouldn't want that?

I actually think that even Vivec could have used a few more inhabitants.

Because more is more people seem to overlook that. :shifty:

It isnt about dialogue options but about city size,atmosphere and feeling your actually in city.And i dont get any of that from playground size "cities" like in Skyrim.

whiterun should be on par with solitude due to it being so centraly located that most everyone would have to stop by it while in skyrim, yet it looks like it shold be where dawstar is, way out of the way. windhelm is the oldest hold in skyrim by some accounts so it sould be bigger but more downtrodden imo. and markath was built by dwemer wasnt it? i think it should be smaller if that is the case. all the other holds feel right imo

edit: skyrim has combined armour, supposedly, so there could be more NPCs (larger cities) but there is FAR less in any given place than the amount of NPCs oblivion had in a single place

For me, it's not a matter of the size of the city, but rather the lack of NPCs who roam it.

I mean, has anyone been inside the Thalmor Headquarters in Solitude?

Okay.......

What would be the perfect size for an Icy Tundra like Skyrim to you?

Well tbh at first after hearing that statement i thought Whiterun wasn't one of the main cities. But after all Whiterun is one of the biggest
Morthal, Falkreath, Dawnstar, Winderhold are more like small villages :s
And to be fair most "important" npcs some mentioned are 1 small quest npcs.

It really is a bit disappointing standing outside Dragonsreach and looking down at the whopping 10 buildings that comprise the "city" of Whiterun.

I would love that option, yes. It was possible in Morrowind because there was text dialogue. But with the current system of voiced dialogue, it isn't possible. The least they could do is add some more NPCs.

Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize there were 7 billion people on the planet of Nirn.

In smaller towns everyone knows eachother, it's that simple. It's LESS realistic to have random people who are generic.

there was so much repetitive dialogue in morrowind though. every npc had like 9/10 lines carbon copied from every other npc. they could have made each npc have a deep, intricate personality.. but they didn't

Right now the cities are built to house exactly the amount of NPCs you find there. I'm guessing more or less every city has exactly enough beds to house each present NPC (give or take a few, and excluding inns), which is all very orderly and nice, but what about people who are not present? In a logical sense, you'd always have a certain percentage of a city populace that you'd never even meet, or that would be somewhere else entirely during your stay at that place. Where are their beds and houses? Or where do all the guards come from? Are they bred in the local barracks? For instance, mistvale keep in Riften has maybe 10-20 beds for its guards, but where are their real houses, and families? Wives, children, parents? I'm guessing they all have to come from somewhere, and I don't think every guard in every city is imported from cyrodiil or another part of the empire. Local law enforcement is usually exactly that; local. Especially in a place like Skyrim.

I don't feel like the city needs any more content, per se. It's just that one has to wonder where everyone comes from. There are frankly too few houses. I'd very much like to see a mod that fixes this. I don't even have to be able to enter half of them, I just need to see that it's actually a town, with people in it; not a place where quest NPCs gather conveniently to make it easier for you.

All I seem to do here on this forum is complain :celebration:

But aaaanyway, I also think the cities are a bit lackluster. The exception being Markath and Solitude, which are awesome, but oddly lacking in population. In Solitude we got this drunken guy who always tells the same drunken story, which I suppose is funny the first time, but makes Solitude feel more like an semi-abandoned western outpost in some Sergio Leone movie, than a rich and powerful Nord city.

However, all of this could be fixed by adding a nice little brothel in every city, we are talking about Nords right, happy go lucky I smell fresh blood in my whiskers-type of guys. I wonder how long it will take for the modding comunity to make that happen, it probably did the day after release though :hubbahubba:

Making me sad for what we have lost.

The cities feel too small. I understand that there is no hard and fast way to satisfy what everyone wants to see in a city. But It just seems that the lore does not fit what we are given. I haven't checked how factual this is, but there is a link to the demographic and population of TES series.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Demographics
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Demographics
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Demographics

I would be very interested to see the numbers for Skyrim and see how each compares head to head. It breaks the immersion for me that almost every NPC has some problem, menial or otherwise, that must be quested in some way to solve. If that's true Skyrim has a TON of problems.

This next statement will be very biased, but I don't have the knowledge to make a less biased opinion. In the 11th century (1000-1099) Dublin Ireland had a population around 4000 and was ruled by Norse, which is the obvious parallel for the Nord homeland (Something that I am still utterly ecstatic about because they did a lot right in this department) Now, Dublin was HUGE by medieval standards, as is the Imperial City. Lore has it that Titus Mede captured the city with a mere 1000 men and crowned himself the first Emperor of a new dynasty. This seems quite logical as a city with a population of 4000 would easily fall since it's pretty inconceivable that a full quarter of the population (and equal opposing force) would be warriors (see links below). It is also said that the population of the Imperial City is "several thousand" so comparing it to the 4000 or so of Dublin doesn't seem that far outside the realm of possibility.

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_City
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Imperial_City

I realize I'm picking at nits here, but even so... even if these are "holds" and not "cities" the population wouldn't differ very much. In reality all a hold means is that a lord, in this case a Jarl, holds unto himself land to govern. You probably see where I'm going, but the cities are very small, even thorps, not fit to be labeled as a village. That being said, I'm actually impressed by Solitude. Its high walls and buildings make it feel larger than it is, but it still doesn't seem to have the population as I felt as... say Skingrad or Leyawyn. I'll refrain from passing my final judgement on such things until I get hard numbers on the population of Skyrim.

And while you are talking about this... it makes me think how limited the 'big battle' scenarios are. They should change up the game play or something to allow for hundreds of soldiers to fight at once. I'm not sure how it would work, but it would be awesome to have an actual battle.

I was just thinking about Bard's Tale... one of the first computer RPGs I played on an Amiga. You were in one city called Skara Brae, and it had several temples, shops, taverns, inns, etc. This was 1986.

I wouldn't mind more houses... empty even, but make me believe more than ten people live in each city.

Okay you nailed me there. But I'll be back. -.-



We do agree on that. I said I agree there could be changes. For me personally size doesn't matter so much, but more immersive npcs. I think if the NPCs were more immersive, the size wouldn't be such a factor, because it would feel so... human-like?

But they're not supposed to be small towns. Think of Whiterun, the TRADING CAPITOL OF SKYRIM. Not a small town, even if it feels like it.


That is beside the point of anything we are talking about here and you are opening a whole new can of worms.

the size of the cities is actually about right. if you look at maps of middle age cities they really arent that big inside the castle walls. the problem is that the outskirts of the cities are very barren. there should be more farms and huts and stuff to flesh it out more.

i remember they said something about how they could put more npcs on screen when they combined armor slots but aside from the fort battles they have the same number of npcs as oblivion had. at least im on PC and there will eventually be a Skyrim Alive mod to address this but it will be a few months at the earliest.

Me too.
:violin:

I got sad after how small Whiterun was, when I first seen it I was like great all of the five major cities are going to be small.

Shouldn't the capital of the Empire be a lot larger than a hold in the far northern reaches of Tamriel? That's why I guess I don't mind the sizes, once I start thinking about where we're at.

I just wish that they'd increase the bankroll of some of these merchants, if they're going to limit the sizes of the towns and the number of NPCs. Crawl through a couple dungeons, and I can bankrupt every merchant in Whiterun selling off loot, and still not get rid of it all.

I can't wait for that mod. This game has the best graphics, and I think for modders, the best open slate. I can't wait to see where that goes.

In this game the "cities" look like villages and the villages look like a small farm.

I love how Whiterun has five children living in it, whereas two of them are the children of the Jarl.

And, speaking of guards, I'm pretty sure each "hold" has a guard-to-citizen ratio of nearly 50/50. No wonder the thieves guild are having a rough time.