I wonder this myself, how big actually the landscape of Cyrodill?

As i grow in speed attribute and high acrobatic (with light armor or robe), i can travel from town to town overnight while cross country (off the road, taking short cut). Just run and jumping...and cliffs and rocks are no problem anymore.... having Rumare Ring, underwater is no problem anymore...so basically i just can cross everything in my path to reach my destination in half a day

For example, from Chorrol to Anvil in just one night off the road

So it makes the world seems too small...

Edit : Feel like being The Flash

How big Cyrodiil is can be estimated in several ways, ranging from travel times to measuring cells in the construction set. And the answer can vary widely depending on which criteria and assumptions you use as well as how much imagination you want to plug in. You asked how big it is for me, so I will share that.

I base the size of Cyrodiil on my character’s movement speed – which is very dependent on what speed the game is set to. The default speed of the game is that time passes 30 times faster for the character than the player. My game is set to 10 instead of 30. And my character travels astride her mare at a nice walking pace of about 4 mph - this can vary quite a bit based on how many bandits and pretty flowers she encounters while traveling. Generally, it takes her from 7.5 to 12 of her hours to leisurely make her way from one city to the next. In her world, all that translates to about 30 to 50 miles between cities. We calculate that Buffy’s Cyrodiil is about 225 miles across at its widest point. Your mileage will vary of course.

It's not as big as it seems, Niza. At one point very early in my game, I stood upon some precipice somewhere in the game, and estimated it's even smaller than my hometown of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellicott_City,_Maryland. Cyrodiil is something like 4 square miles, if we're talking vanilla.

Of course, it's all about perspective. I tend to walk, run, and ride a horse everywhere, and there's TONS of stuff and places to discover out there. It takes me a lot of time to navigate thru those dungeons and whatnot. A typical gaming session with Lady Saga, for instance, can be her preparing to explore, finding a dungeon, raiding it, and then going to town and selling her stuff. That can possibly take HOURS for me.

I hardly ever fast-travel, for the simple fact that I think it makes the world seem smaller than it is.

Acadian says it well. And I too set my time-passage speed from default 30 to 10. At that speed travel feels appropriately 'right' to me.

But yes, Cyrodiil seems minuscule. I've touched on this before. To me, its small size is the element I'd most like to see 'corrected'. How big should it be? I'll settle for the same land scale as that used in Daggerfall, the game world of which is purportedly twice the size of real-life Great Britain.

It's all pipe dreams of course. Such a transformation is all but impossible without solving or working around limitations of the game engine. Even should that prove possible the amount of work it would take to recreate Cyrodiil on that scale ensures it will never come to pass. Still, a fellow can dream.

-Decrepit-

For me it depends. On the roads with the compass, pretty small. Off the roads with the compass covered? It seems a hell of a lot bigger.

Cyrodiil is 16 sq. miles. It averages to about four miles from one side to another.

Skyrim is even smaller at about 11 sq. miles.

Walk, don't run. Unless something is chasing you, in which case, run!

16 square miles is often quoted as the area.

But if you count up the exterior cells it works out to more like 8-10 square miles, as I recall.

Really? I could've sworn Skyrim was larger if not the same size... must be the "Morrowind Effect" in certain areas.

Anyway, at a base time speed of 30, it generally takes my characters about 8-12 in-game hours to travel between cities in a full run/jog. As Oblivion's base run speed is 3 times your walking distance, that translates to about 24-36 hours if they were to walk. Assuming this relationship holds true, your average person can walk at about 48 miles in 12 hours (or 96 miles in 24 hours) walking at a pace of 4 mph., making the average distance between cities 144 miles for a full 12-hour run. This also assumes that the distance between cities is accurate in terms of ratios.

Using Acadian's figures, we can establish the ratio of city distance vs. width of Cyrodiil for Oblivion (average of 50 miles between cities, making Cyrodill 225 miles wide.) However, his figure is skewed as he lowered the base timespeed from 30 to 10, throwing his calculations off. The figure I come up, by dividing Acadian's highest figure with my own and then multiplying the result by 225, makes Cyrodill about 684 miles at it's widest point.

It feels smaller than Morrowind due to its 'infinite' view distance, bowl shaped landscape, faster running speed and fast travel, even though it's actually bigger than Morrowind.

So it is true that the faster you are, the smaller the world seems to be. It is like in real life

dangit! I svck at math.


I was gonna say: Skyrim seems smaller for sure.

Mmmhmmm. That's why they call it a "sandbox". There are many ways to take it all in, if ya know what I mean. You can run around (but it'll make the world seem really small) or you can walk around, and Cyrodiil will seem larger.

I have a nephew who plays a lot of Halo. Racing games. Stuff like that. One day he sees me playing Oblivion and he asks me "why do you walk all the time. You know you can run, right?"

Halo players.


Exactly.

that's because, you know, it's suppose to be.

it's much easier to make a larger map when just about 70% of it is randomly generated by the game engine (including the dungeons).

well, my wood elf finds the world to be quite big:)

I guess the difference here is actual square mileage and content.

See, it is true that with the larger estimates, the area of Cyrodiil is 16 square miles. The smallest state in USA is Rhode Island at ~1500 sq miles.

However, if Cyrodiil is about 4 miles on side then I should be able to walk (average human walking speed is 4mph ) from, say, Chorrol to Cheydinhal using direct paths in a bit over one game hour.

But this is not true. To compensate for time and space issues, he developers tied Speed attribute to actual speed and then balanced against time passing.

The effect means that if you walk, not run, from those two citites, it will feel as id you are going an epic journey between places. On top of that, many roads climb and bend, and many players would take side trips to caves/ruins or fields to pick flowers.

This content manages to mask the basic fact the Cyrodiil is tiny.


Yep, that prety much represents what I mean with some better numbers.

For me personally, the world is plenty big because of this effect.

Yeah...why walk if you can run?

It is not like in Diablo where you will become tired from running, you will never tired by running in Oblivion. I don't know if it is a bug, but Athletic seems like no use at all.

You run faster. Your fatigue regenerates faster while running.

really? i don't notice any changes...or maybe i am not aware of it

If the implication of the above is that Oblivion is 70% randomly generated, that is 100% totally false.

Only the Oblivion planes are randomly generated.

Outside of the Oblivion gates, the landscapes and dungeons of Oblivion are hand crafted with many unique aspects. Anyone who plays the game with an open mind will see that. Those that want to falsely believe the rumor that it is randomly generated will, I suppose, believe in the fiction of random generation no matter what.

The speed is a gradual change. It's hard to notice it in playing. You'd see it if you had a character to high Athletics, and then loaded an old save of the same character from long ago. Your movement speed is determined by a combination of Speed Attribute, Athletic Skill, and Encumbrance, and is also affected by your armor skill, any weapon in your hand, and whether you're sneaking.

The change in fatigue generation comes as "perks" when you raise the Athletic skill to Journeyman, Expert, etc. At master, you regenerate fatigue the same whether walking or running.

yeah, i notice that, all the dungeons, caves and ruins are the same no matter how many times i replay, they are not randomly generated


I don't understand this fatigue regeneration, i don't see any difference. When running, no fatigue decrease and regenerating, it only decrease while i am using melee special attacks. I don't run while fighting (except if it is too hard i need to run away for healing), so regenerate fatigue while running is no use at all

Marksman level apprentice don't decrease fatigue at all.

several aspects of Oblivion's landscape was randomly generated during development, this isn't up for debate. it's why 99% of the dungeons are completely generic and uninteresting.

I don't know where you guys get this, but I hear it over and over. I find a very large variety, as well as some cool unique locations.

I think I know every tree and every rock in Cyrodil after all of these years. That's why it feels small to me. When I first played, ( oh happy days ) the place was overwhelming.