firstly- large ammounts of npcs IS possible without lag. generaly when developers want massive amounts of ai they dissable all of the non related stuff (no, you dont think about tending to your chickens and stopping criminal scum when you are fighting daedra). most

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAKBJSjpP-c - note that he does lag slightly when he has 350 zombies active at a time- but he goes fine on 250 zombies. do note that ai in tes would be dumber in the distance, but smarter up close. so the distant guys would only care about moving towards target, attacking and blocking,sticking with the group and perhaps tending to the wounded. whilst the characters close up will have every combat oriented ai package available to them




aside from great combat- massive things have been something tes have failed at. all of those city walls and you never get to use any .


now, what i am talking about here is battles that involve more than 50 ai at a time. but i am hopping for something around the 200 mark. oh, and possibly idle ai/ models in the background that give the feel of a big battle. i also dont mean that every quest should be something like "defend village x against 1741 undead troops, and after that lead the imperial legion to fight the second numidium, maybe then as you walk back for your reward some vengeful cavalry will find you in the hills and charge at you.


but on the whole epic battles pump me with adrenalin. and yes this does fit with tes gameplay. i remember in a history book that a single celt warrior defended a bridge on his own against a roman army with an axe. developing skills should reward moments as epic as that (although without the primitive missile killing you). after you get your full daedric set and the spear of bitter mercy :rock: why not defend a village until help arives? lock everyone in the small castle and call yourself the gatekeeper :gun: and fight of thousands of opponents until death/ reinforcements. what a sense of progression!. at first you struggle against a skeleton warrior- now you fight legions of them.

Hell if they can swing it, I want all that stuff.

Though I wouldn’t want to actively lead an army, as that would inevitably lead into a strategy game scenario, which would be a huge diversion from the core gameplay.

I'm certainty interested in a move away from the 'me' against everyone sort of combat. I'd much rather more equal group based combat, the odd large scale battle could be interesting and something I'd at least like to try.