Yeah, I need both, worldspace 4x the size of Cyrodiil would be the dog's.

If I had to pick 1, it would be cities hands down. Honestly, what is the size and population the imperial city? I think there are more guards there, than there are people living in it.

I'd rather have more cities, spread more evenly over the in-game environment than for each city to be larger, or for there to be more wilderness.

What I'd also like, and this isn't really a complaint about any of the previous TES games, is for there to not be much of what one could call an invisible-but-very-obvious line between civilization and the wild. You know what I mean? Where you step outside of a city's walls and all of a sudden there's no people anywhere, just animals and monsters? In Oblivion it wasn't bad, and even in Morrowind I didn't notice for the longest time, but it could be improved.

Of course, as with many other aspects/features, the choice of location for the next game is key. Morrowind, for example, is/was harsh and desolate (especially now! ) and not well-developed by most standards, so getting into trouble so easily when getting right outside city limits, or even staying within them, is/was to be expected. And Cyrodiil is/was hardly short on wilderness too, albeit a different kind.

For this purpose, setting the next game in Skyrim would probably serve well, as it is, literally, a polar opposite of Morrowind, and, I imagine bears at least some resemblance to Cyrodiil, allowing Bethesda to kind of combine the two when designing the place. Of course, Todd Howard and crew picked a spot for the game long ago, but we obviously don't know what it is yet, so....

When did Bethesda ever try less? WTF?

I don't want bigger cities, I don't want bigger wilderness. I want a believable unique world with depth. When you try to do too much it's shallow. I'd rather take one sprawling, evolving, alive metropolis with a surrounding wilderness and a few other settlements, rather than "BIGGER and MORE".

Give me a reactive deep rich immersive role-playing experience.

It's not about "less is more" because less isn't more, but rather, about putting much more into the game while staying within the size constraints that allow it.

You drive a Hummer don't you... must be compensating for something else if you know what I mean.

If I had to choose one, I'd have the cities, but only like grizo24 said, I want people that have lives and all that. Just imagine walking into the city and having millions of merchants trying to sell you their wares, and beggars asking for a coin, sure, it may get annoying, but it would improve immersion a great deal.
With the wilderness, not only would I like to see dense forests with all kinds of woodland critters wandering around, but more small towns with more quests, even if theres just more single home farms, imagine a hard day of adventuring, then coming into a clearing with a small village with bread baking, and someone always willing to lend a bed to you - if you get rid of the ogres threatening the village.

My ideal TES world:

1 giant city. And when I mean giant, I mean something so big that you could lose the guards in it.

3/4 small cities, about the size of the ones in Oblivion.

A whole lot of small villages with stories to each of them.

More small villages, but when you have something titled "city" I think it should be more than just +-10 NPCs and their houses/stores. So make cities actually large enough to be called cities, but add some villages roughly the size of the cities we've seen in (for example) Oblivion. Vivec in Morrowind was pretty good, that's the size I'd expect when you hear of something referred to as a "city".

Although I spend plenty of time exploring and dungeon delving, I'm really hoping Bethesda fleshes out cities for TES V. Having been introduced to the series with Daggerfall, adventuring could often get very draining and I'd sometimes spend entire real world days just staying in the cities. They were procedural carbon-copies of one another, but I always found a way to entertain myself by visiting the guilds and messing with the townspeople. With climbing and levitating horses, the world was your oyster.

The cities in both Morrowind and Oblivion don't have enough interest about them. I'm not necessarily talking about in the amount of quests or NPCs, but I'd just like more services and little touches. Temples, libraries, and other additional attractions would make cities much more interesting to stay in. I'd like if they had lots of verticality too, like in the small Telvanni settlements.

So you didn't notice that the typical "city" in Oblivion was the same size as soccer field with a castle and a wall around it? Good for you -- I guess you must have been immersed, then.

But the problem isn't really that the world was small -- it's that they tried to make it seem much bigger than it really was, without success. Bethesda needs to stop making in-game "representations" of what Tamriel would look like and rather go for choosing the areas they make better -- like choosing a place that doesn't have large cities, because they're not gonna make large cities anyway.

And you think I drive a Hummer to compensate for something? Until I read that sentence I was willing to believe you were just misinterpreting my post or something, but seeing that you're throwing out inappropriate stuff like that gives me reason to believe you're just to thick to see what I'm really saying.

edit: especially seeing that you actually seem to want the same as me -- a more immersive, less shallow world

The Hummer thing was an off-the-mark joke... I was tired.
Saying Larger Cities or more wilderness could give the devs the wrong impression... because they could, if they wanted to, provide very large cities and very large wilderness, yet it might be large un-interactive and boring.

@Rindill:

All right -- I'll let it pass and we'll drop the duel to death that I had planned for us

And I see that I didn't really explain my opinion very thoroughly in the post you commented -- I didn't explain what I meant by "less is more" and so on because I didn't want the discussion to go in that direction... I simply wanted to ask everyone what they prefer, wilderness or cities. But just so you don't think I'm stupid or anything, I'll explain a bit better what I meant. I didn't mean "give me more just for the sake of more" -- we both know more isn't good if it's not well fleshed out (deep, well crafted, of good quality, etc.) -- I was just stating that Bethesda has already tried making small cities that were supposed to be big, and that they could've made the world itself bigger too. (edit 2: and I want them to try and make a bigger world this time around... but not necessarily stretching over a larger geographical area...)

I hope that's a bit clearer.

edit: and I'll add another option so that (hopefully) everyone's opinion is represented... and I did that now.

I would like maybe 1 or 2 Huge cities, with the rest of the settlements being small towns. And by huge city I don't mean Imperial City or Vivec. Both of those cities seemed to do it wrong. Imperial city had the wealthy outnumbering the poor, which never happens. Vivec didn't even have much class distinction, as there were the wealthy house leaders in the plazas and then the less wealthy merchants.

The cities should be bigger only if it has content as should the wilderness too for that matter. The wilderness should have more wild-life and birds should be flying in the sky and fishes should be swimming in the oceans. A bigger number of animals who wouldn't attack the player should bring the wilderness alive as you explore it. The cities should, as said in another thread, have more activities and that would allow them to grow bigger in a natural way.

How bout a large but believable world, with plenty of large cities and villages. And NONE of the world is copy and pasted and everything is unique. Nothing looks the same (Like it did in oblivion every dungeon was just about the same.)

@Melook

Wow, that's great idea! Can't believe no one's thought of that before

Sorry, mate. You're not the first to think that. In fact, most people who play TES want just that -- which is why that's not the focus of this thread. But doesn't hurt to tell Bethesda one more time, so good of you to mentioned it

Isn't it what all RPG fans want......?

Exactly. And that's why they should play TES V

But yes, everyone wants that, so there's the option: "If you want more of everything, click here / or here"

The things I love about TES games so much are exploration and assassination. I want a wide open world to discover... and roaming citizens to kill in robust cities. I want tons of content, but I don't care about believability at all. Who cares about realism? It's a fantasy game for Pete's sake...

Totally. The game should involve stabbing wooden badgers with butter spreads.

I want both larger cities and more wilderness.

TES2: Daggerfall blew me away with it's huge cities, and I would like to see that return, it was one of my major Morrowind disappointments. But I understand why it didn't happen in Morrowind or Oblivion, I mean, the Nehrim mod have a fairly large city and the framerate is rather poor in there.

And at the same time, I feel the wilderness in Oblivion is too small, Morrowind kinda gets away with it as it's on a holy island and all (so having crypts all over the place isn't that far-fetched). But it doesn't make sense to me that there is a new dungeon and a bunch of monsters every 100 yards, more space and distance are needed to make a more belivable game world, at least for me. I really liked it in Fallout: New Vegas how it's possible to explore more of the game world without actually being attacked.

So yeah, what I want to see are larger cities, more wilderness and safer roads

a mix of small villages and oblivion sized cities... with loads of wilderness with natural cave systems

europe's population in 500 AD was roughly 27.5 million
in 2009 it was 840 million

so large cities are needed for a large population

europe's population grew to 38.5 million in 1000 AD, just 10 million more in 500 year.... population grew because of many reasons but one of the main ones in the introduction of the industrial age

a big no to an industrial age concept for TESV, infact there would be little need for much advancement in technology due to magic

as far as i can remember TESV is believed to be set 150-200 years after TESIV

sometime ago i remember a thread about the lack of population in TESIV... i have never had a problem with the population level, to me it felt right... we are used to an over populated world

uhh... what? 1000 isn't considered "industrial." It's more considered, "older that the idea of a british monarch" or even "before Islam spread to egypt"

sorry i didnt mean the industrial age was between 500-1000... at this time the increase was low at just 10 million

my post wasnt very clear, i should stated that there was a steady increase of population up until the industrial age then the population starts to increase dramatically

from wikipedia

Most notably, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth. In the two centuries following 1800, the world's average per capita income increased over 10-fold, while the world's population increased over 6-fold.

Uhm, Islam was spreading to the Iberian pencsula (you know, Spain) by that time. Your history fail isn't as epic as that other guy though, I could hardly believe my eyes when I read that.

the 11th century was the start of the 'high' middle ages, the population rose dramatically in the tenth century because all the eastern and northern tribes were converted to Christianity and everyone finally stopped killing each other. After the black plague it wasn't until the 1800th's that the European population exceeded that of the 11th century.

The high middle ages is best known from building cathedrals, the rules of chivalry and etiquette.
Elder Scrolls IV already had those things, more or less.

Edit: Egypt was converted to Islam around 650 something btw.

as i have stated before, my original post was poorly written rather than historical inaccuracies

as for population facts...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation

which makes much better sense than i do, lol

[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Poulation-since-1000AD.jpg[/img]

Fewer large cities, but more detail and immersion. And more villages. Besides that, wilderness, but with more interesting locations, not just identical fortress ruins.