I thought the population density in Morrowind and Oblivion was a little low. I expected the capital of the Empire to be more...crowded. Maybe not Assassin's Creed style, but still, those big houses and those imposing streets seem to me rather deserted. The roads are pretty deserted too: no trade, no group activities, no ceremonials, no celebrations. Of course I do like that every NPC has a name, an occupation and many of them own a house. Since Oblivion they started moving, sleeping, eating and wandering pointlessly. This is likely to be pushed further in Skyrim with the professions and the (hopefully) improved Radiant a.i.

My question to you is how many NPCs would you like in Skyrim, knowing that the more they add, the less backstory and activity scripts each of them will have? We do know the map of Skyrim is about the same size as Oblivion, so let's take Cyrodiil as a reference. Do you want more "johndoed" population so as to allow some believable crowd activity (ceremonials, skirmishes, celebrations, hunting) or do you want every single individual to have a very detailed life, sacrificing the "crowd" factor?

It seems to have been fixed in Skyrim (watch gameplay trailer for glimphses of cities filled with all kinds of people).

Meh, I never really had a problem with the population size in Morrowind or Oblivion. The way I see it, both gameworlds are incredibly tiny, scaled down versions of what they should be... so it makes sense for the population to be scaled down as well.

More people visible than in Oblivion
It can be done partly through improving the AI and having more activities taking place on the streets (eg markets rather than just shops) so it needn't mean a massive increase in the number of people

Towns are fine imo, a few more people on the roads wouldn't go amiss though, and I do not mean guards.

I want at least the same depth as oblivion, hopefully improved. I like that each person has a bed/home and some sort of story or reason for existence. If they can keep or improve on this depth and add even more NPCs, I am very happy

Just towns.. Theres no such thing in the trailer as "cities filled with all kinds of people". Dont spread lies.

Nicely said.

1) The houses in the ImpCity should have had much more population.

2) They already made a step in the direction of making some of the npc's less important (they just say a line instead of opening dialogue) so I guess they are going towards more crowded cities with more population and less important figures.

3) The reason I want more crowd is because some events, like the ones you mentioned, need many npc's at once. For instance, the "crowd" cheering after Bruma battle was lame. You need 70-80 npc's to pull off a crowd. The whole Bruma I doubt it had 80 npc's.

So I vote 2xOblivion. For now.

2xOblivion.

That would be just perfect.

A lot more people on the roads is a must. So, I would say more than Oblivion but not as much as 2x. :shrug:

Definitely more than Oblivion. They can't put too much characterization in the npcs anyway. 1000 npcs with distinct backstory, wishful thinking. So my wish is about 3000 npcs (for a map size of Oblivion) of which 2000 are fillers. The game would have an invisible counter to keep track of the total population, and each time a filler npc dies somewhere, another one with a random generated name passes the border and takes his/her place. So we could have believable cities, busy markets, dockers loading ships, religious processions, clan armies passing by and such.

They won't be really that different than in Oblivion, I think. Considering the new dialogue system that doesn't stop time etc. it sounds like it will be the same amount of dialogue, but instead of just having the option "Rumors" as a dialogue options to choose when engaging a conversation with some nobody, you "click" them several times to get more dialogue. I might be wrong but that's how I understood it.

I don't think the mass murderers would approve.

seeing some factions like the companions escorting a merchant caravan would be pretty sweet, seeing more happening around you.

QFT

I vote Oblivion x 4. They don't have to be all important, but in a world this big you need numbers too for the atmosphere. Cyrodiil felt empty.

Would be awesome to put in certain events that society revolves around in game.
Perhaps some people hunt for food every 3 days, every 7 days everyone in town hits the taverns to bring in the weekend, funerals? The list goes on and on. Little touches like this that you don't notice until you are several weeks into the game that there is some type of ongoing culture around you.

They wouldnt aprove of having more people to kill? I like to play the murderer type in these sort of games but I was always put off doing it in Oblivion because if I went a murder spree sooner or later the game would feel empty of NPCs. You can only break into someones house and murder them so many times in Oblivion.

I would [censored] LOVE THAT.

I liked the population density in Morrowind because it was a kind of "frontier" setting. It worked with the back story. Oblivion did feel on the empty side though. I think however because of the setting has changed once more and we're in Skyrim, I don't think it should be too high simply by virtue of the fact that Skyrim is by no means an easy or nice place to live. That and the Nords are a warrior race. These two factors coupled with the fact that there is a civil war going on the population is bound to be on the low side. That is, as long as we're going by the overall back story we've been given.

after playing with mods like MCA and the oblivion version there is no way i want them to that sparse again. it mostly depends how on many NPCs the consoles can draw at a time since they require more resources than pretty much anything else.

Aye I always wondered how the empire fielded such might legions when there would have been lucky to be 1000 citzens in cyrodil.

I want more NPCs for busy cities, busy farms, busy roads, busy battlefields and open air markets. I reckon Oblivion x3 would be satisfactory. I do care about deep back stories for some of the characters, but there is no way on Earth they could make 5000 different stories for 5000 NPCs so yeah, add some generic NPCs when/where needed to simulate crowds.

more people than in oblivion but depth to i hated fallout when i couldnt talk to people

Personally, the only way I'd want more NPCs at the expense of many of them having substance would be if there were at least a bunch more actual detailed characters than Oblivion.

Personally, I'd prefer a bit more than Oblivion for Skyrim, but I'd also prefer more character depth than Oblivion had. If there were too many NPCs that only had one line of dialogue it wouldn't really have that "Elder Scrolls" feel to me.

of course there are those npcs that tell you a little too much ( we all know who im talking about)