I dont know how many times somebody has gone "missing" in Oblivion or Fallout and the NPCs just act like that person has never existed. I think they should react more to when people die like say the guard tries to investigate somehow and people mourn the person if they die or something along those lines.

That's really complicated and would require extensive coding. I don't think the developers have the time to work on something as trivial as this.

I wouldnt call it trivial when people die alot in Oblivion.

All that work for something so insignificant. The player probably wont even care.

People stepping over the corpse of the person they were just talking to 5 seconds earlier without noticing they've dropped dead is "trivial?" :blink:

Alas, the voice acting required for every possible combination of deaths could... quickly spiral out of control. Another argument for having a mixed voice/text system.
Better reactions for *nearby* deaths, though, I fully expect. People dying mid conversation warrants more of a reaction than turning around and talking about mudcrabs to the person next to you.

lol, that was the point I was trying to say. It really breaks the immersion when someone is killed in the middle of the street and they just walk past or they just jump you if they saw you do it.

Yes, if it's just going to be reacting to a death as it occurs, that would be very easy. When someone dies, simply have someone in a certain radius of the killed man cry out "By the Gods! SOMEONE'S BEEN MURDERED!" followed either by guards racing to the scene to investigate if you weren't seen, or guards racing in to arrest you if you were with the witness fleeing in terror (if it was a civilian witness).

Not hard.

Depends on what you mean by "reacting". I'd definitely want to see someone be shocked when a person just drops dead right in front of them from an attack by an invisible force from around the corner (read: my Wood Elf marksman ), but I don't necessarily need people to later on in life talk about that person in a mournful sort of way, visit their grave, try to solve their murder, etc.

I personally would just like to see NPCs maybe cry if their best friend died in front of their eyes or scream or try to help them or something... Something other than the Oblivion-style "Help! Someone's been murdered!" and run off to tell a guard, who comes to the scene and maybe digs around in the deceased person's corpse a bit.

This. Having long-term results with actual changes in the way NPCs act and more complex action on the part of the guards would be impressive (and honestly, would probably be a very promotable feature for the game - I don't know of any game that does anything even close to this), but at least having people notice corpses seems like the bare minimum nowadays.

I was referring to the whole period of mourning if the NPC was familiar with the deceased - I agree that at least a reaction to violence and death is appropriate.

Actually this is not so complicated as it seems its been done for ages look at "Thief" they been doing it in that game since the get go, no long term affect of course but they do react and guards do come running to look and see and search for a time .

This was partially implemented in New Vegas, with guards sometimes reacting when they find one of their comrades dead. Of course, the goldfish memory of the AI causes some issues here - really, how many times are they going to discover the same body?

This sounds great! I don't know why they haven't done this before. :tongue:

Extremely simple fix, have the guards inspect the body and program no NPCs to go near the deads area while the guard is investigating (even if it means the stand completely still for a few minutes).

Then have the guards take the body away so that everything resumes to what it once was.

Nice answer to all those dang bodies laying around forever messin up everything like I hated so bad in other games like Fallout3/mod/mothershipZeta/command deck