Hello, today I was browsing UESP and found a page called 'Demographics:Morrowind', and just out of curiosity I typed in 'Demographics:Skyrim' to compare. This is what I found,

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Demographics

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Demographics

Basically, the graphs provided here show the difference populations of each town, settlement, and city of Morrowind, and each 'city' in Skyrim. And it kind of goes to prove the point that Skyrim seems empty, and devoid compared to Morrowind. Not only do NPC's say less things, there are less NPC's. To give some context, Morrowind's largest city - Vivec contains more people than Solitude, Riften, Whiterun, and Markarth combined. Both graphs (appropriately, I think) include guards in their numbers.

So, I just thought this was really interesting and decided to share.

More evidence for Morrowind's supremacy! Good find.

Wow that's a pretty big difference. I've thought that skyrim feels somewhat empty too.
And for those who want to know, here's oblivion's demographics (this doesnt include gaurds.)
http://uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Demographics

That's what happens when AI is bumped up, the more NPC's having to make decisions means less can be in the game.

And you have ot remember, Morrowind runs on a original Xbox, Skyrim only runs on a 360, the power just isnt there for complex NPCs like it has, so the amount have to be cut.

It's funny, because people complain that Morrowind cities feel empty. Mods that deal with correcting that, if they're all used together, probably increase the NPC population three fold.

Thing is, Morrowind cities really wouldn't look barren at all if most of their citizens were walking around doing stuff instead of standing around inside their houses.


Wait, what?

Are you saying that the successor to the original Xbox is actually weaker than it, processing-wise? WTF?

This is kind of a fallacy.

Most NPC's wander in circles at all day long, and then are scripted (okay...they 'think') to go to bed before waking up at 8 AM to go stand around all day. And of course they're ready to deliver their one-liner at any time Been to the Cloud District lately? Oh! What am I saying...

Frankly Morrowind is more realistic even in this sense. Sure NPC's are kind of limited to their own little world, either in their house or whatever...though in my mind I kind of 'abstract' their lives as going on whenever I'm not there - it fits with Morrowind, which also abstracts your character 'missing' their attacks, or failing at 'Admire'. But still, at least in Morrowind I can walk up to virtually any NPC and ask them a ton of different things. Of course a lot of them will tell me the exact same thing, word for word, but you only notice if you run around purposely talking to everyone about the same thing. Even then, this isn't very unrealistic. If I go up to ten butchers and ask them 'Describe your trade', how many different ways are there to say 'I cut meat'?

You'd be surprised how much the 'walking in a circle' can cost to the CPU. The NPCs in Morrowind are nearly completely still, this means that they aren't constantly checking if they should move, looking at the pathgrid to find a way to thier next location, checking if they should instead be doing something else. Don't even try playing up Morrowind's AI as a 'better' aspect, it isnt.....Morrowind's AI does next to nothing, and Oblivion's and Skyrim's AI is one of the few things that in my opinion greatly improved over Morrowind.


Of course not, but look at it this way, the original xbox cant handle much AI at all, the power inst there.....the 360 is only 5 years older then the original xbox......is it any wonder that the power still isnt there. Like graphics, the console hardware really holds back the developers on what they can do with AI.

I don't dispute what you're saying in terms of CPU cost.

But, was there really much added? In Morrowind NPC's are mainly stationary, though guards and many (particularly outdoor) NPC's do walk around a little bit. In Oblivion and Skyrim NPC's still walk in circles, and do very basic actions, like lying in a bed, or eating an apple which is kind of cool...but I think that so much was sacrificed to get this very small improvement. In the same way that full voice acting cheapened and lessened the amount and quality of quests, factions, and interactions.

I can't help but notice the Morrowind demographics page lacks a table, and also mentions every single settlement, while the ones for Oblivion and Skyrim only refer to the county/hold capitals.

Do you mean the 6 or 7 small towns with around 5 NPC's each?

Well, I'll say this as it concerns NPC behavior: You can attach all kinds of different animations and set them up as Idle, so that the NPC does them whenever they're not walking around, which is easy enough to make very seldom. Plenty of Morrowind mods do this. I rather doubt the method eats up as much CPU power as an actual schedule of actions set up through scripting, since it's based on set percentages. There's no checking necessary, I believe.

I'm not saying this is more advanced, it's not. But as far as I know, it does put less strain on the CPU, and is effective enough at maintaining the illusion that is NPC "life".

Oblivion and Skyrim NPCs don't just "walk in circles." They have fairly complex daily, weekly and even monthly schedules. Some NPCs travel all over the map. As da mage says, all of this extra activity uses up processing power. AI routines use up more CPU cycles than almost anything else in an Elder Scrolls game.

A lot of them do, actually. That one Redguard in Whiterun comes to mind. Not to mention all of the barkeeps who stay glued in one spot 24/7. I think a lot of Skyrim's NPCs actually have less complex routines than Oblivion's.

Yes, they might....but they still do all the same processing about what they are supposed to be doing as someone travelling the map. As someone who has been studying this field, AI computation is just as expensive as graphics processing....only instead of having a dedicated card for it, the CPU has to do all the grunt work along with running the rest of the show. Hence why most AI in games is pretty [censored].

I'll have to admit I was actually thinking mainly of Oblivion NPCs when I wrote that post (in fact I wrote "Oblivion NPCs don't just walk around in circles" and added "and Skyrim" later). I think I have to agree with you about Skyrim's AI: it does seem more primitive to me too (or else it's just my imagination). There are even times when Skyrim's NPC behavior reminds me more of Morrowind's NPC behavior than Oblivion's NPC behavior. So, on second thought, I'm going to strike "and Skyrim" out, because I think that what I wrote is more applicable to Oblivion.

It didn't bother me at all when I was playing Skyrim. Heck, I didn't even think about it until this topic came up... though I doubt it will ever matter. I hardly take any notice of half the NPCs in Morrowind, because most of them are there just to fill the space and nothing more (not too different from those nameless NPCs in Fallout).

I see it as a quality over quantity thing. Yes, Morrowind has more NPCs but most of them just say the same things as everyone else. Heck, some of them never even move. Every NPC in Skyrim has a reason for being there. Almost everyone is involved in a quest or quests in one way or another. They all have unique, distinct personalities and they all tie into each other within their respective cities. They interact and respond to each other in a way that simply can't be found in any other Elder Scrolls game. As for the "empty" feeling, I've never felt it once in my time with Skyrim.

The thing make makes me truly sad on that graph is that there is a massive lack of Argonians in Skyrim, compared to the Morrowind and Oblivion chart. Bethesda Y U NO LOVE LIZARDS