No it wouldn't. Infact it would be much more realistic.

Of course, my character should know the name of every person in the entire world. That would make it more realistic, just like in the real world, where you know the name of every person you see before you even speak to them.

I met a lot of people named Bandit in Cyrodiil. I wonder why so many mothers name their children Bandit, when people with that name seem to have a tendency to resort to a life of crime.

It's not about knowing the name of the NPC. Almost every single RPG game lets you instantly know the name of NPCs... it's a standard practice.

It's more about that they have a name, instead of just "Bandit" or "Man"

Named NPCs are more immersive, because it brings the game to life.

It's not just the fact that they are named, it's that they have lives, schedules, homes, items, dogs, Ect. You can see them wake up, go to work at the shop, and then go home to thief own house, with their own story built into the game world. It is MUCH more immersive than just having tons of random NPC's with generic names/lives. Names is only half of it.

You could put a random name generator into GTA but that wouldn't make the thousands of NPC's any more seated in the game world like ES games do.

I guess I have the opposite problem. One of the things in Oblivion which breaks immersion for me most of all is the curiously small population of Cyrodiil. The Imperial City, the capital city of the entire continent, has a smaller population than my street. I don't buy Cyrodiil as a real, living place, because the entire population of the continent is barely enough to fill a single neighborhood in the real world.

I find the cities of GTA far more believable precisely because they are filled with strangers.

I would like to see background NPCs used to give the illusion of a more populous world. I don't even care if they have random names or generic names. I just want to see more NPCs so the word is a bit more credible.

I hope so.
^_^

That's not a good reason to continue doing it. Refuse to improve because it's a standard preactice? :facepalm: If everyone thought like that, the genre would never evolve.

I am fine with named NPCs but i shouldn't just instantly know everyone in town.

NPC schedules is a fine idea for sure but unless i am in a quest which require me to stalk somebody, it's not really that important to me. I would rather see a large city (like the Imperial City and Vivec SHOULD have been) with thousands of generic NPCs who just wander around.

That would be nice, but I would also hope the cities increase in size to realistically accomadate all the nameless wanderers, whether they go anywhere or not. I'm picturing thousands of people in the Imperial City and Vivec, and it would seem too overcrowded with not nearly enough living space.

Anyway, if someone angrily refuses to mention their name, will they be labeled as "stuck-up jerk"?

Ofcause. Yes that would become a little too crowded. :laugh:

Cities like the Imperial City and Vivec should be somewhere between 3 to 10 times larger. Heck even if they where just double the size it would be a tremendous improvement. I don't mind their size really, the problem is the scale. If Bethesda want me to believ that the Imperial City is a metropolis and the capital of the whole empire, it needs to feel like it, both in size and population density. Obviously, it can't have the size of a real metropolis. It has to be scaled down, i just feel they went too far with it. 150 NPCs isn't a metropolis and 5 NPCs isn't a village.




No, they will be dead. :ninja:

But seriously, why do they even need to tell you their name? If you are just asking for directions or rumors (which is the only things you should be able to ask most unknown NPCs about), why is that relevant?

I really don't see why there can't be. There are modders which add NPC's to the game, all they use is a basic name generator. Devs won't have a problem with it.

Unless you'd mean named bandits. In Morrowind all 'bandits' had unique names, in Oblivion they're just 'bandit', 'bandit boss', 'marauder', etc.

Which again dosn't make any sense. How could i possible know the name of some random bandit? the guy just attacked me, he didn't introduce himself first... well alright a few of them actually did, i wouldn't mind seing that again... but you know what i mean.

Number of npc in cities is not limited by names; they are limited by the game engine and hardware, probably 30-40 on screen at once. Fallout 3 did better than Oblivion here, not sure why they did not use names on all in Fallout 3, probably because of fallout tradition.

Fallout is interesting because it shows how much better the graphic/ physic can be than in Oblivion. It also shows some trends in gameplay as that they mostly fixed the level scaling.
I does not suspect it will be much like fallout 3, probably far more like Oblivion in gameplay.

Bandits in Morrowind was not respawning but unique npc. Yes with a name generator you can name random NPC to but find the “bandit” nice for friend/ foe identification.

Yeah respawning is definitely an advantage there. And it separates the normal bandits from people actually important.

While thats true, the team that made Fallout 3 is the team that will be making Skyrim. So it stands to reason things from Fallout 3 well could work their way into Skyrim.

With that said, this was not really an issue in Fallout 3. Yes, there were some generic NPCs from time to time in FO3 but most of the NPCs had names and purpose. It wasn't until Fallout New Vegas, which was not made by Bethesda, that filler or "generic" NPCs became huge. Pretty much every town in NV was filled with generic NPCs and some areas (many of the areas surrounding the strip) only had one or two non-filler NPCs. Also it should be noted that NPCs seemed to lack schedules in NV... something that was also not an issue in FO3.

When it comes to Skyrim, I would like to believe Bethesda will stick with the system from Oblivion in which every NPC is unique with their own dialogue and daily schedule, and nothing from Fallout would seem to indicate Bethesda is moving in a different direction.