For anyone unfamiliar with how Spore shares user-generated content with other players, the idea is that your creations are automatically uploaded and included in other players' games to add more diversity to the world than a single group of designers could ever have the time to give you. I never played enough Spore to see if this really panned out, but I remember the pre-release hype and the coolness of the idea stuck with me.

Could a version of this be implemented in Skyrim?

It needn't necessarily be done automatically, you could upload a version of your character when you felt it was presentable (choice of clothes, gear etc) and have it available in the official database.

Radiant could then place them appropriately in other player's games:

If the character were advanced in a particular guild you might find them training in their guild-hall. You might come across a Ranger's camp out in the wilds. You might meet them as a particularly tough barbarian in the arena. Or imagine if there were mercenaries for hire at the fighter's guild (hireable companions).

I was reading a post by another member bemoaning the possibility of countless NPCs with names like "traveler" or "merchant" on the roads, harnessing the creativity of all the other players is a perfect solution to this!

Imagine logging on to your account to see how many people had hired/killed/traded with your character, they might even develop their own fanbase. And there is something cool about knowing that other adventurers might meet your character on the road out there, even match blades with them. The more customisable our gear/character generation can be in Skyrim, the more effective a mechanic such as this would be.

Obviously they could not all be Dragonborn.

All this is achieved with mods.

It's a nice idea, but I don't want to be walking down the street to suddenly be confronted by herpderp-orrsum-guy and his vibrant green hairstyle.

Or come across some random whose name is Dovahkiin... I feel that would annoy me. It is a nice concept but I think that it would be mostly an immersion breaker.

Well...I really like the idea...I truly do...it would be great, BUT (you knew it was coming) the problem with that would be that it would have to be dynamic and automatic to not lose the immersion, also the character name would have to get a random name added to it because you never know what someone would name there character, for instance words that can't be posted on these forums. That aside bethesda would need an arm to control it and it would be unnecessary cost. So in the end it's likely not practical and won't be done.

Also, what about the fact that these new people won't have houses and such?? Nice idea but not really going to work.

No thanks, Bethesda needs to move away from generic NPCs.

I can now see why console gamers would get so annoyed by hearing that all the time. Seriously, I prefer Oblivion on the PC, but the console gamers are missing out, so it would anger many people and Beth would lose tons of customers if they decided to leave it all up to modders. There's an original game for a reason, you know.

I think you have misunderstanded me. What I mean is that integrating a NPC in another player's game, is very easy with a mod, while the integration level to do this without mods requires more complex coding. They should instead make posible to use mods in consoles.

I agree, the biggest problem would be lore-unfriendly names, but perhaps this could be addressed with a community endorsemant/veto system? What I'm suggesting would be integrated with some kind of website with player profiles, stats and forums.

It is alot to hope for... but then so was Elder Scrolls V!

I approve of this :nod:

Edit: Perhaps this would indeed be more suited for the arena, to keep things interested after the main boss, you could fight other people's characters with a random (lore firendly) name stuck on them.