I'm hoping we see more stock NPC's populating the world in Skyrim. In Oblivion, the stock characters were limited to hostiles and guards mostly, "Bandit," "Marauder," "Palace Guard," etc.

Even though they aren't named, I don't have a problem with it. I like that they are able to respawn if you kill all the guards in town. Whether that is a problem for immersion, I don't care. But I'd like to see some stock NPC's in towns, taverns and other non-hostile oriented persons.

Actually this is kind of a minor issue. But if I go on a rampage in a town somewhere, I want the game to spawn replacement NPC's to repopulate the area. I don't mean bringing back NPC's that have died, but have system of auto-naming and creating NPC's that will "move in" when there are vacant buildings.

It would be nice to have a built-in name generator as well, for character creation as well as the auto-spawning of NPC's.

I think this might be cool in the context of the new economy dynamic hinted at by Beth. NPC's that are alive could migrate to other cities in the economy gets really bad (which would be a cool feature), and the number and types of NPC's spawned should reflect the local economy. I just hate seeing ghost towns.

So, tl;dr:

The local economy determines a population of equilibrium and influence NPC behavior. If economy is low compared to nearby regions, local NPC's will pack up and move to the more prosperous regions. If nearby regions are poor compared to the local economy, the opposite should occur. The NPC residents of the foreign regions should migrate to the local area.

If there are too few NPC's to actually simulate this kind of migration (say the PC went on a killing spree ), the game should auto-generate NPC's, auto-name them and equip them with clothes/gold/items that reflect their economic class.

I hope the point got across. What do ya think?

Yes, despite popular belief, Morrowind had a lot of "Stock" and "Generic" NPC's as well, but they had considerably more dialog because, well, text allows you to more flexible really.

Fallout 3 had a pretty good balance of Personality:Filler, and while it only breeds stagnation to say "That's good enough" it would be a good jump-off point in terms of "What do we NEED to do" as opposed to "What CAN we do?"

Anywho, what I don't want to see, is Grand Theft Auto/Red Dead Redemption type ratios here, which actually isn't a ratio at all, since I'm pretty sure the NPC's in the game are actually procedurally generated as you approach the general area they should be, which isn't exactly bad for strictly filler-type NPC's, there just needs to be a fairly sizable number to balance that out to give the world an overall sense of persistence.

Sounds like a good idea. In the trailer we see in a small village characters walking around and acting casual. I hope cities, towns, and villages aren't just populated by a handful of guards and some civilians walking the streets waiting to be talked to. Instead market districts for example, should be full of people and activity during the day and I should be able to stand in the center and not have every NPC that passes close freeze look at me and assume the PC wants to talk, just carry about their business unless spoken to. I know it can't be like the amount of NPC's walking the streets in Assassin's Creed, but like the OP said, more NPC's and lively towns would be nice.

Some generic NPCs would be good. Just have a list of names to randomly pull from when the NPCs respawn. I mean, if each npc isn't going to have unique dialog anyway, why not? It would make me feel less bad about killing some random person.

If it means having generic NPC's without names then no thank you. I don't want to see "Skyrim Villager".

I actually don't mind that, but I think a random name generator would be simple enough to implement. And even than, there are still Guards, Bandits, etc. that don't have names.

Should guards and bandits have names? Or is there a good reason for keeping them nameless?

Guards could have names, but bandits and such are just fodder for the player and would be pointless naming NPC's that won't be cared about other then "are they dead yet?".

I don't know about that. Bandits in Morrowind had names, and I thought it made them seem more like actual people. Like maybe they had a family somewhere. Still, if bandits are as common in Skyrim as they were in Cyrodiil, there's going to be enough of them and enough named types of them that individual names won't be necessary.

Generic NPCs need names, and I think guards benefit greatly from names. Makes me almost feel guilty about slaughtering them.

I heard that the Radient A.I. Will repopulate NPC's with 'relatives' if they die. But I would love to see NPC's Like 'Traveler', 'Roaming Trader' and stuff, for the character that want's to make a living as a bandit. That would be NEAT!

Maybe have them as backups, yeah. But I don't want ANY stock NPCs in the towns apart from Town Guards, as they take all life and character out of the game, or atleast the towns and settlements. When an NPC dies, sure, add some generic NPCs to take their place. But don't make it like it was in Fallout.

I've been playing Oblivion for a while now with Tamriel NPCs Revamped and Banansplits Better Cities mods.

Giving all these NPCs names and unique, more realistic faces has had a huge impact on my enjoyment of the game, even if they are just "generic" NPCs without any special dialogue. Definitely makes all the cities feel more vibrant and alive. Even all the imperial guard patrols on the various roads have names now.

I don't think so, but I could be wrong. I just heard that relatives take the place of an NPC if they own a shop or give out a quest. As in the relative is always there in the game, but until the NPC they're related to dies, they don't do anything major. :shrug:
Could definitely be wrong.

This is along the lines of what I thought Todd meant.