This is something of another design philosophy question.

If you tallied up ALL of the NPCs that you encounter in Skyrim, it feels like about half of that entire population are labeled as "Bandits". Economically speaking, anything beyond 20% of the population -- actually closer to 5-10% -- engaged in banditry as a full-time occupation would pretty much guarantee that Commerce would get crippled. The Skyrim Bandit groups number from 3-20, and the merchants that travel between cities would have to guard against the larger number under ALL circumstances. Guards cost money and their wages cut directly into the merchant's profit margin. Worse, it seems that bandits generally would not be content to just collect a "toll" and leave the merchant free to continue on his way. Skyrim bandits seem to generally prefer to _kill_ merchants. Therefore merchants are literally putting their lives on the line just to transport goods from one city to another. And the odds do NOT favor them surviving the trip unmolested.

What margin of Profit would be required to justify taking that kind of risk? Anything less than "fabulously wealthy" wouldn't seem to be worth the risk of making such trips repeatedly. That means that merchants really should be charging more than what the vast majority of Skyrimmers could afford. Insufficient customers at a destination means less motivation for merchants to be merchants. Fewer goods of less variety would inflate prices, leaving locals with hardly anything to survive on. Goods would have to be nearly 100% locally produced, with negligible access to foreign goods. That leads to a stagnant local Economy.

From the bandit side of the equation, just what can they be doing with plundered goods? Wealth must be spent/spendable to actually be worth anything. Sitting on a pile of coins doesn't feed the belly. But if a bandit tries to go into town to sell his ill-gotten gains, he runs the risk of being recognized as a bandit. Incarceration or death would be what he risks. So that leaves the bandits to exchange stolen goods between the members of their own bandit band. Again, a stagnant Economy.

Notice how nearly all communities have guards. If the Economy of a town is threatened by the depredations of nearby bandits, what is it that nearly all communities do? They form posses and go hunt down those bandits. And then usually execute them in such a gory fashion as to "send a message" to any other would-be bandits. That tends to push bandit activities out to the hinterlands, far, far from any community boasting a guard contingent. This posse element is something that is clearly missing in Skyrim.

The balance between risk to merchants from bandits and risk to bandits from guard patrols is what has been overlooked. Both merchants and bandits MUST perceive an adequate reward to warrant the risk that they take by pursuing their chosen professions. Historically, that balance is what tended to hold down the percentage of the population that engage in banditry.

More bandits give the player something to do, it's more of a gameplay reason than a story reason.

Likewise in Oblivion, if the guards there were competent then we won't have anything to do.

You have to remember that Skyrim is a fantasy game, not real life. As such logic and statistics tend to go out the window where the game is concerned.

This too, it's a high fantasy setting, real life logic does not apply.

Skyrim has a much worse bear problem.

Very true and don't get me started on the wolf population!

Gameplay and story segregation, dude. Also bandits are known to raid towns and farms. That solves the food problem.

Also this. [censored] them.

Wolves aren't a threat though and their howl has been muted since a few patches back...that bear roar though, I hear it in my dreams

Notice Bandits are setting up shop hitting caravans along the road (Pinewatch), and also occupying old Legion Forts. The land is in the midst of a Civil War - plenty of opportunity not only to gain loot from profiteers and supply caravans for both sides, but also a chance to take advantage of the chaos to carve out a small kingdom of their own.

Skyrim's mass Bandit population - compared to Oblivion or even Morrowind - is more due to the situation the province finds itself in.

Not to mention that you don't "see" a fair bit of the population of most cities. It was the same in Oblivion. Do you really think the Capital of the Realm would have a population of around 100??

Oblivion had a deadric armor and weapon problem. Morrowind had a flying dinosaur problem daggerfall and arena.....I haven't played those games so I can't say oh and skyrim has a bigger flying dinosaur problem.

Been too long since we had a good bandit raid.

No kidding, rabid murder bears everywhere. Where's the murder bear born when you need him? Damn lazy [censored]

But every game needs an enemy group you can slaughter without feeling bad about it

So glad I got the friendly creatures mod.

But that sort of accentuates the LARGE percentage of bandits in the population. If each NPC is representative of just 1 in 100 of the population, then the percentage of bandits remains the same. That is, half the population is bandits and half is victimized by the bandits.

As for the Fantasy or High Fantasy aspect of the game, that rationale isn't one whit different from "It's just a game" argument. Fantasy just means, "Magic works." Similar to Science Fiction being equal to "Futuristic where there are a lot of yet-to-be created tech items available." What makes a game world investing is that after the Givens of Magic or advanced tech, the world looks functional. That is, "realistic", if you disregard those magical or science fiction elements. Realism hinges on events and people behaving in a believable and logical manner. Like, "What goes up must come down", cause-and-effect relationships. (Though I'm sure some Magic spell or anti-grav device might negate the gravity of the situation. 8^D ) Deliberately diverging from realistic and logical undermines the immersive quality of the game. What remains would be much more akin to Action streetfighting type games where the ONLY focus of the game is the primary activity.

All that is required to make even a Fantasy game more "realistic" is for the developers to do some roleplaying of their own. Such as, "If I'm the Jarl and there are lots of bandits operating in my hold, what would I do about it?" Bethesda was actually pretty good about that, mostly.

Somewhere in the game, a civilian wailed like, "What good is it to protect the city if everyone dies from neglect?" (I think that was in Windhelm.) Just guarding the city proper really wouldn't be adequate to the needs of the hold. Sure there's a civil war going on, but what good is winning the war if the province is destroyed in the process? Somehow, the jarls would have to try to do both.

Given the HUGE number of quests scripted into the game, nine more for the jarls combating banditry would have been a drop in the bucket.

So true! Screw them!

^This. Daggerfall had a serious undead and endlesly spawning guard problem.

The Khajiit merchant caravans have the right idea. They are more than capable of protecting themselves from a typical bandit ambush as they travel Skyrim.

I was on the road to Dawnstar last night, with a low-level character, and came upon one of those groups of Imperials escorting a prisoner. Decided to follow along for a while, and let them deal with the wildlife. As we approached Fort Fellhammer, the bandits there started sniping from the walls. The group of four, including the prisoner, took off on the run, attacked the fort, and quickly killed off all the bandits on the outside of the buildings. Then they calmly marched back to the road, where all but one soldier were killed by a group of spiders.

The spiders are tougher than the bandits, and the bandits are stupid. You need a lot of bandits, just to keep the population from crashing.

If I had to make a guess outside of "we need people for the player to fight", part of this problem is that Skyrim is just too damn small.

For instance, consider the loading screen with the Sabre Cat. It says that those creatures attack people who stray from the roads and go into the wilds. Yet, walk for maybe a minute away from a road and a cat is attacking you.

The world is hilariously compressed down. In theory, everything is supposed to be spread out more - when you think about it, the Bandits are in the hinterlands, it's just that Skyrim is scaled down so damn much that everything is really close together.

And doesn't that perception make the game feel that much more UNreal? Seriously stupid and incompetent NPCs. One would imagine that they would at least have a vague understanding of their own incompetence. As in, "I'm really not cut out to be a bandit. If I try my hand at that, I would most likely just get myself killed." Granted, being a bandit isn't really such a great career move. In Real Life, most bandits and pirates take up their roles primarily because their lives lack options. As in, most people living comfortable lives in the suburbs for the opportunity to rough it in the wilds, putting their lives at risk by murdering and thieving until some Government patrol wipes them out. Most have gotten to the stage of "What have I got to lose?" before taking the plunge. Granted there is a very small percentage that don't fit that demographic. Most of them are bored thrillseekers, or else sociopathic individuals looking for ways to vent their homicidal tendencies. But across the entire population, we're looking at a small percentage of a small percentage.

Then again, TES like every other game out there fails to account for a VERY real concern: self-preservation. Characters never seem to take into account that "Doing this may very well get me killed." For people with nothing to lose but a life of misery, death may not be a deterrent. But the vast majority of people cling to Life, even when most of their lives are considerably less than ideal.

Skyrim does have a bandit problem. That problem is that bandits are weak.

Right! I believe that the game would greatly benefit if most bandits were made notably more competent AND their numbers were reduced by about 75%. (For things to combat, just increase the variety and numbers of wildlife to replace the removed bandits.)