Again a reason to have a big map, you actually CAN make large cities without them being door to door, you can place several smaller settlements without them being within earshot from each other and you can actually make farms that look convincingly large.

It's also much harder to maintain a decent level of detail and variety in your map, which seems reason enough NOT to have it for me. I'd much rather have a smaller map that remains interesting to explore than a large one that mostly has large expanses of nothing that are so boring I wouldn't want to set foot in them even if I knew there was a chance I might find a dungeon or something.

But the small size of cities was mostly a concequence of the map being smaller than it realistically would be, and honestly, it worked fine for me. Oblivion's cities may not have been realistically large, but as far as cities in a game go, they worked, if I were to have a problem with them, I'd say it's that they didn't have enough personality or that they weren't populated enough, but the former has nothing to do with their size, and the latter could likely be adressed by going the route most other RPGs use and adding in some nameless, random NPCs who don't have much to say, which would actually be perfectly fine with me, it's not like most of the NPCs in the Elder Scrolls have anything interesting to say anyway. They have dialog, but for the most part, it's so boring that I hardly feel inclined to hear what they say, and it's not like in real life, you feel the need to stop and talk to every single person you see on the street.

Now what Oblivion DID need was more population outside of the city, honestly, most of the farms in the game looked like they might be able to feed their occupants, and maybe could give them a bit left over to sell, but they were neither numerous enough nor big enough for it to be believeable that they could feed the entire province, and the small settlements really seemed far too small to be a believable town or even a village, I mean, the settlement across the bridge from the Imperial City (The name escapes me at the moment.) had only one house and an inn, and the inn even had its own map marker, implying that it's meant to be a separate location that just happened to be right next to the house, that's not a village, that's one man living alone near a big city, when I think of a village, I would at least imagine something like Maar-Gan in Morrowind, not that. I don't expect full realism in the map, I just need enough that while playing the game, it isn't obvious that the setup Bethesda went with is completely implausible.

I don't think we need huge Assassin's Creed size cities - for one thing, it's a completely different game. Most of the buildings are just intended to be climbed on, and only a tiny minority could actually be entered. I would hate to see inaccessible buildings in a TES game, and without them it doesn't make sense to have a huge generic crowd, such as GTA or AC. Imagine walking around Chorrol, but with endless crowds in the streets... it just wouldn't be right. If the cities are to be expanded it has to be done correctly, not just ramming in a load of anonymous NPC's and useless 'buildings.'

I do agree that the game needs far more villages. I'd much rather see the focus on the villages than the towns - as another poster said, 90% of the population lived out of the cities before the Industrial Revolution, and Tamriel (as a very much pre-Industrial environment) should be no different. Even today, for every city you have 10 towns and 100 villages. I'm not suggesting Bethesda attempt anything on that scale, but the number of small settlements should outnumber the larger ones.

What's annoying me is the sheer amount of unused space in towns. For me, it looks like you can stick another 5 or 7 houses in most.
Also, most houses are only inhabited by 1 or 2 NPCs. I find it unbelievable that fewer than 5 people live in a house with 2 floors and about 70 square meters of space, in the ES setting.

I thought both Oblivion and Morrowind were heavily underpopulated, I wouldn't mind having nameless NPCs walking around. It didn't bother me in Mass Effect or Gothic and the whole problem of singling out named NPCs could be solved by adding a bunch of 'duds' in mass, or even better, use name generators. Besides, you can't rely on just having important people walking around to say 'look how detailed our NPCs are'. That achievement kind of looses meaning when there's only 2 or 3 NPC per street and one of them is a generic guard...

It would help if the cities had more than 1 type of merchant in a so called city. Lets say about 2-3 smiths (with more than 1 blacksmith and maybe an apprentice) and another alchemist for those who are not members of mages guild, and more traders in the cities. Same for inns, I don't want 2 inns per cities. there should be like 3-4 or so.

And please add more house in cities with random npc's. We would still be able to interact with them if we get basic topics like "rumors, directions, guilds" and much more.

Oh, and make the cities atleast the size of Imperial City in Oblivion.

I agree with this. It should pay to shop around - the smith on the high street may offer better quality weapons but be very pricey. The smith in the less visited back streets may offer lower quality weapons but a better value for money.

I agree, I just think that in Morrowind they should have adjuncted a city like the Imperial City, and maybe 1 or 2 other cities like Bruma and Chorrol.

Nameless NPCs don't bother me.

But, when each NPC has a unique name, including commoners and bandits, the game gets extra points for attention to detail.

I think, when every NPC has a name, it adds a whole new layer of immersion. So that's my first choice.

But, nameless NPCs don't mean the end of the world, especially if an empty world is the compromise.

And remember that the smallest town in Morrowind had like 7 or 8 people, not including guards, and each NPC had his own house, and they were one-room shacks, not the two story manors that peasants in Cyrodil can, somehow, afford.

Agreed.

Yes! This would make it so much better in terms of trading.

Note: To enhance city life, there should also be other people who trade with merchants, and please make the inns populatiet. I want to see atleast 8-14 people pr inn at night, I don't even know how the inns can run in Oblivion with only 2 people other than the player.

Another thing I'd like to see, and again a larger game map would make more possible, is really large manors and estates.
And I don't mean a single house, I really mean something that look luxurious, take for example the http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/7627/beifongestate.png. That looks like a small village on it's own with a huge garden, big main house and servant quarters.
Imagine finding such places here and there, that place there alone is almost as big as a entire town was in Oblivion.
While you did have noble manors in Oblivion they looked more like just a house in the middle of nowhere, having an actual estate like that would be far more convincing and impressive.

Also I mentioned before, I'd really like castles to look more realistically large, actually having a courtyard and such. I remember a Morrowind mod that added a undead infested castle which really was huge with a big courtyard and several chambers. Things like that are simply missing.


On a side note, personally I wouldn't mind landscape that is more decorative as long as it's done convincing. Plus I mentioned somewhere else before you could have bigger overworld structures as well, imagine a gigantic ruin of which most is above ground and not buried. I gladly think back to the "reaver Citadels" in Soul Reaver 2, they where huge and mostly above ground. I specially remember one, a huge room of pillars which a collapsed roof, the sunlight flooding the room and the pillars partly overgrown looking more like huge stone trees... that is something I'd like to see, not just the dark and cold caves and undergrounds.

Agreed on every aspect of your ideas on cities and structures. :thumbsup:

RE: unnamed NPCs

When you're walking down the street, do you really know everyones name? Would everyone really stop and chat with you? Or is it more likely that people would just ignore you and cary on with their day?

I think the added atmosphere of crowds would outweigh the disadvantage of them not having names. There is still plenty of room for named NPCs who have real lives, real things to say, and real importance in the game.

Agreed. Arguably, having non-named NPCs would make everything less generic, because then they wouldn't have to make a generic rumour for each NPC.

I know that I wouldn't have a problem with unnamed NPCs.

I'd have no problem with nameless NPCs either, however I did suggest a system how "no name" NPCs can be put in the game world and still be part of it.
After all in a country you can have travelers who come and go, it makes no sense really to ALWAYS have the same people around.

However the basic idea was that a NPC can be randomly generated and then remains for a while. See it like this:
The game creates a random NPC, you encounter him, afterwards he remains for 2 more in game weeks, what he does and where he goes is simply simulated. When you encounter him again within that time the timer is reset, he remains 2 more weeks, unless he has a fixed date on which he leaves again like having to catch a ship.

And those random NPCs can actually become permanent residents. For example you encountered that same random NPC several times, enough time so he stayed around for 3 in game months, the game simply makes him a permanent character (saves a new file for him) who may even settle down at some point, like buy a empty house or a permanent room in a hotel.

That would make "nameless" NPCs far less faceless, plus there could be a huge pool of random names to chose from, Dwarf Fortress kinda does that by simply taking words in the game and putting them together (that's how the god Armok was crated, simply from the expressions "Arm (limb) OK (status)"). Here you'd just need a long list of names and it can freely puzzle one together, recurring names are no real problem, after all how many people have you met that share the same name you have?
And if the list is long enough the repeats wouldn't be that often.

No, no, there's a better way to deal with that.

It could be like in Daggerfall, where every NPC has a name, but you don't learn it until they introduce themselves.

There is only a very small variety of names in Daggerfall, though.

Sure thing! And I also liked that you could ask anyone directions to anywhere, but they could not know, only know generally, or know exactly where it was. I think that kind of dialogue matrix would work well again.

That's easy to fix, just put more info in the wonder-namer.

It was neat, yes, but might work a bit less well with voice acting. I personally wouldn't mind the genericness of it, though some people might.

Daniel_Kay: Thats putting too much emphasis on it, I think. I have no idea whether something like that is even possible to implement, much less implement well. I don't think anyone would pay enough attention to one of a hundred guys on the street to care about where he lives. imo, NPCs with randomly generated names (or general titles like "traveler") and a basic wander routine are both effective in adding atmosphere and simple enough to do even with the current AI system.

Irrelevant.

You could have a larger number of unique names than even Morrowind and still do it the Daggerfall way.

Or you could make it random, and have a larger number of random names, either way.

How about this:
If there are 1,000 NPCs in the world, then write 1500 names.
And make sure each race has unique names. I didn't like how everyone in Daggerfall had an elvish first name and an English surname.

Another thing which doesn't help the population of cities in Oblivion is how big families are non-existant, the only people having any relation I could think of were the Breton Twins, Vilena Donton and her sons, and Martin to the Emperor. The fact that people are living alone or with a husband in homes big enough to house multiple people is pretty lame. Make NPCs living alone live in smaller homes (except for the occasional rich guy) and squeeze families into homes that are the current size of Oblivion homes.

Another way to increase the city populations would be to add apartments to the cities. I'm not talking about high-rise multi-story skyscraqers, but rather a building maybe 3 stories high where the generic, unnamed NPCs would go to during the night and live together in rooms, usually 6 of them per room. They would be inaccessible, unless you were a good lock-picker, or killed a resident and got a key. Adding a decent amount of them could boost the population of the cities without necessarily expanding them, sacrificing open-land space.

Good point, there should be lots of lots of apartments, and buildings squeezed in tight against each other inside the city walls.

I'm not a fan of nameless NPCs. No clearer indication that a NPC is unimportant. In NWN 1 & 2 almost every NPC with a name was involved with a quest or ran a shop. I don't see a problem with random generation of names though especially if towns/cities are large enough that only the most OCD players would notice that Bill Bloggs didn't have a home. Add a few guest hostels providing cheap accomodation and it wouldn't be provable anyway.

Aside from the waterfront district, which wasn't heavily populated, there were no "poor" or "working class" districts in the IC. There should heve been several large sections of town beyond the walls of the original Ayleid fortress. The enclose center that we saw in-game could have been occupied primarily by the nobility and upper classes, with the vast majority of the population outside. As it was, the whole place felt nearly empty. The cities in MW had the same problems, but they were supposed to be parts of a recently opened district in a formerly closed or limited region, not the heart of a huge empire.