Am I the only one noticing that in TES games, especially Oblivion, there are a lack of villlages or hamlets?

Granted, you could say the Cyrodiil is supposed to be the Cosmopolitan province, but I felt like a lot of the "cities" like Chorrol and Bruma felt more like towns with a massive chapel and castle thrown along to seal the deal. The only city that was even close to being one was the Imperial City, but the division of the districts, some of which didn't seem to offer any real service like the Arboretum and Prison, really hindered the feeling that you're living in another world.

Morrowind kind of had this problem too. Seyda Neen and Suran are perfect for what they represent. Balmora is kind of good too, but upon learning that this the second biggest city, and the fact that you're there so early in the game, hurt the experience a bit.

The fact that both these games had sooooo much space that was unused and filled with creatures and bandits, adds salt to the wound.

Its not the worst problem of the TES series, but I want to know if anyone feels the same way or has even noticed it.

It felt "right" in Morrowind, however, I agree I don't like the "cities" in Oblivion, but what are you going to do. I'm so used to cities in Assassin's Creed now...

I thought Morrowind's balance of larger/smaller cities was about perfect.

Oblivion could have used a couple more small towns, though it was acceptable too.

My major complaint with both games is the lack of INNS. Oblivion's small towns almost never have a place to stay. Some of morrowind's *medium* size towns lack an inn!

Yes, cities of all kinds in Morrowind and Oblivion are smaller than what's realistic, but it's very difficult to hand design huge cities, and they can get pretty annoying for the player to try to navigate. Especially when they're trying to find a particular shop. I don't think it's worth the effort personally, as long as you have at least one large city, and both Morrowind/Oblivion did.

Its never really bothered me, but bigger cities (like Creed) would be better. However, it should not be done at the expanse of open land, as you seem to suggest. Scale everything proportionally, or at least as close as possible.

For the most part, I agree. Hopefully the cities in TES V will be bigger...Much bigger...

I never noticed this and like it this way, I don't feel like being in NYC.

There's always room for more.

If you want tons of villages, try Daggerfall.

Yep that's what mods are for....

Eh to me in Morrowind, all the NPC's had the same dialogue responses 60% of the time. It didn't feel right to me.And in Assassin's Creed(a totally different genre) the NPC's are only good for killing and blending in with

What does this have to do with NPCs? We are just talking about amount of cities/towns and their sizes.

It never bothered me in Morrowind because Morrowind was supposed to be rather backwater, at least Vvardenfell was, because it was only recently (last 100 years? Last 50?) allowed to be populated with non-temple people.

It bothered me in Oblivion, mainly because the little towns were so far out of the way. I'd preferred if we had some hamlets that were actually decently accessible.

Read the post I qouted in the post of mine you qouted. I was replying to something someone said

Bazz22 is on topic.

One of Oblivion's crushing flaws was an insane lack of variety in the fauna and enemies you encounter in the open. Daedra-wearing Bandits are so prevalent in the world, my character has killed thousands of them.

MW kind of had this problem, but there were so many intriguing storylines and quests that it wasn't that bad of a factor (except for Cliff Racers :cryvaultboy: )

So with more realistic numbers of villages, an increased size of the standard of what defines a city, and more variety in enemies and other NPCs you encounter, I feel like whatever province/ region you're playing in would feel more like it was what it represents/is.

I don't think small towns should have Inns because there likely wouldn't be enough traffic to support the business. In those cases, you should have to butter someone up to get them to let you sleep at their house.

I suppose it would depend on where the town was located. If it was on a decently busy road then a small bed and breakfast could serve, although your idea works well too. You could talk to a kind old lady and let her rent her room out to you.

Oh, and maybe we'd have a freaking actual reason to use speechcraft for once.

Daggerfall had dense cities. Mind you, not population wise. It'd be interesting to see an assassin's creed approach and crowd the cities, mind you, the engine would chug big time. Oblivion has already started with marauders not having legitimate names and Fallout 3 furthered this by populating megaton with Megaton settlers.

It would add a whole new level to finding the right person to talk to. Who knows we could even throw in some perks attached to speechcraft that enable a better chance of asking someone if they know the person you're looking for.

I agree and disagree. If they added crowded cities, NPC's would lose their individual personalities but then again the IC would feel so much more like the freakin' capital of the Empire

Yeah, I know the post you replied to WAS mine.

They don't have much in the way of personalities now. Do you remember the dreamers walking around town in MW? Only one in the game had a name.

True but at least they (in OB) all have homes(the NPC's I mean) and it's not AC where you can only enter a few certain buildings

8D my bad, but I wasn't off topic
Sorry for the X2Post

To turn that around: What good adding more people would really do? If it's even shallower interaction it would only give an ability to kill more people.

I prefer small and focused population over GTA style random people minding their business.

That said I didn't find Oblivion's cities too small or empty. Removing the load zones in IC would have made it a lot better though

City size has to be appropriate to setting. MW was a backwater district recently opened for settlement. It seemed right to me that it lacked large cities and towns. I would've liked a couple more towns the size of Caldera or Suran though and a lot more hamlets and villages full of guar herders, egg miners and farmers. Prior to the late 18th/early 19th century 90% of the population worked on the land in our world.

DF had the cities, towns and villages in abundance but apart from the odd animal wandering around the settlements no sign at all of agriculture.

Cyrodil was hopelessly lacking in farms etc, worse than MW (where at least the Ascadian Isles looked like they could feed a town or too). For the capital of a continent spanning Empire the IC just wasn't convincing. It seemed much smaller and certainly had less services than Vivec.

I don't expect 9 farmers for every other NPC. Total realism would waste a lot of resources but a few more farms that weren't quest connected would've been nice in Cyrodil.

Yeah, Daggerfall is pretty much the only one with actual city sized cities.