Compared to most single player RPGs, especially in this generation, skyrim actually has a lot of people.

Yeah if you play for 60-100 hours you'll see a lot of the same people, but notice the hundreds of unique character models and dialogue exclusive to each one.

Not to mention the detail made in their schedules, ever tried following a person throughout their day? they do some interesting stuff

I wont lie; i would definately enjoy a much more populated Tamriel, but honestly if the lack of people is that much of a problem for you heres a tip...

STOP PLAYING IT!!


Obviously this isnt your kind of game if such a small part of the game is such a big issue
i mean FFS, skyrim isnt a [censored] SIM. its an RPG. Appreciate the amount of holds and people that are there to begin with.

Name me a game bigger than Skyrim in this generation.

and all games are scaled. It would be impossible to try to create completely realistic civilizations on whole continents without doing so, and would probably become so massive that you whiners would probably [censored] about it having too many people and too much distance between towns.

Well, if we're talking population alone (of named NPCs), and only this generation of consoles, then, Oblivion. I don't know about other games, but if we go back one generation and include Morrowind, that had over 4 times the number.

I keep hoping the scaling won't be so bad with the next game....

But there are a few constraints, mainly making 10,000,000 individuals with their own wants needs etc... although I guess an automated system could be made to churn those out.

The other would be space, Daggerfall did it, with a download file larger than most PCs came with at the time. They could do it today, but not while also sporting top notch graphics.

well im not sure on oblivion, but id say they're roughly the same size with roughly the same amount of towns.

Either way, all you listed was TES games, which also had larger amounts of NPCs but more errors, and the NPCs seemed less unique.

In any game when you add more detail you have to take away some of the bulk

Wait, so when I've cleared out a bandit hide-out, I've killed over a hundred people, not just 5-6? OH God, I've killed thousand of people in the few months since I arrived in Skyrim?!

THE HORROR!! THE BLOOD!! IT WON'T WAS OFF!! WHY WON'T THE BLOOD WASH OFF!!

Daggerfall was a DOS game with simple models and graphics, not to mention very repetitive models.

So what you're saying is you like a million generic people over a few hundred highly detailed ones..

Mind you, this is an RPG where people matter for nothing more than exp, info, and stuff

OMG, you just enlightened me!

I used to think Skyrim is a world with population of 200 until I take a..

No, there are fewer towns. There are only 5 cities roughly the size of (in some respects, smaller than) the Oblivion ones, rather than 7, there is no massive city like the Imperial City at all, there are 3 cities about half the size of an Oblivion city (and without the unique architecture), and 7 other towns/villages with the same average size as the 10 villages in Oblivion. I counted the NPCs on the page on UESP, which was missing the orc strongholds and a few farms, but that's it, and got about 530. Oblivion has about 850 NPCs. MW has 2500.

NPCs by count

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Category:Morrowind-NPCs
Morrowind - 1,195

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Category:Oblivion-NPCs
Oblivion - 992

As for Skyrim, no editor to determine yet. This would count named, and generic NPCs. However this counts them by name so BANDIT, would be one NPC, not the 100s of bandits in the game. I think its fair enough to see, while Morrowind has the most unique NPC ids here, the loss of NPCs in Oblivion/Skyrim could easily be contested with the integration of voice acting and the AI/dynamacy improvements in Oblivion/Skyrim.

Nevermind, this is the named NPC list only.

so every TES game should be bigger and have more regardless of what providence it takes place in?

isn't cyrodiil bigger than skyrim in the first place?

and im pretty sure the imperial city is meant to be as huge as it is. because its the IMPERIAL CITY
Skyrim is going to be more secluded from people because its a colder and more dangerous region.

And to be honest when i play a TES games i rarely go to a town other than to sell and rest. so why does it matter? you should be more concerned with the amount of dungeons in the game(which is a lot) and the vast array of quests there is to do. Besides the MQ i have yet to do the same quest twice on any of my characters

like i said before, if you care about population so much maybe you're looking for a SIM or a RTS or some [censored] like that

Never played a TES game before, although i've been playing PC games for 30 years or so (yeah i know, you'd think i would sleep sometimes) but I think Skyrim is just epic. It's pretty, it's interesting, and it blows pretty much every other comparitive game out of the water.

One thing i think it really has in common with most any other game is the sack of whiney emo's who are not happy with anything that is not EXACTLY conforming to their expectations when they read the pre-release hype. This is a great game, it's fun, it's keeping me interested in playing it, it's got some things that could be done better but i have to assume that those things were offered up as sacrifices to the altar of "Relative Importance" when the publisher started reaching for the whip.

I know it's not as broad as Morrowwind and that lots of the content of previous TES games has been snipped out of Skyrim, I recognise the many complaints might have a good portion of fair comment when seen from a certain position but has it occured to any of you die hard RPGers that maybe you're not the target market anymore? True dyed in the wool gamers were always a minority, which is why games companies always limped financially from development to development. Now they have found a world of non-gaming game players, the general public, who play RPGs on consoles and the world's wallets are opening up to games developers. Face it, the market where the old dice and pencil gamers were the core of an RPG developer's market are long gone. The good thing about this is that companies like Bethesda have the cash to keep producing games, unlike so many developers who folded and died halfway through producing something i would have given a bollock to play.

Yes, more npc's in Morrowind. And how much voice-acting?

Yes more npc's in Oblivion.. But how unique was most of them? not at all, many was the same.

How many of the npc's in Skyrim has the same dialog? except for the guards.

Sometimes less is more. I would not want some standard npc's as fillout only so it would be more people. And besides, Skyrim is smaller then Cyrodil. Much smaller.
Much wining over so little. You'll get your generatic npc's when the CS is out. Have patience.

Daggerfall featured a landmass half the size of great britain for players to play on, as well as the most NPCs in any TES game



http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_II:_Daggerfall

A limited array of building blocks were used to construct the towns and dungeons, causing some reviewers to complain about the game's monotony. In 2002, Morrowind, the third game in the series, responded to this issue with a smaller, more detailed world with unique-looking cities and NPCs with greater individuality.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is 0.01% the size of Daggerfall, but it should be noted most of Daggerfall's terrain was randomly generated. Vvardenfell, the explorable part of the province of Morrowind in the third game has 6 square miles. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has approximately 16 square miles to explore. In Daggerfall, there are 750,000+ non-player characters (NPCs) for the player to interact with, compared to the count of around 1000 NPCs found in Morrowind and Oblivion. It should be pointed out that the geography and the characters in these later games are much more detailed.

this has continued to be the case in each new TES game

Smaller, more detailed worlds with more and more unique NPCs and atmosphere
i didnt really get immersed into the games until oblivion.

the visual upgrades from morrowind made me enjoy the game much more than before.

and when i play skyrim with my turtle beaches on; the visuals and audio are so good that sometimes it feels like im in the game
i wouldnt trade that for some more annoying villagers to pester me

What is the point of a forum then?



Good points here, I perfectly agree.

They could do a better job of convincing you. It's not good when the scaling borders on silly. It's all about creating a believable illusion.

Magnets don't do work they only provide direction :wink_smile:

Yes.