The seemingly decreasing size of cities is a side effect of a more major thing, which is the miniaturization of the game world. Both Morrowind and Oblivion are much smaller than Daggerfall, and though Oblivion does cover a larger area of land than Morrowind, the actual area it should cover is much larger than Morrowind, and it is miniaturized more. Since the rest of the world becomes smaller, so do the cities.

I think cities should be larger than in Morrowind and Oblivion, but I doubt the size of Daggerfall would be feasible, I just want them to be big enough (and populated enough.) to give a convincing illusion, the cities don't need to be completely realistic, they just need to FEEL realistic, they need to offer a convincing illusion of being of a realistic size.



I wouldn't say Fallout 3 did much to change it, Megaton worked a lot like cities in Oblivion, and most of the other places I'd consider major cities in Fallout 3 seemed to be inside large structures, such as the carrier for Rivet City or Tennpenny Tower, the game had smaller settlements outside too, but so did Oblivion, and those didn't seem any larger than the ones in Oblivion, they just seemed more believable than the likes of Weye as it was in a wasteland.

I didn't mind the city walls in themselves, though, what did bother me about them was that I suspect the reason levitation was taken out was because Bethesda was making all cities walled, if Bethesda can find a way to work levitation back into the game even with walled cities, I don't mind if they stay as they are in Oblivion.



Morrowind's towns seemed to have a fair amount of shops too, at least the major settlements, Balmora had quite a few of them, for example, but usually each was a specific type of shop, you didn't get multiple shops all selling the exact same things close by like in the Market District of the Imperial City.

Oh yeah. I felt that some unique names were in order, but they just simply went overboard with names in Oblivion to the point where it made me cringe. They didn't all hire a writer to come up with the name, so why should gamesas have someone specifically "creative" come up with it? Unique names are good, but they did better with Daggerfall, where you got names like "Theodyn's General Smithy" and "The Odd Blades."


Yes, that was a major problem with the shops as well; a majority of the buildings should not be outright stores; in Morrowind, they found a clever workaround by making people literally look like they'd converted their own homes to shops. But a lot more residences need to be seen as well. And just that they all felt so larger-than-life, too.

I rather have cities be 1 cell than have them any bigger. Constant loading while entering and leaving houses (plus no real windows, no open doors, less people present) is a lot more annoying than not having 50 unnecessary houses for the sake of having more. Towns already have all main services plus farmers plus royals plus outcasts. There isn't much to add into medieval towns.

Places like Chorrol and Anvil seem just fine. This is medieval afterall, not 2009 New York. If Skyrim is a bit like scandinavia, most towns would have 10 houses and settlements would be just 1 big house. Imperial City is the only 1 that should have been bigger, but I feel that having it be 1 cell would have made the city a lot more lively anyways.

Those numbers show that illusion makes a huge difference.

Well you gotta keep in mind, if i'm not mistaken a lot of the bigger towns in Tamriel existed for centuries already so there would be SOME visible growth
Another visual problem with towns in Oblivion was that it looked like they never outgrew the walls... so do they just kill the oldest inhabitants once room runs out and let new ones move in or what?... they should show that they actually started tearing down parts of the town walls and built new bigger ones (buildings near it could be made from the old material)... also have some foundations of old buildings that got torn down over time visible like they actually try to make the town grow

On shops once more, here's another thing but that might go into "general suggestions" a bit... shops in Oblivion didnt really look like shops, they where either empty or just stray clutter lying around... i loved how they looked a bit more organized in Morrowind and actually had their merchandise on display... hell if you bought something it actually dissapeared of the shelfs... like in Suran, one of the shops (a double shop if i remember right, one side was a general trader, the other a fletching shop) had a neat display of all the arrows they sell on the counter... if you look at shops like Thoronirs at the IC marketplace for example it's just a huge room full of clutter

PS: I don't wanna say "all thanks to console gaming" but i think it's partly fault of that too, a lot of places felt like "how can we design this so you can easily manouver it with a game pad" and not "how can this have a realistic size you can somewhat fit through"

The towns probably started from 1 house. We don't see when the walls were built and if they were tore down and expanded.
If there are no kids I don't really see any point or chance of having the population increased. It is like if there were toilets but no one would ever use them. Makes the city size quite steady. Especially when everyone is supposed to have a meaning in town: There is the smith, the tavern holder, the counts, the guards, the farmers. Towns won't like useless newcomers and I don't think newcomers like an unsteady career as a beggar or robber either. Explains why cities have fewer people and there are a lot of corpses and bandits around in the wild.

A great reason why I don't want to see random unnamed NPCs. Practically they shouldn't exist. Everyone must have a reason to exist. In medieval times there were only so many jobs. There won't be 100 workers in a small wineyard, there won't be 100 beggars. I don't want useless filler.

Ya know, there could be more than one farmer, and more than one black smith, or one guard. Is the town gonna say "NO! THATS MY JOB!" and kick the bums out. There doesnt have to be many useless people to add more population. Give em something to do. And whats wrong with other adventurers in your game, I'd love to see some other guys (npc) running around killing monsters and raiding dungeons. The only thing I saw that came anywhere near that was the Imperial Guard Hunters and all they would do is chase deer and shoot each other. It didnt make it that much more immersive at all.

please spell it as Daggerfall, would you kindly.

and in my view the only TES game that had "real" towns/cities was Daggerfall, after that it was pure decline, simple as that.

and about the repetation of generic buildings, we have those in real life too, so having them in a game doesnt bother me at all.


well you dont know the names of all the people you meet in the street in RL either, or where they work. the first mods i plugged into Oblivion was those generic people filler mods, like adventurers, more audience in the arena and that one that added even more people on the roads.

Well, I'd note Daggerfall's cities were all 1 cell; cells have shrunk through each game, from starting as 3,080x3,080 feet, to 385x385 in Morrowind, to a paltry 192x192 in Oblivion Seriously, if you'd like to say that a 1-cell "city" would be fine... That's a joke. The main block of TIC alone is 5x5 cells.

You don't need a tiny city to avoid long loading times intermittently; that was just a problem with how poorly gamesas did the loading scripts in Oblivion, which were largely unchanged from Morrowind. Fallout 3 did a hell of a better job.

And no, there's more reason for having another 50 houses, and it's not "just for the sake of having more." They ARE necessary. For one, they're there to prevent the unrealistic scenes we saw where over half the buildings in a town were businesses. Seriously, how were they running busineses if there was no one to buy anything? And for thieves, who's houses are you going to steal from when there's maybe 5 houses in a city? And where are the houses for those that DON'T just provide the clich?d adventurer's services, like the butcher and baker? The cities in Oblivion were simply too tiny.


Hey, there's a huge gap between Oblivion's tiny thorps that call themselves cities and NYC. And if you actually bothered to pay attention to the lore rather than assuming it was like Fable, then you'd know that TES isn't "midieval." I mean, gothic-style plate armor like what all the Legion wears never showed up in the midieval times, and was a rennaisance thing, not really showing up until just AFTER the middle ages ended... That's right, it came out during the era of Leonardo Da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli. And at any rate, a believably-busy city is still a far cry from the some 5,000,000 establishments of NYC. Even with Daggerfall city, you're talking a disparity of some 10,000:1. And if your history is THAT rust, remember that huge cities DID exist even in the middle ages. Rome, for instance, reached a peak population of over 1,000,000 during the height of the Roman Empire, and even during the middle ages, it was as large as 100,000. And furthermore, a certain popular game takes place in large cities during the REAL midieval ages, called Assassin's Creed; cities like Jerusalem and Damascus had thousands of citizens. Similarly, capital cities elsewhere were not quaint faming vilages either; Paris and London, among others, were far larger than any cities shown in game set in their time period. So yeah, your argument based upon time periods falls completely flat.

And I honestly can't see how you could consider a tiny, 192-foot-wide cluster of shops to be a "lively city." And that assumes that you've built the landscape knowing that all cities would be placed on a grid like that, so that their borders lined up with the cell borders, making the clusters look as forced and square as Daggerfall's cities. Seriously, once you include the fighters/mages guilds and a temple... Well, the temple ALONE almost fills a cell. Seriously. And with larger buildings like the Leyawiin houses, you honestly can't fit more than 2 in a cell without one of them crossing over into another.


What a lovely and perfectly logical explanation for why cities never grow: they have no children! Utterly brilliant.


If you'd ever actually played Daggerfall, then you'd know that none of the NPCs were given generic names aside from the guards. They ALL had unique names; all some 1,000,000 of them. Of course, they were largely randomly-generated, but there were millions of possible names for it to generate.

And yes, there's loads of reasons for NPCs to exist. I mean, you mention small wineyards, but what about, say, the LARGE ones? A large farm is not going to be worked over by a single owner. No, they're going to have workers, enough to manage it all. And there has to be enough guards to provide the services of law enforcement, bot inside the city and around in that city's county, and enough people to support them all, and people to provide each type of shop, and to support the guilds... Literally, to make a non-flat-looking city, you'll need at least a few hundred NPCs. They all have a purpose, and they all need a place to live.

Well there could be few more people like a butcher, baker and a cart driver. But how do people have the money to buy if they don't work? Nobles are rare. As far as I see even Oblivion Cyrodiil doesn't really need more people. People offer different services and they buy the other services with their own profits, there is no unemployement insurance or anything like that. It is also very consuming to try to compete with old and experienced smith.
You have leaders, food producers, safety... The extra people would really be extra people. Put 1000 random unnamed undialoged people on the corn field instead of 3-5 who could do the exact same with names and dialogue.
What is the role of most people in Assassin's Creed? If they just walk around they could as well not exist. We do have overpopulation in our world. I don't see why TES should, if the only thing it does is decrease the depth of world.

I said Imperial City could have been bigger or more lively, but 100 000 people isn't really an option. Everything is relative. If Chorrol has 30 people, Imperial City can have 100 people and feel that much bigger.

If people in IC didn't teleport through doors, I would see people and rooms through windows, the big gates would open and close allowing carts and horses move through city... The illusion of more lively city would be enormous. You'd only need about 10 extra people to make it nearly perfect instead of adding 10000 NPCs and keep the tiny cell build. Even you said Vivec seems much bigger but really it isn't.

When I walk around Chorrol, I don't see why and how there could or should be even 100 more people. The hierarcy is nearly complete. I can't even describe how much more I want to see 1 cell cities instead of tons of extra people.

Ever heard of china? Or Japan? or any 3rd world countrys?

That's what I said.

We can have 10 consumers and 1 food manufacturer. Or
We can have 10 000 000 consumers and 1 000 000 food manufacturers.

I see no reason to aim for the 2nd option. As long as the community is complete. It is not fully complete in Oblivion, but it isn't very far from it.

I never proposed hobos. In case you didn't know, it takes a LOT of farmland to grow enough foot to feed people. And likewise remember that without modern technology, it was VERY labor-intensive, to the point where tons of people were needed for farming; one person couldn't grow enough food for themselves and the entire legion. Remember that if you're thinking about older times, you have to think about ALL the factors there, not just those that push the argument in one direction.


I never proposed that. And besides, Oblivion's farmers had no real dialogue anyway. And again, as you CLEARLY ignored what I said, they can be all named. Please go see Daggerfall as an example. (and yes, you could talk to them all)

While a village doesn't need that many, here I'm discussing CITIES. You need all sorts of services there, both government and civil. If you'd bother thinking about it, you'd realize just how many jobs needed to be done in those days:

• Government
  • Rulers (not everything just has one noble ruling, but might be council-run, like Morrowind's great houses, which will multiply the number of people needed)
    
  • Rulers' assistants (lord chamberlain, etc.)
    
  • Advisers and courtiers
    
  • Personal/palace guards
    
  • Jailers/wardens
    
  • Soldiers/city watch
    
  • Judges & barristers
    
  • Treasurers/tax collectors/census officers
    
  • Government support (i.e, civil jobs like below)
  
  
• Civil Sector
  • Alchemists/apothecaries
    
  • Bakers
    
  • Blacksmiths/armorsmiths (remember that their main fare was not armor and weapons, but also making horseshoes, metal tools like hammers and pitchforks, pots, hinges, handles... Just about anything made out of metal)
    
  • Booktraders
    
  • Butchers
    
  • Candle/torch/lampmakers (remember, people didn't have installed electric lighting then... Unless they were dwemer)
    
  • Carpenters (not just furniture, but home/fence construction, and other wooden goods like wooden bowls, etc.)
    
  • Cobblers/leatherworkers (not just shoes, but they might make leather bags, belts, boots, saddles... Maybe even leather armor)
    
  • Cooks/tavern managers. (ain't a one-man job, you know)
    
  • Farmers, farm hands/laborers. (before the industrial revolution, geneticly engineered seeds, and pesticides/growth agents, farming was VERY labor intensive. And no farm made everything; you had grain fields, root vegetable fields, fruit orchards, vineyards...)
    
  • Fishermen
    
  • Fletchers/bowcrafters
    
  • Glassblowers
    
  • Gravediggers/cemetary managers
    
  • Hunters/gatherers
    
  • Mages (with the guild)
    
  • Mercenaries (fighter's guild)
    
  • Merchants (selling wares often traded from other cities)
    
  • Metalsmiths/jewelers (crafting of items out of finer metals, like silverware, jewelry, possibly licensed to mint coinage)
    
  • Miners/quarriers
    
  • Pawnbrokers
    
  • Spinners/weavers (people that produced thread, yarn, and cloth)
    
  • Stablemasters & horse breeders (more than 1 person needed)
    
  • Stonemasons (creation and laying of bricks and stones for paved roads and sturdier houses... And castle/wall construction, too)
    
  • Tailors/clothiers (those with hands nimble enough to sew didn't ruin them with dull, blunt work making cloth)
    
  • Temple chapplains, priests, etc.
    
  • Transport/teamsers (wagon/caravan drivers, plus anyone handling boats or ships if there are any)
    
  • Woodcutters (always needed, since people burn wood as fuel for heat and cooking)
  
  
• Other
  • Artists (wealthier people, or those kept on at the interest of the rulers; you have to have painters, carvers, or statuemakers for a city to seem 'modern' and 'metropolitan')
    
  • The Underworld (beggars, thieves, assassins, counterfeiters, muggers, charlatains and other tricksters... This could easily add 10-20% more people on TOP of whatever is the count from above)

Heck, I've played games where they were complete enough that you could build CLASSES around pretty much all of the above civil jobs. So if there's a purpose for them in some RPGs out there (like the first MMORPG, Ultima Online) then there sure as heck is a place for NPCs to do them, and NPCs will never make their own complaints about their job.

As one of my main points was, the difference between villages/towns and cities is not chiefly with their size directly, but with what services they provide. And when you look above, you realize just how many services there are needed to make a midieval or rennaisance city work, that most gamers just don't think about, and take for granted.


Eh, it INCREASES it, sorry. I don't think anyone here would really agree that "bigger cities = decreased depth" on its own. Most agree, for instance, that the non-capital cities in Morrowind, in part because of their larger size, felt deeper than those of Oblivion. And the fact remains, that these were the sizes in the real-world at that time. The fact. The truth.


"bigger" doesn't necessarily mean "big." It can just mean "not quite as tiny." Again, I was merely refuting your argument that in midieval times (let alone rennaisance times) everyone lived out in the wilderness or tiny 30-person hamlets. The point here that you're missing is that sizes are, in fact, NOT entirely relative to each other. If the largest settlement in a game has 10 people in it, you're NEVER going to convince anyone it's a bustling city.


I'm not arguing against more seamless cities; I don't think anyone is. And simply put, the marketplaces look utterly barren. I never argued for 10,000 NPCs, merely demonstrated that your assertion that everyone up to the 1400s lived in tiny hamlets was baseless. The actual NPC count I'm looking toward would be closer to 200-300 for a significant city, not even the size of Daggerfall's, but a far cry from the measly 56 of a city like Chorrol.


Read up and see all the jobs that are actually needed to make a city thrive, even if a typical adventurer will never actually buy their goods. So no, the Chorrol hierarchy falls pretty darn flat. Just ask yourself:

• Chorrol prides itself on looking good, but where'd everyone get their fine clothing from? Seed-Neeus obviously isn't a major merchant, and can't have supplied all of it by importation.
  
• Where do people get their light sources? Again, a city can import, but Seed-Neeus, as we've seen, is hardly a merchant with a store big enough to supply all these things to everyone.
  
• Who supplies all the food used by the inns and people? Not many people there are farming or producing their own food. No bakers or butchers, really.

Basically, Chorrol, like Oblivion's other cities, only passes as having enough services to conveniently supply adventurers, without supplying themselves.

I do have more to say about the city situation, but I'm low on time so I'll just post this list of things similar to yours that I came up with for town activities from http://www.freewebs.com/anticlere/townshops.htm.

Bird keeper
Butcher
Construction Carpenter
Furniture Carpenter
Cooper
Cobbler
Baker
Book seller
Ship repair
Jeweler
Haberdasher
Lawyer
Enchanter
Printer
Artist
Apothecary
Doctor
Sculptor
Scrap yard retailer
Brewery
Weapon Shops
Armor Shops
Magic Shops
Dirty Blacksmith - Makes lockpicks and thief gear
Blacksmith
Cartographer
Warehousing
Stables
Transportation Services
General Clothier
Weaver
Potter
Tanner
Taring Service
Farmers Market
Funeral Home/Undertaker
Laundry
Fighters Guild
Mages Guild
Blackwood Company
Toy and Miniature shop
Legion Station
Monastery
Thatcher
Lampmaker
Translator
Taverns
Gardeners
Thieves guild
Mason
School
Infantry School
Siege Engineer
Tobacconist
Glassblower
Bank
Courts
Tittie Bar
Ballet
Witch Coven
General Store
Boothman ? Sells Grains
Collier ? Sells Charcoal
Fueller ? Sells Fuels
Ironmonger
Lighterman ? Transports Goods
Chandler
Scabbard Maker
Milliner ? Makes Hats
Ropemaker
Arkwright ? Makes chests
Cordwainer ? Makes fine leather

random data (google is magic)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography
http://www.tulane.edu/~august/H303/handouts/Population.htm
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/pop-in-eur.html

an example of actual figures used to make believable fantasy.
this is impossible in a game however
http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

Sheesh, if I'd seen that list, I could've saved myself some time.

But yeah, there's loads of jobs to do. Plus, most NPCs in Oblivion DID do nothing other than walk around town all day, eat food, and go to sleep. Once you figure in both a few such "entirely disposable" NPCs, AND you figure in all the jobs you'd need in a city that you wouldn't find in a "generic urban adventurer's waypoint," you literally NEED a couple hundred NPCs to make it all work.

If we presume that TES V was to be set in Skyrim, then we'd probably want to see something along the following for NPCs and buildings, going on what we saw for the map in Arena:

• 8 major cities - Ranging from 80 to 200 buildings, with the capital, Winterhold, having the most, also with around 500 NPCs, and I think Solitude being the smallest, with 200. With all the jobs necessary to support such a large population, EVERYONE has something to do. This allows for all 8 county capitals to boast every service and branch the player might want, such as one of every guild, and an active underground.
  
• 16-24 towns/villages - Each would range from 20 to 40 or so buildings, with 50-100 NPCs, hence being comparable to Morrowind's secondary cities. These would be the fairly urbanized areas, based not entirely on agriculture, but also be minor trading centers.
  
• 24-32 hamlets - These would have closer to 8-20 buildings, (20-50 NPCs) being the small settlements. These passed for towns in Oblivion.They would obviously be barebones for services, with only the standard basics, like an inn, tavern, general trader, etc. They might have one or two specialties related to what defines the city. However, for the most part, these would be settlements based upon production; farming, mining, or fishing, or something similar, with some subsistence farming. Hence, trade is generally not big.
  
• ~20 farms/homesteads/plantations - These would have 2-5 buildings, and an average of maybe 10 NPCs, to work and manage the farm.
  
• TOTAL AVERAGE - ~2,000-2,500 buildings province-wide, 5,000-6,000 NPCs living in civilization in 68-84 settlements, less than ten times what either Morrowind or Oblivion.

Even with randomized guards, and hostile/disposable NPCs like bandits and such thrown in, the total game would still have well under 10,000 NPCs. This would be quite sufficient to populate a much larger world than Oblivion, giving you, depending on the land scale, from 240 to 1,500 mi? of land. (for 1:30 and 1:12 size ratios, respectively, far bigger than Oblivion's 1:200 or Morrowind's 1:100)

Well, it's far more realistic, though as I'd noted earlier, when you're actually transversing the city in real-time, after a point far below that it starts to get unwieldy; Daggerfall's city was really too large for a first/third-person real-time game, yet by my calculations, if done with permanent NPCs, it'd only have some 1,200-1,400 NPCs in it. The realization that Daggerfall city wasn't as large as I thought it was is what prompted me to make this thread; it raises a curiosity over exactly how large/small settlements HAVE to be to feel realistic.

Less people = Less demand of food. Less everything. That is a policy real world wants to approach now, but history and cultures prevent efficiently.




That is 39 points, even if there would be 5 of each, it wouldn't be 200 people total. In addition many of those loop each other and are not necessary in every city/civilisation. A full day gravediggers seem unnecessary. Smiths can do the job of glassblowers, even more so when there are fewer people demanding different items.

It is a bit odd Surlile brothers in Skingrad make enough quality wine for all Cyrodiil, but I imagine the "a lot of" would be more like 3 additional wineyard workers instead of 50.




Oblivion is the latest game and had trouble running 200. People of Morrowind are wikipedia booths.
Your original list stated that the cities of Oblivion are about as big as Morrowind's, surprisingly. That makes the fact more illusion than hard truth.




Some do think every city should have 1000+ citizens.

You are using real life as a base even more than me. If all cities would have 10 people, they could be considered bustling cities. It's all about our expectations.
I didn't even say every city/town/settlement should have 30 people. Imperial City would do fine with 100 if the people seemed to move and do instead of standing, teleporting and having stiff conversations.



What makes you think Seed-Neeus isn't major and couldn't import? If there would be carriages, more traffic bethween cities at all, things could be different.


Thing is that I feel cities of Oblivion do quite well with little improvement needed while some suggest major city size and population increase. These arguments of yours don't convince me at all.
I do feel improvement is welcomed, but the topic isn't worth the countless posts and threads IMO.

Uh, yeah, that's the difference between a hamlet and a city. However, you can't tread city populations like government budgets. The people kinda get unhappy when you start eliminating them. 'cuz technically, since its perfectly balanced with 0 people (no need for production, nothing consumed) your argument is utterly useless for arguing that cities should be smaller.


The gravedigger (I only really specified one) likely works with the temple, and also tends the graves during the day. The temple pays them, and they work at just that. And you're dilusional if you think a blacksmith has the skill to blow glass. Or to think that hardly anyone needs glass for windows, (which need replacing as weather breaks them) or common, liquid-resistant glassware for cooking and eating.


But that's also because Cyrodiil has like 1,000 NPCs total, and is a tiny land where you can see clear from one side to the other and cross it in an in-game day.


No, the surprise was that The Imperial City was larger, though on a quick re-count through, it appears that this is partly because Vivec had more people, and the establishments were actually larger and better varied.

As I also noted, the NON-CAPITAL cities in Oblivion were smaller. Do not say "cities." That is an outright lie, and hence a straw man argument you are making.


Am I one of them? No. So do not argue that I am. That's known, again, as a straw man argument.


This is quite quotable. I think I just might sig it. Seriously, can you HONESTLY think that, or is that merely a statement you have to put forth because it fits into your flawed arguments?


Have you LOOKED at her store? My point (which again, you completely and utterly ignored) was that if you actually played the game, and looked in there, you could tell that she wasn't really a major trade hub for the town. She clearly wasn't being the mass supplier of all the goods that everyone obviously consumed, but no one produced. No, she's just a mostly out-of-the-way shopkeeper who appeals primarily to adventurers.


Too bad, because it appears you are alone in your opinion. And your arguments aren't only unconvincing, they are incredibly flawed and thus far have relied heavily on dancing around fallaciously, changing what it argues for and against just to try to seem right. If you cannot actually provide reasonably debate, then I'd request leaving this thread alone, and not fueling it.

I think settlement hierachy should be based more on population and less on number of buildings.. although they pretty much come hand in hand.

There is no need for eliminating. The population is this sized now, why should it be multiplied by X suddenly?

Cities shouldn't be smaller. They should be bigger, but sacrificing anything to get 300 extra people is no goal in my eyes. When people have this much dialogue, they don't act realistically etc. adding more people can only go one way.




Why couldn't a person in TES be able to smith and blow glass?



Less people = Less demand
More people = More demand
More = Requires more processor power and everything else.




If Imperial City had bigger houses?
And people that just stand still 24/7?



Smaller than Imperial City? Of course they are.
Smaller than Morrowind cities? Here:
Imperial City - 92 buildings.
Vivec - 74 buildings
Balmora - 38 buildings.
Ald-Ruhn - 31 buildings.
New Sheoth - 26 buildings.
Leyawiin - 24 buildings.
Skingrad - 24 buildings.
Sadrith Mora - 23 buildings.
Bravil - 22 buildings.
Bruma - 22 buildings.
Anvil - 21 buildings.
Cheydinhal - 21 buildings.
Chorrol - 21 buildings.
Out of 13 biggest cities 8 are in Cyrodiil?



So they are wrong, the same way I am wrong because I'm satisfied with less people?




Yes, times change.
Rome was a huge centre. Nowadays the people of Tokio would laugh at it.
Early humans were somewhat successful if they managed to get 10 people in a group. Most just drifted alone or with a couple of others.




Yes it is small and cramped as a small city could.
I say the problems are more about the game mechanics. If people would actually visit the shop and do their jobs the illusion would be a lot better. The change from static people of Morrowind isn't quite as big in the end.




Right about what? That I am satisfied with less people?

Originally I came to say that I rather have TESV cities be consisted of 1 cell and not have 1 person more than Oblivion than the opposite. Apparently you suggest more everything without suggesting what to remove or reduce.

TESV needs to have more variety, cities need to feel like cities, and the captial of the province needs to be noticably bigger and have a wider range of people. I was totally shocked, when I made a character that joined the Fighters guild, to discover that the figher's guild smiths aren't actually smiths, they don't offer services at all, which just seems ridiculous. In the small cities the traders that exist hold a monopoly on their market, which is just stupid. The only people that don't have a monopoly are the inns, but where are the travellers? As far as I can say there is only one NPC with a script that sends him around all the various cities, and if you do a certain quest he's no longer available. This just doesn't make sense, especailly considering the number of roadside inns.

While I understand there are limitations, there were no such limitations with older software/hardware. Why should we have to go backwards just because technology has moved forwards?

Because it doesn't fit the demand. You are intentionally blinding yourself to the fact that cities in Oblivion do NOT provide all the services they should. Seriously, if what is supposed to be a major "county capital," like Chorrol, has only one blacksmith, one bookseller, one tiny trader, a run-down tavern, and an inn, does that sound like an actual large city to you, one that's supposed to represent the capital of a county?


Because they are completely separate skills; it's the same reason why the baker also isn't the bowcrafter and stablemaster at the same time.


More is a relative term. It's never big to begin with. Especially when they're in cells that aren't fully 100% loaded, hence only using up a minimal thread to handle them in the background for just their AI, and not dealing with sounds, animation, etc, all of which are far more processor-intensive; handling a city of even 1,000 (let alone my suggested size of 200-500) in the background would actually use up less processing power than most of Oblivion's larger battles, such as outside the Great Gate. I'd judge that you probably aren't a programmer if you didn't realize this.


That's not what I was getting at. Quit mis-construing what I say; it seems as if you can't do anything else.


You're looking at it in the incorrect manner. Morrowind only TRIED to have 4 cities. Oblivion went for 8. So it's no brainer that if you combine them, it's going to have more. That doesn't stop the fact that each city is smaller than Morrowind's, on average. You are bending statistics just to try to back up your own point, because your argument cannot stand elsewise. You demonstrated only that Oblivion has more cities, not that they're larger.

A more meaningful comparison, rather than selecting an arbitrary list size and counting the number of each, (if you take the top 4, Morrowind's got 3 of 'em, 75% to the 61% of 8/13) You'd find that Cyrodiil's cities average only 30.875 buildings per, compared to 41.5 for Morrowind. So on average, cities got about 25.6% smaller.


Quite egotistical you are there. Rather, it means that perhaps it's a sign to re-evaluate what you're believing, as there's likely a REASON you're the only one holding said beliefs... With, more often than not, that reason being that there's nothing real and substantial to back up said beliefs.


I see you don't know anything of history, either. Again, almsot two millenia ago, Rome had over a MILLION citizens. This is not the empire I'm talking about; that was around fifty times that size. But rather, just the city ITSELF. So yeah, you're just making up stuff here; people did not "drift alone." Ignoring the facts presented to you cannot win you an arguement, so I'd request you cease, for the umpteenth time.


That would bring more problems, if they realistically went to buy the items I mentioned... Seed-Neeus simply doesn't even have the room to STOCK enough. So this would illustrate the problem that she alone was insufficient, so more would have to be added. And with those would require more food, more services, etc...

In other words, to provide adequate services to act as a stable community rather than an overglorified shopping/quest waypoint for an adventurer, cities need to be larger than 50 people. Which is basically what they are in Oblivion; they exist as a fantasy clich?, as shops clearly made for the hero's use, (the blacksmith having a large supply of weapons and armor?) with a handful of houses tossed in as an afterthought in a feeble attempt to make it look like people live there.


You've been right about close to nothing, because you aren't adhering to any facts at all, but rather basing your arguments entirely upon your own preconcieved notions, and more or less disregarding times when it's revealed that the cold, hard facts are distinctly different from what you were expecting. 1-cell cities would be tinier than Oblivion's, because they all use more than 1 cell. You'd be talking something the size of Border Watch or Hackdirt.

Fine

I was just stating and explaining my opinion but if you feel you know better...
If Oblivion was that, I won't believe TESV running on same consoles, DVDs etc. can improve much at all. Atleast I'm not the one getting dissapointed.

TES V isn't coming out on current consoles. That was pretty much assured when gamesas threw their development power behind Fallout 3. There is too little time left to get TES V out before everyone forgets about the Xbox 360 and PS3, and instead focuses on the Xbox 720 and PS4. Contrary to Microsoft's CURRENT claims, they had admitted, previously, that they have been in fact developing their next Xbox since not long after the 360 hit shelves. Given that the average lifespan for consoles before the next generation is 5 years, that gives us a prospective release date of 2010 for it, or 2011 at the latest; that'd give gamesas all of 2 years from finishing up their dealing with Fallout 3 to actually run the entire standard development cycle for TES V... Where Oblivion took them 4 years.

And even without such a case, graphics and such can always be toned-down to get something to fit on a console. And with the optimizations and LOD improvements they made for Fallout 3, they could readily make a game run on the Xbox 360 that had miles of city with the same detail as Oblivion, and not worry.

Great list, if NPC's are all doing things like these it will really help to make them seem to have more of a life and make cities feel more alive. Also it would be great to allow the player the ability to do those things has well.