Generic NPC's is a bad idea.
They are just filler, no more than moving background and totally unfit for a TES game.
I want to talk to people, I want to see who is related to who, who has weird little quirks.
Oblivion did this well.

In Morrowind every hostile NPC bandit in a cave somewhere had a name.
This needs to return.
There is so much more to NPC's when they have a name. Killing generic bandits that respawn three days later and are even called bandit, meh, might as well be a mudcrab or a rat.
No, have them named and dont have them respawn. This way there is consequence to adventuring and one can feel a true sense of accomplishment. When around endgame there are only a few caves left with hostile humanoids in you truly get the feel that your actions matter, that youve made the world a safer place.

This is a roleplaying game after all, and there is nothing roleplaying about a cardboard NPC without even a name.
No emotional connection can be made, no reason not to go on a city slaying rampage.

If the cities consist of "Skyrim Settlers", I think I'll cry...

But are you really that concerned about a random bandit having a name? I mean if its a specific target, I'd understand but if its just someone trying to rob me, why would I care about there name? To busy cutting them down

I thought it added a lot to Morrowind when every single character had a name, even the random bandits in the wilderness. It made them feel like real people.

Just calling a bandit..a bandit, makes them like just another animal that attacked us. Giving them names...and then letting us join them...that's what I'd like to see. Always tried to join the bandits in the caves...they never let me join either...making bandit caves into little comunities for a small band of thieves makes things seem as if they really are bandits instead of the guards for that specific cave's loot.

Because them having a name and not respawning makes them more real.
I get to muse about why someone from the Varyon family wound up a bandit living in a cave. feel something when killing them. Seek out a member of the Varyon family in a town and pretend to inform them of the fate of their wayward niece/ sister/ daughter.
Them not respawning adds to their 'reality factor.' It also gives a sense of progression to the game.
Your actions make the land a safer place.

You know, roleplaying.

I guess its a pros vs. cons thing to me. I'd rather more attention was put into things like gameplay, exploration, quests, etc. Also I find RPG's without respawning enemies, tend to become boring after you complete the main quest. But thats just me. To each their own. :thumbsup:

Lol pretty sure there won't be anything near that many NPCs. I doubt its even possible.

Live cities could be an issue, but magic? Have you not read anything about the magic system that has been released?

(Dunno if this is been covered, I ain't scouring 6 pages of a thread)
Elemental spells do more than just damage, you can place runes on the ground that are like land mines.
Again, there are more than just the elemental spells. This is still Elder Scrolls.
And finally, Dragon Shouts. Enough said.

Personally, I like the smaller but more real communities of TES. Where everyone has a name, things they do, a home (or at least a place to sleep), inventories etc. With Skyrim, communities actually function as such, with farming, woodcutting, smithing etc. all being active activities NPCs are involved in. The AI is supposedly improved and they can create or be involved in random quests, which should utilise most of if not all NPCs. Also, something I don't know why they never did in Oblivion, is to give them all something to say. It's easy as hell to implement. It takes 5 seconds to think of a background for an NPC who has nothing else to do and let them tell you it, and they should all (or mostly all) have something to say about town. They could give 1 developer a few days to add this to the game once everything else is done. Rather than just dissapearing whenever you walk around the corner and not coming back, you can see these NPCs in their lives (It wasn't done so great in Oblivion, I know, but with Skyrims better AI, I have confidence), their families (children are in now), their jobs (like I said, visible occupations now a big factor) and so on. I couldn't imagine how dull an AC style city would be for an ES game. However, I do agree that some towns felt empty. This was because people barely ever left their homes or shops, or went into shops to buy things, and so on, and because the cities were so widely spaced that the roads could fit 2 trucks on them driving alongside each other. If they, say, double the amount of NPCs (did I hear somewhere that there was loads more dialogue than Oblivion? Hope I'm not imagining that) in cities, make cities more compact but with more buildings (from the size of cities on the map, it looks like the case), add the better AI which Skyrim is already doing as we know and give something small for everyone to say besides rumours and I think that is a fantastic way to do it.

I know not everyone has something interesting to say in OB, but talking to 100 (or 1000, depends how extreme you're really thinking) people and finding 1 interesting one (with an inventory, a life, quest dialogue etc.) than going through 100 people and finding 50 interesting ones.

EDIT: Take Blankenmarch (small village) in Oblivion for example. They did the textures, built interiors (though maybe they jsut copy pasted) made the houses and a farm and the NPCs with basic schedules and stats so why couldn't they take 5 more seconds to give them something to say?

And epic are of effect exploding ground firestorm type of spell is sure to break away from that lame spell system in Oblivion.

But your argumentation about the cities is just ridiculous, first you say you do not want it to have "Skyrim travellers" and then you want it to be like Assassins creed, which didn't even have that. Way to go.

I think all NPCs should be unique and have interesting things to say, if they want to talk to you. The NPCs should be able to ignore you and not say anything at first, but rapidly trying to talk to them could lead in them walking away from you or talking to you in a very angry tone.

After playing Oblivion. The way I see NPC's as completely changed, whenever I play another RPG and see random NPC's just standing there, unkillable and with no depth it annoys me. Less is more in this situation, less npcs with there own lives and routines really makes the world more believable and alive. Im glad they have focused alot of time to improve this.

Though I feel magic wasnt really improved upon in OB, im hoping for a better system in skyrim.

Well..... since AOE is confirmed you cab remove that ;P

Random names is cool too as long as they're racially appropriate for the most part.

Also, the same NPC doesn't have to replace one you killed, since people are worried about not affecting the world. Another randomly generated NPC can replace the previous one, but keeping the same schedule so that every generic NPC doesn't end up in the same city at once while other cities are barren. But it seems like some people actually want to be able to kill every single person in the world... what's the point to that? Even BGS is implementing a system to replace shop keepers when they're killed. Having everyone in the world dead by the player's hand alone sort of breaks immersion, but some prefer absolute freedom to an actual good game. Anyway, Oblivion already had respawning guards and bandits, so I don't see how adding another class of respawning NPCs (commoners) is somehow going to destroy the foundations of the series.

In some ways, I agree with the OP's argument about "Live Cities". Oblivion in my opinion really did a poor job of giving any sort of believable representation of what an actual city in its universe might look like. The cities we got (even the imperial city) were excessively small, uncrowded, contained (had to enter them like a building), and thus in my opinion, unimmersive. Oblivion is a great game, but the cities were just done poorly. That said, I think that a large majority of the community do not want to see unnamed NPCs wandering about the cities just to give them ambiance. It seems like there must be some better middle road...name the NPCs and make the cities bigger and more populated. That said, this would obviously entail much more work on Bethesda's part. I'm hoping the fact that their workforce has increased by so much since OB, and the fact that they got some really solid systems in place for that game, should have opened up room only for improvement. We will have to see.

As to the magic system...I just hope the depth of the magic systems in past games don't get completely destroyed in this one. I'm all for more dynamic magic-oriented gameplay...the past games were not good at that. Usually when i played a mage in the past, I'd make one powerful destruction spell and just spam it for the rest of the game...maybe make one good AOE spell as well. Those past systems weren't perfect, but they did have depth. I just don't want to see that entirely eliminated.

One thing to note is much like lotr and a few other fantasy games this world is set before all that many people exist. Back when the entire world pop was under 1 million or under 5 million. In short before the roman empire of our world and back into one of the much earlier empires before it.

I'd really love to see the "depth" to ANYTHING people are claiming Oblivion to have.

Oblivion was just pretty, it was watered down in a lot of aspects and I mean A LOT of aspects because it was just to show off radiant AI and the dynamic landscapes they made.

The spell system was poor and so were the cities. When I said I wanted the so called "Live Cities" to be more like (NOTICE HOW I SAID "LIKE") Assassin's Creed cities, the next thing people started to tell me was that that was impossible. I admit it is impossible to the extent of AC, but it's one of the few things the AC team did RIGHT so why can't Bethesda take them as an example of what their cities should be?

If someone mentions that they want named NPC's with "background" to them, or that when they'd kill them they'd want it to have an effect on the game and that they'd want to feel as if they really killed someone... I'd like them to back it up with an example.

Give me just ONE example of when killing say, someones husband in Imperial City, that the widow wouldn't react to anything and just go about her business doing her pointless schedule?

I thought so. All the claims of "quality over quantity" are being made by roleplayers who probably make believe too much.


I shall reiterate: Make "Live Cities" actually LIVE. How? Add life to them; add a bunch of filler NPC's and add a way to traverse crowds without it being TOO awkward. Save your energy making pointless schedules for every single character. You may keep your useless NPC's that apparently add life when they don't, I never said they should take them out.

And when I said I didn't want them to just be named "Skyrim traveler" I was simply saying I didn't want them to be bigger versions of the Fallout Towns (8 NPCs and 9 Generic NPC's) to being Cities with 20 actual citizens and 25 "Skyrim travelers". See my point?

En garde, criminal scum!

Lol weird double post! Sorry.

No, they can't, hence the challenge of creating a game.

We are giving you examples of what we mean. You are choosing to ignore it.

And keep talking about how you say "like" Assassin's Creed: You're the one who was talking about "billions".

Roleplayers who play "make believe" too much?

Yes, because roleplaying is so out of place in a ROLE PLAYING game.

Adding a bunch of filler NPC's doesn't add "life". It just adds more pixels for the game to load, more things to slow the game down, and for no other purpose than to just be there.

Blasphemy!

I am giving you examples of what I mean. You are choosing to whine about it.

Role Players do make believe a little too much don't you say?

The videogame is supposed to provide us with the fantasy, we aren't supposed to pretend it's there.

So how can I think it's a city when there are almost as many people in a city district as there are in my house half of the time?

Apparently Orzorn's post went RIGHT over your head. As you'll notice in his edit he realized his point was invalid because while Beijiing has 13,831,900 people. It is also 6,487 square miles. Skyrim is roughly 16 square miles. So yeah...

You'll also notice that the entirety of Assassin's Creed (pretty much) and games like GTA, are made up of a few cities. Games like Elder Scrolls are mostly wilderness and dungeons. That's why they need to focus on having a ton of NPC's all over the place. And not to mention the fact that these so-called more believable NPC's in Assassin's Creed are randomly generated from the same 20 or so character models. If you ever actually stop to look at someone when you're not too busy running them over (gta) or free-running on buildings (AC) you'll see the same NPC with possible slight variances of hairstyle or color palette standing right next to two other guys who look just like him. And that works in AC and GTA because you don't really stop to look at this "huge crowd. for the most part.

You also have to understand that Bethesda doesn't have unlimited resources. Elder Scrolls is a very different style of gameworld than GTA or AC. You're just going to have to accept that. it's one of the things a lot of us actually love about TES.

For the last time I am not saying they should make Elder's Creed Skyrim. I only used them as an example because they made they're cities believable and awesome. I'd love them to make the cities more like AC cities. That's it.

And like others have said we realize that. But AC did not make believable cities. To use your own example if I go to Wamart and see say, one hundred people. I would see the same 20 people repeated and walking right next to each other.

We, as in most of the posters in this thread are saying, it's better to have unique NPC's that actually have a place in the game world for a game like Elder Scrolls than it is to have generic generated NPC's.