I like the idea of a name generator and random NPCs honestly. Everything is a tradeoff... abandon the realism of each of them having a set schedule and place to sleep for a more realistic number of people in the population. I'm in favor of that.

As for people reacting effusively toward you... there is another game but I won't mention the name because I'm not sure that's allowed, that even focused more exclusively on the way people react to you, and after having played that game I'm convinced there is just no way to do this in a balanced way that would not make you overly the center of the universe. It's very unlikely to not make such a thing also be annoying, especially if you are a hero, but also a covert agent type in your gameplay, sneaking for the greater good etc...

As for there just being enough people in the scene... I am worried about this myself. There never are enough people in these games... always so many more monsters than people in combat-based fantasy worlds, always imbalanced. I know the engine they are making is going to be superior to the one used in Oblivion... but just something to consider, With a PC 6 years newer than what was available at OB's release, even with OB's old engine, I can have all settings modified to maximum, high-res textures, VWD, UL, Better Cities, you name it in my OB build, and everything runs sooth as butter in almost any circumstance, but the only time a strain on the FPS occurs that really ruins the game is when there are too many humanoid NPCs walking around nearby. NPCs more than anything kill performance. I'm dubious as to how many NPCs can stably render even with the new engine.

I'd have to disagree with AC not making believable cities.

But I digress. The thing is, one of the few things that REALLY killed Oblivion for me was the fact that I always felt alone in the city streets, even during the day.

To think I haven't even talked about the roads... They were also abandoned in the day and night (besides the occasional guardsman and the Newspaper Horse Woman).

I'd like there to be activity,maybe a sort of middle ground between AC and New Vegas, get me? People going to and from cities that you could steal from and such. But don't assign one merchant to go to and from two cities like in NV either... That was sort of lame. Same one over and over.

I'm not whining. I'm disagreeing with you and stating why. But when I (and others) state why, you ignore it and continue saying "Give me one example of what makes your system better" Well, we're doing that. But what's the point of doing so if you don't want to hear the answer anyways?

The difference being, you want something that will fundamentally change one of the things that has been particularly endearing to myself and many many others with the Elder Scrolls series.

Nobody is saying we wouldn't like to see more activity in cities and in the world. We don't want it done via just throwing a bunch of randomly generated, pointless NPC's into the world who do absolutely nothing just for the sole sake of putting them there.

BILLIONS huh...well seeing as they're aren't even that many people in the entire world, there wont be that many in ONE city..

Time. From what I read, Blankenmarch was going to be part of some quest, but they didn't have time to finish it. I'm sure if they did, the NPCs would've had more to them.


A bunch of filler != Live Cities. There needs to be a reason for an NPC to exist. If you can't take an NPC and give a reason for them being in the game, they should not be in it. A bunch of filler NPCs with no background doesn't do anything but artificially inflate the size of the city... there is no more actual content than if they weren't there. So all it does is put strain on the system without giving you anything substantial in return. TES is not a virtual first-person Where's Waldo game.

Omg... Kinda like crates with a paintbrush and an inkwell in them! What is their purpose. All they do is artificially inflate the amount of crates I need to search through to find my 5 gold pieces.

They're not NPCs. But their purpose is to be the belongings of certain people (shop owners, goblins, or whatever).

Oh well... they don't provide meaningful interaction. They create the illusion of life. Kinda like filler NPCs, which are meant to be the inhabitants of the city (imperial city, skingrad, or whatever).

Then they should be actual inhabitants. A place to live/sleep/eat, a job preferably, a schedule, etc. If they "randomly" spawn in, then are deleted when you go far enough away, they're not really inhabitants.

The towns were good in Fallout. Think about it. When you walk into a new town does everybody welcome you, and do you know all of their names and casually go up to them and ask them about the rumours in that town? Nope.

The thing to remember is that real cities and towns would be much bigger than what is in game. The game is a scaled-down representation of the world, showing fewer actual people and places to cut out the cruft and keep only the interesting bits. So if you get to know everyone in Chorrol that you could find in Oblivion, for instance, you don't actually know everyone in Chorrol. There were many more people in Chorrol, but you never saw them because they were uninteresting and irrelevent. Those people that wouldn't talk to you, you never saw.

Now that you mention this, it concerns me too. I havn't played the new NV that's out, but I'd prefer if everyone in the city had a name (except guards of course) and not just called "Skyrim Citizen." I don't think they could add that many people without it really ruining the game, but there will probably be more in ESV than there were in ESIV... hopefully. There should be a few houses outside the walls, but not too many, since the size is limited.

I just really hope everyone has a name and their own life like in Oblivion. It was really interesting to see merchants travelling all over Cyrodiil, and to murder them in the middle of nowhere (on my evil char. of course)

If you were a good character they did just that in Fallout. Some citizens would walk up to you talk to you and give you crap.

You also have to realize that in a world with no internet or television news, you would go up to someone and ask them whats the news. If you met someone on the road who turned out to be traveling from Cyrodill you would ask them what news comes from that part of the world. If you've ever read Lord of the Rings you know what I'm talking about.

Even if you refused that point you also aren't going to walk into a town in real life and start casting fireballs at everybody. But that doesn't mean they game should prevent you from doing so by not allowing you to do it.

Well that's kinda stupid. It's like filimg the big battle at the end of LotR with only the enemies that the main protagonists kill.

LotR isn't really a good comparison. It was more about the story of Middle-Earth itself through the eyes of several different characters. It was much grander in length and scope. TES games are more about the personal story of your character in the world, with each game being a separate installment not directly related to each other (unless you get deep into lore to see all the connections, but then it does become a story about Tamriel/Mundus itself through the eyes of multiple characters, taking a much grander stage and thus drawing a closer parallel to LotR; something that isn't really presented in the game).

Eh such a weak argument. Everything in the game exists for the purpose of providing the illusion of an actual world. Why have a sun in the sky? It's not actually providing a real light source in the game world. As someone mentioned, why have all the crates and well, junk, in Oblivion? Especially all the useless crap with their own physics that do nothing but tax the engine. The argument that having generic NPCs breaks immersion makes no sense because a major city with merely a handful of inhabitants is just as unrealistic and far more jarring since it's obvious even without interacting with the world. In real life, people ignore you, don't have much to say, and you don't know their name. So Chorrol has a huge population but you don't talk to the unimportant people so they're just invisible? Add the illusion that they're really there. And don't try to tell me that the Briuants were important. They weren't. I don't care that they had a house and schedules. There was nothing to them. They didn't even interact with the world. We don't even need nameless NPCs. Give them a name and a schedule to eat and sleep, travel between towns, but basically no dialog or house or possessions (besides clothes and maybe a bit of gold). This will at least make Skyrim feel more like a real place.

It is, actually. The sun's position is where daylight eminates from. East-facing surfaces are lit when the sun rises in the east, and west-facing surfaces are lit when it sets in the west. It's also the hole Magnus left when he abandoned creation, and is where the majority of magic comes from.


They had a role, though. They were the crazy dog-people. The few lines of dialog they had about themselves, and the lines other NPCs had about them, gave them personality and presence. They contributed the the overall feel of the city, and it partly the reason why I decided to buy a house there, instead of in, say, Skingrad or Cheydinhal. If the cities and towns are mostly filled with filler NPCs with no personality, then the characters contribute less to the overall feel of the cities.


I do, because it gave them a place in the world. The world would not be as interesting if it was filled with bland and non-unique characters that had no place in the world. Not only would it make me not care about the majority of the world's inhabitants (thus make me less willing to actual save the world), but it would also make it harder to find the handful of characters that could be interesting and worth talking to.

There's another point that people need to realize...

The game world of Oblivion is, what did someone say? 16 square miles?

An entire NATION is 16 square miles. The HEART of the Empire is a nation that spans 16 square miles.

Soooo... since we're obviously working on a scale here (is there a single nation in the WORLD that is barely 16 square miles, let alone a nation that is the heart of an EMPIRE?), doesn't it make sense that perhaps even the Imperial City ISN'T going to be like Times Square in New York City???

I for one never had a problem with the populations in Oblivion, for simply that fact. The WORLD itself is scaled down, and not very big, thus the cities are going to be smaller as well, thus, there will be less inhabitants.

But the world DOES feel alive. When I escape the Imperial Prison Sewers and walk into the Market District for the first time, and see people walking all over the place, going about their business, talking to each other, going in and out of stores, working in their shops, you have the courier shouting about town to get your newspaper and don't miss out on the latest happenings. When the towns people are talking to each other about recent events such as the Emperor's assassination, news from other parts of the world like the whereabouts of the Nerevarine. When at night all the shopkeepers get together for a drink at the Merchant's Inn or the Feed Bag, and hang out and eat, drink, and talk, until it's time to go to bed for the night. And as I walk around the different districts in the city, I come across these people's homes, where they live, sleep, eat, and keep their possessions. I can enter their homes and learn more about the person based on how they keep their dwelling, and what kind of possessions they have. Yea, that makes the city feel alive.

Okay, so there's only a couple dozen people in the city. Well, we're working in a single city that is part of a nation that spans a whopping 16 square miles. Yea, it's going to be toned down to scale. So the Imperial City, capital of the Empire, has a whopping 50 people living in it. Underwhelming? Sure. But considering the actual SIZE of the world, it's actually a pretty solid scale. The blueprints of a building don't span the hundreds of feet that the actual building is going to take up. No, the blueprints of a building are to SCALE. On paper, a building may only be a few inches tall, but those few inches represent stories of architecture.

Well, the game is the paper of the blueprint. There is only so much a developer can work with, and in an open game world that spans barely 16 square miles, we can't get populations like New York City, or Chicago, or Atlanta. So it gets toned down, to scale.

So yea, you can add a bunch of random NPC's that have no actual place in the world, but are just there to fill space. But for me, and many others, THAT is what breaks immersion, because those people HAVE NO PLACE IN THE WORLD and are just randomly put there for no other reason than to be put there. And then I am reminded in a harsh way that I am playing a video game. The immersion is broken, the enjoyment that I get from the game is now damaged.

So yes, I would much prefer to have fewer NPC's, NPC's that actually have a place in the world, and realize that the game is to scale and that a city with a population of hundreds or thousands simply wouldn't work. Because just knowing that every NPC I encounter in the game actually has a place in the world creates an even greater sense of immersion, that I am in another world, than just seeing a bunch of random NPC's who do nothing but fill space.

My point about the sun was that the image is there in the sky to give an illusion. I think that filling up the cities with NPCs would create the appearance of an actual city. Anyway, I can understand your second point, even though to me it involves a lot of pretending because the illusion is so incomplete. Your last point definitely makes sense. In a way, it reminds me of when I first played Oblivion and had a difficult time sorting what was just junk/clutter and what was actually valuable.

If 80% of the NPCs in a city are Unique and you can talk to them, the rest 20% would add up the feeling of the city. So for each 4 NPCs in a city in Oblivion for example, you'd have one human who doesn't want to talk to you, but he/she still reacts on you. A 75% and 25% way could also work, which would mean that for every three citizen in a city you'd have one of these.

*cough*Oblivion Crisis.*cough*

Well I'm just gonna throw my random, very specific thought in here...
I think it would be cool if you go to a shop at opening time, and for some reason it's not open, and the shopkeeper is nowhere around, so you go looking for him and find him passed out in the local tavern after a crazy night that you missed 'cause you were off killing dragons like a freak.
This idea came to me while chilling in the Merchant's Inn and wishing someone would bite the dust.

Just thought I'd add my opinion into this topic...
To anyone who claims that having cities with people whose names you don't know carry out their lives unaffected by you is unrealistic, I challenge you to walk around an actual city. Or, better still, pester someone with small talk and rumours. A percentile of 'filler NPCs', who'd follow a simple yet detailed schedule would certainly increase realism. Honestly, should everyone in the game respond to you, tell you their name engage in small talk and stand around until you dismiss them? I'd much prefer some people merely grunt, just mutter hello and tell you to go away if pushed further, blatantly ignore you in addition to chat with you. Obviously, an Assassin's Creed style implementation would not fit the game, but would it kill people to have a couple of citizens go about their lives uninterrupted? My preferred implementation would be around 10 to 50 NPCs, possibly identifiable by your Telepathic Name-Reading Ability, who have better things to do than converse all day.

Yes true, but the reality was you could talk to everyone but most had the same things to say as each other, so there was really little point. I know Fallout made it so you couldn't talk to everyone who had nothing to say, but i would still prefer the Oblivion way out of the two. I dont think we can have it both ways, where every person has unique dialogue options and the city's are bustling like Assassins Creed. So a good balance i think is essential.

As for the magic system, i'm not worried at all. When you actually think back to the Oblivion system it was kind of lame. Don't get me wrong, i loved it at the time but when i think about it now it really does need an overhaul. The new system sounds cool, and i'm looking forward to it.

Well, yes, the reason Oblivion's magic was so lame was that compared to Daggerfall and Morrowind it was completely and totally dumbed down and stunted.
The proper way to fix this would be to go back to the sheer choice and customisability of the previous games,
not remove spellmaking and stunt it even more.

Who cares about a spell 'looking really cool'? That is so unimportant compared to what a spell actually does.

As far as cities are concerned, its been said a few times already. The version of Tamriel we play in the games is a condensed down version. There is even a game related word for that, but I forget.
I want to be able to talk to anyone.
I dont want filler NPC's who do nothing more than just stand there being moving background.
Other game makers do this because they are lazy and its easy.
Again, the solution is not to dumb things down and make em more like the others. The solution has to include maintaining what makes a TES game brilliant.