2) Generate unnamed "filler" NPCs similar to the ones you see in games like Grand Theft Auto. Most will want to be left alone, and you will not be able to speak with them. Honestly, how many people can you just walk up to, as a total stranger, and just start a conversation with? Try it next time you're at the mall.

In my opinion TES cities should each be like the size of the imperial city in Oblivon or Vivec in Morrowind.
There should be no loading screens connecting the different areas together and there should be a lot of non-targetable filler npcs.

1. Skyrim has HOLDS. The HOLDS are pretty big, there are tons of things outside the city walls.

2. Random people you can't talk to that live there? Why? WHY?

I'm sick of this topic if you couldn't tell.

sick of a thread you havent read

how quaint

1. Skyrim has HOLDS. The HOLDS are pretty big, there are tons of things outside the city walls.

sick of a thread you havent read

how quaint

Have you been to Winterhold?
There are sawmills with more houses around them than in that entire hold.

What is the virtue of a game world consisting of sparsely populated villages masquerading as bustling towns? Don't get me wrong - I enjoy my first stroll through a new open-world VG city, especially a TES city, as much as the next guy. But of all the stuff in a game like Skyrim that demands the player suspend disbelief and fill in the gaps with his or her own imagination, the "city" of 13 residents, 4 houses, a couple shops, and a temple wears thin quicker than most. The technological limits are what they are, so I'm not asking for more citizens or activity, necessarily. I am just wondering if those 13 NPCs couldn't be inserted into a more convincing environment.

An abandoned city being re-settled by a small group of determined homesteaders. A group of survivors left in the wake of a plague. A small religious cult isolated from the rest of society. There are any number of creative and interesting excuses to have a group of 15 or 20 folks gathered in some corner of the world just waiting for your dual glass dagger wielding elf to wander by. And, of course, there are examples to be found in Skyrim.

Of course, you couldn't tell the stories Skyrim aims to tell, complete with warring jarls and property-owning thanes, without rough approximations of towns and cities. I understand that and accept it as part of the language of TES. This isn't a criticism of the game that has eaten every second of my free time since 11-11-11. And I would certainly rather see the processing power devoted to other pieces of interesting content rather than town folk filler that are little more than props that grumble, "Sorry, too busy to talk. Gotta get this arrow out of my knee" as you walk by.

How 'bout you? In your next open-world RPG/adventure game, would you prefer conspicuously under-populated cities with furnished homes to rifle through, a smithy and a chemist, and a few citizens-in-need to send you on errands to retrieve lost heirlooms? Or would you be willing to forgo the great halls and majestic manors in favor of more modest settlements, camps, trading posts, drum circles, hunting parties, caravans, acting troupes, or outposts -- anything that you would actually expect to consist of only a couple dozen people?

My answer is, I'm not sure.

Have you been to Winterhold?
There are sawmills with more houses around them than in that entire hold.

Not sure if you're serious?

You mean the town, because the sawmills are part of the hold.

The hold is like a county, and Skyrim is sparsely populated as is. It fits the setting, this isn't Cyrodiil.

My issue is when people complain about town size and totally ignore that the town is just the focal point of the HOLD which is much larger.

No, I mean that near Solitude there is a sawmill with the same number or more houses than Winterhold has in the entire hold.
Skyrim sparsely populated makes no sense.
It is the original homeland of man in Tamriel, it has been part of the Empire for a very long time.

To Johnny Doe: No, Winterhold is the one up northeast with only three houses in the entire hold.

It's the frozen north, how many people live in Greenland on Earth?

Why do you insist on being so apologetic for this issue?
Winterhold is obviously cut due to time constraints.
While this is fine in and of itself, its still a bit silly to have an entire hold that consists of three houses, especially when a marketing line was that there would be fully seperate holds, each with their own economy and legal standing.

Um, no. If you listened to the game, Winterhold was DESTROYED. It's intentionally that way dude

Yes, it is intentional that they gave a small in-game reason for there not really being a Winterhold.
That does not mean that the reason there is no Winterhold was that they ran out of time.
A clue in that is that there is nothing, no quests or anything, associated with that story,e ven though the circumstances were ambigous.
You cannot restore relations between Winterhold and the College, you cannot find out what really happened, there are no ruins of Winterhold to be found in the sea.

Still good there is at least that small in-game reason though.
Id hate to have seen another Sutch happen.

It wasn't a small in game reason, and everyone left. What's left of wooden houses isn't going to survive the ocean very well.

You refuse to understand, and have no proof it's because it wasn't finished.

And you have no proof that it was.
Only I back up my theories and you do not.
What do you really think is more credible (and more desirable for that matter) that we got a lemon because they decided not to deliver what was told would be in the game, or that they tried but did not have the time to flesh out the more remote areas of the game such as Dawnstar and Winterhold?

Most cities are underwhelming in Skyrim and NPCs try to persuade you that they are bigger than they look.
Markarth and Whiterun however, do show some signs of improvement. Whiterun for surrounding farms / mills giving it a larger feel.
Markarth for it's clever cityscape design, making quest markers harder to find and thus becoming lost can be quite usual.
Which happens in most new cities that people in real life come across- the design is unusual/unfamiliar and thus we can get lost easily.

In my opinion TES cities should each be like the size of the imperial city in Oblivon or Vivec in Morrowind.
There should be no loading screens connecting the different areas together and there should be a lot of non-targetable filler npcs.
Assassin's Creed I believe does cities best, but that series is always based around cities, so much of the work goes into making them look realistic.
However if in the next TES, Bethesda could improve their Creation engine for larger npc management and less lag- I think people would be happy.

Excuse me, no. Stop it.

If YOU make a claim YOU back it up. I don't have to back anything up, you do.

"God exists"

"Prove it"

"You disprove it!111"

Is NOT valid. Back it up, or logout and stop posting please.

Winterhold was destroyed in massive storms that left the college unharmed, and everyone left and the buildings and entire districts got wiped out. It's all clearly explained.

I have backed it up, I am not in the habit of repeating myself.
You misunderstand the issue at hand.

Yes, there is an in-universe explanation for why there is no Winterhold.
This however is totally seperate and apart from the out-of-universe explanation of why there is no Winterhold.
The most logical reason is that they ran out of time to create a full-fledged hold with a capital city.

You only view it from an in-universe standpoint. As the game is made in the real world, some real world reasoning has to apply.
It isnt just not there for no reason, nor because they got lazy.