I loved Vivec, It was feasible size-wise. Skyrim cities are probably the best looking we've had in any TES (Don't come with Sadrith mora, It was kind of interesting but nothing else), but they're too small.

Not to mention that Vvardenfell had been a religious reserve since the war of the first council in the first era, and only became open to colonisation in the late third era, in 3e 414, 13 years before the arrival of the Nerevarine.

While Skyrim is the ancestral homeland of man on Tamriel and has been a part of the Empire for a lot longer.

I haven't read all of the posts so I don't know if this has already been mentioned, but did anyone else find it really strange that the population of guards in the holds would boom like crazy when they were under siege? At first I thought that maybe they had just pulled every single guard from his/her position in the city and dragged them into battle, but then when I reached Solitude I realized that, no, they were just spawning a steady stream of soldiers from the gates. It was surreal to attack a place that I knew had only a handful of residents and be met with a whole swarm of resistance. (Not to mention that all the Imperial soldiers were identical mustachioed clones.) And then afterwards, where did they go? There were like forty, fifty soldiers per town - were they all just dumped in a mass grave somewhere and forgotten about? Skyrim's holds are minuscule to begin with and the fact that this huge loss of life was swept under the rug like it was nothing just makes me even more uneasy about the population problem.

Until NPC's can calculated by the GPU there are serious hardware limitations if you still want a modern game with the huge cities, that and until consoles are upgraded to the next generation.

Today's hardware could handle marginally larger cities, maybe twice or three times the current size, but not consoles, hence cities stay about the same size. The shadows being offloaded to the CPU is the biggest issue and no doubt it was done because the console graphics cards couldn't handle both the graphics and the shadows.

Hardware acceleration is usually what is needed before games start getting true scale. Hardware acceleration of shadows and post processing affects for instance is what caused the upswing of dynamic shadows and blur in modern games since parallel processing of GPU's is far superior to linear CPU processing but requires it's own architecture which will be at least a couple years down the road and more for the average person to have this new architecture, one day....

That doesn't really explain why Morrowind's cities are larger. Morrowind was ported over to Xbox for example.

The difference is in the character models, blur, shadows, sound effects, and all other modern conveniences that come with graphics today. Lighting alone takes up a lot of CPU power, Morrowind didn't have to worry about this. Beth decided to focus more resources on graphics rather than city size, personally I would rather have more NPC's than fancier graphics but as a business decision I understand.

The graphics in Skyrim take up almost all of the console graphics power, to the point where shadows and a few other things were offloaded to the CPU which limited resources for NPC's.

If Skyrim was solely PC then cities can be significantly larger, maybe two to three times or even over ten times if really ambitious,but beth seems to want to keep system req low for more $$ which has been proven to work both with Crysis and with Skyrim. Cities are still held back because the AI for NPC's is still CPU bound; if AI is accelerated by the GPU alot more can be going on, almost a full city with a next gen graphics card if fidelity remained the same.

Not really bothered by the city size. To tell the truth..85 hours in and i've only been to Makarath, Whiterun, Riften and Windhelm. I don't fast travel so I'm on the go a lot; just stop by to sell stuff, smith stuff and pick up missions. Plenty of people to talk to; get some unexpected twists and turns; never feel bored when I'm in a city so for my play style, they're fine.

What would be really helpful is if people could quote where (if anywhere) it is indicated that Skyrim cities are supposed to be populous and/or huge.

Can somebody provide some quotes from in-(or out-of-)game official material that says, 'Whiterun has a population of 10 000' or 'Markarth is 10 kilometres in circumference'?

Anyone? If not, I suggest we drop the topic, because we're all going by OPINION and INTERPRETATION, and not FACT.

Markarth is rather large due to its multi-levels


Falkreath seems large to me since I rarely go there and I get lost xD
Morthal seems like it started out as a military outpost or a trade-stop to gather supplies as a shortcut through the marshes.
Dawstar and Winterhold were the only cities I was disappointed in; Dawnstar is supposedly a big port, yet there is only one ship docked and it is rather small. Winterhold however, is a collection of 4 buildings in total. I understand the scale and magnitude of the game however, so it doesn't bother me much.
All of the major cities were fine by me. Whiterun and Markarth seemed the largest, with Windhelm following, then Solitude, then Riften as the smallest

I have no problem with the towns and think that Skyrim is more realistic and the urban environments much better laid out than in Oblivion.

In some past parts of the thread I recall someone bringing up Vivec as an example of larger city design. Don't rely on that too much, it's the worst city I've ever seen in a video game. The layout is meticulously tautological, and specifically designed to take on you on the longest route from A to B possible. If they didn't design it for that purpose, the city designers for that game have some innate evil streak the government would likely use as a war tactic, because their design has to be against the Geneva convention for customer treatment. The city isn't even that hard to navigate, it's just so tedious while you do it. Then you notice the torches in the underbelly of the city, and how there are no air vents. Torches or no, those cities are ventilation deathtraps meant to suffocate the poor elves touched by Sheorgorath enough to live in that computerized hell compound. Then they have a sewer when the city is built on the water. You can tell they thought this through, even with no sinks, toilets, or need for water runoff from a storm as they are on the water.

Though they might be held back by consoles in some ways, I have played every elder scrolls game (including Battlespire and Redguard), and my computer at the moment can't even run Oblivion. I'm playing Skyrim on the Xbox. I'm pretty sure they'd be taking such a hit from loss of console sales that they aren't going to make a pc only game ever again, because of pc gamers like me who need all the low settings.

Look, we would all love it if the cities were bigger. But how many games have bigger cities that are also fully interactive and populated with interactive npc's?

Personally I'd be willing to sacrifice some npc interaction for more populated cities, but thats another story.

Anyway, it's just a game and there are limitations with what they can do. I take it for granted that the cities are representative of what in "real life" would obviously be much larger then what I'm seeing, and that the distances between those cities (and dungeons) is only representative of what in reality would be much larger distances.

I can't wait for the tech to catch up with my imagination, but for now they did an amazing job of seldom causing me to notice.

this is my first Elder Scrolls, and I am pleased with the cities.
they are hugely underpopulated and a bit on the small side, but they are GORGEOUS.

I love how each city is incorporated into the environment, and I love the distinct architecture and vibe of each city.
Solitude -- the epitome of class. Each time I visit I trek to my special perch to view the city in all its glory along the rock bridge. The inside is terrific too. It is upbeat and pretty with a stone medieval theme.
Whiterun -- nice climate, close proximity to the quaint Riverwood. Geographically, it's straight from LOTR. the houses are nice but not overly glamorous. positive vibes all around.
Markarth -- the most visually stunning city. some might perceive the atmosphere as a bit dark. waterfalls are glorious. homes on outskirts very unique. the remote location provides lots of... solitude.
Windhelm -- a historic, King Arthur-style city. dark, snowy, and confusing to navigate. Windhelm is a city I love to hate. And it's better this way. If you ever see me in Windhelm, it's strictly business.
Riften -- when stunning golden forests and blue streams collide with a corrupt, crime-ridden city, the end result is Riften. While the crime and Ratway give Riften a bad name, the town is one of subtle beauty.

I don't care for bigger cities. But more populated cities would be awesome. Even if a lot of them had next to nothing to say.

The cities in Oblivion felt so empty. Better in Skyrim, but I don't feel like they would be a huge city just for 50 people.

You will never see cities like this in an Elder Scrolls game if Bethesda keeps using the entire province and scaling it down.
http://wallpaperscrunch.com/wallpapers/1/fantasy-city-1920x1200.jpg

Some things we can't get enough of.... like # of NPCs or size of cities. Drums circles? Acting troupes? Yes and yes, partly because I do not exactly what you mean and how they would be implemented. As far as the thread title question is concerned, I have not been to enough cities yet to really answer. I will say this though... on a second playthrough the cities I've encountered twice actually seem larger. On my first, I must have been overloaded with information in a way I was not paying full attention to each NPC.

Video game are much more expensive and much more longer to create. You can't compare daggerfall character model with sprite to a full motion character with millions of polygons. The sheer amount of work to create every item in a game such has Skyrim is immense.
I would be curious how much money and hours were spent to create the City of Skyrim vs the Oblivion CIty. It's was without any doubt ... Much more expensive and much more longer(Per hours)

They have something called a budget and a deadline and if you want bigger city ... Play assassin creed

While the size of the cities is a little small I would also like to see a little more nomadic life in the game. There are areas where people would very much be better suited to live, for example the NW part between Solitude and Markareth. Beautiful places there. And other places like Winterhold which would have been abandoned long ago because of its destruction and the cold. And what I gathered from the story is that Winterhold was much much larger and most of it fell into the sea, not just a few burned houses but the city is actually disintegrated. I used my imagination with that one though and saw a city that sprawled about the College of Mages. Anyway, my disappointment would have to be the fact that about 70% - 80% (it seems) of the NPCs you meet have some menial quest for you. That just doesn't feel genuine to me. I would like to have seen more NPCs that have nothing to do with the game other than look at me and say a few lines it I talked to it. With that said I think the integration of a Merchant Guild would have been an awesome way to get those menial quests tied into something believable. Like, "Hey I'm Nordy the traveling delivery man and I can take that letter to you son down the road, for a fee."

Asheiko, I like you.

# of Guilds or factions has been a problem for 2 games now. They can be short if there are more of them. Merchant/trader guild is a great one... as is expanding the bard guild, as is perhaps a ranger/druid society, or a knight/priest faction. There also should maybe be a rebel mages organization...could be 3 quests, but just having it would be fun.

Assasins creed does a stellar job of making you feel your in an active city, thanks to the number of npc's just roaming around and thats one the same hardware so thats not an excuse. Skyrim falls in to the same pitfall as other RPG's do, naming something a city when it has a population of 10+ people. Oblivion's Imperial City had it about right in comparison to scale and # of NPC's for a TES game. Skyrim feels like Beth didnt make much effort after making the 4 main towns (and they are towns not cities). Whiterun, Solitude, Markath and Windhelm initially feel like cities but as soon as you more around it you realise its just a town sized walled cell. They are tiny, with very little actual content. A few generic NPC's milling around would do wonders for the game to make it feel more alive. As it is now, it feels like the country has a population of 100 max with everything else just bandits and monsters. 100 people is barely enough to make a proper city, never mind an entire country.

Yes and No. It is much more time consuming true, but the size of development teams are much larger now with much bigger budgets with the increase in size of the gamer market. Not to mention once you do the hard part of modeling, textures, meshes ect. the difference of workload between a small city and a much larger one is marginal since you can essentially copy and paste making slight alterations if you have the time. From my experience 80% of work in games is actually making the objects, landscape, game mechanics ect. while about 20% or less is actually placing them in the game. Once you have all the blocks, putting together a town versus city is a small difference in time commitment.

I think Beth chose to go smaller partly because FPS is generally low in cities already for the average user, but also to give scale with the more urbanized Cyrodiil since Skyrim is supposed to be a rugged, underpopulated region (Cyrodiil was small enough as it is). Since Oblivion and Skyrim are so close together and based on the same technology it wouldn't make sense to have a huge bustling Skyrim with cities larger than the Imperial City capital of the Empire. I think we have to wait for the next console generation before more realistic cities can be developed, with real view distances

On my main playthrough, I joined the Stormcloaks because my heart was in it.

After seeing just about every house in the woods/farm/town/city across the entirety of Skyrim, I felt no other choice but to join the Legion on my 2nd playthrough. I did not join the Legion for variety. It's because the number of NPC's living in Skyrim that could be mustered for combat would fill maybe one large company of able-bodied soldiers. Imagine a Thalmor invasion of an independent Skyrim. 100 or so Nords holding off the entire Aldermeri Dominion.

I could suspend belief in the number of NPC's if there were places I could not go...if I was somehow given the assumption that there were many more people out & about in the land. Since I can go everywhere & see everything in the game, I can see exactly how many people are out there & I am, unfortunately, underwhelmed after seeing almost every person that lives in the entire country.

(There were more NPC's at Mardi Gras in Hitman: Blood Money & I could interact with everyone them too...with my Ballers.) :mohawk:

Why do people keep mentioning AC?

Yea, they have big cities but that's all they have. No interactive province between them (no ac1 was corridors).

Besides, have anyone actually walked in those cities? No, not over roof tops but actually using the streets across the city to wherever you're going. It's boring. It takes forever and isn't fun. Because we are not supposed to. In TES we are.

Sure, the holds could have been bigger but they should not be the size of AC cities. I'm sorry but suggesting that is to be ignorant of gameplay and what makes games fun.

I'm not all that excited about big towns in games but still Skyrim towns are too small and feel empty. They should be at least 2-3 times bigger than they are now, and have more NPCs wondering the streets.