Skyrim; Populatuion: 750

[Stratomunchkin]

Don't get me started on the Mage College.

 

* Students of magic should be hustling and bustling their way through the hallways and corridors (be they court mages-in-training for the Jarl or Imperials looking to apply their skills when rejoining the army.)

* The teachers should have their own homes off campus, not sleeping in their small rooms like a sleepy-time village.

* The students should have to sleep in those cramped facilities.

* NPCs should be randomly giving lectures, demonstrating magic, and generally experimenting with spells (basically what's been going on during your quests but practiced by others.)

* Conjuration students should be walking with Atronochs or their Dead Thralls.

* Destruction students should be practicing their spells on Restoration students using Wards.

* Illusion students should be turning invisible, provoking guards, and calming them again.

* Alteration students should be practicing their Skin spells with Conjuration student's Bound Weapons.

* Tests should be handed out by facility or student-to-student quizzing Players on random spell names/facts and are awarded skillpoints for passing (or decay for failing.)

* The Nords should be petitioning the Mage against abstain from raiding their burial grounds, this could lead to conflict and high quality quest material.

* The researchers should be launching excavations to ancient Dwemer ruins, Nord burial grounds, and sites of interest.

* The researches should be tasking students to hunt local animals (or Werewolves and Vampires) for their projects.

 

Yes, massive suggestion, but right now the Mages College doesn't feel like a College -- it's more like a hospice for practitioner's of magick.

These sound like excellent immersive ideas. I hope someone mods them into the game!

[fore]

Think about the consequences, folks. If you put NPCs in the game, you have to give them conversation, information, quests.

 

It's already boring enough to click that many non-responding NPCs until you find those (relatively) few which have something to say. Without a mod which shows those few "interesting" NPCs left I would never load a mod like you talk about. And I'm afraid a mod adding information markers to the NPCs would simply be too CPU consuming.

[Nadimos]

I believe from experience, that the enginge can only handle so much at once and this is probably why you only see a few npc at one time and imho that is okay. Love the idea of making a city+sourrounding land for hammerfell, but the city itself, depending on how big it is gonna be, would definitely have to be split up into diffrent parts, as to not destroy performance. Also you would not be able to put a thousand ppl in there.

Believe me when i say one hundred would be already pretty darn big.

Edited November 26, 2011 by Nadimos

[Galacticat42]

I believe from experience, that the enginge can only handle so much at once and this is probably why you only see a few npc at one time and imho that is okay. Love the idea of making a city+sourrounding land for hammerfell, but the city itself, depending on how big it is gonna be, would definitely have to be split up into diffrent parts, as to not destroy performance. Also you would not be able to put a thousand ppl in there.

Believe me when i say one hundred would be already pretty darn big.

 

Exactly - that's how the Imperial City got away with having bustling streets mods with dozens of citizens in each sector.

[Levgre]

Think about the consequences, folks. If you put NPCs in the game, you have to give them conversation, information, quests.

 

It's already boring enough to click that many non-responding NPCs until you find those (relatively) few which have something to say. Without a mod which shows those few "interesting" NPCs left I would never load a mod like you talk about. And I'm afraid a mod adding information markers to the NPCs would simply be too CPU consuming.

 

Well, if you think about it, in reality few people would really want much to do with a random stranger.

 

A way to expand the population size greatly, while still making it easy to find the minority which have conversations/quests, is via npc networking. You have NPCs which the player will almost certainly stumble upon tell you about their friends and associates who may otherwise be lost in the crowd.

 

 

That doesn't mean they all have to say "Thanks for helping me, Adventurer. I have a friend Tim who could use some help too". They could just mention these people in passing.

Edited November 26, 2011 by Levgre

[Barlas]

You could recreate the mage's guild.

 

Make a special portal to a large mage tower or something.

[Aluminumfoil]

I'm already planning to make a populationizer mod which adds non-interactable, minimum AI characters to the game, who are ideally spawned and despawned as needed, without needing every single npc to have a bed to sleep in. It's a pretty big project (one that I intend to approach piece by piece, adding populations to the game in logical chunks that are individually playable), so I would welcome anyone who cares to participate.

 

Anyway, it's easy to make players able to find interact-able NPCs. Just name the non-interact-able ones something generic, like "Guard" or "Farmer."

 

At any rate, if you'd like to cooperate, shoot me a PM.

Edited November 26, 2011 by Aluminumfoil

[Julenissen666]

I also find the low population annoying.

If you want to make a mod that adds more people in the cities I have a few ideas.

 

- More Guards at the walls of Cities like Solitude, Windhelm an Whiterun. They could be programmed to patrol the guard towers and walls 24/7 so you don't need to add more beds in the barracks. You could try to add more beds to the barracks, but I don't think there are enough room for more beds.

 

- The Nobles could have servants that live in the basement. Just add those haystack beds down in the basement of the noble houses. They could be programmed to go out in the market and buy food and stuff for their masters, leaving the Nobles to do more important things.

 

- More beggars in the streets. I think each town has like 1 beggar. There should be more and since they live on the street you could just add haystack beds in corners. The Grey District in Windhelm would make most sense for beggars to live in. And in other towns they could live next to the taverns.

 

- There are some beds in the cities that are not owned by anyone. You could easily add a new citizen or two that owns these beds.

 

- Taverns are really empty. You could program mercenaries to visit the taverns when the sun goes down. They could be programmed to just sit on a chair and drink beer and tell you to gtfo if you try to talk to them. And when the sun comes up, most of them leave.

 

And yes, the cities are really small. but remember when you expand the cities by building more houses you still need to add a lot more people to fill the streets that are already there and the new streets that you have made.

Remember how each city is compared to other cities. Think about what types of people should be added to each town. Solitude should have more high class people while Riften for example should have more low class people like mercenaries, thieves and beggars. But since Solitude is the capital city of Skyrim, there should be more beggars there.

I don't know much about the Elder Scrolls lore, but when starting working on this kind of mod you should read up on the lore so you don't make something that does not fit in to the lore.

Edited November 26, 2011 by Julenissen666

[HiddenRanger]

For those wanting a fix now before a mod comes out and does it properly you can always just spawn some more people where you want them. Im working out this thread right now for this very reason. I will hopefully be able to add some citizens to the list shortly as well.

[uruku7]

Great ideas. About the NPC's, I was thinking along the same lines as Aluminimfoil. I don't see any need, or want, for every NPC to be "somebody". They already talk to much and do too little as it is.