Skyrim; Populatuion: 750

[Stratomunchkin]

*snip*

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.

Good ideas, and the engine limitations could be circumvented by dividing some of the towns into different sections (eg. the Grey Quarter in Windhelm easily could be its own section).

[calabi]

With too many npcs and too many buildings it would be information overload. I mean the player would have trouble handling it. They would have difficulty finding things that they want and just be overwhelmed. It would cause a lot of expectations and frustrations which would have to be countered by other methods.

 

In my opinion no game should try to emulate the real world. They should stick to manageable game spaces that the player can solve and navigate.

[Levgre]

With too many npcs and too many buildings it would be information overload. I mean the player would have trouble handling it. They would have difficulty finding things that they want and just be overwhelmed. It would cause a lot of expectations and frustrations which would have to be countered by other methods.

 

In my opinion no game should try to emulate the real world. They should stick to manageable game spaces that the player can solve and navigate.

 

This is a matter of taste, there are lots of players who actually like ignoring fast travel and taking 20 minutes to walk across the countryside. Those same players would love having to walk around twisted city streets for 20 minutes before they get a handle on the neighborhood. TES games have the highest capability for immersion/realism out of any PC RPG games. There is a very large portion of the players, whom have played TES games for many years, who WANT the game to emulate a real world and have modded previous TES scrolls towards that aim. If you don't like this, you can just not use those mods.. to each their own. You have a right to your opinion but your opinion is wrong for many players' gaming personalities.

Edited November 26, 2011 by Levgre

[calabi]

With too many npcs and too many buildings it would be information overload. I mean the player would have trouble handling it. They would have difficulty finding things that they want and just be overwhelmed. It would cause a lot of expectations and frustrations which would have to be countered by other methods.

 

In my opinion no game should try to emulate the real world. They should stick to manageable game spaces that the player can solve and navigate.

 

This is a matter of taste, there are lots of players who actually like ignoring fast travel and taking 20 minutes to walk across the countryside. Those same players would love having to walk around twisted city streets for 20 minutes before they get a handle on the neighborhood. TES games have the highest capability for immersion/realism out of any PC RPG games. There is a very large portion of the players, whom have played TES games for many years, who WANT the game to emulate a real world and have modded previous TES scrolls towards that aim. If you don't like this, you can just not use those mods.. to each their own. You have a right to your opinion but your opinion is wrong for many players' gaming personalities.

 

I'm not talking about taste though, I sometimes like to ignore fast travel as well. In my opinion creating a huge environment with lots going on, noise and everything wont work, because of the limited view and audio, just the whole limited'ness of your interaction with the environment. I just think its not just due to a lack of tech that this hasnt been done.

 

But I'm not objecting to what your doing, just stating a reason for why, they may not have done this in the main game.

[kitsuneshoujo]

This is a problem MMOs have. The worlds are condensed into a sampling of a few houses and farms and buildings, and it is generally considered that the rest of the village or whatever is "off screen". But that being said, I wish villages and cities in Skyrim had more people and buildings.

[borgmaster]

Maybe just make the college taller and add some more basements. The middin would be a great place for some of the darker mages to hang out. Population would increase with the building size.

 

In my opinion the college should be a little like Hogwarts as far as living quarters go. Have a nice big room for the students to all sleep in and have special rooms for the teachers.

[Levgre]

You don't need tons of individualized sound sources to create an immersive environment, if you care about the noise all you need is an urban ambient sound track. Mods have been made to expand cities in TES games and modders will continue to push size and realism as much as the hardware/software can handle it. It's incorrect that it hasn't been done, and that it will not continue to be done.

 

Again, you stated your opinion and your taste. TES designs the game for production efficiency (they can only do so much) and to meet the average buyer's expectations. The average consumer's expectations/desires aren't 'good' though, in fact oftentimes they are less than ideal for the 'passionate' gamers (which is the primary reason why the modding community is so large and energetic)

Edited November 26, 2011 by Levgre

[kitsuneshoujo]

One of the first mods I downloaded for Oblivion was a mod that added more people to the capital.

[Lachdonin]

Since Daggerfall, they've gone for a 'scaled' approach to world building, and with good reason. Daggerfall, to this day, causes problems. It was made to true-scale, and contains something liked 150,000 npcs (though most of them generic 'villager' and so forth) and in the day computers just couldn't take it. A similar sized world, using Oblivions engin, would cause the same problems. There is no computer on the market that ciould handle that kind of data-storm.

 

So while you may not like it, there is a very real, and very rational reason why the game is done the way it is.

[Levgre]

Since Daggerfall, they've gone for a 'scaled' approach to world building, and with good reason. Daggerfall, to this day, causes problems. It was made to true-scale, and contains something liked 150,000 npcs (though most of them generic 'villager' and so forth) and in the day computers just couldn't take it. A similar sized world, using Oblivions engin, would cause the same problems. There is no computer on the market that ciould handle that kind of data-storm.

 

So while you may not like it, there is a very real, and very rational reason why the game is done the way it is.

 

Hum maybe you're confused but no one is suggesting nor expecting anything near 150,000 citizens. Doubling or tripling the citizens in some cities is most likely, along with extra wandering npc's to make the world feel more alive.

 

The game is published how it is because they just want to meet the average gamers expectations and ship out the game in a timely manner. They know 90% of the players, many of them on consoles, won't care that 'major cities' only have about 25 citizens, and a town has 10. That doesn't mean it isn't incredibly unrealistic and unambitious. Modders will push the game in the direction away from having some token towns/citizens to having a semblance of similarity to a realistic population.

Edited November 26, 2011 by Levgre