Those individuals are spawned upon the beginning of the quest, they don't exist until it starts.

Committing genocide on a town and then hoping it will repopulate is asking a lot when it comes to scripting, it means having another bunch of NPC's set up waiting in the wings, then giving them routines, setting the homes they will use, I realize that sounds simple enough, and it would be if they copy/pasted the originals, but that would be unrealistic, a dead Ysolda wandering around Whiterun would not be very realistic(unless you've raised her of course), add to that all ownerships would have to be changed to the new NPC's, basically you cannot tell a new NPC to use an owned bed, the beds ownership would need to be changed, the same applies to doors.

Here we have people complaining that your decisions don't have enough of an effect on the world, and then those that want a replacement NPC waiting to step in for anyone you kill. The reason cities don't repopulate isn't because it is too difficult to script or because Beth is lazy, but rather because if you decide to commit genocide on a town you should be able to see immediate effects of your actions.

Even if they did repopulate, you could still see the effects, the ones you knew no longer around and the replacements could be bandits and scavangers picking over the carcases.

So like what happens to Helgen? That could be interesting. Just have a balance where after some huge percentage of the population was eliminated the town would be overrun by bandits. That actually may be difficult to script though. What I'm opposed to is just a bunch of NPC's with different names and faces coming and stepping into the same exact roles.

I really wish Bathesda would give some info on how the world reacts and if the world does repopulate in time after killings. I know I have said this but I have been dying to know. The only reason I dont kill people in towns is because I am afraid that I will be lonly and wont have a full lively world to play in with loads of citizen like NPCs...

Dude it's simple if you kill an npc they are dead and will not be replaced. Your can stop waiting for Bethesda to answer your prayers. However if you go all homicidal you'll still have plenty of npcs left because and insane amount of then are immortal because Bethesda apparently caved to idiots and decided not to maker players live with the consequences of their actions.

Since the DB has it's own quest line, its not going to clash with other quests or have you kill a NCP tht is needed later.

But it does. There are several quests from Nazir which have you kill people who are part of other quests, meaning you can't get the other quest. They don't "break" them, in that you just don't get the quest, but they do interfere with them,

Dead is dead. Be careful who you kill. One of my first contracts was the owner of the iron ore mine in Dawnstar and this made it hard to become thane.

For me, Falkreath has been the place hardest hit by dragons. Lod, dead. Mathies, dead. Runil and his "helper", missing and presumed dead. Helvard, dead (ok, I did that one...)

Why would anyone wanna reside in a wartorn province? I dont wanna move TO a country who has a civil war in progress

Because there is a chance of loot and glory

Yeah, the definitely do not respawn.

A double-dragon (frostie and named) wiped out nearly everyone in Rorikstead for me except for the two little (now orphaned) girls who only survived because children are immortal. (Until I get a mod to fix that little inconvenience at least...)

LOL that svcks... I am annoyed that not even 1 or 2 generic NPCs come and live in the abandoned or slaughtered towns.

Why exactly would folks want to immigrate to a region ripped assunder by civil war and under attack by dragons. I would think folks would be fleeing out of Skyrim. Except for souless mass murderers of course.

Just like in real life, things have consequences. If you kill every shopkeeper in Skyrim, you really should not complain that you cant sell things. Its like killing your parents, then complaining that you are an orphan......

Lol well tbh you would think the world would have more people than it actually does... at times it seems very abandoned... That is just my opinion. The cities seem more like close knit communities rather than hussle and bussle cities.

The fact that NPCs don't repopulate towns is probably mostly down to the fact that they have to be handcrafted and handprogrammed in their behaviour and dialogue. They are not just generic people that do nothing and can be spawned at will like bandits. They need to have their schedules made, their services reprogrammed etc., and to make several replacements for every single NPC (Who you could probably also kill so you'd eventually have to run out) is just a huge undertaking. I think that they should probably make replacements for the NPCs you have to kill as part of qritten quests, but that's it. It's too hard to do it for every possible murder. I do agree though that they should have put more NPCs in the world, Skyrim has something like 600 named NPCs. Oblivion had about 850 and Morrowind had 2500 (mind you they didn't have radiant AI back then). If the world were more populated to start with, it wouldn't feel so empty after killing say, 10-15 people in a city.

Thank you for that explanation that makes total sense. I am right there with you that they should have made more NPCs in the world because indeed, when I kill someone it just makes the world seem very empty...

Why the heck did you ever bother wasting $60 to play Skyrim in the first place??? What's the point of posting rubbish scenarios like this? If what you consider fun equates to a mindless hack and slash, shoot em up FPS then you should consider posting over at COD, HALO or WoW. Hell, you'd probably get a better bang for your buck by playing that POS SRTT. It's this sort of mindless gameplay that Quake PKers did to destroy the game mechanics of classic RPG games like UO. Players like you really give the RPG genre a bad name.

Hey Alaric calm your little adolesent nuts. It is a legit topic. Look at all the views maybe?? It isnt that I want to commit genocide for the heck of it, its the fact that if all the named characters and all the NPCs in cities, towns, farms etc, then the world literally becomes empty.... Not to mention just killing 4 NPCs in a city does indeed make the city far more emtpy... which is really sad because you would expect a "city" to include more than 20 people in it... With that said, I do consider Dragonbones post very insightful in the fact that Bathesda would have to do A TON of work to make more NPCs and script them etc while trying to make a repopulation mechanic for those NPCs who died...

I enjoy the fact that The eldar scrolls has characters who are named and have jobs and you can actually have a sort of virtual emotional connection with them because of how real they seem, however I am upset that the world isnt a little more populated especially for those of us who want to cause chaos and want to set them selves up as a dark lord of the land so to speak. Or for those who want to become a mass murderer or gang leader or something of that sort.

Like most of us have said, its your game, play it as you want too.

So calm down Alaric, relax and add something useful to the topic rather than flame and try to insult me on my taste for games.

I was thinking the same thing, but "cleared" doesn't mean, "killed all hostiles". It merely indicates that you've explored that place completely in order to have it count towards an achievement. Perhaps they should have used "Searched" instead.

Yeah sometimes someone just makes you wanna kill them and their entire town... I have a ton of saves just in case I decide to do that to make myself feel a bit better...

It is so you can't clear the same "Dungeon" over and over every time it respawns just to get the trophy/achievement for clearing 50 dungeons and it pertains to the number of dungeons cleared in your general stats list... I've actually found a "Dungeon" (Roadside Ruins, just north of the DB sanctuary near Falkreath) that only had one enemy in it, a Spriggan, to kill and it was "Cleared" according to the game... Basically this feature stops me from going back to it every couple of weeks to clear it just for a trophy...