I think the cities are the right size for a rural area. They each have their own look. The houses themselves are a little small to house an extended family, which is pretty much how I beleive ppl lived back in the time that's being portrayed.

As it is I pretend most of the food is imported, it would have to be, the farms aren't big enough nor are their enough OF them.

I guess each to their own, The "cities" have everything that you actually need. Their are some quests "inside" them.

I understand that the gameworld would probably suffer had the city walls expanded too much (Riften would start swallowing dungeons for example) but what I'd have really liked is if the cities were crowded. Many many houses packed into a small space with very little room to move, would've made them somewhat more believable without actually having to expand them and shrink the wilderness.

Kinda like the better cities mod for Oblivion, I'd love to see one of those for Skyrim.

EDIT: Also Winterhold city could have at least been an underwater dungeon to explore

Let's be realistic, they are not going to get any bigger unless we mod them.

I'd love to play with big cities though. Who wouldn't want to?

I like the look of the cities, and enjoyed that it took me a while to figure out how to negotiate Markarth. I would really, really like them to be bigger, though--more people, buildings, and stores. Where are the book stores?

I often find myself thinking of cities in other games not in the TES series such as GTA and wishing they could have something on that scale. I haven't seen a city yet in TES only villages! The Imperial city was nothing more than a large town!

Amen to that.

Yes, Skyrim cities are villages, while villages are thorps, really, and thorps are lonesome shacks.

They are perfect for me, given the viking town approach in ancient times. Then add the "reduced size abstraction" found throughout the entire game, and it just works. Even now there are locations in towns where fps crawls down, I sure wouldn't want more of that. These are things that ACTUAL designers think about but none of the couch designers...

I really like the cities. I wouldn't say no to larger places in expansions, but I wouldn't be disappointed if those expansions had Skyrim-sized cities either. If a larger city was introduced, I'd expect some mini-games or, I dunno, something, to make that city seem worthwhile.

The big cites in the game are big enough. I personally do not like it when a city is big to be big as it gets tedious to run around in. Cyrodill was a big city, but most of it was just scenery and not game content. But, Cyrodill needed to be a big city because it is the capital. Anyway, back to Skyrim. Solitude and Whiterun and Markarth are big enough to make me believe it is a city, but not so big that I dread getting from one side to the other day after day after day. I remember Daggerfall, it got old going from one side of a city to another all the time. So, bigger just to be bigger might not be fun.

However, the smaller towns need to be a bit bigger and the settlements a few more houses. That would be nice especially if you could do something for most of the NPCs in those extra buildings. Give us more to do out in the smaller places and settlements.

Well, that's because Skyrim's bandit population outnubers the citizens 50 to 1

I'm hoping for http://tes.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=16513 -like mod to be made for Skyrim.

There's a glaring problem you're overlooking.
When you ask for towns and settlements to be more populated while at the ame time request that cities remain at their current size you asking for touble. The contrast would be lost and you'd end up with blurry continous of insufficiently populated territory.

Bad idea.

I say Bigger cities, bigger towns and settlements, bigger yet sparser gameworld.

Sometimes a lack of quantity can directly and negatively impact the quality.

Cyrodiil doesn't have the same culture as Skyrim. The Imperials should be compared with the Romans, a culture that has a center of power, and several other cities who are connected with each other. The province of Skyrim isn't like that. It's more barbaric, it goes back to the powerhouse that was Clovis (who lived around the year 500).

Not necessarily bigger cites. But an open cites mod would help, as well increased dialogue choices for the NPCs inhabitiing the cites.

Like in the case of magic. Larger selection of spells would somewhat alleviate the lack of spell creation. As for the towns, they work, but are nothing special.

Putting 2 or 3 more buildings in each settlement and 4 or 5 in each town is not going to create a Skyrim wide megalopolis.

I disagree about the towns working. I find the collection of three or four buildings too small. And the cities aren't any better. They're just too small to deserve the term "city."

the cities are horrible, we didnt even get the many NPCs we were promised for the loss of greaves

OP I do agree with u 100% skyrim cities are tiny, oblivion was not better though, while skyrim cities are beautiful and have style

i do believe that MW still takes the cake on massive cities but lets not forget MW NPCs had text dialog

i wish they were bigger i really do but realisticaly i don't think it possible to have it all maybe mods will give me the solitude i used to imagine when I read the wolf queen back when I first played morrowind, good times

but all in all I still think skyrim is the best game of the TES series followed closely by Morrowind

Well first off, let me say I'm a really devoted fan (no word filter A FAN BOI) of Morrowind.. but now lets take a step back..

If you have any mod (you're playing morroblivion, so that should work) that gives you the ability to see more than 100 yards without some unfortunate fog blocking your view, you should be able to tell that Vivec honestly wasn't that big. It was spaced out, but the cantons were tall if anything, and the outside details weren't that vivid. Also the insides are interior cells.. they have nothing to do with the "size of the city". Unless of course you're comparing the interiors of a city (houses, jarls house, underground areas) to the entirety of the inside of Vivec. If THAT is the case, you're right, Vivec as a whole had more (canols).

If you have already taken a step back, great.. if not do so now.. Oblivion came out for the 360. It had the Imperial City, which although not HUGE, was still pretty dang big. Granted it was sectioned off and each section was its own cell. Skyrim also came out FOR the 360. It easily outstrips Oblivion visually, and it should be understandable that the cities aren't going to be nearly as large as the IC (even though honestly some of them are still quite large.. Solitude? Markarth? Windhelm? Whiterun?) But here are some things the cities have in Skyrim that Morrowind doesn't. NPC's which are more than reservoirs of repetitive text that have day/night routines and go to pubs and the like. Effects! They have weather effects, smoke, and Whiterun they have the cutsie wootsie little hay straw things floating around . Exterior objects out the wazoo.. Whiterun for example, forges, fencing, insane architecture with dragon heads carved into beams and a flipping tree garden thing with a stream forming a circle around it.. Solitude has way more.

I'm just saying (I just woke up so if there are some glaring holes in my arguments, forgive me) Vivec was cool, but can not even possibly compare visually or technically to even a weak city in Skyrim.

This coming from a huge fan of Morrowind. Now if you were to compare a city in Skyrim to that of Mournhold.. but then again that was an entire DLC expansion .




I remember fighting a LOT more NPC's during the civil war quests personally.. it's nice to fight more than 4 enemies at once (that aren't cliffracers.. )

lol

the horror XD

Except the Nords have been the backbone of the Imperial Army since there was one. The Imperial Army is supposedly huge, it secures an entire continent. That requires a lot of manpower, with Nords being biggest part of that manpower. Skyrim would need a very large population to support that many of its citizens serving outside its borders, and still not appearing like a New Vegas Wasteland. The Empire itself was born out of Skyrim, Talos was a Nord.

Now, I don't think it should have a massive metropolitan city like how the Imperial City should have been in Oblivion, but I feel that the holds should be several times larger than they are, and the 'capitals' should be at least as big as the representation that we got of the IC in Oblivion. They should also be much more lively than that representation we got in a game six years ago. Also, like a previous poster said, the holds should have a population living outside the gates at least as big as the population living inside.

The other thing you have to keep in mind is larger cities and more NPCs means more cells for the cities. Powerful PCs can handle larger cities in one cell, but not all gaming PCs are that powerful, nor are the consoles. The cities could have been a bit bigger, but not without more cells. That is why Freeside and The Strip were split up in New Vegas. Those cells are about as big as you can get in this game and have it run on all platforms. The strip had a lot of graphics so those areas were even smaller.

That's a good point and I understand why Bethesda did this, however, honestly I would have preferred they broke larger cities into smaller cells for the consoles - it allows PC mods to make the cities massive by simply joining up the cells. Then again I suppose console players or people with PCs not powerful enough would complain about the number of loading screens.

In the end it doesn't matter too much - it's not like I spend that much time in cities anyway, and what is there is of decent enough quality.

If it helps, in lore, the cities are actually massive, holding thousands of people comfortably.