So I went and made Senchal an actual City

ArchMikem

The player hub cities in this game always seemed scaled down (then the down bits scaled way up to compensate) which ended up being "cities" with very few, large buildings, overall making them look sparse. I always had imaginings of getting lost in alleyways and packed in streets lined with vendors and Guild traders, but instead every city has wide open plazas and a grand total of ten houses.

So anyway, I took a map of Senchal and just started blasting copy paste.



Thicc Senchal has an increased number of houses throughout the city, making the streets more dense. I extended the city docks further south, and placed an additional Inn and Outlaws Refuge entrance in the Docks. Placed a sort of "Merchants Lane" along the southern Docks for additional vendors. Added structures in various points along the ring road outside the city walls. Created a Village extension outside the main city gates on the main junction, giving it another Wayshrine as well as a Stable and Inn.

My end goals with this game's cities is two fold. One, is to just make them much more dense which can easily be achieved with just copy pasting more structures, or creating structures with a larger overall footprint, taking up more space. Two is to give players additional congregation areas within a Player Hub. This would be more easily done if the game had additional gameplay mechanics that actually had us visit and stay at a certain place. Make Inns actually something important to get players to gather inside, create a designated player trading market where players can gather and use Area chat to sell their goods instead of using Zone.

ArchMikem

No one wants bigger cities?

I don't want this to be buried off the front page so quickly

Thokri

I like big cities but if you want other than bored people to look at thread using terms like thicc is not best option.

It is also bit touchy subject currently due bad performance since bigger and more active cities would mean lower performance.

ArchMikem

Thokri wrote: »

I like big cities but if you want other than bored people to look at thread using terms like thicc is not best option.

So I went and made Senchal Thickly built

Fixed, though not nearly attention grabbing.

Ratzkifal

Oh my god... MAKE MORE! This is awesome! I always found the cities in the elder scrolls games too small.

Ratzkifal

There is this website https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator which let's you generate realistic medival cities of realistic proportions and even allows you to manipulate its features, even but not limited to geographical features like rivers.
I once thought about having this tool create more realistic versions of the cities in elder scrolls, but I was ultimately too lazy to try and recreate the geography of even a single elder scrolls city. But others might enjoy doing that and this is probably the only opportunity to bring it up so...

Sylvermynx

I like it, Arch! Too bad the devs didn't hire you to do the cities!

Nord_Raseri

Thokri wrote: »

I like big cities and I cannot lie

Needed MC Hammer

Nord_Raseri

I'd suffer a true "unusually long loadscreen" for this. As long as fps is fine after loading.

ArchMikem

Nord_Raseri wrote: »

I'd suffer a true "unusually long loadscreen" for this. As long as fps is fine after loading.

I do admit, I still have flashbacks to the Orsinium infinite crashes back at Wrothgar's launch, and I still get some stuttering in DLC player hubs. But more powerful components, and the most important thing, loading the game from an SSD helps a ton. I do wonder what ZOS can do with the game once the PS5 and Xbox Series X are released.

Elsonso

Thokri wrote: »

I like big cities but if you want other than bored people to look at thread using terms like thicc is not best option.

It is also bit touchy subject currently due bad performance since bigger and more active cities would mean lower performance.

True. FPS is basically why the cities are wide open plazas with 10 houses in the first place.

thissocalledflower

The city is small because access t resources and the tech to utilize it fully dont exists and they are hard to defend. Also, Senchal has been ravaged by dragons so it shouldnt be built up..

ArchMikem

thissocalledflower wrote: »

The city is small because access t resources and the tech to utilize it fully dont exists and they are hard to defend. Also, Senchal has been ravaged by dragons so it shouldnt be built up..

Dragons never attacked Senchal, only the surrounding environs.

Lysette

Contents of a region are streamed cell by cell - that is why one can get a loading screen when there is no obvious reason for it - i.e. the cell one attempts to get into isn't ready yet. As far as I could see, those cells are much bigger than in single player TES and I guess the density of cities is somewhat related to this cell size - putting too much into a cell will increase the chance that there will be loading screens or stutters or being stopped at a cell border without being able to enter it - this happens to me pretty often in Daggerfall - the cell border is between the inn and the wayshrine and another one is past the bridge in direction of the crafting area.With a lot of people around the cell content has to be less to not cause problems.

And as far as Senchal goes, it is already a problem at prime time - to make it more densely packed with people and houses would just make it worse. i really like the idea of it, but anything what creates player hubs is just creating performance problems and makes it unpleasant with a lot of people around - ZOS will first have to increase performance and we know how this might go. I have not much hope that ZOS will ever be able to achieve performance which can handle a lot of people and dense content at the same time.

Turelus

ArchMikem wrote: »

No one wants bigger cities?

I don't want this to be buried off the front page so quickly

Sure but I also want/need a reason for them. A bunch of houses/buildings to break into just to kill an NPC and take some average items seems eh...

Some daily quests for regular townsfolk?

TelvanniWizard

Tiny towns being "cities" ruin my immersion. Love op's work!

Royaji

Que the "but why do all the doors have locks on them!?" complaints.

Darkstorne

This will also be my biggest issue with Solitude when I'm so used to the Solitude Docks mod, more than doubling the size of the city

xshatox

I think they make cities like the way it is to reserve compute power.
More complex cities more objects need to be rendered means more compute power on both ZOS server and client side. ESO just starting revamping their multi-core capabilities so in the future they might design more dense and complex cities.