Towns and villages

navarat9 · July 2014

I feel like all towns and villages are too small. It doesnt make sense that NPC in town are about 30-40 , but houses in town are 5-8.

If you played Tera. Allemantheia, the highelf city is very big.
GW2. Divinity's reach is breathtaking.

That why i always stay in Wayrest and Glenumbra because i think they make me feel like Im in a real city.

Do you feel the same?

Eirikur · July 2014

All towns, villages, and cities, are on a much smaller scale than what they realistically ought to be like, which unfortunately seems like a necessity in open world games like this. In example, in Windhelm there probably ought to be at least 100x more commoners (if not 1000x), and almost all should be housed in commoner housing, but that would require too much space.

Skyrim should probably be the size of Russia, so it doesn't make sense for us to be able to run from the northern city of Windhelm to the southern city of Riften in 3-4 minutes. Still, it's a necessity due to limited time and resources in creating a game such as this.

I always imagine that everything is on a much grander scale. On Ebonheart Pact territory, it's easiest to do so in Davon's Watch and Mournhold.

forbarcusb16_ESO · July 2014

I think it'd be awesome if they bumped up the game scale by like 10, giving a real sense of adventure.

bertenburnyb16_ESO · July 2014

well first off everything is a little small, if you campare the size of example ebonheart (what just a little town) on the map, and then look at Vvardenfell where Vivec city ought to be, Vivec city would be smaller than ebonheart...
secondly, towns and citys are way to open, just slap a couple generic buildings in there with to much open spaces around every building, I think if they just add more buildings to excisting towns, fill em up more, give roads a purpose, since now you can just run everywhere, it would also be alot better, examples as davons watch, mournhold and Windhelm (compared to skyrim version), I think Shornhelm and Daggerfall are the best city-like citys, but even walking through those I constantly think "throw another building here, do something extra there,..."

Welka · July 2014

forbarcusb16_ESO wrote: »

I think it'd be awesome if they bumped up the game scale by like 10, giving a real sense of adventure.

Excuse me! My SSD has only 128go of space. Can you imagine if the game were 200go big!? Lol

TehMagnus · July 2014

I see spaces to build your own house/store in a far away future :-). It's true though some towns are too small, but not all of them imo. Pretty hard to change it all at this point :-/

EinionYrth · July 2014

Welka wrote: »

forbarcusb16_ESO wrote: »

I think it'd be awesome if they bumped up the game scale by like 10, giving a real sense of adventure.

Excuse me! My SSD has only 128go of space. Can you imagine if the game were 200go big!? Lol

Procedurally generated terrain?

Welka · July 2014

EinionYrthb16_ESO wrote: »

Welka wrote: »

forbarcusb16_ESO wrote: »

I think it'd be awesome if they bumped up the game scale by like 10, giving a real sense of adventure.

Excuse me! My SSD has only 128go of space. Can you imagine if the game were 200go big!? Lol

Procedurally generated terrain?

Well no, how you suggest that? This is Tamriel, not minecraft. Plus, you don't have a point because procedurally generated terrain still needs to be stored on your HDD. I'm not against more realistic villages and bigger spaces, but the game is already huge as it is!

navarat9 · July 2014

Divinity's reach in GW2

Allemantheia In Tera

Fi'yra · July 2014

navarat9 wrote: »

I feel like all towns and villages are too small. It doesnt make sense that NPC in town are about 30-40 , but houses in town are 5-8.

If you played Tera. Allemantheia, the high elf city is very big.
GW2. Divinity's reach is breathtaking.

That why i always stay in Wayrest and Glenumbra because i think they make me feel like I'm in a real city.

Do you feel the same?

Wayrest and Glenumbra are still small, but the villages are usually the right sizes compared.

Most people around them times would of lived in cramp situations, unless very wealthy, considering.

I mean look at us, we're completely homeless..

BBSooner · July 2014

I agree, bring on the large/busy city streets. Im glad ESO's cities at least feel bigger than Skyrims, generally. Sieging windhelm at the end of the civil war with 11 soldiers was ... sad.

navarat9 · July 2014

I wish that if ESO make all city bigger it would be awesome.

Velika in Tera

Tabbycat · July 2014

Cities in TES were never all that big either. Probably the largest city in Morrowind was Mournhold, and you could never go outside the city walls.

Arandear · July 2014

Divinity's Reach from Guild was like posted above was massive... shame there's no real players inside the city though lol.

Eirikur · July 2014

navarat9 wrote: »

Divinity's reach in GW2

Allemantheia In Tera

But is that an open world where you can actually explore all the buildings and towers within the city? Or is it like the Witcher, where there's a few explorable 'theme park' zones within the city?

navarat9 · July 2014

Yes. in GW2. youcan explore almost all building. but no in Tera

tehsa · July 2014

Yes, ESO's cities are really way too small, especially if you want every commoner to have a house/room to sleep in and maybe have some extra commoners to give those places a livelier feel.

But on the other hand the houses we got so far are fully explorable. I remember most of the big cities in TERA (Allemantheia, Velika or Kaiator for example) to be mostly decorative which annoyed me a lot. In general TERA had lots of empty places in between. Velika outskirts are a prime example here, just look at that empty terrain. You barely got that in ESO, there is always some little skeleton that shows someone being ambushed, some resource nodes or even a hidden quest.

So yes, ESO cities ought to be a little larger to feel more "real" (i.e. at least all those commoners need a place assigned to them, not all of them have a bed in a tavern I think. if so they're way too cramped, think of the nonexistant children!).

Please don't make your cities too large like in "some other MMOs" so we don't get purely dekorative buildings without being able to even enter them.

Sotha_Sil · July 2014

Well I disagree with you guys : there is actually one big city in Tamriel like those you talked about before : the Imperial City.

But I agree that other towns are quite small although they follow Elder Scrolls V Skyrim and IV Oblivion. We will see what happens to Vivec's city when Vvardenfell comes in.

Gigglesnort · July 2014

Welka wrote: »

forbarcusb16_ESO wrote: »

I think it'd be awesome if they bumped up the game scale by like 10, giving a real sense of adventure.

Then it would take you days if not weeks to travel from town to town on horse back.
Right now as it stands you can travel from end to end in a few minutes which gives you the sense of running a couple city blocks not the entire land.

Enodoc · July 2014

Sotha_Sil wrote: »

Well I disagree with you guys : there is actually one big city in Tamriel like those you talked about before : the Imperial City.

But I agree that other towns are quite small although they follow Elder Scrolls V Skyrim and IV Oblivion. We will see what happens to Vivec's city when Vvardenfell comes in.

Yeah I suppose Imperial City is quite big. It's got about 80 buildings across 4 districts (the other two districts being Arboretum and Arena), and another 10 or so on the Waterfront. Each district has ~20 buildings, similar to the other cities in Oblivion and Skyrim, but they're much more densely packed in.

UPrime · July 2014

The towns are small. GW2 did a better job at making their big cities feel big and it is more immersive.

But immersion only lasts so long, and when it wares off people go to the most convenient towns. Which usually means smallest that have least amount of travel between points. And these smallest towns then become the defacto trade centers. So in the end, I think the towns are fine.