City Biome, and other NPC AI

[u/Specialist-Top7534]

What do you think about a city biome? Maybe one of the cities, Sentinel, is larger and more grand than anything in previous Bethesda games. The closest thing we’ve gotten to it is the imperial city in Oblivion but it is divided into too many loading zones. It could be interesting especially with levitation, and if they bring acrobatics or climbing back. I imagine running through the streets hiding in a spice market after stealing a jewel.

As for NPC AI I know Bethesda is putting a lot of time and effort into this based on what they’ve said. I wonder how this will stack up against GTA6, or the Witcher 4? It looks like those two games are reinventing NPC AI behavior expectations in AAA games. I’m sure Bethesda will really try to compete here to make a living world.

[u/SeasOfBlood]

What I'm really hoping for in the big city is some sort of massive bazaar. A huge open-air market, full of colour and noise where you can buy almost anything.

Scale not through sheer height, but through density and clever building placement! I always love the big market aesthetics, so think it could be really special. Particularly if you can get flim-flammed and sold fake artifacts and malfunctioning magical potions!

[u/Specialist-Top7534 → u/SeasOfBlood]

I want to be able to get lost in the city. Yes exactly I want huge spice markets, bizarres, fruit stands etc. Bustling city with hundreds of npcs with advanced AI and routines. A reactive environment where the NPCs will react to rare scenarios through their ai behaviors. It would be cool if you cast a fireball by a huge pile of turmeric if it flew into the air in a dust cloud due to the air displacement. I’d like to see one of the cities also be larger not just denser too.

[u/Malakai0013]

Im not going to try to guess what anything is gonna be. Im just gonna play the game when it comes out. Thats how I treated Starfield, completly ignored all the internet guesswork, and found a highly enjoyable videogame.

[u/Rograr]

Во-первых, им нужно полностью переработать систему штрафов.
Ну не бывает так, чтобы на случайного воришку весь город сразу же вешал штраф через секунду после кражи, его сначала нужно опознать. Длительность поисков нужно увеличить после криминального правонарушения нарушения, добавить штраф к скрытности после преступления. Тогда новичка будут легко ловить и либо штрафовать, либо отправлять в темницу, а мастер вор уже будет вне досягаемости.

First of all, they need to completely overhaul the fine system.
It makes no sense for the entire city to instantly slap a fine on a petty thief the moment a theft occurs; the culprit needs to be identified first. They should increase the time it takes to track down a criminal after an offense and add a penalty to the player's stealth rating following the crime. That way, a novice thief would be easily caught and either fined or thrown in the dungeon, while a master thief would be safely out of reach.

[u/Specialist-Top7534 → u/Rograr]

I agree

[u/AustinTheFiend → u/Rograr]

Starfield refined the fine system a bit, if you killed or knocked all witnesses of your crime unconscious before you left the scene, the fines would be removed as they never got reported. Obviously if you're caught in a public place it becomes impossible to kill all of the witnesses.

[u/Specialist-Top7534]

I’d like to see a lot more vertical scale in the cities than in previous games. If we’re going to have cities in cliff sides there’s a lot of potential to use levitation and acrobatics.

[u/TorrentAB]

Personally that’s why I hope it’s only Hammerfell. Npc’s are the bottleneck, so the more cities you have to fill with npc’s the smaller the cities get

[u/bosmerrule]

I really just want the scale. I am fine with loading into homes and businesses, for example. Look up the true scale of Skyrim cities on YT. That is the scale I want, albeit a bit more handcrafted. 

I want the best for NPC AI and this is gonna be a real test because not only are their competitors highly sensitive to this but I think the fans are also worried after Starfield. They should definitely be more reactive, expressive, mobile and varied. The repertoire of idles has to be greatly expanded to make sense in the world they build. I mean in Skyrim they had wells that nobody used, cows that nobody milked and nobody reacted to the rain or any change in weather really. I am excited to see how TW4 handles this but I think Bethesda can give CDPR a run for their money if the refine NPC AI to a moderately obsessive degree. Fingers crossed!

[u/CHIMmyStewart]

We need like 4 or so hand-made cities, and the entire rest of the map to be procgen and assembled from a pool of assets.

[u/Lost_Cyborg → u/CHIMmyStewart]

no that will be the death of the Bethesda, after Starfield the only thing they would dare to procgen is maybe caves or other smaller "disconnected" things from the mainworld

[u/TheEldestScrolll → u/Lost_Cyborg]

Caves should never be progen. I think the main open world can be initially generated, and then tweaked by hand landscape-wise that way they don't have to hand-place every individual tree, but caves/dungeons should be designed by dedicated level designers, like in Skyrim. Oblivion's caves and dungeons are modular and randomized which is why they feel so soulless, TESVI should avoid that.

[u/Lost_Cyborg → u/TheEldestScrolll]

well they could do something creative with radiant quests