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Although in Oblivion every city was very similar, and in Skyrim, aesthetically the cities look different (apart from the boring minor cities), i've noticed each city or town follows (rather strictly), that there should only be 1 blacksmith, 1 alchemist, 1 general store, 1 court wizard and 1 inn. Whatever happened to the scrolls shops? the shield shops? the book shops? etc.

whiterun has 2 Blacksmiths though , and Riften has 2 General shops , and then theres always the khajiit caravans , but their never there when you need em
I truly miss the book shops .. i shall never finish my ''A Dance in Fire'' series , because i can never find Volume 5 ..

Go read it on UESP.

Nah , thats cheating , i have to find it !!

Or well , buy it if there book shops

I found the cities generally disappointing as a whole. Solitude and Whiterun were ok, Solitude being built on the massive overhang and Whiterun on a hill with a place to capture a dragon, but that's it.

The town's don't really feel like towns as they're so small and uninteresting (and I know they probably have roughly the same amount of houses and residence as oblivion, it doesn't fell like it).

I personally like Skyrim, but I can't help think that its a worse game than previous games, but only makes up for it due to being the newest release.

my problem is that no one in the cities of skyrim has anything to say to you , there are barely any people who you can talk to in the cities , on oblivion , everyone could be asked their opinion about their own town at the very least !

I liked the cities in Skyrim a lot. The cities in Oblivion, and Morrowind were WAY too bloated, filled with tons of stuff that serves no purpose beyond draining CPU power.

I cant recall ever going into even half of the buildings, or talking to even half the people in cities, in Oblivion or Morrowind, in Skyrim I've been in almost every building, and talked to just about everyone, because they actually have a purpose.

They could use a couple more shops, like a book shop, but the cities are a vast improvement IMO.

I would rather have Skyrim's useful towns, then Oblivions "here's a town were 50% of it is empty, and another 25% is stuff you will never go into or use."

Whiterun has 2 blacksmiths, AND an archery vendor as well. 3 vendors that buy and sell weapons and armor. 4 if you can get the Warmaiden's people to "split" somehow (but that's a bug).

I will agree though. I do wish there was more variety with regards to shops beyond the street vendors.

Also, that "bloat" in oblivion served the thieve's guild advancement quite nicely imo.

Oblivion's thieves guild was terribly designed though, the bloat in Oblivion's cities only served to fuel a terrible, and excessively needless, gameplay mechanic.

The "you have to fence 50 bazillion gold in order to continue" is almost as bad of a gameplay mechanic as "you must have 3 skills this high to pass", that Morrowind did.

There's a fletcher in Whiterun and in Solitude who deals with archery equipment. I'd say that's an interesting variation. Also, there's a clothing shop in Solitude.

Yaije wrote:Whiterun has 2 blacksmiths, AND an archery vendor as well. 3 vendors that buy and sell weapons and armor. 4 if you can get the Warmaiden's people to "split" somehow (but that's a bug).

I will agree though. I do wish there was more variety with regards to shops beyond the street vendors.

Also, that "bloat" in oblivion served the thieve's guild advancement quite nicely imo.

Im not sure that warmaidens splitting thing is a glitch , whenever you finish Trading with adrianne avenici , she tells you to ''check inside the shop if you need anything'' , and everytime i do the guy has different equipment , so it might have been intentional

philfredobob wrote:Im not sure that warmaidens splitting thing is a glitch , whenever you finish Trading with adrianne avenici , she tells you to ''check inside the shop if you need anything'' , and everytime i do the guy has different equipment , so it might have been intentional

It's intentional, there are different merchant chests for inside, and outside warmaidens.

Also if Adrianne goes inside, she sometimes gains her husbands merchant chest, gold, and inventory.

SajuukKhar wrote:Oblivion's thieves guild was terribly designed though, the bloat in Oblivion's cities only served to fuel a terrible, and excessively needless, gameplay mechanic.

The "you have to fence 50 bazillion gold in order to continue" is almost as bad of a gameplay mechanic as "you must have 3 skills this high to pass", that Morrowind did.

I thought that was reasonable enough , i had already sold one thousand gold worth of stuff with the first fence anyways , so it didnt bother me

SajuukKhar wrote:"you must have 3 skills this high to pass", that Morrowind did.

To be honest I found that completely reasonable, why would the mages guild let people with little to no magic experience be their leader?

Crepe the Ashlander wrote:

SajuukKhar wrote:"you must have 3 skills this high to pass", that Morrowind did.

To be honest I found that completely reasonable, why would the mages guild let people with little to no magic experience be their leader?

Indeed , seems reasonable to me as well
In oblivion , i was a full on warrior , i didnt have any magic skills tagged , i didnt even have any above apprentice level , yet they let me bocome arch mage ... it was stupid

Crepe the Ashlander wrote:To be honest I found that completely reasonable, why would the mages guild let people with little to no magic experience be their leader?

It served a reason in lore, but it served no reason in gameplay because with the way skill training was done ANYONE could get the skill that high without using any skills. I got through all magic related factions and quests with only 1 or two spells because I could just pay my way through training.

It was abused, it was known to be abused, and Bethesda removed it because it didn't stop non-mages from becoming the mage leader, when the entire purpose of the limits was to prevent non-mages from being the mage leader.

It was an entierly purposeless mechanic, and while it is a nice little "lore" kinda thing, in a game, gameplay > lore, and game designers normally dont put useless game mechanics in their games, nor it considered good game design to put in purposeless game mechanics.

SajuukKhar wrote:

Crepe the Ashlander wrote:To be honest I found that completely reasonable, why would the mages guild let people with little to no magic experience be their leader?

It served a reason in lore, but it served no reason in gameplay because with the way skill training was done ANYONE could get the skill that high without using any skills. I got through all magic related factions and quests with only 1 or two spells because I could just pay my way through training.

It was abused, it was known to be abused, and Bethesda removed it because it didn't stop non-mages from becoming the mage leader, when the entire purpose of the limits was to prevent non-mages from being the mage leader.

It was an entierly purposeless mechanic, and while it is a nice little "lore" kinda thing, in a game, gameplay > lore, and game designers normally dont put useless game mechanics in their games.

So would you agree that , were it a little better done , it wouldnt be useless ?

I miss the Imperial city market district from Oblivion used to get all my shopping done in one place there and that '50 bazillion gold' you had to steal in order to advance in the theives guild could all be gotten in one night.

philfredobob wrote:So would you agree that , were it a little better done , it wouldnt be useless ?

There is no way to make it better, it's a flawed concept at its core. Its only real purpose is to arbitrarily deny people game content that they are just going to find ways to exploit, and abuse, the game's mechanics to find ways around regardless of what the Devs do.

There is no reason to put any sort of barrier that hinders progress in any quests beyond the barrier made by the player when he makes the decision "do I want to do this quest or not".


But back on topic, I like skyrim's cities, they needs a little more variation in shops, but they are better overall IMO.

I like oblivions cities because of their storys , all the citizens would comment on each other and it felt more like a community
I like skyrims cities because most people have a mini quest for you to do and it felt more alive

I felt like the difference in cities between the two is in Oblivion, every county's main city was big, unlike the minor hold's towns. The cool thing about Oblivion towns was there was always stuff to do.

I'm not too sure how medieval towns were set up in terms of business competition, but since most towns were under the control of a lord or duke or someone who represented the authority of the ruling monarch, it seems to me that having just one-of-everything would meet society's needs. Having multiple similar merchants compete for the same limited customer base probably wouldn't have resulted in the modern-day model of retail competition, rather, in the medieval mindset it could have resulted in feuding and the accompanying shenanigans, which would have been a continuous source of bother for the town's "ruler".

Having said that, I suppose that there would be room for more than one blacksmith in a larger community. Each blacksmith would then be free to specialize in a particular aspect of smithing, such as shoeing horses, smithing arms and armour, or smithing "hardware" supplies, likes nails, hinges and other household items.

I have to say that I'm happy with Skyrim's towns in general, even with their lack of retail variety. I like having a mix of small rural settlements and larger main cities. It makes the game world feel like people have spread out from the larger towns, giving the countryside a lived-in feel. The one gripe I have about city organization is the actual layout of some of the cities. Seems like every time I walk into Windhelm, I wind up getting lost. Just can't wait to leave the place when I'm there.

philfredobob wrote:I like oblivions cities because of their storys , all the citizens would comment on each other and it felt more like a community
I like skyrims cities because most people have a mini quest for you to do and it felt more alive

What do you mean? They just had the exact same speech over and over, to each other. "Do you like the Gray Fox?" "No, hang him" "Do you like the Gray Fox?" "Yep he cares about the little people." No one was unique and you didn't know what you said. And Skyrim npcs actually talk to each other, they don't say, "mmmn I love mudcrab meat.", or, "Here's a trainer." All npcs were copies of each other. I miss these things from Oblivion: the Arena, Sheogorath, my own order of knights, Martin(who actually treated you like a friend), and sigil stones. And of course their are no book stores, the Imperials love books, not the Nords. And you not makes a city really a community? Varity in voice actors.

Many people wanted open cities because the mod was such a success in Oblivion.

But no, lolconsolerestrictions.

Even if it wasn't on the console it would still be the exact same because of how many low end pc users there are.

It would be a terrible decision to make open cities from a game designer standpoint. It is a terrible, and unnecessary waste of processing power.