npcS

[Malchik]

This may already have been raised, sorry. With Oblivion a major crticism (for me) was that many of the NPCs had no purpose. It was one of the reasons Povuholo and I created the mod Kragenir's Death Quest. Morrowind had quite a few characters like it but far fewer than Ob. Skyrim has by and large resoved the problem. Training and shopkeeping is fine IMO. TR is rather variable in this respect. In some places almost every character has a purpose. In others there are a great number who are 'wallpaper'. This is not a criticism because one has to start somewhere. I suggest, however, that as the mod is developed attention is given to finding purposes for these NPCs. (Especially where there are rather a lot of them.) Collection quests can deal with a large number quickly and can be very varied. Need any suggestions feel free to ask me.

Cheers,

Gareth

[tkl7]

Personally, I like npcs that have no purpose, as it adds realism. That's just me, though.

[rot]

Fluff is important. If at the end of the day you remember every NPC in town as "the guy whose cat you I had to rescue" or similar, it will be apparent that the "living world" is small and just a quest ground for the player. Okay, it IS a small world, but it's meant to symbolise a large one. I think that's the justification for how the world is built here: the NPCing people create the NPCs, some with quest purposes in mind but not all, then quests are added on top. Hence why so many are "just there" at the moment.

That said it would indeed be weird in comparison to vanilla to have too many NPCs with no game purpose, moreso if they're very detailed or special NPCs - but the mod isn't done yet, and those currently unused NPCs will come in handy when the land is complete and we can do quests that send you across different regions.

Quest ideas for existing NPCs are always good though, I'd just say there's no need to go out of your way to cover them all at this point-

[Yeti]

Creating purposes for each NPC and writing dialogue for them is simply far too impractical. Skyrim can get away with it because there are fewer npcs in that game than in Morrowind. There's a reason that the LGNPC mod for Morrowind, which is trying to add unique backgrounds and dialogue to every NPC in Morrowind, isn't even a third of the way complete after years of work.

Filler npcs are simply necessary when faced with populating the massive cities we make at Tamriel Rebuilt. It's best to save unique backgrounds and special dialogue to a selection of interesting characters, than try to come up with a life story for every Joe Dunmer. There are only so many times you can write background dialogue for commoners before they all start blending together.