Never More NPCs in a Developing City

[Veritas-Ancora]

Have you noticed that there's never an increase in NPCs in cities that are developed over time? And that the story barely increases the count to offer more in the immersion?

Few examples:

Mor Dhona. If you were here in ARR, it was built from a single shack. Despite its massive build, it's still pretty empty.

Idyllshire. The city didn't increase its numbers, and there was never any NPCs that celebrated your victories.

Doman Enclave. The city isn't anywhere near as bustling as Kugane, it has maybe 10-15 NPCs total. There's really no indicator of success. You literally paid for the entire city and not a single person recognizes you or says anything after donating millions.

Return to Ivalice in Kugane. There's only one pair from the ship that are in Kugane but no one else interacts.

I don't know if it's because there's generally not enough people, but Kugane really showed me that there's NPCs walking around, interacting with each other, having conversations, and it's kind of strange that we don't see that more often.

I wonder if that's a lore reason or a system limitation.

[ObsidianFire]

It's probably due to limited dev resources. Like it or not, the devs don't have the time to keep making NPCs to populate the game with. Also... the amount of "actors" in a given zone is a big deal for hardware. So it could probably be that too.

Kugane was the hub city of its expansion. So it probably got the most attention by the devs when it came to NPCs. That said, most of the NPCs in Kugane are just set-dressing. A lot of the ones moving around don't have anything interesting to say or even have speech bubbles. The NPCs in Mor Dhona, Idyllshire, the Doman Enclave, and the Prima Vista get a lot more development via sidequests then the ones in Kugane do. So while there are less overall NPCs in those zones, I feel like I know who they are as characters better. And honestly... I prefer that.

[Cilia]

Remember that pre-Stormblood zones were designed to work with PS3 hardware, which is significantly more limited than PS4 / PC.

Just as well, remember that the number of NPCs is only representative of a location's actual population.