It is not bad design decision from Bethesda. It is disastrous design decision from them as it ruins gaming experience totally. It is clear that they did not test Dawnguard with high level characters at all.

Looks like you weren't very lucky. I only lost one NPC, and it was only a worthless miner in Markarth. Usually the guards kill the vampires before I even get to the scene. Looks like the guards in your game aren't well trained. The guards in your game, shameful is what it is!

DG was designed 'not to be ignored'. It gives you a sense of urgency, quicker you finish its MQ the quicker you don't have to deal with the vampire attacks.

It is clearly about vampire level vs. town guard/npc level. I tried few more times and I was lucky enough to see that master vampire needs only few hits to take down npc in town. After that I do not really wonder why I am getting so many dead npcs. One npc takes only seconds for them to kill, so running from other end of the town gives them plenty of time to kill half the town.

Luckily for me I found a save which lost me only about half an hour of playing and used that. It does not remove my problem though as now I need to save after saving because I never know when vampires decimate town population somewhere.

The mistake isn't the fact that they go into towns, its the mistake that they go near the town gates...such as the Whiterun spawn point if you fast travel to it instead of Dragonsreach.

I tested it when I was doing the companions questline before even starting Dawnguard.

I went to adrienne..they spawned when I got close to the gate, I reloaded.

I went to the general store and alchemy shop and came back out and they didn't spawn, I went back towards the gate then they spawned.

etc

Going past Breezehome actually spawned them (since its very close to the gates), so if thats your favorite home..tough luck?


Just adjusting your playstyle so you never go towards a town's gate til you beat Dawnguard DOESN'T ruin the gameplay experience in any shape or form.

You know that you just confirmed that Dawnguard is broken?

So..because you can't go near a town gate without easy to kill Vampires spawning...the DLC is broken?

K.

You do not need to use workarounds with working product, right? If you are playing like you said, you are actively avoiding possibility to trigger DLC part which you know is badly bugged.

Sure, you can play as you wish, but do not expect me to believe that DLC works as expected just because your workaround.

Oh the DLC starts regardless if you meet the Vampire raiders or not, the Vampire raids are just a part added to add a sense of urgency since the Dawnguarg Vamp Hunters are aggressively recruiting because of how vicious the Vampires have been...due to the Vigilants pissing them off.

Its not a main part of the DLC nor does it make the DLC broken, its merely an extra added to add to the feel of the DLC and give some explanation to why the Dawnguard is recruiting.

Saying the DLC is broken because of Vampire raiders makes entirely no sense.

If you haven't gimped your character badly you can easily kill the raiding Vampires before they even take a step from the gate.

And that urgency is broken anyway. According to other threads you will break game main quest badly if you complete Dawnguard before getting to certain point in main quest first (check cheats & spoilers part of forum for exact part). I am not even close to that part in main quest meaning that I am either forced to break my game or play the main quest before I want to. So much for sandbox feeling.

Killing vampires myself is not hard and that is not the point. Point is that your extra feeling can kill town npcs in seconds which means very frustrating gameplay. Especially since all npcs are set to attack enemies immediately (for which they do not have hp).

There are vampries that are much stronger than the NPC's that spawn in the towns, I've actually had vampires spawn while I was just in the town not walking around the gate or anything also.

There are also bugs that make it so the vampire attacks are VERY frequent and in larger numbers at times. The guards like to swarm around the vampire making it difficult to shoot them (miss and you get a bounty and the guards all forget about the vamp who's killing the shop keeper and instead try to kill you)

The vampires can have over 1k health and the shopkeeper won't even have like 200 and he runs in first with his bare fists.


For some people the bugs make the vampire attacks unbearable and the bugs make them continue after the questline is done.

They either need random NPC's that take the place of dead townsfolk (immortal children can grow up eventually...)
Smarter NPC's that run away from vampires instead of running towards them
Or scale the NPC's to level with you to an extent to better hold off vampire.

You only need to use a work around if you are hopeless at playing the DLC, just like many players these days cannot play a game without a walkthrough and a pile of cheats. Does not mean there is anything wrong with the game or DLC, just means some players like a challenge, and some do not. There are no bugs in the vampire attacks, it works exactly as it is meant to, for some players that is going to be beyond their capabilities or patience level. Having to actually think and plan ahead is not something some want to do, and some who play Skyrim never bothered much with fighting. Which is fine for the main game, the DLC is not going to let you get away with ignoring it. You can choose to avoid attacks by avoiding towns while doing the main Dawnguard quest, but you ignore vampires while visiting towns you get consequences. Most players would quickly figure out what they did wrong and adjust their play style, some might just prefer to have ghost towns, some just prefer to whine about getting ghost towns and do nothing about it. Well the last lot got what they deserved! It is fine to complain and moan about how hard they made it, not that most would have found it hard, but no point not doing anything about it, and thinking they will make the game easier.

The "mistake" isn't in going to a town. If you do that, you arrive "at the same time" as the attack starts, presumably so you can intervene instead of watching or running away. The "problem" is fast travel. Because of simu-time, you can "arrive" after the fight has started, or even already over, and just find piles of bodies and/or ash lying around. I don't really fast travel much, so I don't see the "problem" and I'm willing to bet most of the others here who've said "what problem" also don't fast travel a whole lot.

I've finally had experiences with the vampire attacks, and my opinion is negative.

New character, started with Dawnguard installed. I had not fast travelled even once. Nord Warrior.

My first vampire attack was at level 8. I had just been recognized as the Dragonborn and instructed to go to High Hrothgar. I left Dragonsreach at about 10 PM. One of the guards said something about vampires, so I looked around the city. Near the main gate to Whiterun I found a fight. I intervened and found a couple NPCs had died before I got to the fight. I reloaded several times from saves within Dragonsreach, and every time, I sprinted back to the main gate. I tried several different routes, and found that I could not get to the main gate fast enough to prevent the loss of a named NPC. Often, the dead were vendors whom I did not even think were out at that hour. Eventually, I just spent the night at Dragonsreach and left in the morning - no attack. The attack was by a master vampire and three vampire thralls. So, this time I avoided the vampire attack through reloading.

My second attack was at level 11. Unlike the previous time, I had actually heard about the Dawnguard earlier that morning from a guard. I left Whiterun. It was about 11AM - open daylight. I walked to the stable and got on my horse, only to find that a master vampire was attacking the man and woman who work at Pelagia farm. I tried running over there to attack them as fast as I could, but found myself unsuccessful. Usually at least one died; sometimes both. No matter how quickly I cut across to the farm, one was dead by the time I reached. Finally, instead of leaving through the Whiterun gate, I fast travelled to the Stable, immediately got on my horse, and sprinted over to the attack location. This time I got the vampire and killed him from horseback before he could kill either NPC. It didn't feel exciting - rather gamey and tedious. But I did kill the vampire this time, so at least that is something. Maybe that means I won't see another attack spawn for a while.

Honestly, the whole "sense of urgency" thing isn't something I like. Skyrim is an open world game where you can pretty much do what you want at your own pace. The DLC shouldn't actively undermine the core design tenets. Feeling like you have to drop everything and make a beeline to Castle Dawnguard limits the sense of openness. It is legitimate to add a sense of vampire threat to the world to justify the DLC story, but it should not feel like the player is being pressured into immediately following one particular questline. I think the attacks would be better if the followed certain principles: one, non-combatants should flee and run inside, not engage the vampires. Two, the attacks should trigger when I am actually at the site of the attacks - player experience is paramount. Three, the guards should be able to fight off vampires - others have said that this is the case in their games, so it might just be my bad luck, but in neither case did I find the guards much help - the civilians were fighting, not the guards!

Also, I will note again that I did not fast travel until the second vampire attack, and that fast travelling actually helped me kill that vampire and save the townsfolk since I was closer to the attack when it began. In any case, I tried to make this more of a constructive criticism post than just a complaint. I don't agree with the original poster that buying Dawnguard was the "worst mistake ever" but I do think that these attacks are not as well implemented as they could be.

I'm twenty hours in and had no such problems, so people are most likely overreacting and being negative about the nature of the game itself. Unpredictability makes the game a lot more interesting.

If it works for you does not mean that it works for everyone else or even part of them. Some bugs never happen to some persons while others can hit them all the time. Be happy that you are one of the lucky ones.

All my characters fast travel, one had a lot of attacks. The attack will not start till you arrive, it can start if you arrive near the gate (stables), so going in the gate you get bodies, it can start when you come out of some other door into the town area, but they do not happen if you are not there to start with. You will not always be able to see the attack, you just have to assume there is going to be one and make sure to be in the right place as fast as possible. You can get an attack on Dawnstar just by going near the Dawnstar Sanctuary, you cannot see Dawnstar from there, so there is a good chance if you are not quick you are going to lose NPC's. Better to go to Dawnstar, check and then go to the Sanctuary, but then coming back out of the Sanctuary you have the same problem unless you already had an attack. A lot of my second characters attacks in Windhelm happened as she came out of Hjerim, naturally she became a champion sprinter since she had to rush to the gates all the time. She still does that even though the main quest is finished and there have been no further attacks, does no harm to rush to the gates for a bit of exercise. You leave the area without checking, yes you can come back to a pile of bodies.

I think the word broken is being missused. Broken renders the game COMPLETELY unplayable, and there is very few ways around it. A few vampires that attack a town(as they were programmed to do) is not the game being broken, perhaps there is just poor design choices, in say the leveling of the vamps but the DLC is not rendered unplayable because of a poor design choice.

Broken also means that it includes everyone. It doesn't. In fact, the majority have no problems whatsoever after dozens of hours of play. Bugs slip through, most are bugs that afflict a small group. It happens. Get over it.

And for PC players, there is a mod that removes the vamp attacks in Dawnguard.

saying some people have a bug and should get over it isn't right...

Imagine you were the only one with the water crashing bug and Beth just said you should get over it cause not everyone else has it.

If you play pc, there is a mod that make all shop keeper and quests giver as essential

I wonder if u know the attacks are not a bug. Some people don't check the city out for vampires first. You have a dlc that is involving a vampire race trying to rule tamriel. What do you expect?? The vampires to ask before they attack? Some players are so derp sometimes.

Yes, Coyteria, I know the attacks themselves are not a bug. That does not mean the attacks themselves are not bugged.

I had one character who got around 6 attacks, one who had over 20 and one who so far has had none. None of those characters were bugged. Just like everything else in the game, what you get can vary a lot. Same goes for attacks after the main quest. The ones complaining the most about attacks usually get one very predictable attack which they failed to deal with, and give up! They are not ever going to learn anything giving up.

I have yet to see a vampire that would not drop dead if you tried hard enough to kill it. The vampires always spawn in the same place, how are the attacks bugged?

A couple of things: First off, take the time to see my original post and to what I was responding. Secondly, your personal experience with the DLC does nothing to show that others' games are not bugged.