Since i purchased Dawnguard "Blood on ice" quest wasn't starting no more. I know that it's a really bugged quest so i was patient. Then i realised that NPCs who were supposed to start the quest in the cemetery have been killed by damned vampires one day i passed by this town.
So my question is :

Will Bethesda staff will resolve this utterly stupid kind of event, killing even more this game (and it's quite a challenge if we take on account the huge amount of pre-Dawnguard existing bug). And obvioulsy will they search a way to correct all of the deaths inflicted which actually have broken important parts of the game (quests, Thane opportunity, house achievement etc.).

If not, is Bethesda thinking of refunding dedicated players unable to use this product efficiently no more, or eventually find a way to indemnify them as this kind of failure badly needs compensation. And by compensation i don't even speak of the 20€ many have just spent recently to be totally unable to play this game as normally as possible.

Thinking about this would be really appreciated for now there's a serious lack of professionalism, communication and sense of commercialism.

Thanks. (hope there's also a lack of bad spelling and grammar approximation).

I don't think they'll ever will. That 'event' has been added to either motivate you to fight for the Dawnguard or against them, and join the vampires instead. At least that's how I see it.

true but theres no point in it if it destroys parts of the game you could have played. I do like the vampire attacks on towns and such but they shouldn't be able to kill key people in the game, or if they can, just let the people re-sporm after a few days so you can do or get the quests from them.

I have noticed however, since downloading Dawngaurd there are A LOT of bugs which are very very annoying, so much so i thought of deleting it from my xbox so to try and get rid of these bugs. I restarted the game to play dawngaurd and when i got a house in Whiterun it would not upgrade properly etc the first item i would buy for it would not load in the house and would always be on his list of things i could improve so i would buy many times but still nothing, in the end i spend 2000 gold on the same item but it would never load. this is one of many annoying probs i have come across to which i hope is fixed. if they aren't then they aren't given this game much justice.

Neither do i and i fully understand the intentions.
The only thing i can't accept is that this crap is ruining all the original game experience - understand keeping the player from experiencing normal access to the game. As another player said in another post, if all of this non sense isn't corrected all of this will be brought to a consumer association, and with the huge number of people affected, i think they'll easily found a way to be heard by a company which obviously doesn't respect their part of the deal.

We gave money so we must expect a finished and (almost) working product. When something is broken and ruin the game experience, that's Bethesda responsability to solve it, as nobody has bought Dawnguard knowing that this DLC will break their actual saves, in term of [censored]y events or even various major bugs. Bethesda has never warned nobody about that.

And i don't even speak of morality, just legality.

Hello, why can't you just go back to your previous game rather than starting a new game for DG? I finished the MQ a couple days before DG was released & just added it to that game. My level 52 has too many useful skills to dump her. I had none of the big problems with DG that I read on this forum & I finished DG a few days ago.

If i knew that an important NPC has been killed i would have gone to my last save but i didn't. Sounds logical to me.
If you've got no problems at all i wonder why you're here. Strange...

Blood on the Ice is broken for me too....

Pretty sure if you can manage to not to get your NPC's killed the quest starts just fine, my third character did Blood on the Ice after Dawnguard was added, nothing went wrong with the quest. Any quest is going to fail if you allow the NPC's it needs to be killed. There is nothing essential about the quest. It is possible you could still get it to start by finishing the civil war campaign and doing the usual things to buy a house, then solving the murder mystery. Go see if you can kill Calixto or the court mage, they should be the only two people you need. Or go see if you can get the key off Tova to get in the house. there were always lots of ways you could start that quest.

My advice: it doesn't matter how trivial it must be to save before entering any city, at least you can reload until you manage to save an NPC.

I'm confused on who exactly the OP is talking about being killed. I know of no NPC that is vital to a quest, not being essential. If the quest is unobtainable from an NPC being able to get killed. That is not Dawnguard allowing it.

Besides I think that that type of gameplay should be encouraged. I don't agree with the whole "You can't kill me" concept anyway. If the quest fails, than so be it. It's the consequence of actions. That is something TES is lacking IMO. You should not be able to do everything.

I think that having NPCs die would be ok if AND ONLY IF you have the ability to stop it. I cant count the number of times I reloaded a save to try to save certain characters only to have others die. Whats more is that these deaths are happening even while you are not around. For example I was sitting inside my Whiterun home cleaning out inventory and out of nowhere I fail a quest. Sure enough I walk out to find the town being attacked. That is unacceptable to me. Call it a design choice if you want, but it is ruining the game. I havent even finished Dawnguard because I dont want to lose anymore Blacksmiths. If you want to kill NPCs, why not allow the moth priest to die once hes not needed. Seriously do I need to put him down every time I come back to Fort Dawnguard?

This happened in Oblivion, and FO. I think the world around you should run on it's own idle. No matter if you are in the cell or not.

the issue is the NPC are dying even when you cannot see it

i have gottem several letters of condolence in areas i had not been into

now this is an fyi only

i have two xbox's with different gamer tags

on my second xbox i never downloaded dawnguard, never

but did the mandatory update

the NPC's are also dying in this game and i am clueless as to why

because this is happening in areas that i had not been to for quite some time [getting those letters]

so dawnguard is an isssue concerning vampires [ps it happens no matter which side you chose-vamp or DG]

but may not be the entire concern

i am so very DONE with this game

not fun any more, frustrating

no never happened in oblivion i played thru dozens of times,occasionaly certain NPC's would fall unconscious but never die [never ruined a quest]
like quill weaver who liked to walk from anvil to chorrol- irritating to have to wait for her to walk back -lol
not whole towns


never happened in fallout 3 or new vegas

and this started with the new update on skyrim

understand with oblivion i played that game dailey for over a year
and was still playing it last year
i still play fallout 3
so i do know

Most bugs will probably never be fixed.The Blood on Ice quest is still broken despite them saying it was fixed.Even amateurs do a better job patching this mess.

The vampires do not spawn while you are inside your house or any other building, they spawn when you first enter the town or perhaps when you leave a building (I have seen no actual proof of that yet). You failed to stop them then, or failed to look, yes they have fun while you are off doing something else. Or hiding inside your house thinking everything is safe just because you did not "see" anything. The spawn points seem pretty regular for the walled cities and if you are looking it should not be that hard to catch them before they kill anyone, assuming you have the skills to kill them quick enough.

let's see if you think the same when you go for a few in game days doing quests/side-quests, and come back to a ghost city/town full of dead bodies or ashes.

it's not about people "hiding" or their "skills", the point is, we don't want to be a baby-sitter for every NPC character.

Braggen had 5 attacks Aussie has already had more than that in the last day of play alone. I do not walk around with my eyes closed, Aussie leaves no area till she is sure it is safe. She will be losing nothing but a few guards (she has lost one guard so far) and hopefully two trouble makers standing just inside the Whiterun gates, it takes less than a minute of your time when first arriving in a town to make sure nothing bad is going to happen when you turn your back, hardly that much trouble. Aussie went looking for trouble for the challenge, so is still doing quests alongside the Dawnguard questline. She neither needs to do quests or needs to even visit any location other than the Dawnguard ones. Since just about the only random event the game can give her is vampires, it seems she will get as many vampires as Braggen gets Dragons. Which is going to be a lot.

We are talking about important NPCs that get get killed without the player being there. Two Master trainers come to mind right off, in Oblivion. The Deasruction trainer and the Marksman trainer. They are both marked quests.

FO has important NPC to get killed all the time. Merchants and regular NPCs as well.

A year is great, but now you know...

EDIT : Understand I am not defending the concept of loosing entire towns, on a regular basis. But I do support random deaths throughout the world.

never in my 1000 hrs of playing oblivion
had that happen

Glad I could help.

No NPC gets killed by vampires(or dragons) in a walled town in Skyrim unless you caused it by being there, whether it was a quest to kill someone or just visiting. While the Travellers and whatever they conjure up might be a bit hard to kill the Master Vampires and their thralls do not seem that difficult, usually the guards by themselves can kill them. Aussie lost another guard and I am thinking of counting them to see how fast they respawn, would be nice if someone checked that. Braggen often lost a couple of guards to dragon attacks and there were always the same number of guards when returning, hopefully more frequent vampire attacks does not result in a shortage of guards, there has been enough for Aussie so far.

Each walled town has a set area for your unwelcome visitors to spawn and they will spawn when you first enter the town area (which includes stables for at least some towns) or when coming out of at least some buildings in that town area. I have yet to get more than one vampire attack in the same location on the same day/night, so once you have an attack it might be safe to visit buildings further from the spawn point. Either they all turn up when first entering, or the sods wait till you come out of a building, Aussie has had 2 attacks in the last hour of gameplay as she was caming out of Hjerim, she is going to become a champion at doing the Windhelm sprint. She has yet to get an attack in Whiterun despite her best efforts, and no visits to other walled towns resulted in anything interesting. Windhelm and any defenceless unwalled town seem to be favourite targets for her vampires.

I've encountered vampire attacks only in Windhelm yet. The first one occured in Whiterun but it has been the last there.
Needless to say that i'll have no more available quests in Windhelm in no time ! I haven't got any vampire in sight yet they've already killed an helpless NPC.
Perhaps NPC with small health should flee instead of trying to kill some supernatural creature with their bare hands... Stupid AI. ^ ^

The only one in Windhelm that attacked with bare hands for Aussie was Torsten Cruel-Sea the only reason he was never checked for weapons or given health potions was it never occurred to me he would be in danger. he was never involved with Braggens brangles with Vampires. Torsten should have been up near the graveyard, not near the main gates, he must have heard the commotion and come running to help, he was a late entry and almost got himself killed before he was noticed swinging at a vampire master with bare fists. After a few attempts he has a nice big silver greatsword to swing at the next vampire with. Unfortunately Aussie has run out of Dawnguard weapons. Braggen being a vampire always had lots of Dawnguard weapons to give out to NPC's. Strangely enough Aussie was doing a bit of smithing and improved one of the axes for Nils the cook, he equipped it just fine, but seems to have given up chopping wood. Belethor's assistant in Whiterun has a normal Dawnguard axe and still goes through his routine fine. That was the first time I had improved one before reverse pickpocketing it onto someone. Aussie only had silver weapons at the start and could not improve them. Braggen gave them out as he got them, not needing to put much effort into fighting of town attacks, he could kill the few he got usually before anyone even noticed they were there.

I know the RPG experts will probably think this a dumb question, but if you lose a NPC why not just reload a savepoint and try to save them?