They are 100% obnoxious and accomplish nothing other than eliminating useful NPC's from the game, like Merchants and the like. Terrible design choice.

Damn you and your logic. But I'm sticking with toon, just to be stubborn and to get on W&V's nerves

I guess I may just be the only sod around here that actually enjoys the " punishment " from the vampire attacks. If you ask me it make the war between DG and the fangers feel like an actual war, more so then the civil war. Speaking of which I wish the civil war had the same mechanic as the vampires, it would have added tons of enjoyable game play during the civil war, but that's my opinion.

Except I don't think the goal is to kill townsfolk.

A war such as the Civil War is to simply gain ground, and in doing so, gain control. Killing innocent civilizans won't get you anywhere... it can get you hate amongst the local populace, interrupting your plans. The instrumental part of a war like the Civil War is to damage the enemy with attrition, gain ground, and eventually win. The more enemy troops you kill, the more they spread their forces out, the easier it is to control.

So I don't think having Stormcloaks/Legionnaires rushing into cities and attacking is a good idea, nor is it smart.

I have to beg to differ, the best way to bring your enemy to his/her knees is through the lives that are under the control of that person. It didn't pan out to well in other wars throughout history **cough** WW2 **cough** but the theory is sound enough. During much of the middle/dark ages the best tactic used during a siege was to starve your opponent out including the population under that persons protection. So it's not a new idea to attack the innocent in order to win the fight.

I was gonna purchase dawnguard DLC even tho Im not a Werewolf and Vampire fan at all. After reading many threads here and other forums I decided not to purchase dawnguard because of its feature random vampire attacks on cities and towns.

Cities for me are about selling/purchasing loot, getting quests, and relaxing not dungeon crawling or searching around to see if anyone was killed. Weak NPC like merchants offing themselves running straight to danger against vampires is not realistic, just a big annoyance that will over time reduce towns and cities to ghost towns. If weak NPC reacted in a realistic way, if new NPC moved in to replace dead NPC this feature random vampire attacks would be alot better.

Really, on my way to riften only to see 3 revellers- mead drinkers attacking a spider with fists.....

Ahahahaha I see what you did there, using Ra's Al Ghul's line from Batman Begins. But I agree, this is what everyone who complained about stage four attacks gets for complaining because this is the only way they could balance vampires now, in my opinion. I feel like Bethesda was like yeah lets get rid of that and add this in, just to make those people mad.

Its still worth it, however getting your dragon elder scroll before the blood elder scroll is a pretty big bug they missed.

Not IMO,
Dawnguard is B.S. because you can't avoid the random attacks and end up with quest givers constantly killed off unlike the main quest. Where I can avoid it completely so I don't have dragons chasing me everywhere I go. Now I have gone through a week of gameplay saving and doing quests to get the Riften home. Only to now find out the woman for the Skooma trade you need is dead and gone along with others. When I read about the random thing being in Skyrim I thought it was a good idea. However I think it is complete non sense. My character isn't superman and I can't protect every quest giver on the map. I am not going to sit here and sift through hours of saves to find one to load that is before NPCs die FFS!!! bye bye Skyrim...... Facepalm!!!!!

Sorry but if this is how they are going to keep doing expansions and randon garbage. I am done with Elder Scrolls. I don't grab quests and do them as I pick em up. I usually get a list of quests and explore and do them at my leasure. Can't do that anymore with this system. Now you are forced into doing quests as you get them for fear of losing quest givers. May as well call it the new random linear TES....What a Joke!!!

When townsfold die just go to your last autosave. There will almost always be one before a vampire attack because they usually come after fast traveling to town. What you do is check where they spawn. Reload and kill them before anyone dies.

No its free and you can just leave it on.