I have played alot of skyrim since I got it (Christmas day), and ever since I saw the dragons I have had one problem - they always get distracted. I will be fighting a dragon and after it takes off and i try to hit it with arrows, it just flies away and attacks some mammoth (one time I even saw one land in front of a bear and get killed by it). Since these are the random "boss" encounters, I think they should at least focus their attention on you. It really annoys me, because I like the idea of breaking up traveling by foot with dragons, but they just make me chase them around even more. On a side not, they should also be harder to kill, because im tired of being killed by a saber cat and then killing an enormous fire breathing lizard that can fly.

This happens to me all the time, haveit to half health, it flies away....its just like a hyperactive child " OH LOOK A SQUIRREL!" :: chases squirrel ::, OH LOOK A CAT :: chases cat :: OH LOOK A MUDCRAB :: attacks mud crab ::: veryy annoying

Exactly, there must be some way for the devs to release a pathch where they turn up the players agro or something

I even had one land in the middle of 4 giants and 4 mammoths one time....needless to say, it died, very fast.

I disagree.
I like their distractedness.
If they never got distracted, I wouldn't be able to kill the passive ones. They only seem to come close to the ground when some other animal really wants to bite a chunk out of them... then the moment they fly low... BLAM... I aggro.

Those are different though, those are the sight seeing dragons, we are talking about the ones that come straight for you, and after you nail them a few times, they ignore your damage, and just fly further and further away forcing you to chase them.....and if you dont, they just disappear .

Dragons are meant to destroy everything, Not just Dovakiin.

I definitely agree with this, I always leave the docile dragons that simply fly around at peace, but if one decides to sweep from the sky to rain hellfire down upon me, I don't expect it to start fighting the miner with a pickaxe on the other side of the mountain range. When I had my first dragon attack from within a city it was difficult to keep track of the dragon as it seemed more interested in attacking the blacksmith than the guy sticking fifty arrows into its neck.

Exactly. It's their way to tell us that Dragonborn or no, we are insignificant to their eyes.

you -really- feel that dragons should focus exclusively on you? I think a good solution to this wuld be some kind of..interval or stage to the Dragons disengagement rather than suddenly bolting off to kill a Mudcrab, some priorities setting I'd say.

Seeing that on master they kill me with one breath attack I'm glad they get distracted.

I just let them play and then go in and mop up.

Not solely on the player, but if I'm pelting them with arrows and spells, I doubt that lumbering mammoth down the road should really grab their attention so much. I'm not going to stop filling them full of holes just because they think the fuzzy elephant looks delicious so they shouldn't really stop attacking me unless a higher priority target gives them a reason to fight.

Had a superb session one time where a Blood Dragon swooped out of the sky to attack me but turned its attention on the giant camp not far away. Watching a Blood Dragon kill my bounty target for me before getting its skull caved in by his friend seemed natural. Giants are larger, hit harder and are very territorial, it makes sense for a dragon to treat one of them as a higher priority target than the dirt-caked little human shooting at it. It should not however dive bomb at the nearest Skeever when I'm tossing a fireball into its eye socket.

I love how dragons get distracted, or never even notice I'm near. It gives me the sense that dragons are a threat to the world, and not just a threat to me the player. Which gives me all the more reason to be concerned about their presence while role-playing.

It is a bit dumb for them to start picking a fight with everything near though. You'd think they'd want to finish a fight before picking a new one.

You probably hit the nail on the head, there. If they didn't make the dragons easily distracted and pretty easy to kill, they would wipe the ground with your hero [censored], and you'd never kill one. Since killing dragons is the vehicle by which you gain shouts and power to advance in the game, they couldn't be having them use you as a mop all the time. So, dragons are easily distracted so they don't kill you instantly, and they are easy to kill so you don't have to struggle too much to get shouts, etc. If it was hard, nubs and casuals would give up quickly and not play anymore. So basically, dragons are just a loot/shout pinata that you pop every so often as you wander around.

Heh, I dismounted my horse to fight one just outside of Whiterun yesterday, and the dragon completely ignored me and Lydia the whole time as she hacked on it and I pincushioned it with arrows... and just focused on my poor horse. Whoever is arguing that "your character is not the only thing in the world, dragons attack everything'... that argument falls apart when you factor in that you are the only one killing it, hacking on it, filling it with arrows, causing it pain and suffering.... unless the vastly intelligent and resourceful dragonkin evolved with a complete lack of a genetic ability to tell what potential threats are dangerous to it, and which are not... which is rather unlikely... then that is just plain stupid. My horse certainly wasn't causing it any harm, and was only trying to escape. It's a fakey and affected game mechanic to make it easier for the player to kill dragons, nothing more.

Sadly, the residents of Tamriel have not yet found an remedy, either alchemically or magically, to address Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in dragons.

Attacking NPC's as well as the player is all well and good, but not the animals. That makes no sense.

With my first Blood Dragon I had to run like hell and hide, and then join up with the NPC's (some treasure hunters, two Alik'r, and two Riften guards) it went for instead to take it down. Only the Riften guards and I lived, and even then it was close.

Yeah, so that happens occasionally.
I like to imagine they get eaten by Cliff Racers.
Doesn't happen often though, as I lurve me some overpowered weapons.





Animals ARE NPCs... o_0;

I believe they should focus on someone who delivers the most pain to them. As would any other sane creature do. Which would be me yes.