Or you could also not fast travel into cities/towns at night...

I did find it annoying that Vampires were so good at killing named NPCs, and I did have to reload some saves, but in the end it forced me to pay attention and always be ready for an attack which upped the tension in my game which I liked.

Word...

I do exactly the same thing, and I'm a VL (although I sided with the DG). I got tired of losing NPC's, particularly merchants, so I do a sweep every so often just to keep the numbers down...it's not a roleplaying thing, just a simple necessity.

Your suggesting it's MY FAULT for not arming the NPC's? Seriously? Do you even read you own post? I like Bethesda and I love thier game, but I am not going to take the blame for their terrible NPC AI. Sorry.

It is not a problem for me because I do take percautions (like no FT). But all I am doing is working around terrible NPC AI, which by design I shouldn't have to do.

It's not your fault.

aussie500 likes to defend this feature of Dawnguard. I believe in my game it is working as intended. In over 20 hours with Dawnguard Ive had one attack. But, on the other-hand you are absolutely correct. NPC's die stupid. Bethesda's "radiant AI" has always been a problem in many ways, especially in not knowing when to quit.

Edit: No offense intended aussie500, I enjoy your posts.

I'm on PC, so I correct things that I think are wrong, like important NPC's dying for no reason or because of bad AI implementation. So if I see an NPC falling from a house when I exit a building and dying from fall damage (Sigurd in this case) I simply resurrect him. But for vampire attacks it happened that the master vampire killed Carlotta and then raised her, then she was just ashes at the end of the fight. Is there a way on PC to resurrect NPC's that are ashes ? I heard there is a special hidden place where all dead NPC's are (before the hall of the dead). I want to be able to resurrect an NPC before I receive for example a letter of inheritance. It's not only bad AI feature that merchant NPC's attack deadly opponents with bare fists or even a levelled weapon they deal no damage with but also the fact they add to the mess that you must be more carefull not to him them than to hit the ennemy. Betweem the time you aim your blow and the time the blow hits the ennemy there is a chance an NPC will just jump and receive the blow instead. That's ridiculous and you have to start again the fight when it's finished or even during the fight because guards give more priority on attacking you (and if you drop your weapons they send you to the prison's exit) than the real threat that are the vampires or the dragon.

I always had a save ready for this, since it's the simplest way to get an NPC back who has been ash-piled. The other way is to make a copy of them with the placeatme command followed by their base ID. Also, if you don't know - when resurrecting a dead named NPC always put a number '1' after the resurrect command so that their normal schedule etc will be reinstated. Otherwise you can get your NPC back, but they may behave like mindless automatons.

I getcha.
And I do agree, despite anything my prior posts may have implied, that having random weak NPCs (like Belethor) charge a master vampire and his thrall (or a dragon for that matter) is stupid. Somewhere (prolly another thread) I agreed with someone that named NPCs should all flee indoors during said attacks, leaving only generic guards to fight the vampire/dragon.
BUT, (playing Devil's advocate again) if this were the deal, there's no real threat or risk to the encounters. If the guards win, your role is obsolete. When the vampire or dragons win, it doesn't affect you at all. In other words, you can deal with these threats with impunity - your role in the game world (as a defender against dragons and vampires) is meaningless. You can basically ignore these foes without worrying about any consequence - no one's gonna get hurt except the enemy or respawnable guard-type NPCs, and I think that defeats the spirit of the scenario. I try to think about the challenges that the game designers face - trying to make everybody happy. No easy task. A similar issue comes up with NPCs flagged as essential. Some gamers hate when an important NPC dies during the game while gamers can't stand that a character is immortal.

I do what Abrinth mentioned - if a cell loads and a vampire or dragon spawns and it screws me up, I just reload.

But I get that everybody has their button to push, and the NPC AI gets lots of people up in arms. For whatever reason, I am able to manage those encounters pretty successfully, so it doesn't irk me. Some of the stat tracking in the journal, on the other hand, really gets me frustrated...

You make some good points here, but I see an essential difference between dragons and vampires. Dragons are flying around or up on someone's roof where the NPCs are not in the way. Even when they land they are really, really big. So when 6-7 NPCs charge it, I still have room to get in there and whack it. With vampires, OTOH, many times I am helpless. The NPCs surround the vampire and I can't get at it without hitting a friendly. This is quite frustrating.

Another frustrating aspect of vampires vs dragons is that with dragons you know they are there. With vampires this is not always the case. Instead, you only find out later there was a vampire attack by running across a body or ashpile.

I really like trying to save the townsfolk from a dragon attack. Makes me feel like the hero. I can't feel that way with a vampire attack because the townsfolk all get in the way of me doing anything.

So cities will literally be empty after a while? Vamps go into homes too?

Yes and smarter AI, with an more rationally cowardly behavior would be nice. Standard NPC should run from anything they had no chance of killing,
Wonder if this could be moded, run away then hurt or if attacker is dragon or similar.

No.

I am playing the vamps side currently and I am seeing first hand just how bad this can get.

I’m trying to get the quest The Gift, where you turn your wife, so I’m doing a lot of the random vampire quests trying to get it. Well some of the random quests require me to kill a notable NPC in a town so I’ve been offing food merchants mostly. Also there is a quest where I have to turn an NPC into a vamp. The problem is when I get the quest again for the same person (a bug obviously) the only way to move past the quest is to kill the NPC vamp so that the quest fails.

In addition to that when the vamps attack the cities I am leaving them alone. I don’t see any reason to attack my own kind and since I’m a rogue my character is more designed for stealth kills, not charging into melee. So I just watch and enjoy the show until the guards finally kill the vamps (then I loot them).

So, after about 30 radiant vamp quests (still haven’t got The Gift) I have figured out exactly what NPC’s in most cities are essential … because they are the only people left.

Thankfully I am only playing this current character to do the Dark Brotherhood (finished), all Daedric quests (finished) and the vamp side of Dawnguard. What I have created for myself here is a nearly unplayable world, which oddly enough is by design since all I did was follow the quests given (other than having to kill the vamp NPC’s due to that bug). I really can’t say this is good game design.

LeBurns, are you fast travelling to cities at night?

On this play-through I am since I don't care about the killings. But FT is a built in game feature and technically I wouldn't think I should be penalized for it. In my REAL game, I was very careful to not use FT and I only got one attack (which I had to reload 4 times because the Whiterun smith kept dying).

If you are role playing a Vampire who doesn't stop thin-blood Vampires from killing NPCs, then you have gotten what you want. If you are either someone who cares about having NPCs, or are role playing a character who cares about the NPCs then you would be doing more to protect those NPCs. Doing stuff is the main point of RPGaming. If there was no necessity to do anything, you would be watching a film.

One of my characters had over 20 attacks (yes she fast travelled), no NPC's were lost, admittedly she never waited long enough to see if any would go in any doors, so I cannot say if they would or not. The spawn points are all outside in set locations. I have heard someone ignored the attacks and a vampire followed him into a shop and killed an NPC. So it seems possible you insist on ignoring attacks there is the potential for an even higher death toll. But they would only be following your character, so no need to worry about them getting into random houses.

But the game is designed for you to take action; the game is designed for there to be consequences to your actions or inactions. You are choosing to let people die, and you're ending up with a wiped-out game world. This is excellent game design. If you only did the things in the real world that you wanted to do, and ignored everything else going on around you, your life would become a mess, because you have responsibilities. Ignore them at your own risk. In the game, you're ignoring a global threat that you can influence and prioritizing working for assassins, vampires, and (evil-ish) forces, and when the (game) world becomes a mess, you're saying its bad game design? You just stated that all you wanted to do were the DB, Daedric, and DG quests. And you did. You also ignored everything else. So if assassins, vampires, and daedric princes ruled the world... how else should it have turned out? A thriving community of happy and productive people?
You and I may simply have opposing viewpoints here, so I'm not trying to be this antagonizing guy - lots of gamers would probably agree with you - I'm debating your point of view, not you personally.


I'll agree with you that the vampire attacks are way more clandestine than the dragons - that's true - although (to my knowledge) I haven't lost NPCs to attacks that occurred when I wasn't at least in the vicinity. I've heard some folks claim that vamps spawn in cities when they're not around, and that shouldn't happen because then the choice and action is taken out of your hands. I hate when I arrive somewhere at night and hear clamoring, but can't get a fix on where it is, and by the time I get there, the vamps have killed a named NPC. No doubt, I'll reload. But I play a character that wants to kill the vampires and dragons, and I'm a gamer that wants to control the game world, so I make every effort to attend to these things, because I want to keep my future questing options open.
And I hate when the idiot NPCs get in the way. sometimes I'll just play it through angry and kill everyone in the area - just to get it out of my system, and then reload and try to get it right.

I agree I could stop the vamps and could save some of the NPC victims, but like I said this character wouldn't.

Actually the one that bothers me most is the radiant Vampire quest that asks you to kill a notable person. If I just kept playing as a vampire and never continued the Vamp side of the DG MQ (finding a Moth Priest) I would, by game design, kill every notable person in Skyrim. This, well is just odd. The DB did have me kill a few named NPC's, but they were basically hand chosen by the developers to have that fate. Also some DB quest require you to kill some noble. Well that 'Visiting Noble' then spawns in the castle and you go kill him. He is not some named NPC that is already there, he is created just for that quest, so when you kill him there isn't any NPC loss to the game. The Vampire quest asking to basically chose your own victim and is requested that it's a named and important NPC ... just really odd. Obviously if you are playing a game where you are not wanting unnecessary NPC loss you will not follow the quests instructions. Again .. and odd thing to have to do.

I agree about killing important people. I guess it's there for players who want to be really evil and kill off all the Nazeems and Taaries that they hate, but after killing Thonar on my first one of those I just killed guards for all subsequent ones. No way I am killing named NPCs, and Feran doesn't mind - in fact he seems quite happy I wore the Dawnguard outfit and killed in a public place. I didn't get this optional bonus for Thonar even though I was wearing the Dawnguard gear in a public place.

I'm sick of having to play out of character. I don't fast travel but I need to enter and exit buildings in towns naturally. I want to play with the Dawnguard features but chose when I start the quest like it happens with the Skyrim main quest. I'm level 25 and still not visited Fort Dawnguard. I want to do other quests first . So I decided to make a batch file that sets all named NPC's that wander at night essential. If needed I can switch back to original but I don't see the need in any quest. Now if there are vampire attacks, they'll have to target my character or the guards if they want to kill someone . End of story for me until a patch fixes it some way or the other.

Guess you're not on PC or can't disable the Dawnguard content until you're ready, eh?

I just have to be honest, and this is kinda where I'm at with LeBurns and (I forget) whoever said this feature was broken: it's never going to be "patched" because it isn't considered "broken" by the devs. If you don't like it, I think it's always gonna be something you have to work around. It's a design feature - for better or for worse, like it or not, y'know? If the devs agreed with the "protestors" they have had ample opportunity to address it, and have chosen not to.

I'd do what alkoriak does, and create mods to offest the aspects that I take exception to.

^This. I'm sure it's not considered broken either, but never discount that enough complaints will get stuff patched.

Just a little AI adjusting for the NPC's (which is needed anyway) would be enough to fix it. They wouldn't even have to stop the attacks. You might still miss a few, but if the attacking vamps and dragon avoid NPC's that are fleeing or cowering (which I've seen bandits do) then all they need to do is program the NPC's to run or cower when faced with a enemy that is higher level. That why they can still whack a mub crab, but will run in terror at the sight of a dragon or master vamp.

Is this a mod-able thing, meaning, can a person use the Creation Kit to create this effect? Because now that you mention it, children don't attack enemies or get attacked by enemies - so their AI script could cover all bases, or to your point re: mudcrabs, etc., maybe include a conditional parameter (I'm just throwing words around now) where the NPC doesn't engage enemies (x) levels higher than their own, or with (x)% health or armor greater than their own... or something.

And hey - I had a great idea (pats self on back) in another thread: you know the elder scrolls you end up with, Dragon, Blood, and Sun? How about assigning them properties whereby they could be read (post-related quests, 'natch) with the following effects:
Sun: forces vampires to flee (turn into bats and leave; thralls either trun to ash or get left behind)
Dragon: forces dragons to fly away
Blood: maybe something useful for a vampire, like a regressing to a less feral state, or maybe counting as a feeding, or something)

So, maybe you never see a generic AI tweak, but at least have a 1/day option to dispel/disperse the offending enemy and spare yourself and the NPCs from the fight.

This^

The towns people...should... run from EVERYTHING!

Also I dont like how the dawnguard are attacking the towns like vampires do (if you joined the vampires). It does not make any sense.

Edit: I have not played the vampire quest long but I ve had them attack riften once.