There's nothing wrong with random events - one of the strong features of Bethesda games are the crazy random battles you can get occuring in the wild, potentially very crazy with the right mods.

What is very poor game design is deliberately setting up random events that have a strong chance of breaking quests, killing traders and leaving already half dead cities ghost towns. That makes the environment a damn sight more static. It makes it dead.

People have complained about so many essentials but observed there is a logic in this due to dragon attacks. Bethesda clearly knew dragons could mess up other parts of the game. So what did they do? They decided to increase the odds of messing up the game by exacerbating the risk to non essential NPCs who may still be useful, tied to minor quests or at least make the cities seem like somebody lived there.

A good RPG is a representation of a fictional world. It should feel as real as possible. That's part of the art of designing a good RPG. Towns/cities as a part of that world give the player a sense of the civilisation they're encountering, what it's about and hopefully a reason to care about it (Bethesda are bad at this though). Towns full of bodies because suicide squads keep spawning inthem for no reason are not a good represention of a fictional world.

The world not being static would have been far better represented by something like the promised but absent working economy or stuff like NPCs actually noticing the civil war is over as opposed to spending so much time getting the guards to have so much inane prattle like their psychic divination powers that tell them to comment on skills you hardly ever use just because they've hit 30.

I don't need any. I haven't bought Dawnguard and don't intend to. The vampire attacks being one of a whole string of reasons not to.
I'm just watching the train wreck and generally being a bit irritated by Bethesda letting something that clearly spoils some people's games pass straight into the PC release (and I'm guessing the PS3 people will get t too - which will be worse as they can't rely on mods to sort it out).

One of the best posts iv seen for a while funny yet still makes a serious point.

Yes, because you can never actually do something about these attacks.

Like, you can never actually help out the guards to beat up those vampires...

Beth need to pull their fingers out and get patching. I haven't even been to dawnguard yet and every city I enter after dark, be it fast travel or no, there's a master vamp and 2 hounds scrapping with guards just inside the gates. Vamps were part of the game before DG, so why now have they decide to go apesh*t. At least turn the NPC's with a bite rather than kill them.

Lol whoever said cities and NPCs are lame? I said that NPCs being non-essential and actually dying makes the game feel realistic. This is Skyrim, one of the most dangerous provinces of Tamriel (all the more dangerous now) people die, deal with it. To me it sounds like YOU'RE the CoD gamer obsessed with grinding quests and clearing dungeons and not giving a toss about realism. I actually hope they take this a step further in the next game where you can [censored] up quests permanently and that's the end of it. Anything that takes away from the current hand-holding.


Believe it or not, games can be funner if they do this. You shouldn't be a god who can solve everything with a bit of Dragonborn flash. There should be situations where you have to think and plan your next step and some situations (albeit rare) where you can only look on helplessly.

If your on PC download a mod that makes NPC's essential or harder to kill. Other then that there are also mods that increase population. There's always a chance that the Vampires will kill some random generated dude rather then a quest giver .

However I think Beth should just do something with this.

Realism - Watching Npcs die and you can do nothing about it.
Enjoyment - Having Npcs live and give you quests that you will enjoy for at least 15 minutes.

1 minute of enjoyment for the "realism" in an attack, 14 minutes of enjoyment gone. If they want to add realism, add re population. Until then, leave my towns the [censored] alone.

Sure, you can do nothing about these attacks, I mean these vampires must be invincible or something...

It takes time, they can't just do it in a day.
You have to find out why its happening.
Make sure its fixed.
Come up with a decent release date.
And release it.

If your refering to my statement, I was simply replying to him saying there should be situations where you can do nothing about it. If your not, well sorry for replying. You can do stuff about the attacks, and prevent deaths, but it gets annoying.

If it really bothers you so much, get the CK and take it out.

This feature is bugged for a lot of people unfortunately.

Its what we have to deal with. I recommend leveling up, joining the Dawnguard, and taking your revenge against those smelly vamps.

If it was realistic.. They would launch a war against Vampires and werewolf groups... Kinda like war against organized crime..

Well earlier today I was doing a quest where I had to fetch an item from the white phial in windhelm, I leave the shop only to discover the bodies of "miss the unseen" and "mr once honoured" by the gate with a master vampire scrapping with guards (too bad mr Stone fist didn't also die) They were killed in the time it took me to run from the white phial to the front door of windhelm.

For them to die so fast is insane and as a player I got no chance to intervene even with my character being an archer.

These attacks are a big problem, especially in cities that have a lot of npcs hanging around outside (such as riften) to say nothing for those smaller towns that have next to no guards.

It doesn't.. You just go to a file and change a number.. When I get dawnguard obviously I will tamper with the files to fix it.. If I can..

This^^^ it is a feature, that seems to have a bug(s). I have characters that get a bazillion attacks, that don't stop when I finish DG main quest....and other characters that get very few attacks. Lowest lvl I've had them start so far has been lvl 8

That would be kind of awesome.

Inb4 the The Companions Hall gets burnt down.

Realistically a city in Skyrim would have thousands of inhabitants that move around, have children, etc. and some vampires getting a couple of kills would not make a dent in it's population. Skyrim does not model cities on that scale and as a result a few dead people every now and then results in severe depopulation. Because the way the game models the world can't properly support it, these attacks really shouldn't have those consequences. It breaks the illusion and gradually destroys your gameplay experience.
Hard to say which is worse, but 'giving the Dawnguard questline a sense of urgency' doesn't really weigh up to either of them imho

I agree! Skyrim is great, true, but there are only so many ways one can play it. When skyrim was still in rumor-esq stages, I heard that if you joined one group (say, the college) and became known in the group, that others would call you out, talk about you, or even hate you because of it. Thats not the case. With these attacks, we can get a whole new purspective. For example. When dawngaurd comes to the ps3, im starting a new character, a shadow warrior with the theives and DB. Im going to slaughter every npc in every town i can find.

I mean come on, have you ever considered this? I think it would be fun.

And for those who say "what about quests?" Ive played skyrim a dozen times over, ive had my fill of quests. Time for something NEW! Like a good ole slaughter! Plus have you ever spoken to people after a few others have died! ITS HILARIOUS! Like if alvar of riverwood dies HAHA His wifes all.. poor alvar.. his daughter loved him so much.. HA! That feels real, Games now-a-days, its death, respawn, no big deal, well see him tomorrow. Now when someone dies, you have to deal with it baby, becuase in the real world, theres no reloading an old save.

That's not what I meant about not being able to do something; you can (and should be able to) help the NPCs, however if one dies then you can't do the quest. Though luck.


Yep, all Skyrim needs is a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7l7koBivpM

Personally I'd prefer far less essentials. New Vegas had virtually no essentials, but was designed so the chances of important NPCs being killed were minimal unless the player chos to go on the rampage. That was solid game design. And you could mess up as many quests as you liked - which was great - the point was the game was very unlikely to arbitrarily mess up quests for you without that being a direct consequence of player choice. Because of course the player wants to choose what quests they do or don't do - the game is there for them to enjoy playing and it is terrible game design to include quests they may wish to do but could be denied them just due to random actions the player has little or no control over.

The notion Skyrim is dangerous, does not include the notion cities are a permanent warzone which for some people leave them empty. A "dangerous" province is not made realistic by towns consisting of respawned guards and immortal children.
Additionally, the core game is focused on the return of dragons - it wouldn't be a good idea to relegate the primary focus of the core game to a relative insignificance when by installing a DLC that suddenly becomes what the whole game is all about due to its greater impact on the gameworld.

What's funny is this is one of those desperate rationalisations people engage in - the wide variety of experiences people have seem to indicate Bethesda did not actually intend the level of attack some people experience. In all likelihood they intended some level of attack in an atenpt to present some atmosphere, just messed up how it was implemented. Bethesda may make many poor design choices, but I really don't think they're so stupid as to intentionally mess up quests they themselves put in the game, make the DLC take primacy over the core game or kill all the traders they put in the cities for the player to interact with.



Yet Besthesda's game design is primarily centred on making the player into a god, something I actually don't like. The DLC enhanced this with the introduction of cheesy vampire superpowers. With each DLC you can guarantee more superpowers/uber equipment will be introduced so by the end the player will be ridiculously powerful. The player is already very much a god - the issue is that the rest of the population isn't.

The vampire attacks are not about the player. Good game design encourages the player to strategise and plan to cope with a situation to achieve their goal because they have limitations, need to utilise their particular character's skills and can't just blunder in. In many instances the NPC deaths wil just give the player less retail outlets to choose from and they can never break the big questlines due to all te essentials. But what it does do is make the already underpopulated gameworld seem deserted and thus totally unrealistic, dull and unimmersive. Even if Skyrim is "dangerous", that doesn't mean it's a post apocalyptic wasteland. It's not supposed to be that dangerous. It's portrayed as having unarmoured NPCs happily wandering about the cities doing their shopping - if it's supposed to be as "dangerous" as you claim, why didn't Bethesda portray NPCs as all cowering in their cellars or manning the barricades? Why are the cities open? Except Whiterun- which is "closed with the dragons about" when you arrive, but apparently this doesn't apply if you're a vampire.

And I agree it's ok if it's rare you look on helplessly. I posted on another thread about seeing the very rare occurance of seeing the random thief killing the blacksmith in Riften before I could react. That was fine because it was a very rare event - one I'd never seen before in this case.That creates a sense random things can happen which does enhance the game - if it's rare. However, multiple people have reported attacks that are far from rare and decimate the population. This either breaks the game or becomes a chore trying to keep NPCs alive. I've esen multiple people telling people to reload - a game shouldn't have to be about reloading to stop a random event from happening. If that event is very rare, you're much more likely to go with it and see it as adding something unique to that playthrough. If it happens all the time, it's likely to just do your head in.

And having to think and plan about how you walk into a city in case a bunch of vampires spawn and kill loads of people is not remotely realistic or a decent challenge. It's babysitting NPCs because they're not a god like you are.

On top of this, it was very, very lazy of Bethesda to concoct some new terrible menace to Skyrim (on top of everything else) totally out of the blue in a lame attempt to make the DLC seem 'interesting'. Clever writing would have introduced something more insidious and subtle. Not vampires suddenly launching suicide attacks that make no sense whatsoever. You totally fail to say what is supposed to be remotely realstic about suicidal vampires.

Ah...the PC release gives me new people to repeat already posted information to...lovely.

Of course...being the PC release we should see some "better" player testing on this issue because of the CK...still waiting for that...

Anyways.


Bethesda is selling the supposed "BETA" version of Dawnguard. There has been absolutely NO CHANGE since the beta...

Someone didn't do a definition check on the idea of a beta...

You just described Morrowind and Oblivion!!! I'm sure you enjoyed those games, right?

In most Elder Scrolls games your character is a "god" that solves everything...with little issues...

I take it Vvardenfell was just a picnic compared to Skyrim...what dangerous things could ever occur in a province other than Skyrim?

Where did he state that his character was having an issue with killing the vampires? I am pretty sure he was mentioning the vampires killing suicidally programmed NPCs.

There has never been a need for a "sense of urgency" in any of the Elder Scrolls games.

In fact, the whole idea of a "sense of urgency" is against what they marketed Skyrim as. You know, the whole "You can ignore the main quest, or any quest, entirely and there is no downside to it!!!!!" thing?