+1.

If not, I will release the mod myself, and it wont be pretty. I'm just as likely to remove the offending vampires than to let them spawn but turn them into pink bunnies that deal 1 point of damage.

... Too much Wabbajackery.

Hahahahahaha awesome! I support this mod! Btw I wonder who the "anonymous" person is looking at this thread...
Edit: And.....now s/he left

I like the idea of vampire attacks on Towns, as long as they don't start until you join dawnguard, and cease (or dramatically reduce) attacks after you finish the dg main quest

I accept that.

But is it "working as intended" or a bug?
If it's a bug, it may not affect me for example and I can keep playing once I'm sure I don't have it (which I think I don't with my apparant low rate of attacks).

But if it's feature working as intended (which would shock me as a design choice)... then depopulation of all non essentials is inevitable... and the only way to avoid it is to stop playing or delete the dlc (which will probably break something in the save).

Also if it's a bug, expect a rapid fix... if it's a feature then expect for it to be changed only after a long campaign by a lot of vocal players (and even then it's not 100% certain).

Like the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v80gUzq6Ec8&feature=BFa&list=ULVEWKVNQwou8 showed it. The vampire attacks owned Gerdur... I hate being forced on a feature that is changing the game the way I do not want to play it... It's not fun and not cool! I like my NPCs alive and well! I want this feature nerfed or gone!

I did a little test on the PC. Spawned two master vampires in the city. They owned in Whiterun : 5 misc. quest givers, Farkas, Nazeem, the Whiterun guard general and 1 Whiterun guard. Even if I tried to defend the city, Adrianne Avenicci and Amren died by just 1 hit... This feature is fishy

Exactly this. I have seen it happen and there are videos of it. Ash piles everywhere. Can we please get some information from Beth on this?

I second this statement.

I very much doubt it. DLCs cannot be patched, so this won't change for XBox, and giving PC and PS3 player DLC that works differently... Well, it just might piss off their Microsoft overlords. And you don't want to piss off your Microsoft overlords

Well so far I have had an idiotic amount of vamp attacks. At this point I just head in to town and if a red dot pops up, I don't even bother, I just load up the last autosave and walk through the door into town again most times the town loads vamp free, of it doesn't then just reload until it does.

I'm not gonna comment on certain straw arguments being made because even though it is nearly 4am and I can't sleep there is no reason for me to be rude and unfortunately all my reactions thus far to such posts has been one of contemptuous bewilderment at the acceptance of an interesting feature that wasn't implemented right for long term gameplay.

One idea I have though, so the vamp attacks start around level 10 right? Well once the pc version is released would it not be possible to lower your level back to 1-9 or something to disable them? Since the 360 version's saves can be transfered an loaded up it simply becomes a matter of owning a PC copy or bringing one's save to a friend who does. I know it wouldn't be much of a fix but if that works then might as well since xbox users can't get their hands on mods :/

Do they kill chickens?

lol Sorry, that's me on my mobile phone. I'm too lazy to log on there. I was going to get this the first day it released on PS3 but this single handedly turned me off the purchase. I'll wait and pray to Akatosh that it's fixed.

Sure, but that attack had the same impact as a dragon attack tbh and this time he got unlucky and lost an npc.
That video doesn't really show the excessive nature of the killing being reported as a problem.
On my dragonborn character for example I've lost 3 or 4 npcs to dragons in over 140 hours, these losses are acceptable and imo actually enhances the experience.

But on the character I use for Dawnguard I purposefully didn't "activate" dragons (for other reasons than Dawnguard)... you should be able to avoid vamp attacks in the same way imo.
(Actually I'm kinda scared to load my dragonborn file in case I see a tag team of dragons and vampires massacring the entire population of Riften or something.)

Is there a trigger moment that can be stepped around or do the random vampire attacks just kick in as soon as the game loads with the add-on?

You can do pretty much anything with a PC. You can even delete the NPCs from the game if you wish
But I don't think that's the solution... I don't wanna be forced to get a mod for this, because the developers will probably ignore these posts or it cannot be changed.

It's amazing how many people are actually not gonna buy this DLC because of this crappy thing added. I didn't want a random event added into the city and it's pissing me off. All I wanted was damn crossbows and a vampire hunt somewhere far away... now with the DLC, I would have to stare at the gates 2 minutes before I start doing my business in a town... Even I'm sceptical about buying it.

Microsoft paid a hefty sum to get that 30 days exclusivity. That's not being anyone's overlord. That's just competitive business. Maybe if Sony cared about it's customer base instead of having all of it's divisions absorbing the losses of it's TV Division, maybe then they'd have put in a counter offer to Bethesda. But they didn't, so MS's money got the 30 day exclusivity.

Blame Sony, not MS and Bethesda for being competitive businesses. (Note that I have a PS3 as well so I'm not just being a box really devoted fan haha)

Back on topic though, it's a VERY small chance, but I would also like to hear from Beth about this, like a previous poster asked.

IMO I think this is the way to go. I've already lost weak NPCs due to mindlessly attacking dragons with iron daggers. If an NPC is weak, they should run and let the guards deal with it.

These attacks are so random. You guys are saying your towns are being outright assaulted daily, yet in the 23 hours Ive played it, I have had a total of 3 vampire attacks, 1 of which was out in no man's land. The other 2 were in Windhelm and Whiterun.

I dont blame you, and dont worry I ALWAYS use my phone for this site haha.

Oblivion had a complex system that created an npc's personality. One aspect of this controlled how he'd react to enemies. Every npc had a certain level of "heroism" (not what it was called but something like that) that would determine how much more powerful an enemy had to be for the npc to run instead of fight. This helped low level npcs make informed decisions based on logic and their unique personality. This appears to be absent in Skyrim, and is another reason why I think the game itself is shallow (and why I made this thread about it http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1387018-why-does-what-you-do-have-zero-impact-on-the-game-part-2/)

Agreed. The first time it is hilarious seeing suicidally brave people take on a dragon or master vampire with nothing more than an iron dagger and manly-man-balls forged in the very depths of oblivion itself.

The second time is a nuisance, the third an annoyance. Once the episode repeats itself for the hundreth time all you can do is silently curse them and try to kill them as punishment for their idiocy before the dragon/vampire does. Seriously, I blasted one of those beggars and an old woman in to a wall as punishment for their brazen attempts to make my rescue efforts infinately more difficult. At this point I am just killing them myself to make a point before turning my ire on the would-be invaders for putting me in that frustrating situation in the first place.

It doesn't even need to be that complex - a level check, or check on the weapon equiped by the player would be enough to determine whether they flee or fight. I think I've seen on UESP an 'aggressive' property assigned to NPCs - surely weak NPCs could be made nonaggressive.

I just dont see why they cant go back to what worked in Oblivion, but that would work too.

Maybe they lost the programmer(s) who did the Oblivion system - it shouldn't've taken much for other programmers to sort this out though.

To be honest, city attacks shouldn't randomly happen. As I said in another topic. Stormcloaks / Imperials are at war, yet you don't see them randomly attacking a city which the opposite sides control. You had a siege on a city, but even then all the other NPCs were safe from danger. Now, people tell me that this is for immersion Vamp/ DG when they randomly attack a city.

Firstly, I disagree. The first thing that should of been scrapped immediately was when someone mentioned the idea of a city attack. A city is meant to get quests, relax and equip yourself... not go Van Helsing style every time you wanna visit a city.

Secondly, if Vamp attacks are for immersion, why hasn't there been a single Imperial/Stormcloak random city raid ? Did nobody even think about adding a possibility of a planned attack like in the Civil War where you have to attack/defend the city depending on which DG faction you've chosen ? Apparently not . It's quite simple. Plan an attack and have a welcoming party of Dawnguard members along with the guards to greet you, while no other NPCs are involved.

Thirdly, By adding this feature, I'm personally getting the idea that Skyrim is now focused more on vampires than on dragons. I strongly have to protest against that. DLC is supposed to be an add-on which builds up upon already made content, but does not in whatever way change the main path of the game. Killing off misc. quest givers is completely wrong and breaking the feel of the original. These kind of events are fun once, but what happens after a gazillion of times ? I found it even boring when I find that darn thief in Riverwood / Riften every time trying to hack'n'slash his way through, only to end up facing the dirt...

Oh, hey there Whiterun! How's it going?... Oh? What's that? Your too busy being completely devoid of life to respond?

Quick off-topic question: Do vampires in caves still attack you in your regular form or VL form? for instance say i go to broken fang cave as a vampire or VL will they attack as usual?