I haven't had any troubles really, save one dead begger after one playthrough. So, I guess I can't really relate. It is nice that for a change it actually feels like the world is in danger, and all would be well if the townsfolk were programmed to run and hid instantly a fight broke out rather than join in.

But to not get dawnguard just because of this does kinda not sit well with me. The area's and suprisingly story as well really improve Skyrim as a whole, in my eyes. Amazingly jaw dropping views of the world along with a companion who actually has enough dialogue to come off as well developed... look at it this way. For all the cardboard cutouts of npcs you could lose if you're unlucky, you stand to gain one really really really well scripted and developed one.

That completely depends on your level and just how lucky you are. (Here come my 2 cents)

On one character (level 62, pretty OP), I've visited whiterun 6 times since the DLC started and had a vampire attack three times.

At this level the guards are still pretty capable of taking them out, but villagers will still rush in and who the vampire chooses to attack varies. At higher levels these guys will 1-hit damn near every villager, and one of the times I had to reload it was because right before killing the last vampire he casually turned around and ice speared an attacking villager in the face. It's not hard for them to kill NPCs.

This is the issue. Even though I know that a lot of people have experienced this less than I have, that doesn't change the fact that it's still happened to me and a fair number of others. I would never consider these vampires a threat to me personally, and even if they took out a guard I wouldn't care (guards respawn anyway), but when I visit a town I don't want to have to worry about saving all the villagers because a random vampire might show up. That's the kind of thing that makes the experience seem like an annoying chore.

These are actually way worse than dragon attacks too. At least those attacks are extremely rare in walled cities, and dragons attack much more slowly and predictably. Dragons (like other AI) will generally go for whoever last attacked them when they're in a town, and %99.99 of the time that's a guard with a bow. This makes them much less dangerous to villagers and easier to handle.

Now if these attacks were better scripted and were more or less unique (instead of casually spawning some vampires next to me when I walk through the door every now and then), I would not have a problem with it. Even if they added vampire ambushes when I'm out in the forest I would be ok (in fact that would be badass). But instead what I've got now is vampires that will attack pretty much the first thing that gets their attention (which often isn't even me).



Of course not, the expansion is [censored] awesome. But this is really annoying for a lot of people, and to say that it's ok because it's more rare for you or because someone exaggerated their story is silly. Whether or not someone exaggerated their story is completely irrelevant because you don't know how their playthrough went and especially because it's still happened to a lot of people. Unless you work for Bethesda's PR or advertising it shouldn't even matter to you. Of course you can share the fact that you didn't experience that crap and you found the whole thing to be great, but you shouldn't try to undermine other players' complaints with the justification that "some of them are just exaggerating!".




The DLC was great, not perfect, but great. However the vampire attacks that it brings on can be significantly damaging to the towns and therefore the player's experience. Though it's not a problem for everyone there are a sizable number of people who are frustrated by it. It should be dealt with.

There you have it.

Well said.

That guy was lucky.

Are the spawn frequency influenced heavily by difficulty + faction? So even if you don't fast travel, you get proportionally more than say Normal or Adept.

Doing Master difficulty (PC), and going with the Dawnguard faction. Kinda worried about getting griefed.

Yes, I'm lvl81, Master difficulty, I had 3 Master vampires and 2 death hounds spawn in Riverwood. There's nobody left alive in Riverwood now... I told them to stay inside! BUUUTTT NOOOOO. They had to come outside to see what all the fuss was about...

Maybe my sister Azura was right after all... Twilight is more entertaining after all.

I did start a new character...i got to level 12 before i could find any Vamps in the wilderness much less the cities

To people saying that this isn't an issue: Vampires kill people on the other side of town without the player ever knowing there was an attack. This will eventually reduce cities to ghost towns. This is an experiment that was done:

I totally agree, I have no point. Now to go to any cities, next to all npcs die. Not to mention when you fast travel to a city the attacks happen all the way into the back of the city away from the gate (or at least in my game) I've lost so many radiant quest I get upset every time it say "Quest Failed: Blah Blah Blah". There goes more time I could put into a game I loved.

Story of my life lol. Same thing happened to me.

You're assuming that there is anything to fix. They wrote it that way.

And you're also assuming that this is everyone's game, and it happens every time. That also is not true.

I think he's just trying to give everyone the overall picture, we may not all have the same results but I'm sure we all have something close to it.

Just because they wrote something doesn't mean it's right.

The fact that this happens to a good number of people without them doing anything wrong points to a problem. Though i wont bother arguing with you based on how illogical previous comments on other threads were (comparing this to the oghma infinium glitch, WW2, weapon disarming, random encounters outside of cities etc)

People actually compared it to those?

I see it as nothing more and nothing more difficult than the random Dragon attacks.

And yet you still missed the point...IT IS PART OF THE GAME...dont like it then dont play it

Has anyone encountered simultaneous dragon and vampire attacks on a major city?

That isn't to say this shouldn't be addressed somehow though. Giving the Vampires nameless npcs, like "Traveler" or something, to kill along with named npcs knowing to run would more or less fix the problem. I wouldn't be suprised of Dawnguard got a mini-patch or something that fixes a few bugs and edits a few spawn numbers. I mean, people here are pretty calm when compaired to other internet forums for games. And while I do think people are over-reacting, they're only over-reacting because they like Skyrim and don't want to see it get unintentionally broken.

I know it's part of the game. Since it's a part of the game a lot of people hate and spent money on without knowing it was going to be tjis bad, and since many of us have been fans since childhood of this series, then I believe we should be able to complain. If you like this, more power to ya, but when a large portion of the fanbase believes something on this forum, don't try to tell us we shouldn't discuss it.

I wouldn't say "a lot"... The people who post on Forums are the vast minority of a games population.

Thank you. Finally some sense. I have a different solution to this though.

Here's what they should do:

1. Change up these attacks the way I describe in the OP
2. Make defenseless npcs run instead of fight using the aggression, courage, and energy personality system like it worked in Oblivion.
3. Make it so that, instead of making characters essential, important npcs can only be killed by the player, sparing them from dragons and vampires. Fallout New Vegas worked fine with no essentials, but their npcs didnt have to worry about random attacks. Skyrim needs SOME system however.

Yes. So are both sides of this argument. Your side is much smaller than our side. Therefore, using your logic, both our sides are smaller in real life, with your side most likely still smaller than ours. Also, there are forums all ocer the internet just like this, with similar sides.

What happened to this series? I mean, we used to LOVE this type of stuff. Named/quest giver dead? Who cares!

Now it's like if one, or if a few die, we are up in arms about it. Not only that. We have petitions. We have polls. We are boycotting. I mean wth? This goes with the theme of the DLC. Like the Dragons with the base game (which people complained about...all they did was restart), this is the same thing. Problem is.. there's more. And you can probably say that these guys are more apt to kill people at random than the Dragons...So it makes sense.

What would be cool is if you could have moments like "Dang...I miss Adrianne" or something like that. Only letting lifeless/respawnable guards die would make these attacks pointless. May as well not have the attacks..or worse yet. Make them like Oblivion gates: "We are invading this town...oooooo...can't you see the army of vampires? But we wont move until you get about 30 yards distance from us." It would look awkward that's for sure.

They could tweak some stuff perhaps. But if they remove this, you may as well rewrite the story...are the vampires invading? Where are they?

Much better than my anologies

Yes. I understand your point. But never before in this series or the fallout series hage deaths occured on such a scale that is so out of the player's control. When someone dies across town without you knowing there's an attack, it ruins shops and mini quests. And since this just keeps happening, town eventually become ghost towns. Few people want that.