If vampire attacks can't kill merchants, etc, then they would be even lamer then dragon attacks, which it shouldn't be. You might as well say that dragons shouldn't be able to kill important NPC's.

If you take that away, it would just make vampire attacks lame because there are really no severe consequneces in failing to stop an attack, since the important NPC's wouldn't be able to die.

I'm not saying NPC's should rush at the vampires and die, i don't care if they run away, however making it so that they can't die at all is stupid.


Here is my idea, non-guard NPC's should run away if they have iron daggers, however if you give a strong weapon to a non-guard NPC, they won't run away but stand and fight. That way, even if all the guards are dead in a villege, there can still be some defense against the vamp attack instead of them all just relying on you to defend them.

I thought the entire forum whined about "Hand-holding" before and now that there is something semi-difficult everyone is soiling themselves? Weak

Hadn't thought of that, but yeah. My warrior's pick pocket skill is not too high so that would be the main obstacle there.

I really feel for the people playing on 360, I'm incredibly anol about keeping NPCs alive in TES games(to the point that I resurrect most NPCs I assassinate during the DB quests) since there are so few to begin with. The biggest problem with these vampire attacks, watching from the sidelines anyway, seems like it could be fixed rather easily by stopping the vampire attacks after completing the MQ(which seems fairly reasonable to me, especially if you're playing on the Dawnguard side).


There are numerous ways you could deal with it on PC, anything from simply stopping the attacks after completing the MQ to stopping the attacks entirely(I'll personally be looking into the latter option). One idea which is popping into my mind is that from what I've heard some vampires start out as "farmers" or some such. It'd be easy enough to set them up so they spawn with 1 health and an item that causes poison damage to the wearer, so they die before they can even attack. You could do something similar with the Vampires themselves, though there's a question of whether they're the same NPCs you fight out in caves and whatnot. And then I'm sure more enterprising modders could find and simply get rid of the script which causes them to appear in the first place. It all depends upon how Beth implemented them. Out of curiosity, could anyone tell me if all vampire attacks start with them being a "farmer" or whatever?

Now THAT was FUNNY.

Thank You.

It's not a matter of failing to stop the attack, it's that the npcs get to the vampires normall before I do. Because of my location in the city at the time or the attack already started before I got to the city.


I love the random attacks, I like that their are consequences to them. The ver first idea I had about this was....When npcs die over time new ones should replace them. Their should be a whole process behind it. When they die their houses/buisness should go up for sale then someone should buy it and move in. Not like the next day but maybe a month or two in game time.

True that.

I've moaned about hand holding before. So I'm very pleased if they've addressed that. Like if they've made you choose to be either a vampire lord or join the Dawnguard and not be able to be a vampire lord at all - a decision you must make and stick to. Not some copout where you can end up a vampire whatever you do or some crap like that. I hope they haven't done something stupid like have merchants and blacksmiths killed while you're not looking - that's not making the game less hand holding, that's just getting people to pay for the privilege of the vanilla content being destroyed.

Bethseda and pretty much any forums in a nutshell:

The game companies don't give them enough consequences: WHAAAAAA NOT ENOUGH CONSEQUENCES!

The game companies give adequate consequences: WHAAAAAAA TOO MANY CONSEQUENCES!

Anyone else noticing a pattern here?

Instead of reverse pick pocketing, you could always drop items on the ground. Some NPCs ask if you want it and you can let them have it.

I am probably going with Honeyside @ Riften as my main home. You can enter from docks, and you have Mjoll patrolling at night.

That "fans" are annoying?

Let me guess , you're fast traveling.

Just wondering, if you join the vamp faction will you get these vampire attacks on towns/cities? Or is it only if you join the dawnguard? Or does it not matter, so even if you don't join either faction the attacks will still happen.

That was me. Yeah it's just common sense that vampire hunters would try to help others protrct themselves from vampires. As I said before, this is my plan.
Here's what they should do:

1. Make it so that instead of repetitive and mindless vampire killing, you can help the guards FIGHT BACK by training and upgrading them. If you're a vampire hunter, doesn't this make sense? This will decrease the liklihood of attack, make attacks happen outside of the gates with vampires TRYING to get in, and increases guard's chances of killing them quickly should they break in.
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. Skyrim needs SOME system however, because of all the random attacks on citizens.

It happens to both sides, the Thin-Bloods are attacking, not Harkon's Court

I don't think I'm going to bother following this topic anymore. There is clearly an issue that many are having while only two or three people are adamantly defending this feature with their argument being "I'm not having a problem therefor nobody is".

I'll be modding out these attacks on day one personally.

THIS! Mind if I quote you later? I'm sure someone will force us to make this point again soon

If you install a DLC and that automatically causes random attacks to trigger just by installing it (assuming you're level 10), how does that represent "consequences" in terms of gameplay?
Please explain.

At least these vampire attacks gives an incentive for people to build up their pickpocketing skills, so you can reverse picpocket and give your towns/cities more of a chance of survival.

In the past i have heard people say that pickpocketing is kinda pointless, since the items you get from it are not enough or not worth the time spent on pickpocketing. However dawnguard has allowed these skills to instead of just being used for your evil selfish desires of stealing items from people for your own gain, you can now use pickpocketing for good, by giving weapons to those in need which could help save their lives.

Be my guest. I'm just totally aghast at how many people don't seem to have any grasp of concepts like "consequences" and "hand holding" in the context of RPG game design.

Nice post. It's funny you talk about the vamp lord, because that's exactly what kind of bullsh*t Bethesda pulled. Dawnguard can become vampire lords? Are you [censored] kidding me? Who the [censored] had that great idea? I think they should be psychologically evaluated to make sure they're not psychotic. Way to really balance the questlines and give consequences to joining one Bethesda. Oh wait, they did give consequences to joining one. The vampires don't get sh*t.

Wow pickpocketing? How about a SYSTEM that actually lets your vampire hunter train and upgrade guards to defend their cities? Reducing the chance of attack and increasing the likliehood of victory when there is one? Or was that too much effort for the devs to implement?

Upgrading defenses as a minigame might be a fun. Upgrading gear, or finding followers/mercs to patrol. Maybe someone can create a mod for it.

You can bet someone will.

Sometimes.....you can't rely on beth to solve all of your own problems....sometimes you have to man up and fix things yourself. You can't always rely on other people to create a easy fix for you.