It's fast travelling that dramatically increases their chance of spawning. I've stopped fast travelling recently, and haven't seen a dragon since. Aside from when I finished the main quest, atop the Throat of the World.

I think it happens when you fast travel. I used to fast travel a lot, and I had plenty of dragon attacks, almost to the point of absurdity. Once I stopped fast-travelling however, dragon attacks became very rare.

I went to unload some useless armour/weapons at riverwood trader earlier and before I entered an ancient dragon came circling the town. I did battle with that one without any problems and slayed the dragon in the center of town. I entered the shop and sold my stuff. Came out and behold another dragon except this one was by the wood mill. Im a lvl 81 fully maxed out player so I had no problem with this one either. Annoying to say the least.

Dragons should be alot rarer and alot stronger than they currently are. I know Beth were proud of them but they imo made them too common

People were correct when they predicted that dragons would be the new Oblivion gates.

The devs always have the right idea, just the execution is off.

How is it "the right idea?" The entire idea is doomed to fail.

What Bethesda basically wanted to do is take that "epic boss battle" and make it a regular thing. Problem is, humans are sentient beings so after the fourth dragon, they're no longer a challenge. Instead they become redundant and people get sick of killing them.
It was a very stupid idea to make the strongest enemy type such a frequent occurance, because then the entire game quickly becomes easy and redundant.

I wonder if the devs will fix the dragons. I think it's safe to say the concensus concerning dragons is they're too easy to kill and way too common. Will they every change them, make them harder and rarer? Or is there attitude that they don't want to spend time changing the game, they just want to make new stuff?

PC USER
I found in my last run the dragons to be a bit much. In this run i used "live another life" mod, chose a bandit, and didnt start the main quest line. So 30 levels in and not one dragon, I am enjoying it so much more. Only issue is I can not get a few houses as they are main quest related. Oh well.

Well, it does not bother me that alot of dragons appear. It just bothers me that they just float there and never land on the ground.
I also don't fast travel that much, i think i just ran out of luck.

I've never taken a character past level 40 something, never completed the MQ and rarely fast travel - dragons are rare in my games andI've never had enough souls to activate all my shouts. I have noticed though much more spawns on higher levels on the occasions I do fast travel. It strikes me, the longer you play the sillier it gets.
One thing that does my head in is when I do fast travel on higher levels, weird stuff starts happening. Like taking the carriage to Windhelm, a draugr wight and a hostile mage were there after travelling. I fast travelled into Whiterun and a bunch of frostbite spiders appeared with me. What the hell were they doing there?

I took a character to level 52, and I never saw anything above an elder dragon, and dragon attacks were obscenely infrequent. I think I often had ten to fifteen hours of game time at least in between dragon attacks.

There's nothing wrong with the idea, it's just the execution is a bit off. In the base game Dragons are no where near strong enough or use enough of a variety of abilities for them to remain challenging and interesting for some players. A large number of players maxing out and in some cases exploiting and outright breaking the game with the crafting skills doesn't help matters. Try taking on one of them with out your Daedric sword of Uber L33tness sometime.

Still, a few mods to Dragon abilities, resistances, and AI patterns will liven them right up for you if you're on the PC which is what I've done. I almost never fast travel so with much stronger dragons, they become a moderately rare sight for me to come across and are always a difficult and random fight when I do battle one due to changes in their AI (they land a LOT less often) and use a wide selection of shouts in different situations. Not as much fun when an Ancient Dragon Fus Ro Dah's you off of a steep cliffside as when you do it to some bandits, eh?

In the 70 odd hrs I've been playing on my first major character.. I killed 3 dragons and seen 1 more flying over a mountain. Draugr and Falmer's are the most common thing for me ATM.. every cave or ruin and it's 1 of them.. hardly see any bandits, only saw my first vampire last night and werewolf this morning..

Dragonborn: 20 shouts
Dragon on up to Ancient Dragon: 2 shouts (Regular Frost / Fire Breath and a Fireball / Ice Storm)

Really? Come on, dragons are kinda the inventors of their own language for cryin' out softly.

Easiest fix to the whole 'Dragon attacks town and all the merchants try to fight it off with iron daggers and all get eaten.' scenario would be, Dismay Shout. Script it that any character that isn't the player or a guard automatically flees into the nearest building and stays inside until said dragon is dead. Hell, have it use the shout right at the beginning of the fight, while still flying around. No more 'Herpderp the merchant is dead and now I can't buy or sell stuff!'

I don't understand why they didn't give dragons a kind of automatic dismay effect on non guard NPCs - have them all flee indoors and hide automatically. As well as the inconvenience of the unfortunate demise of Mr Herpderp, it does kind of detract from the dragonslaying awesomeness of the Dovakin when the entire town is lining up to take them whenever they appear. Why do they need the dragonborn? Just give blacksmiths and merchants better armour and weapons and the dragons would stand stand no chance.

Yeah, random NPCs fighting dragons is kinda stupid. They pay guards to do it so why civilians are risking their necks?

But as for dragons being normal 'monsters' like bears works great for my playstyle as nonhero. They are dangerous when encountered alone in open, but can be shot down easily given enough ranged weaponry. Like airplanes IRL. And it's great, it adds kinda 'realism'. If they would be 'greatest menace which only dragonborn can defeat because designers said so' then Skyrim would seem like dumb fairytale for kids

If you’re fast traveling, you might be missing out on all of the bunnies. I don’t have an over-abundance of dragons in my games. I could also stand to see some more rabbits.

As far as NPCs attempting to defend their homes and families when a dragon attacks, that fits right in with my idea of Nord culture. I can’t imagine Balimund or Alvor saying, “Nah, let the guards get it. I’ll just go inside and maybe my roof won’t catch fire.”

The dragon spamming has only been a problem for me after reaching about, hmm, level 30. But now they are more frequent than 9 gold in a Nordic ruin urn.

Hmm, I guess I am one of the lucky ones. I have the dragons activated, but so far on my current character I haven't encountered them very often.

Over 95 hours in and I this is one of the many reasons why Skyrim is Oblvion's poorer cousin. I'd say I put in over 200 hours into Oblivion but it has gotten to the stage where I will struggle to put in another 10 hours into Skyrim.

I single handily killed Alduin, defeated the Stormcloaks, and stopped the Thalmor and Ancient Dragons think they can take me on? Wasn't Alduin supposed to be the strongest dragon in existence? I would have thought the game was designed so Dragon fights became rarer after Alduin was killed.

Today I went to Riverwood to sell some loot, when I was attacked by an Ancient Dragon. Once it was killed, I sold my stuff and as I was leaving, I was attacked by another Ancient Dragon. I was passing through Riverwood a little later and another Ancient Dragon attacked me. When I stopped playing earlier, I think every non-essential NPC in Riverwood was dead. I wouldn't mind fighting the odd dragon but the sheer number of them and the fact that NPC's are stupid enough to take on a Dragon, really breaks the narrative and makes it feel like I'm playing a game rather than taking part in an epic saga.

Don't even get me started on endless storyless-dungeons full of daugr....