The Dragons are the focal point of the main quest hence making you Dragonborn. If Vampires suddenly became the center of the main quest id think of it as very unoriginal being that vampires are always present somewhere in ES games. As for Draugr, when theres tons of burial crypts, dwarven ruins, Mines, Caves, forts, etc, you are going to be fighting one common type of enemy whenever you frequent one of these places. To complain about Draugr when theres probably a hundred other locations not featuring Draugr is not fair. I cant name another game ever that had this many dungeons to explore, let alone enemy types. If you dont like them, explore the countless other locations that dont contain them

all it would really take for vampirism to be awsome is to switch feeding around, example:

feed to increase your level by 1, feed again to increase it again, etc. (max 4 obviously)
levels decrease by 1 every 24 hourse you go without feeding.

i also think under this idea you should have less health as you are lower in level, as well as weakened by the sun more. becoming more resisitant as you feed.

If you are on PC I can send you link for lore friendly mod which hmm how to say
I play with vampire now and when I feed I become ultra strong for 3 days
then ther is second stage where I am weak and so on
Mix that with bottle mod where you can take blood in bottles and carry with you
even from animals when you kill them
well you get the picture

I understand dragons being the focal point because they are based around the main quest, and once you beat the main quest you do not see them nearly as much as you used to. And I know there are a bunch of places that do not have Draugr in them, but the majority of quests involve the places that do, and that is really annoying and boring, but Skyrim is great in the fact that it has a bunch of different dungeons and that is awesome, it is just I find all the quests I do have me fighting in a place with Draugr so to me they seem to be a focal point of the game.

But I do not want vampires to be a focal point either because that is one thing I like about Bethesda they have vampires in the game and have quests based around them, but they are not the focal point, they did an amazing job with this in Oblivion, Skyrim on the other hand seems to not have much going for vampires when it comes to quests.

Still, dragons are just plain original and boring. At least werewolves were focal in Bloodmoon. They deserved the spotlight there.

Anyone have suggestions for what my vampire character should wear? I can't decide between light armor, mage robes, or a mixture of the two.

My guy wears black robes or black mages robes of destruction. In cities, he wears good nobles clothing. In the battlefield, light armor is good. I just can't picture a heavily armored vampire.

This makes me want to fire up Oblivion and go Vamp. but I already cheesed up my character's STR stat

I don't know; I think if i want to play a vampire game, I'll play Bloodlines. I give Bethesda the benefit of the doubt in play balancing vampirism. A lot of this stuff sounds cool that the OP brings up but it would make vampires way overpowered and foul up the game. Now one component I never hear people bring up in vampire lore that is always very much out there is age. Much of the vampire powers come with age and toughening. You'll never get that within this game; you're a fledgling. Vampire characters shouldn't be powerful because they are so young...ergo..playing as a vampire should not be all perk and no fail.

I remember becoming a vampire for the first time.
It made me long for the Oblivion vampires.
That is insane. (Because they svcked as well)

i agree with most people here...sadly same counts for werewolves..they get useless after level 30...why cant we unlock new perks for the werwolf/vampires...both need some dlc+major update