So this isn't a unique event, happens so often I have lost count. But I'm down this dungeon that some explorers are having some trouble with. Get kidnapped by badguys for future eating, all sorts of tragic things happening to them. They seem level headed. They are very clearly not bandits, they're all named and intelligent.

And for no reason whatsoever, all of the survivors want to kill me.

This is pretty [censored] lazy bethesda. Just put their dead bodies near a pool of blood and say the badguys did it. This [censored] with everything wanting to kill me for no reason is getting [censored] old.

I wonder why Falmer servants want me dead when I get close. Maybe I just want to free them.

Stockholm Syndrome.

Maybe one evil group captured another evil group and the moment you got to safety

KNIFE IN THE BACK!

I notice the same thing in places like the skooma dealers' cave. You traipse into the pit dog area and all the gamblers charge up towards you and start pounding their fists against your armor while you cut them down. This quest was just begging for multiple solutions: Fight your way in, sneak past the gate guard, bluff your way past by claiming you're here for the fights, etc.

have you considered the fact that it could be your personality?

Personally, I am just as disappointed with how bad guys always have empty titles like "necromancer" or "lowlife". Oblivion did it too, and sure its a convenient way to throw a "kill me" sticker on someone, but when you do that you remove all sense of that character being a real person with a history and a life in the game world. It immediately tells me this person is non interactive, a dummy generated out of thin air to improve my combat skills instead of a person making a hard life for himself out in the wilderness (or wherever). It detracts from immersion, and I can't see why you would want to do that when you put so much effort into creating it through other means (like scripted bad guy conversations you can listen in on, which I really like). Name generators don't seem that difficult to make...

The shop owner of the drunken huntsman randomly attacked me one day when I walked in. I kept trying to yield and reload but he kept trying to kill me. I gave up and left but he followed me outside and got killed by guards.. Damn shame, he was a reliable source of ebony arrows for me and I liked him in general.

Maybe you have a bounty on ya head and they plan on cashing it in.

Yeah, I much prefer MAGICALLY knowing the name of this guy tryint to kill me, WHO I NEVER EVEN HEARD OF BEFORE, OR TALKED TO

Every random bandit or thug should have a name and background when all you can do is mow them down? Seems pointless to me.

I wish not all enemies were insta-aggro... especially after eavesdropping in on some bandit conversations/private musings.

I want my Khajiit to be their Manic Pixie Dreamgirl! "What? You're having trouble with your life? Let me help you get back on track and having fun!"

Bethesda is lazy for having living, hostile NPCs instead of dead ones?

..Lay off the Skooma.

The only hostile NPCs I've faced were dead, last I checked. Of course, before I checked, they might have been alive. They keep jumping on my sword, when I just want to talk, or even help them out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk5SkZ4rvKQ

Just the way it is.

Actually this is one of the things that threw me off when I first entered the ratway since you have people with Random names I thought I'd done something or entered somewhere that you were not suppose to enter and aggroed a bunch of people needlessly... and even if these were just aggressive NPCs it made ya think about who they might actually be.

One thing that bugs me about aggro NPCs...I go in their cave, and they get suspicious. "Who's there?" etc. Weird when others of their group are in the area. Why wouldn't they think I was one of their group? "Someone's coming. Must be Jim with that case of mead."

You're not a level four vampire are you?

Exactly but those guys have some kind of excuse, they could have been brainwashed.

But the adventurers that you follow down to that area, they aren't brainwashed their still in survival mode. That khajiit who's brother dies by a thalmor attack, I don't want to take his skooma! I carry extra skooma just in case one of my brosef felines needs a hookup! I'm pretty sure I'm richer than a Yarl now, I'll make it [censored] rain skooma! And hell if I lived in Tamriel I'd be a skooma addict too! 420 err day~

Then they two that escaped the falmer right next to the exit decide to get in an argument that has nothing to do with me. I show up say "sup gois whats happening? I just killed everything that could possibly hurt you and I have a key to let you out of this god forsaken dungeon so why don't you two just calm down and lets get out of h.. OWW HEY WHY ARE YOU ATTACKING ME??"

Like dragons? They woke up on the wrong side of skyrim, all jokes aside, that's a good question.

Cheers

What is "future eating"? I actually like that, if it's used as a phrase meaning "You will have no future because I'm going to (eat it) kill you."

Well to be fair, the AI does warn you if you get to close and I like that rather than just out right attacking you. NPC's to attack you for no reason but it's more because I think you have entered their space or cave.

Did you ever stop to ask why you think the character is only there to be mowed down in the first place? That is the very perception promoted by doing things like giving them generic names and removing all possibility of dialogue when calming them, ect. The game already tries to give hostile NPCs backgrounds, they do it every time their environment contains recognizable living spaces such as beds, cookware, storage, torture chambers, you name it. My point is that a generic name, at least for me, defeats a lot of these efforts.

There needs to be a better mechanic for NPC hostility. I dont like that bandits are always hostile and stuff. In Oblivion you could boost your personality high up and they would become non-aggressive and you could talk to them.


I think there should be factors towards NPC aggression:

1) Speech/Personality level (I think speech should be renamed personality so it has an actual function!)

2) Crime level (a known criminal character would be more hated by "good" NPCs and more accepted by enemy NPCs

3) Game decisions--choosing to support certain factions

4) Dialogue and interaction (Illegal mages might ask "Are you here to turn us in?" and you can say no, yes, or choose to join them or something)



I wish you could be an outlaw too.

They're hostile toward you because the word got out.

Instead of running from those threatening bandits at the first camp/dungeon/hideout you found, you killed them when the attacked you.

Now they know.