It's been a long while since I had an important NPC die. The last time it happened, it was Alvor in Riverwood, during a dragon fight. I was seriously ticked off.

More recently, when we started the DB competition, I had a really weird one. After exiting Helgen and heading to Riverwood, I arrived with Hadvar to find Faendal already dead and laying in the street. So, I grabbed his house key and took some loot from his house (evil character, seemed the thing to do). A few in-game days later, I was accosted by some Hired Thugs....after dispatching them, I grabbed the contract note off of the leader and it was a bounty from......Faendal! For stealing from his house! The dead guy sent Thugs after me!

And, that was the single strangest Skyrim event I've encountered, so far.

The problem here is not that the vampires attack. The problem is aggressive and suicidal citizens who attack the vampires instead of letting the guards (and the PC) deal with them. This, combined with the fact that no new merchants will ever replace the dead ones, is a major flaw in the game.

I have had citizens run in between my character and an enemy, in an effort to attack that enemy with fists or a useless dagger. This prevents me from dealing with the problem.

As for the reloading when things don't go your way...doesn't that kind of defeat the whole point of a roleplaying game?

What are the odds of every smith in Skyrim being killed by dragons and/or vampires? Just go to another town.

Even if every smith were killed, you can learn smithing yourself and make whatever you want anyway.

The "stupid design decision" was to mark some NPC's "essential". Morrowind and Gothic did it right. Anybody should be able to be killed. Even if you broke the 'thread of prophecy' in Morrowind you could still beat the game - you just had to work a little harder at it. I suppose they could have put 'essential' NPC's as part of novice mode or something on consoles, but it should never have been made the default.

Personally, I'd love a mod with a (small) chance for NPC's to be killed even when you aren't there. How great would be if you came back to Riverwood and a guard told you old Alvor bit the farm while you were out delivering daisies for some old woman across the world. As it is, dragons can assault Skyrim for YEARS without any real consequences so long as you're careful about it. And yes, my Skyrim campaigns tend to go on that long because I take my time (and play the merchant game).

Now that would be a poor design decision IMO. I like the way things are now but I definitely don't want Adrianne and Brenuin trying to take on a dragon in Whiterun while I'm messing around on Solsteim or something. Besides, running scripts for every town at once instead of just the player's current cell would probably be a nightmare even for high end PCs and there's no way consoles could handle it.

You wouldn't run actions for every NPC. Just have a 'dragon attack' event that fires every so often. Have that event be able to toggle the 'death' of NPC's. It wouldn't take much overhead at all. So long as it's not commonplace it would add a lot (IMHO) of immersion to the game world. Why is it that events only happen when you're around to see them? Games have been doing this sort of the thing for more than a decade now (think: X3).

Dare I say the word that would provide both parties their hearts desires, that is, keep it the way it is or change it to the way one wants.....it's a word that people love to hate and has never been implemented to my knowledge by BGS themselves. Probably just too powerful an artifact to have in the off-the-shelf game. What is it you ask?

Now that I can agree with 100%.

Looking at it that way doesn't sound very immersive. Not that I'm an immersion player, but still a round about way to blame the player for NPC on NPC deaths

How is it a player's fault that an NPC decides to attack another NPC How about we just have the ground open up and swallow up the player at random times and blame his/ her character's death on them?

Having a farm couple murdered because of throwing a clown in the slammer is one thing, but I refuse to be blamed for not meta gaming right. No wonder Hancock didn't want to be the stereotypical "save all" super hero

Edited post...NM