It might just be me, but I find it frustrating and ridiculous that most of the town folks are not afraid of dragons. In Riverwood, an elder dragon attacked the place and low leveled NPCs wearing no armor, and wielding only an iron dagger would try and take the dragon head on; this usually results in the NPC getting 1-shotted by the dragon. Since Bethesda stated that they're looking for ways to improve the game once future DLCs are released, I hope they change this behavior with the town citizens. The way I see it, most of the town folks (minus the guards and other characters who can obviously hold their own ground) should run into their homes or other places away from the dragon while cowering in fear. The Skyrim live action commercial shows the locals running away from the dragon, so why wasn't this implemented into the game? I'm sick of seeing farmers and other non-combat citizens get killed by dragons because they're programmed to fight any hostiles that enter their towns. What do you guys think?

If they have been hit in the knee with an arrow they might be a bit more respectful of dragons and other hostiles.

Mods will fix this.

Actually that bit of weirdness makes sense. All they have is that town, a dragon takes it out they may as well be dead. There's no FEMA etc to come pick up the pieces. Wooden houses don't do much against a fire breathing dragon, stone houses maybe but the roofs.

That never happened here.

Once a Dragon attacked Falkreath, and every citizen immediately ran away.

It was just us and Dovahkiin fighting the beast.

They did come back later after it was dead, to gawk at it's body.

I agree. And hopefully, Bethesda will do something about that.

One of my videos shows one of the battle-born women run up to a dragon in whiterun courtyard, attack, get hit, and run away sayin she couldn't help in this fight. Excellent AI. Whiterun has guards. Riverwood has nothing. Those people must defend. This is actually an area gamesas should get praise.

THIS! Bethesda wouldn't bother fixing it.

I think te AI says if no guards defend, if guards run. Certain npcs are SPOILER more than meets the eye don't forget.

The only place where a citizen actually fought by my side was Riverwood.

It was Alvor, and he ended up quite dead. The rest only arrived later after the dragon was dead,to stare at the dead body.

As I said, in Falkreath, no one helps.

ive seen some people run away and some stand and fight so just like in previous games everyone has a certain "courage" rating. i forgot what its called in the editor. this makes sense. i dont see alvor the blacksmith running from a fight but i do see sven cowering in the corner.

what im confused by is why they dont simply give the kids some weapons and let them have at it with the dragons while everyone goes into an interior cell of a house where a dragon cant harm them.

The wandering bard that's name darts with a t will help you unless its a dragon or a giant. If ya a giant he told me "I'm not sticking around for this!" and high tailed it outta there.

:shakehead:

Yes, they're very stupid, every time a dragon attacks a town half the population gets decimated because they tried to fight the dragon with a [censored] dagger instead of running inside. This is why dragons were a bad idea, the AI is just too dim.

Haha I know! I was wandering through skyrim when I got attacked by a random dragon. He landed and after laying into him for a bit with my swords, I had to back off to heal... much to my surprise a farmer and his wife from a nearby farm had arrived and were attacking the dragon! Luckily I jumped in and finished him off before they were killed, but seriously, did they have a death wish? They were lucky the Dragon Born was close at hand.

Tell me about it. Using one of my other characters, I was on my way to High Hrothgar; I would have to go through Ivarstead to get there. I was attacked by an elder dragon and 4 NPCs ended up dying because they chose to rush at the dragon with nothing but their iron daggers. Three of these NPCs were the farmer family that consists of the parents and their daughter Fastred (who wishes to leave Ivarstead). The other dead NPC was Fastred's potential spouse Bassianus. I saw 3 of them being killed by the dragon's kill animation where it grabs the foe with its jaws and toss them aside. Fastred was killed by a dragon bite. This wouldn't have happened if these NPCs actually ran into their homes.

I ran into one just outside Whiterun. A farmer woman said to me that she was going to take it on. Good luck with that, I thought. I later found it had killed a different farmer. I don't know why he was tilling fields at 9 pm, and I sure don't know why he didn't run when the dragon came by. In theory, the guards could deal with it, although they were all too busy reminiscing about old arrow injuries. If he'd hidden in his mill, he'd be alive, and the dragon would have flown off or been killed by someone. Silly old fool...

I love when the come and gawk.... Funny thing is that they're usually gawking at an ash pile when I'm done. Yes you can disintegrate a Dragon with Lightning Storm! They'll sit there and stare at a pile of ashes for hours. LOL!

It's funny when they run over the dead bodies of their friends, families etc. just to look at the body of a dragon. They don't even notice dead bodies of their relatives, and sometimes even stand on them.

WOLVERINES!!!!

Skyrim citizens are hardered through years of loss and grief caused by http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g_g7uYFWYw, they can handle a dragon or two.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSHvPJD_558 (Warning, Bad Language!)

Yeah, it's a bit silly, but I had an attack in Riften once and every person went to attack. Got it down pretty fast, so I don't think I lost too many people if anyone. it was really cool though that every citizen right after that had a greeting involving the dragon though...made it seem like the AI memory-of-a-goldfish wasn't in this game.