It's always struck me how rubbish and non distinctive the Vampires were in Skyrim. They're exactly the same as every other humanoid enemy, you would not know the difference but for that crappy 'svck your blood with my hand' ability which I always thought looked stupid.



Where are the feral, snarling, hissing Vampires that leap at you with their claws and try to bite you?! I mean I'm all for having a more sophisticated Vampire (Interview with a Vampire), but if it came down to a fight, things still got way more animalistic and ferocious.


There's nothing stand out about them at all...


What are other people's thoughts..?


I'd love to see a MOD. That would give us some more interesting Vampires to fight !

This is too stereotypical for my taste. I would prefer something a bit more original than that.

In my opinion the last game to handle Vampires decently was Morrowind. And even then there was room for improvement. Until Dawnguard, Bethesda has always seemed a bit half-hearted in their treatment of Vampires. Even in Dawnguard I thought there was much more that could have been done with them. And what was done with them could have been done with more depth.

I would like to see more about Vampire culture, rites, learn more about the history behind Vampirism. What I do not want is more mindless, slobbering creatures. We already have enough of those in these games.

Why Vampires?

Vampires where once human. So, it is to assume that they do fall back on that behavior in the stress of a fight.

From Khajit and Argonians, I would expect to behave like a wild animal if they are about to be killed. The modder could just add some moves from the werewolves and gargoyles to them.

Otherwise, that would be some kind of additional race-ability.

The whole problem with all talk about how Vampires should be is:

All few years, a new movie (book) with a new kind of Vampire comes out. Then, new movies (and books) do use this kind of Vampire.

If someone tells how vampires should be, that just shows what was the kind of vampire he did experience first. And that just tells to which generation he belongs.

Another aspect is, that the player can become a vampire. But how should his behavior change? In a game where is no button to say bad things to your opponent while fighting, is is for me ok if the other side is also not too talkative.

Otherwise, creating a mod that adds some animal-like grunts to the list of things a vampire would say in a fight should not be that hard, except for the real recording.

You don't simply put creature animation in the NPC animation roster, that's more complicated than what well over 50% of modders (I'm being modest here, percentage is probably much higher) are capable of fiddling with, and requires third party programs that can handle animations.


Thing with TES is that it has it's own setting. So it dpesn't matter what's currently a popular vampire image, a handsome sparkling teenager or a demonic beast with 6 eyes and portal to hell on it's back, TES, as a setting, should imho have it's own thing.


And lore did have something cool for Skyrim until the game itself came out. Skyrim's vampire clan had vampires who coud walk through ice. You'd walk around an ice cavern and you'd have a vampire come through the frozen ground and bite your nuts off. I'm assuming this behaviour was too nuch work to design so they eventually scraqed the idea off and we ended with a weak ripoff of Underworld vampires. I do dig their attires though, boots are practically a fantasy version of biker boots.

In terms of lore at least in oblivion I remember them being a more monstrous feral vampire eating people like a beast not a nice or romantic vampire at all. In terms of fighting they don't do anything special but met at the right level they can be ferocious overwhelming and seem quick and nasty. Part of the problem is becoming ridiculously op. Then as a player there has to be some balance or trade off to vampire powers it's not a vampire game. It's bad enough you're forced to be a werewolf for the fighters guild. It's just something different.

Why don't we find more vampire lords is my big question. I mean Harkin will make you a random guy a vampire lord, but in game we don't actually fight any other vampire lords... they should have just made the boss level vampires into lords in the leveled list so we'd run into them randomly. That would have made more interesting vampires. And more gargoyles, those things are badass.

I think my overarching point, regardless of what folks think makes a 'decent' Vampire, is how little difference there is in fighting them in contrast with most other humanoid enemies.


There's almost nothing distinctive about them. I've fought Vampires without even knowing they were Vamps until I went to loot their corpse!


It's a really bizarre oversight on Bethesda part. If you're gonna have Vampires why not make them cool??


I also personally can't stand the ' Vampire Lord' form.. I never use it on my Vampire chick... I prefer to use her Vamp powers whilst looking human.

+1

The Vamp Lord form is just plain butt ugly....my lady has more dignity than to look anything as repulsive as that! Kinda puts a dampener on wanting to play as a vampire.


Cool uber sixy vamp chick with a "jump on board and bite 'em", while sounding like she's really enjoying it = Bloodrayne (the games, not the awful movies). If your vamp char, vamped all over her victims like Bloodrayne.....you'd be biting your way across the province continuously....

That remains me of Fallout 4.

You can choose between male and female.

Male: "I'm a living warrior-legend in the 3 generation! Now I'm searching revenge for my wife and son!"

Female: "Cry... Where is my son? And what a waste was my effort to become a lawyer?"

As vampire in Skyrim, and (as anyone) in Fallout, you can theoretically play a female char. But it feels like the developers did not really assume we would do.

They are just mages with vampiric spells.

I've never liked vampirism in any Elder Scrolls game. The downsides are just too punishing. I also hate being limited to being indoors in the daytime, it's gimmicky and irritating.

In Skyrim, none of the vampirism abilities are particularly good. Drain Life does lower damage than unperked noob destruction spells and any enemy DPSer worth a crap will outdamage the healing.

The permanent Illusion buff could be useful if you're using illusion as a primary specialization. The sneak bonus becomes irrelevant if you throw a few well-placed perks into the Sneak tree.

You also get reanimate once per day (or how about go level Conjuration instead and reanimate as much as needed???), calm once per day (redundant considering you're probably specializing in illusion), night eye (largely inferior to Aura Whisper/Detect).

Vampiric feeding in Skyrim is a pain because you have to find sleeping NPCs as well.

With Dawnguard, you get vampire lord form which gives you some unique and useful abilities, and it might be worth the tradeoff. Outside of that, vampirism is just a crappy version of nano-enhancements where you can't pick your bonuses and you rely on feeding instead of treatments to prevent implant rejection.

0/10 would forget about vampirism completely, load up Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and upgrade my character at a LIMB clinic instead.