One main reason I have for not downloading DG is because I believe it ruins vampires, despite tons of people saying it vastly improves them.

Yes, the new powers, spells, perks, and transformation are pretty damn cool, but one aspect takes something away from the "immersiveness". We all know that in vanilla skyrim when you reach stage 4 vampirism you are attacked by all NPCs on site. Okay, so that doesn't sound too great, especially because stage 4 vampirism isn't even that strong, but this aspect forces players to think as a vampire. But more importantly it forces the player to do what all vampires must do... It forces the player to feed.

IE: when you are about to venture into a dungeon, cave, ruin, etc. you may allow your self to get to stage 4 first, seeing as you'll rarely encounter a non-hostile NPC and the boosts and spells might come in handy. But when you leave the cave you don't want to attract a large bounty and what not so you must stealthily sneak into a town and feed.

Basically you have to think about how much you starve yourself and weigh how much you need the strength or not, causing you to balance it out by feeding often.

But with the addition of DG you no longer get attacked by NPCs unless you use your transformation, and when you're not transformed, why not have the extra strength of being a stage 4 vampire? It really takes something away from being a vampire. It takes away the danger, risk, and strategy.

What's your opinion on the whole "stage 4 vampire" thing?

Personally I wish they would've buffed up stage 4 a little bit while keeping all NPCs hostile, and added the transformation in as the vampires "big scary trick up his sleeve"

I think the whole stage 4 could've been handled better. I'm actually torn between both sides. On one hand I feel that vampires are being seen as vampires in recent media, books and movies. So NPC's don't recognize you as such. On the other hand, it was a lot of fun having to worry about hostile NPc's attacking you. Personally I think that was a bit extreme. Perhaps if they found a happy medium with NPC's except guards running from you, maybe just the guards attack.

The thing that really bugs me with Dawnguard is how they changes the way vampires look with glowing eyes and what not. I can buy that the Volkihar are basically supercharged Oblivion aka no consequense-vampires, but in the vanilla game I didn't realise that certain npc's were vampires until I read about it online. With Dawnguard you can spot them from a mile away, yet they removed the stage 4-attacks.

I absolutely love the glowing eyes. But yeah I hear ya on the NPC's you didn't know about. Like what's her face, the wizard in the Blue Palace. I had no idea.

If you want the other features of DG but not the way it changes vampires, I think your best bet would be to download the DLC, but disable it for the playthroughs that you don't want affected by it. So for your vampire playthroughs, play with DG disabled. But if you have a warrior that you want to join the DG with, then enable it.

I agree that it added to immersion when you HAD to feed in order to not be attacked on sight. I also liked being immune to frost and extremely sensitive to fire.

My only problem with the DG vampire thing is the glowing eyes.

At stage 4 in the normal game people would attack you on sight(Because your eyes get more red or something? idk). So WHY is it that now in DG a vampire can have glowing eyes and no one seems to give a crap?

It makes no sense.

They should have made it so that at level 4 NPCs run from you (Because why would a non fighting NPC try and fight a vampire?) and guards attack you (Because it's their job) .

Feeding seems pointless now but maybe im missing something as maybe it helps with burnt face? Its funny that they kept the stage 4 message that you are feared and when dragons show up my companions yell kill the vampire . Makes me want to get a pc

Things i would have loved

Turning bandits and non essentials into thralls or even vampires
More vampire lords to fight
More vampire companions , vampire spouse should look the part and use abilities
Ability to summon gargoyles/use lord power ln regular form or allow lord to pick locks etc

"IE: when you are about to venture into a dungeon, cave, ruin, etc. you may allow your self to get to stage 4 first, seeing as you'll rarely encounter a non-hostile NPC and the boosts and spells might come in handy. But when you leave the cave you don't want to attract a large bounty and what not so you must stealthily sneak into a town and feed.

Basically you have to think about how much you starve yourself and weigh how much you need the strength or not, causing you to balance it out by feeding often. "

Okay so basically.. i've played Morrowind - Oblivion and then Skyrim Vampire variations creating the same character each time just Rping it. I remember thinking like this and it really worked well with Oblivion as there was no Sun Damage in the other realms (although you could get insta-death by leaving if you were not careful) Anyway what I'm trying to say is I understand your way of thinking... but the fact is, that's non-existent in Skyrim, they forced stealth-illusion casting on vampires with no relevant attribute buffs (and many would say stealth was already OP so you wouldn't have to starve yourself for the extra bonus anyway) In Morrowind you could ridiculously exceed your stats with vampire to become almost super-hero(ish) leaping over buildings with a single bound and running at crazy high speeds, now they removed this in Oblivion (sort of because of the acrobatics & speed-athletics changes) so they're not as dramatic but they STILL effected your core attributes and you could build to accommodate them. I don't know..I don't mean to rant lol, I'm just saying is that you're already RPing your vanilla vampire Skyrim experience, so you may as well install Dawnguard embrace the new animations at the very least and be happy with how YOU play.