Digital Foundry VS Bethesda: PS3 Skyrim is still shit

Tried to play this again last night. Guess I have sick sense of humor.

Attempt #1: Didn't make it past the initial loading screen.
Attempt #2: Made it past the first loading screen! Fast-traveled to Riften, took half a step and my PS3 crashed.

Great product you put out there, Bethesda. Kudos!
 
Don't you know? Using "entitlement" is GAF's go-to buzzword this year. Just how "hyperbole" was last year's winner. Both are generally used to make poorly constructed arguements sound more intelligent.
It's amazing how many people are unaware of their options and what they have a right to. I'm glad there are intelligent right minded people on this forum. Although you still get a bunch of weirdos here, GameFaqs is like a warzone in comparison. It's a really sad sight. It's like they've been brainwashed.

Another thing that infuriates me about this mess is how quickly Bethesda announced from the rooftops about shipments and sales of Skyrim, yet we are essentially unable to use it or return it and we can't guarantee a resolution based on their track record. It's like they're mocking us and laughing all the way to the bank.
 
So to be clear, has the patch that's suppose to patch the magic resistance they broke submitted for certification yet? That's the one in final testing right? And the next patch won't come until after christmas?
 
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...futes-skyrim-ps3-lag-claims-by-fallout-nv-dev

"Wait for time to pass," Grandstaff concluded. "Many things are running in the world depending on what quests you've done or places you have visited. Using Wait or Rest options, passing time will clear up some of these. It depends how long you wait, it may take up to 30 days for some items."

30 days?! lol

I actually read that on another forum, 30 days in game time deletes some things in the world, some guy said he did the wait 24 hours 30 times and it greatly reduced his save, but the results were mixed, for some it helped, for others it changed nothing.
 
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...futes-skyrim-ps3-lag-claims-by-fallout-nv-dev

"Wait for time to pass," Grandstaff concluded. "Many things are running in the world depending on what quests you've done or places you have visited. Using Wait or Rest options, passing time will clear up some of these. It depends how long you wait, it may take up to 30 days for some items."

30 days?! lol
lol.

why dont Bethesda just fart out a patch ASAP (pre Christmas) that reduces the 30 day refresh to 10/15 days?


10 days is still a VERY long time in game.

or even better just add a potion or something that puts the character into a "deep sleep" that resets things.
 
Somebody just found these lying around Bethesda´s HQ.. the ten commandments for the PS3 version.

736ei.jpg


1. Thou shall disable Auto-Save.
2. Thou must only play 30 min. then thou must turn off PS3.
3. Thou shall worship Bethesda daily, then they might grant you a Patch.
4. Thou shall clear your cache.
5. Thou shall look upon the divine lag as a gift.
6. Thou shall not envy your neighbours version of the game.
7. Thou shall believe the words of John Carmack.
8. Thou shall wait 30 days before you move on.
9. Thou shall not cry when the game crashes.
10. Thou shall wait for our next patch, to be even more disappointed.
 
So to be clear, has the patch that's suppose to patch the magic resistance they broke submitted for certification yet? That's the one in final testing right? And the next patch won't come until after christmas?

Yes about the patch being in testing. There is no ETA for the next patch.
 
I fucking love this game, but I am starting to get hit with the lag. Save file jumped from 8.1MB to 8.8MB last night by just clearing out a couple of dungeons and doing some enchanting/smithing.

As a last hurrah before I turned the game off last night, I decided to -walk- all the way from Whiterun to Riften so I could discover more areas. Leaving Whiterun things were fine, but the further I got and the closer I got to Riften, the frame kept dropping and the music kept cutting out. Thankfully, I made it to Riften before my PS3 blew up and saved.

Then I went and played FFX-2 and I stayed up way past my bed time having fun.

I have been thinking about trading in my PS3 version for the 360 version, but my time is so damn precious nowadays I don't know if I have the drive to actually go through 45h of game again and do all of the Whiterun quests again. I mean, technically I could start a new file and instead of doing quests in Whiterun, do what I am required to do there and then move on to another town and start doing sidequests there, but I dunno...
 
Somebody just found these lying around Bethesda´s HQ.. the ten commandments for the PS3 version.

http://i.imgur.com/736ei.jpg

1. Thou shall disable Auto-Save.
2. Thou must only play 30 min. then thou must turn off PS3.
3. Thou shall worship Bethesda daily, then they might grant you a Patch.
4. Thou shall clear your cache.
5. Thou shall look upon the divine lag as a gift.
6. Thou shall not envy your neighbours version of the game.
7. Thou shall believe the words of John Carmack.
8. Thou shall wait 30 days before you move on.
9. Thou shall not cry when the game crashes.
10. Thou shall wait for our next patch, to be even more disappointed.

You forgot "Thou shall buy the DLC a month after it appears on thy neighbour's platform and watch it break thine game further"
 
lol.

why dont Bethesda just fart out a patch ASAP (pre Christmas) that reduces the 30 day refresh to 10/15 days?


10 days is still a VERY long time in game.

or even better just add a potion or something that puts the character into a "deep sleep" that resets things.

I agree with this idea, though after the last patch I'm not sure if "farting out a patch" is going to turn out well.
 
I do not mean to sound disrespctful when I say the following:

The bolded statement is, quite honestly, completely untrue (EDIT: from a consumer standpoint. I don't see any engine improvement from F3 to NV to Skyrim. Same problems are shared between the three). Fallout 3 GOTY is unplayable a certain amount into the game. New Vegas has random lock ups and constant frame rate issues. Skyrim, well, let's not even get into that. (there may have been engine optimizations, but all games become unplayable at some point. My GOTY F3 is garbage due to the issues. Skyrim is fast approaching that point)

I work in customer care, supervising actually. I do have to instruct my people to pawn an issue off for a while where there's a problem I have to fix. Delaying things happens. Telling customers you're working on it happens. However, I never EVER would tell them to say that an issue was resolved when it, honestly, was not. That's not good customer service and it's not good business. How anybody can say that Bethesda has resolved their engine's issues on the PS3 is, seriously, shocking and confusing. Seriously, play any of the above games longer than 50 hours. They'll break.

I'm so happy that I purchased these games on the cheep because your company released a broken product. I'm not blaming you, you're just a company guy, but trust me. This isn't a case of "we didn't know" anymore. Fallout 3 was bugged, NV was bugged, and Skyrim is just terrible. I can, quite honestly, say that if this isn't resolved appropriately I will do everything I can to throw a fit about this issue. Bethesda sold me an item that doesn't work. At this point, knowingly. Unacceptable.
Excellent post.
 
I'm between 90-100 hours in now, save is at around 8.8MB which I understand to be low granted how long I've been playing. Not sure why that's the case, I've been dropping shit, clearing every dungeon I can find, dragons etc. but my save file size remains low. Thanks to that I haven't had anything near the issues most of you are having, after a few hours the framerate drops a bit but nothing approaching unplayability (though I do restart if I opt to keep playing). Rarely play for more than 2 hours at a time which helps keep me clear of even that.

Wondering if exploring the world and discovering new locations is a big contributor to the save file size? I've been exclusively limiting myself to the southern part of the map, haven't seen Winterhold, Dawnstar, etc. out of fear that my game would asplode. Figured when it inevitably happened that I'd roll an alt and saunter up north to do all that I'd skipped on my main. Anyone else doing this also noticing their save file is smaller than most?
 
I'm between 90-100 hours in now, save is at around 8.8MB which I understand to be low granted how long I've been playing. Not sure why that's the case, I've been dropping shit, clearing every dungeon I can find, dragons etc. but my save file size remains low. Thanks to that I haven't had anything near the issues most of you are having, after a few hours the framerate drops a bit but nothing approaching unplayability (though I do restart if I opt to keep playing). Rarely play for more than 2 hours at a time which helps keep me clear of even that.

Wondering if exploring the world and discovering new locations is a big contributor to the save file size? I've been exclusively limiting myself to the southern part of the map, haven't seen Winterhold, Dawnstar, etc. out of fear that my game would asplode. Figured when it inevitably happened that I'd roll an alt and saunter up north to do all that I'd skipped on my main. Anyone else doing this also noticing their save file is smaller than most?

You might be onto something. When I was playing, I did everything I could to not touch anything. It got to the point where if I had mistakenly run over a lamp and knocked it over or something, I would reload my save. But I was hit with the slowdowns to where it became unplayable anyway. I had like half the time you had in the game but double digit save file size.

I did a ton of exploring though. I spend a lot of time just running around discovering things for my map.
 
Sorry if this has already been mentioned...

Would it help the lag and save file size issues if one kept the Miscellaneous Quests to a minimum? If one has a ton of open (incomplete) Miscellaneous Quests, would it help if you systematically finished them all, and closed them out, before continuing on with the main quests?
 
Sorry if this has already been mentioned...

Would it help the lag and save file size issues if one kept the Miscellaneous Quests to a minimum? If one has a ton of open (incomplete) Miscellaneous Quests, would it help if you systematically finished them all, and closed them out, before continuing on with the main quests?

Didn't do anything for me. I had about 20 or so Misc Quests and spent a couple days getting rid of them. I'm down to three now and my save never got smaller and my framerate is pretty much the same (fine out in the world and in dungeons, but jittery in the towns with a few 0fps moments - nothing like FO3 and NV where they turned into slideshows no matter where I went).
 
lol.

why dont Bethesda just fart out a patch ASAP (pre Christmas) that reduces the 30 day refresh to 10/15 days?


10 days is still a VERY long time in game.

or even better just add a potion or something that puts the character into a "deep sleep" that resets things.

OR, they could just add it to the "Cure all diseases" potion and change the cost on it to 1 gold coin. That we can grab one at the local merchant anytime our lag disease starts to flame up.
 
I'm thinking of trading Skyrim PS3 in this afternoon. I'm really enjoying it at the moment (44 hours in and level 24) and haven't had any major framerate problems but it feels like playing a ticking timebomb.

My save file is getting bigger and bigger so it seems inevitable that I'm going to run into all sorts of problems. Futureshop are offering $50 trade in credit so it seems like a good time to just get rid of it. I really hope that everything gets fixed as I'm sure I'll pick it up cheaper a few patches down the line.

Also Bethesda, make the eventual GOTY version compatible with the current version savegames. I want to play the game again but I'm not replaying 40+ hours. Don't do this!
 
I do not mean to sound disrespctful when I say the following:

The bolded statement is, quite honestly, completely untrue (EDIT: from a consumer standpoint. I don't see any engine improvement from F3 to NV to Skyrim. Same problems are shared between the three). Fallout 3 GOTY is unplayable a certain amount into the game. New Vegas has random lock ups and constant frame rate issues. Skyrim, well, let's not even get into that. (there may have been engine optimizations, but all games become unplayable at some point. My GOTY F3 is garbage due to the issues. Skyrim is fast approaching that point)

I work in customer care, supervising actually. I do have to instruct my people to pawn an issue off for a while where there's a problem I have to fix. Delaying things happens. Telling customers you're working on it happens. However, I never EVER would tell them to say that an issue was resolved when it, honestly, was not. That's not good customer service and it's not good business. How anybody can say that Bethesda has resolved their engine's issues on the PS3 is, seriously, shocking and confusing. Seriously, play any of the above games longer than 50 hours. They'll break.

I'm so happy that I purchased these games on the cheep because your company released a broken product. I'm not blaming you, you're just a company guy, but trust me. This isn't a case of "we didn't know" anymore. Fallout 3 was bugged, NV was bugged, and Skyrim is just terrible. I can, quite honestly, say that if this isn't resolved appropriately I will do everything I can to throw a fit about this issue. Bethesda sold me an item that doesn't work. At this point, knowingly. Unacceptable.

Amen

I swear there's got to be a lawsuit in here somewhere. Implied warranties under the UCC or lack of consideration (being able to play the game goes to the basis of the bargain - if I can't play the game and Bethesda knew or should have known that fully playing it was part of the reason for purchasing it to begin with). The counter is that Bethesda indemnifies themselves in their "shrink-wrap" user agreements, but those agreements are only valid on the assumption that you can return the product.... At a minimum people who bought the PS3 version of Skyrim should be entitled to refunds. Edit: plus possible fraud claim especially since Bethesda should have known about the problem but decided to sell a broken product anyway.
 
That's cute that you think that, but it's WRONG. Oblivion with Guns 3 non-GotY froze during PSN notifications of course that wasn't game-breaking. But it was annoying. However: the game would freeze after a huge file size just like OwG3:GOTY and OwG3:NV do and did with-without the DLC installed.

Well sorry, that is just what my research told me, it only reinforces my point anyways. I researched every single Bethesda release on PS3 because that was my preferred platform and every time I was left with the decision that it would be a really bad purchase due to performance issues.

So there is no way I could be surprised by this with Skyrim, and after so many releases there is no way Bethesda wasn't aware of this and pushed it out the door regardless.
 
I platinumed this bitch yesterday. Almost 70 hours on all my saves combined playtime, of which 40 to 45 hours were atrociously bad. I've deleted the game data off my drive and it will never get on it again, except if future DLC works shit out, although the recent rumours made me wary. I'm just a sucker for trophies but hey, everyone has their flaws right?.

Thank God I bought the PC version as well to dabble in some mods. Stupid me. Should have done that in the first place.
 
Just posted on the Bethesda forum:

Update 1.3 for Skyrim is now available on Steam and is being submitted to Sony and Microsoft. As soon as we have more information on the update hitting PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, we'll let everyone know. Below are the release notes for the update:

Update 1.3 Notes (all platforms unless specified)


•General stability improvements

•Optimize performance for Core 2 Duo CPUs (PC)

•Fixed Radiant Story incorrectly filling certain roles

•Fixed magic resistances not calculating properly

•Fixed issue with placing books on bookshelves inside player purchased homes

•Fixed dragon animation issues with saving and loading

•Fixed Y-look input to scale correctly with framerate
 
The day a Date and Price is announced for the Skyrim PS3 DLC, the Internet may actually explode.



I hope I don't miss it, it is going to be awesome!!



You know we are getting nothing for FREE. Heck, they have already made us pay for some Poo wrapped in Plastic, I am sure some downloadable content is going to cost some money as well.
 
I'm not even sure why people are asking for free DLC when the base game is already so bad. DLC will be even less playable, like in FO3.
 
You might be onto something. When I was playing, I did everything I could to not touch anything. It got to the point where if I had mistakenly run over a lamp and knocked it over or something, I would reload my save. But I was hit with the slowdowns to where it became unplayable anyway. I had like half the time you had in the game but double digit save file size.

I did a ton of exploring though. I spend a lot of time just running around discovering things for my map.

Yeah this is my line of thinking too, I've made no effort to reverse tampering with things like you have. I drop items frequently and run across tables knocking everything around like a boss. Only thing I can narrow it down to (assuming Bethesda is wrong in this only affecting a minority of users, which they are) is my having avoided half of the map. Also, interestingly, at this point, my save is still fluctuating considerably. Often it'll drop by 50-100KB while most times it goes up a bit, guessing this is on account of the 30 day reset cycle thing though.

Would love to know if anyone else has been playing like this and if they're having similar experiences with their files. Of course I could just be real lucky or something stupid :\

I'm not even sure why people are asking for free DLC when the base game is already so bad. DLC will be even less playable, like in FO3.

This is the correct answer, why the hell would you guys want free DLC as compensation? I'll be avoiding that shit like the fucking plague.
 
I'd still love to know how people who don't have internet access are supposed to fix these problems. Will Bethesda send them a disk, or USB thumb drive or something with the update(s) on it? Will there be a way to swap out their broken version for a version that has the updates already applied? (maybe the inevitable GOTY version, although I don't think that will release within a reasonable time).
 
I'd still love to know how people who don't have internet access are supposed to fix these problems. Will Bethesda send them a disk, or USB thumb drive or something with the update(s) on it? Will there be a way to swap out their broken version for a version that has the updates already applied? (maybe the inevitable GOTY version, although I don't think that will release within a reasonable time).
Hey man, remember, there's no problem because the problem was fixed. Remember? DO YA?

Have there been any updates? I'm in between drafting a letter that I'm going to send to my attorney general and CC Robert Altman and just want to make sure that before I go through the effort that we're confident nothing's going to happen. I'm curious as to how Tennessee's AG feels about this type consumer disrespect. At this point it's not about the 60 bucks. It's the principle.

BTW, I encourage you all to do the same.
 
Freeing up more space on your HDD definitely works. I played this for 4 hours last night and didn't get a single freeze.

Framerate was still awful, but I'll take that over my PS3 locking up every ten minutes.
 
I'd still love to know how people who don't have internet access are supposed to fix these problems. Will Bethesda send them a disk, or USB thumb drive or something with the update(s) on it? Will there be a way to swap out their broken version for a version that has the updates already applied? (maybe the inevitable GOTY version, although I don't think that will release within a reasonable time).
My cousin had to bring his PS3 to my place to update his game. There really should be a way to download patches to memory cards and update your game that way.
 
I'd still love to know how people who don't have internet access are supposed to fix these problems. Will Bethesda send them a disk, or USB thumb drive or something with the update(s) on it? Will there be a way to swap out their broken version for a version that has the updates already applied? (maybe the inevitable GOTY version, although I don't think that will release within a reasonable time).


If they dont have Internet, they will not know there is Internet Rage and they will assume the game is just crappy. Bethesda will already have their money, some stores aren't allowing returns. They will be just be screwed.

Heck, if Bethesda was ignoring those WITH INTERNET Connections by not returning emails, not responding to tweets, not posting on their message boards, etc. then I am sure they could care less about those without Internet Connections.
 
see this is bullshit having to play the game in a certain way to avoid problems is absurd, whats even the point in a game like elder scrolls if you can't create your own journey and play it the way you want to.

I was dieing for this game a few months ago, now i definatly won't buy until the patch this stuff.
 
welp, got my 360 copy on the mail today, so wooo

That being said, gonna stay active in this thread. need to see how this turns out. My heart goes out to all the PStriple players ...certainly my preffered system and am honestly pretty put off by the reality that I CAN"T play that version at all.

I honestly think Bethesda should have just made the franchise PC and 360 exclusive. Guess then couldn't lose face if they admitted they couldn't make the PS3 version work.
 
Just chipping in to say Bethesda have the 65 hour save we used for the DF write-up. I'm sure they've got a couple to work from by this point, but every little helps. They're most certainly on the case.
 
Somebody just found these lying around Bethesda´s HQ.. the ten commandments for the PS3 version.

736ei.jpg


1. Thou shall disable Auto-Save.
2. Thou must only play 30 min. then thou must turn off PS3.
3. Thou shall worship Bethesda daily, then they might grant you a Patch.
4. Thou shall clear your cache.
5. Thou shall look upon the divine lag as a gift.
6. Thou shall not envy your neighbours version of the game.
7. Thou shall believe the words of John Carmack.
8. Thou shall wait 30 days before you move on.
9. Thou shall not cry when the game crashes.
10. Thou shall wait for our next patch, to be even more disappointed.


And the Son of Man said, if you should forget all other Commandments, keep true only to this one; Don't buy Bethesda games on PS3. Ever.
 
I fucking love this game, but I am starting to get hit with the lag. Save file jumped from 8.1MB to 8.8MB last night by just clearing out a couple of dungeons and doing some enchanting/smithing.

As a last hurrah before I turned the game off last night, I decided to -walk- all the way from Whiterun to Riften so I could discover more areas. Leaving Whiterun things were fine, but the further I got and the closer I got to Riften, the frame kept dropping and the music kept cutting out. Thankfully, I made it to Riften before my PS3 blew up and saved.

Then I went and played FFX-2 and I stayed up way past my bed time having fun.

I have been thinking about trading in my PS3 version for the 360 version, but my time is so damn precious nowadays I don't know if I have the drive to actually go through 45h of game again and do all of the Whiterun quests again. I mean, technically I could start a new file and instead of doing quests in Whiterun, do what I am required to do there and then move on to another town and start doing sidequests there, but I dunno...

The nice thing about the game, is that is so big, that even if you start a new game you dont need to do the same quests again. Just the ones from the main quest, which are not really that long. Besides that, you can go and explore other parts of the game, take other cities quests, join another guild or the other side in the civil war...

If your time is precious, it is better that the time you have it is a really good time; so my advice is, yes, go and change version and sell your PS3 version.


Update 1.3 for Skyrim is now available on Steam and is being submitted to Sony and Microsoft. As soon as we have more information on the update hitting PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, we'll let everyone know. Below are the release notes for the update:

Update 1.3 Notes (all platforms unless specified)


•General stability improvements

•Optimize performance for Core 2 Duo CPUs (PC)

•Fixed Radiant Story incorrectly filling certain roles

•Fixed magic resistances not calculating properly

•Fixed issue with placing books on bookshelves inside player purchased homes

•Fixed dragon animation issues with saving and loading

•Fixed Y-look input to scale correctly with framerate

There are like hundreds of bugs in the quests... and after all this time they could only manage to fix 1 of them? Really... how many people do they have working on the patch? A trainee only coming in the morning? Jesus....
 
Finally got around to finishing the DB questline for my platinum trophy last night. This was by far the smoothest Bethesda game I have played until around 100ish hours in when I finally dug into the main quest. I only had one freeze and no real slowdowns until finishing it. Once I finished it though, my game went to shit. The main quest alone bloated my save file from 8mb to 11mb and my PS3 would start chugging in city areas after a few hours of play and froze two times. Luckily all I needed to finish was the DB stuff at that point for my platinum though.

I can't complain about 100+ hours of trouble free gaming , but it sucks others weren't so lucky. If you don't have any other option, I would disable autosave and only do the main quest up until unlocking dragons and save the rest after you do everything else you want to do. It's not perfect but it's a workaround until if/when they come up with a better solution. Coming from being a PC gamer in the 90s and early 00s, it wasn't a huge deal to me regardless.
 
Oh wait...this living, breathing masterpiece of the world actually...resets if you wait 30 days? What? O_o 10/10 yeah..... -.-

I'm actually not sure if it "resets", but I think they meant the objects will clear up and things will respawn/etc, like how areas repopulate.

It's actually on Beth's forum's sticky as one of those "things you guys could try
while we work on our patch
":

http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1308326-ps3-tips-to-try/

Waiting for time to pass. Many things are running in the world depending on what quests you've done or places you have visited. Using Wait or Rest options, passing time will clear up some of these. It depends how long you wait, it may take up to 30 days for some items. Saving, resetting, and loading after this will have the largest effect.
 
Oh wait...this living, breathing masterpiece of the world actually...resets if you wait 30 days? What? O_o 10/10 yeah..... -.-

I think (hope) they mean that the items that exist within the game world will reset after that length of time, not the entire world itself. That would be crazy.
 
BBC is trying a little to shed some light on this..

BBC NEWS : Skyrim wins Spike VGA awards despite PlayStation glitch

The fantasy role-playing game, Skyrim, has won the top prize at the prestigious Spike Video Game Awards.

The Game of the Year title was voted for by senior writers at 25 news organisations including Wired and IGN.

The decision has been criticised on some internet forums because of bugs which appeared to be particularly problematic in the PlayStation version.

Skyrim's developers said they were working on a solution and asked for "patience".

more at link....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16136691
 
Man, with the Sony certification days for the patches, I can't believe it took a total of 14 days (still counting since it's not out) to fix the magic resistance bug they introduced themselves from the previous patch, they haven't even fixed anything from the last 2 patches either.
 
The next patch fixes the last patch and one quest. We are probably at least a month away from a performance patch and more quest fixes. There are tons of quest bugs that prevent proper progression. Some won't trigger at all, some won't allow you proper options for progressing like the correct speaking option, etc.

I've shelved it for now but I'll be damned if I'm not pissed. I dunno what's worse, that the coolest quest looks like its about to begin and I can't play it bc of a bug, or bc of performance, or that its going to be long after the holiday season that it will work.

That's assuming they even get a performance patch out. DLC will never be an option for me.

I really hate Bethesda with all this . What a shitty scenario for fans and paying customers. But hey, GOTY right Bethesda?

:(
 
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