Basically a short intro. I suffered the wreck that was fallout 3 and the constant FPS and crashing issues on PS3. I was appalled that the save file bug was still prominent in skyrim. When the new patch hit I was a outraged that my save file size was still high (14mb) and my performance was still poor.

However something got me thinking, since downloading the patch, I have cleared four dungeons and done a variety of quests. However my savefile has not gone above 14mb. Pre patch if I cleared more than two dungeons my save file would rise. Now I was thinking maybe that the patch has maybe stopped the savefile increase but can't lower it. In essence, if you start a new game it could be that your savefile never rises beyond a certain point i.e. 5MB. It could effectively lock your savefile at a point where no performance issues occur. However annoyed that I'll probably never play my main character lag free ever again, but this could be a possible theory.

We'll see. I'm currently 15 hours in and my save file is 3186KB. No noticable lag, other than in the beginning when the dragon attacked.

If I start getting lag and crashes, I'm sure you'll hear me crying loudly in this thread...

Yes, this is exactly as I've said! It will increase here and there by a little, but never like it did before.

The problem is that a lot of people's save data is corrupted and so they carry issues over despite the patch.

I just went back to my new character which the savefile is 3200kb and it just dropped 200kb.

I think you and I may be the only people who get this! Too many impatient teenagers who just do whatever they want regardless. And then complain later about it like it's someone elses fault. My game is working just fine. How about yours?

Game is working 100% No lag - no problems. Getting ready to ease in to some new characters.

I'd like to hear an update from you guys once you've played for a while longer. If it works I may reconsider returning my game.

I patched it, and then played it for about 6 hours...my save file is closer to 15 right now...I didn't have a lot of lag issues pre-patch, but post patch I have none! I think this is one of the greatest games I have played yet!

I had a 6mb before patch and after the patch it was lowered by 1mb make it round 5mb. After a while (24 resting) my save file increased to 4.8 and it's currently around 5.
I had another save 16mb after patch: dropped by 200kb but I still had some lag issues because of the file size.

CONCLUSION: the lower your save file, the better effect the patch will have on your game. I have tested this on 5 ps3's (from neighbours and friends, not all mine off course)
it's a shame but i will continue on my lower save file; Better to repeat quests with smooth gameplay then play with corrupt save file. So people with issue either have to play NG or play a lower save file

You don't understand how it works do you?


The more you do in the game the bigger your file gets. There is no corruption, repeat the same quests, explore the same places and kill the same enemies and your save file will grow to be just as large. Well maybe 500kb-1mb smaller since there were probably more cache problems before.

I've got over 80 hours invested and haven't had one single quest glitch. I have had the game freeze up on me a couple times though and had to reboot. But I've had games other than Skyrim freeze up on me in the past. It happens once in a while. As far as lag, Ive had minor lag here and there but nothing game breaking the way some people are talking. I believe there are some issues, but at the same time, half the people on this forum are teenagers who over exagerate everything they say.

if the patch works..what can we complain about then?

Yes, this is what happened to mine. That's likely data that was from un-refreshed dungeons.


My game has been working flawlessly. I stopped visiting dungeons once I noticed they were linked to the rapid increase in file size (I posted a thread letting everyone know but it didn't seem to be accepted at the time) so my file size stayed reasonable despite over 40 hours of gameplay (currently 4.4 mbs). The only thing that's happened that I can't explain is I hit an enemy with an arrow in the woods and he must have been knocked out of sight because I can't find him anywhere.

Yep even though Bethesda said you didn't need to restart the game to make the patch work(which made me laugh) since most patches do infact give better performance when the game is starting up from scratch.patches can't go back and fix things that already happened in a later game so allot of errors and corruptions stay in the save file that the patch cannot fix.but if you restart the patch covers all the problems from the beginning to the end.

Saved games that were allowed to get so large they started glitching are now most likely corrupted (meaning they'll still have a lot of glitches). So a character reset may be necessary if you want the game to ever play well again. That sounds like a legitimate thing to complain about.

No you don't get it and don't understand my post. I have played 6h yesterday and my file has increased 250kb sometimes it would even decrease because I use 3 save files and keep on overwriting them. Before the patch it would at least have increased 2-3mb. I think that's a huge improvement....

Yup the patch works when you delete your old saves and I would also recommend you delete the skyrim game install as well since errors can be there also.I did this and now I'm seeing the patch is doing what it was meant to do so far,I have a few frame rate hic-ups here and there but they seem to sort themselves out,but before the patch they didn't fix themselves.much better now.but we still need more patches.

Are you sure? You can't say how much it would increase unless you did exactly the same thing. I'm certain they fixed some caching issues like some items or bodies never disappearing, but the game is supposed to have big save files. The files were just as big on the 360 and they didn't have any problems.

I can attest to the user's statement. I went wild yesterday and tore through new towns and dungeons and towers. Only a few hundred kbs. Before that it would have been 2 mbs easy.

I'm just about to start a brand new game to see how it goes. I wasn't really having any major issues with my previous one but I suppose I can just keep my latest saves from that one sitting around for later comparison anyway.

PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK

People reporting the game deleting saved games when they start anew character.

I did the same thing as you. Until the patch came out I stuck to the Whiterun area only and kept my inventory as low as possible. My save file stayed around 5MB. I did do some dungeons but I only did the ones already in my journal. And I cleaned everything out of them after I cleared them. I also try to avoid exploring dungeons unless a quest sends me there. Less chance of them glitching if they are done in the order they are intended to be done.
I've also had creatures dissapear after killing them. lol
You must have knocked him into Oblivion!!

Only weird thing I've had happen is during the Mage quests. When the arch mage gets thrown outside after trying to stop (Arcun is it?) who messing with the eye of Magnus. When I go outside to find him, he is dead (which is suppose to happen) but half his body is stuck in the ground and I can't search his body. But I know he isn't carrying anything. I checked before he died.

Good luck!

I agree with LightKnight, what I also noticed is that the size flucuates a bit more. It will go down some, then back up, then down a bit and back up. This tells me things are being cleaned up in the background properly now with the patch. And if you were to start out fresh from scratch with the patch from the get go (or are a a small save file size when the patch hit). THen you should be good for a long while. People with 14-15mb + saves are probably screwed as theirs have become corrupted.

Yes I'm sure. Your comment shows how little you know about the PS3 hardware. Why does the big save file doesn't affect the 360?? Because the 360 doesn't have Vsync option. So is the 360 version good?? NO because there are A LOT of screen tearing and the texture is still messed up.

PS3 uses Vsync which gives us no screen tearing BUT the downside is that the Vsync uses a lot of cache and since the ps3 isn't as powerful as the pc, it lags very bad. So both versions have technical problems but with this patch it will take a lot of time to reach 16mb again which will give me at least 160-200 h of gameplay until another patch arrives. Besides bodies do disappear now. (i had killed 3 dragons and they all disappeared after 24h for some reason)

I get also. i have used my old and new char and no lag