I've seen some buggy releases before, but this is ridiculous. The original game still has an insane number of significant bugs and now they release this and literally nothing about it is working properly. Dead animals are appearing all over the place, vampires are running around the game world terrified of everything (which is hilarious because I'm also hearing "rumors" of vampires brazenly attacking people in the street after just having seen one run away from a wolf), and starting the main quest of it is turning out to be a disaster, from NPCs repeating dialogue to forgetting where they're going to beign in combat with nothing around and not moving. I think perhaps thought should be put into at least making something STABLE before release, and perhaps more attention should be put on existing bugs.

Just an example, I have 6 perks invested into One-Handed, dual wielding especially. Well, now I can no longer dual wield because if I swing any weapon with my right hand while dual wielding the attack animation goes in super slow motion. It's the only non-bow combat skill my level 41 character has, so outside of anything that can be accomplished with a bow I'm [censored] out of luck in any combat scenario now. This bug has been around for some time and is still impossible to fix, to my knowledge.

This is very disappointing.

Well at least you can play dawnguard, I have to wait till they fix the rare glitch that corrupts the Xbox hdd...

There is a whole list of bugs that the beta testers helped with, a few of us were even sent usb drives to send our game saves on. They are working on the bugs but you couldn't expect them to fix them all with out delaying the official release of dawnguard. There were A LOT of bugs.

That's a lame excuse for a triple A game developer like Bethesda. In a way we PC/PS3 users getting delayed is a blessing. Hopefully when these bugs come out on the 360, Bethesda should have the mind to fix these on the PC/PS3 when it does come out (say about 2 months maybe) for us.

Of course these are just speculation on my end. I can dream right?

I've put in over 100 hours into the beta testing and 15 hours into the retail version thus far and I've not encountered any of these "game breaking bugs" you guys have been talking about, this has been the most stable thing Bethesda has ever released.

When was the last time you did a fresh install/re-patching/cache clearing?

Also, you're saying stuff like "this bug has been around for a long time." What does that have to do with Dawnguard then, exactly?

I would rather pay $20 for a product that works in another 2-4 weeks than spend $20 for a product today that's sh***y.

I AGREE! And I'm an Xbox user!

Speaking as someone who's spent the last 7 years as a professional QA tester, I'm amazed they're even able to get these games out at all.

When you consider how many things can happen differently between only two saves, that alone would be an absolute nightmare to test. But with Skyrim every single save in existence will very probably be different. Compatibility issues between save games and updates like this can only be tested to a certain degree. Imagine making a game for a PC, where your game is going to have to work and be tested for the unlimited amount of hardware and software configurations possible. Getting a simple game to work across all versions will be nearly impossible. This is what it's like making a game like Skyrim. Things will always get through as its impossible to test all combinations leading up to it.

Even if Bethesda have the biggest test team in the world, that would still only be a tiny, tiny percentage of the amount of eyes that see the game when its released. Its just the reality of making games these days.

There's a difference between releasing something with some minor bugs that might be hard to find and releasing something where every aspect of the beginning is bugged to hell. It was a miracle that I was even able to begin the questline, and since I've done so I've had to chose dialogue options telling someone that someone I've never heard of or talked to told me to do soemthing. I'm really thinking that I've missed a large portion of the beginning of this quest so far. And I've seen almost every quest name from the Dawnguard questline with its own topic in the bugs forum. That's inexcusable. Not to mention that half a year after release the base game still has game breaking bugs that have not been addressed.

Yes, it was a miracle you were able to start it (I personally can't start it at all, or even continue with my regular save game because of Dawnguard).

What are the chances that someone else in the world has played the game in exactly the same way you have? Picked up the same items? Triggered the same quests? Completed the same quests? Triggered and completed quests in the same order? etc etc etc. Basically, your save game is very, very probably completely unique. Now the chances of someone during testing setting up the game in the exact same way you have, or the exact same way I have, are pretty much non-existent. Any combination of things you did to create the save you have could be responsible for the conflict with Dawnguard. Note, I'm not saying this is your fault, it's not, but you need to understand why things like this can and do make it through testing. Especially with a game as complex as this.

How many of the issues in this forum are happening to everyone? How many of them are happening to even a small majority?

It's not like all the dragons are flying backwards this time around.

True, but there are bugs everyone has. The new alchemy lab one with breezehome, the one with magic absorption and conjuration has been around for awhile, vampires and certain headware. Bugs like this are inexcusable because they can be replicated easily, and spotted easily.

Which bugs are those (I genuinely don't know, I've only been brought to this forum because of Dawnguard so aren't as aware of the bugs other people have been having)?

I'm assuming they're not game-breaking ones?

There's a person somewhere in Bethesda (or a number of them) whose job is to decide which bugs get fixed at the expense of others (it's the same with every games company). And with a game like Skyrim, they're going to have proper wide-ranging crash bugs that affect large numbers of people. At some point* they have to decide which other bugs to sacrifice to remove as many of these huge issues as possible. This is why some really annoying things make it through to release. There's no real excuse for a wide-ranging crash to ever make it through to release, though. It still happens, with every company, not just Bethesda, but when it does happen it needs to be hotfixed asap.

*this point is usually decided by the financial implications of release or not releasing at a certain date.

If you're interested in reading more about this kind of thing, this book has some great insight into QA and development processes:

https://www.facebook.com/CheatMode
http://www.completelynovel.com/books/165018

And each bug you just mentioned has been noted in the beta forums.

So because you beta tested there can be no problems at all? I guess luck really doesn't exist, forgive me lord of playing games and knowing all about code for ever doubting you.

No, I didn't say that. I was just trying to say that not everybody's results will be the same. It's impossible to effectively 100% test games like this, plain and simple, and someone will always run into bugs that an entire group of testers wouldn't run into.

They will probably release an update when its released for other platforms.

Better release one before that, because it looks like quite a few people are having serious problems.

No, but it IS possible to effectively test games more than 0%. And with the sheer number of people having RIDICULOUS problems (Of the people I personally know who have the game, only a couple are having worse issues than me right now, but many others are close), I cannot be thoroughly convinced that that happened. It's just so... broken. As to your question for "if it's been around for a long time then how does it relate to Dawnguard?", if the base game still has some pretty terrible bugs out there, like the Elemental Fury shout crippling dual wielders, then why are they releasing a whole swarm of new bugs? Until all the widespread bugs are fixed there shouldn't be a whole lot of other priority, and certainly not more things introduced that can destabilize the game, especially when the release in question itself is ridiculously unstable.


My game is mostly unique, yes, though there aren't as many variables as you seem to think. Also, most bugs can be accomplished by either very general methods, so even if my game has been played in a very different way than your game, a decent amount of bugs that you're experiencing can easily be experienced by me as well, and most of the issues I'm having are being had by a decent number of other people as well, so it's not like I've discovered some highly unique bug, especially the one that's currently making the game very frustrating to play since it cripples my level 41 character in combat unless I can kill things with a bow before they ever get to me because other than One-Handed, no damage-dealing skill is above level 10 or so. I've played Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion (unfortunately), and now Skyrim. I accept that every game Bethesda ever releases will be full of bugs for a certain period of time, but that doesn't mean they should be ignored or neglected as badly as they are.


I do know a few people who aren't having major problems with it so far. Emphasis on the word few. Yes, it would seem that Dawnguard will be crumbling away for quite some time because I don't anticipate a lot of this stuff getting fixed very promptly, especially if vanilla Skyrim is anything to go by.

if its still this crappy when its released for other platforms, how many people are going to buy it?

the vanilla game is bad enough and there is little relief in site.

I only have 3 friends with DG on xbox, none of them are happy with it. No chance I'm going to buy it for PS3 when we still can't get the vanilla game working.

I feel for you DG owners as it seems you basically got ripped off and based on the early returns here, I'm definitely going to be saving some cash if its every released for PS3.

I have read that (at least for previous titles) DLC could not be patched. Thats why 'the pitt' for FO3 had to be re-released. Not sure if that holds true still for Skyrim, but they did say DLC for FONV was unpatchable (OWB bugs never fixed).

I just got done ranting about Bethesda's incompetence in another thread. This is absolutely intolerable. I feel bad for the beta testers, because they worked their asses off bug testing Dawnguard just to have Bethesda ignore serious bugs they pointed out, and now the beta testers are getting blamed. This is no fault of the beta testers, they did their job and they did it well. This is due to Bethesda's incompetence alone.

Like Dar mentioned.

They don't patch DLC. I have no idea how (more likely IF) they're going to fix this.

I seriously can't even get my character into the game. It locks up every time I try to load a save on my guy.

We tested, the bugs you guys are having just didn't get fixed.

I don't really know why Beth would release with gamebreaking bugs when they had the choice of giving it another week to fix, but its not for me to judge them.

but as far as the original post goes.... we tested every possibility we could think of. at 250 posts per page we had at least 25 pages of bug reports. that is 6250 bug reports at least.

Granted some of those were repeats but it still tells you the effort we put into this...

o u 2 hey idk if i m having the same prob but my Xbox has suddenly gotten 10 times slower and every time i try to load a save i get unreadable disc. and when i actually get in and create a save it instantly becomes corrupted.

i would rather wait another 6+ months then hve a dlc that is unplayable

I have no doubt the beta testers did their job in finding and reporting bugs...

Which just leaves another party, the one who was supposed to fix the bugs, responsible.