Before I say anything, I'm going to preface this whole thread with this: I love Skyrim. I'm sure everyone else feels the same way, but the game is just amazing. It is huge, it is epic, and it quite literally has no equal in the current generation of games. I tried to walk away and find something else, but nothing quite satisfies like Skyrim. So I speak from a position of love

Everytime you try to broach this topic, someone is quick to mention that Skyrim has more support than any ES game before it, and most other games in general. This is true and I applaud Bethesda for backing up their game like they have, I love the updates and support! However, Skyrim is also a game unlike any other (as we've established) and I think Bethesda has realized how much people love their games and HOW they play their games i.e. hundreds of hours into characters, roleplaying, etc. I think Bethesda also realizes that their games are prone to bugs, like many other games, but maybe more so due to scale and other little details. This is why I think they made a stronger commitment to support Skyrim and like I said that is awesome!

My issue comes from how that support has unrolled over the months. I appreciate the commitment Beth has to their games, but when I was told about this support and when I read articles about Bethesda supporting Skyrim, I was very excited and assumed this would mean a game that has less bugs. As many would say, the game is certainly more stable (that may be up for argument as well though) but the game having less bugs seems to me to be a mistatement. The dlc released thus far has had many ugly bugs within it and within Skyrim itself, lots of little annoying bugs still persist.

It was my expectation that Bethesda would be much more engaged with its community, looking at bug reports, collecting them, compiling, and then rolling out the bug hammer. Some of the patches have done that, but recently the effort has slowed to a trickle. As I said, I'm glad for the support, but it just doesn't seem to match up to the promise that was made, or at least how the promise for support was pitched. I'm not complaining about the support per se, but rather I am expressing that it has not lived up to the expectation that was made for it, and the expectation I had for it. Now they could easily turn that back around here with update 1.8, 1.9, etc... but I thought the updates would be aggressive initially and then slow down as things were really ironed out. It seems odd to be doing that in reverse fashion.

I am curious to know what others think? Please, do not come here and flame Bethesda or rage about the state of the PS3, although I'm well aware there are issues to be had with both, but I just want to know what you expected and if the current situation meets your expectations. I appreciate any feedback in advance!

I just wanna say that the Main Quest really Outstands from the secondary quests, and that's just a good thing, that i thought i should mention...

Kudos

If I've understood it right, patching a game costs quite a lot. Not just the actual bug-fizing and rooting out the problem, but also getting the patch to consumers. Someone sometimes mentioned 30.000 extra cost per patch, plus the hours it takes to actually fix the problems.

Anyway, they have patched the game more than I expected in terms of adding things. Just look at horse combat and mage kill cams. But, the added content from free patches doesn't necessarily fix bugs, and might introduce more of them. The mage kill cams are, for me, very buggy most of the time. Either the spell doesn't kill them, even if it hits, and sometimes it doesn't hit at all.

Right on topic. Or tldr?

What bothers me when it comes to patches is that the unofficial patch seems to fix more bugs than any of the official patches. I'm not bashing Bethesda's efforts, I'm simply pointing out that the updates don't seem to fix the game as much as some people would like.

This is something I've heard too and I find it distressing. In an instance like this, I kind of hoped there could be more across the table discussion and maybe Bethesda could take some of the code work from this unofficial patch and implement it into their own patches. I know the company probably doesn't want outside sources to have credit for official Bethesda products (probably due to payment issues or some other legal matter) but in this instance, I only see this working to benefit everyone, so I am disappointed that there isn't more communication and effort to get this patch into the game for everyone.