This is a pretty glaring Havok / ragdoll physics problem. Load up a previously saved game somewhere near where you...


and you'll sometimes see its skeleton flopping around on the ground, often quite far from where you originally killed it.

This is a pretty severe blow to immersion and needs to be adjusted somehow. Please do so in next patch if possible.

Thank you.

That really wasent a spoiler in my opinion....

Just trying to be polite.

I cast 'raise zombie' on one dragon skeleton and it sent the skeleton flying about a hundred yards away from me. Was funny.

Morchai: Same. ANY projectile spell (even Magelight) will make Dragon skeletons fly away like they were smacked by the hand of God. Bethesda, can we not make Dragon skeletons light as air, please?

I agree with crispy's original comment. I've killed dragons in almost all towns and they're rag-dolling around willy-nilly and end up in some really wierd places (such as stuck under small bridges in Whiterun).
Instead of making the skeletons persistent, I'd suggest replacing them by some sort of memorial (dragon skull on the city walls?/on a pike where you killed it?).
Something so you get persistent proof of your dragon-slaying-awesomeness and so you dont have a massive random skeleton flapping about in the middle of the market and all the NPCs carrying on as if it was perfectly normal.

I agree - there's a dragon skeleton from one I killed in Whiterun, and every time I enter, the skeleton writhes and spasms clipping through the walls and bridge.

Open the console with ~ Click on the dragon to select it, type the command "disable" hit enter.

Too bad we have to resort to that. You'll be doing it a lot too from all the dragon encounters, not to mention all the other stuff that gets bugged out from the physics engine.

Just another one of the huge problems with this game's CPU usage I bet.

I've seen things flying all over the place in MANY different locations. Hell -- I opened a door yesterday, and a flying "bowl" hit me in the head and killed me.

Makes me wonder how many totally unnecessary physics calculations are going on -- resulting in decreased performance.

Dragon's come factory shipped with carbon fiber skeletons, I hit one with a dual-cast fireball in winterhold once and it flew off into the distance, never to be seen again.

Oddly enough, after 35 hours of game time I've never encountered that problem.
Fear not. Physics only applies to objects in the same cell in which you are.

There are quite a few other reports of similar happenings - both with objects flying when people open doors as well as being killed by flying objects (my favorite was the killer spoon though).

As we know that the physics engine's spaz attacks are linked to the framerate, I've hypothesized that maybe for the instance after you open the door and before everything has fully loaded, you're FPS momentarily skyrockets to an incredibly high value. That's the only thing I can think of that would allow objects to turn into deadly projectiles when compared with the other examples of the physics.


Hm. You know Bethesda could spin this and take advantage of the situation actually.

Announcing BGS' new game - Phatal Physix!

The cover art would be a close up of a door handle with someone's hand reaching toward it.

Waiting for a modder to make the dragon skeletons behave like regular skeletons. Only with more weight and less bone pieces.

Modders please fix!

Hehe yeah i noticed this too, but there have been so many games in the past with this same kinds of problems i just look past it.
Besides they only really flop around when you travel there or load a game, wich is when they come falling from the sky

Once the skeleton switches to ragdoll, it's hard to predict how it will behave, especially when it has a lot of joints and lands on uneven ground. I remember in games like Thief: Deadly Shadows or Doom 3, a character would die, fall backwards and land in a painful-looking arched-back position ("bridging")

So again my question would be why not make them behave like the human skeletons in the game after the soul absorb animation completes and they fall more or less apart. Making sure to attach high weight values so they drop but don't move.

As I am no modder or programmer everything I just stated, while seeming to make perfectly good sense, may be a HUGE pipe dream. Just looking for someone to confirm or deny.

Well, if the dragon dies on a hillside and the skeleton falls apart, the bones might still roll off, rolling into a lake (or molten lava) or off a cliff and into the sea where you couldn't reach them.

I've been disabling them using the console right after I kill them. First grab all the loot then open console, click the dragon skeleton, type "disable" without the parentheses, press enter and the skeleton is gone.

But honestly this doesn't really matter if you've already absorbed the dragon's soul right? That and for performance issues just breaking the model up into 5 to 10 pieces would be a satisfying start. These will still be assemblies that won't tend to "roll"

Yes?

It's really a question that only Bethesda can answer. On the continuum of annoying in-game distractions, the way bodies behaved after death was probably not a high-priority fix for them.

Well the time a dragon dropped out of the sky and on top of me and my horse about a half a mile from where I killed it was the last straw for me. They all get disabled now. I know it's not a real fix, but it makes the game easier to play for me. I can't stand all the skeleton astronauts.

Agreed we need more info and/or the construction set. Regardless Oblivion and Fallout both had mods that weighted dead people and monsters more realistically. Not sure if Havok will be an issue now.

I just wonder if there is more to this as it seems like a glaringly huge physics error. I mean your big thing is the dragons and after you kill them it looks like all the bones are held together with the strongest teflon and made out of rubber bouncy balls.