Dear Bethesda,

I am really glad this famous company announced the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to be released at the end of this year.
The hopes are high, but the opportunities not less. There is really a huge market for innovative and well marketed games.

Before I say goodbye to Oblivion I would like to add a few words, about fairness and good support regarding Oblivion.
A huge community behind this game is continuing to write and publish excellent mods. For me, this has become an important part,
aside from all fast-food like games. Oblivion with its CS gives you the opportunity to add and alter things in your game.
This was a great innovation. But Oblivion itself offers only a disastrous platform, because it still contains many, many bugs,
which makes it hardly a fortune to use.

A software company is used to think in milestones and release dates, in sales figures and revenue.

But for me as user/gamer it is essential that the software I am using is supported well, for a durable amount of time.
As I remember Oblivion support via patches was discontinued when Shivering isles came out. This was 2007.
It was only this community why I have bought this game another time and installed it.

Should a software company be not aware of the evolving market, especially for big titles in the role-playing market.
Only continuing support and enthusiasts are able to make a game as well as many would like to have it. there is a lot of work to put into it.
This is exactly my impression about the fan community here. And this really became an essential part about Oblivion, because a lot of mods made this game more sophisticated.
Like the Book "Lord of the Rings", only that the books pages still seem to continue.

As a member of the fair play party, a famous producer like Todd Howard should know, where the gap between enthusiasm and frustration lies. And how big it may be.
Do I really need to say that I want the money I have spent on this game to be used partially for more and longer support, even if i have to pay five or ten bucks more? Of course.
Fumbling with the oblivion.ini. several CTD's in just one hour of gameplay, endless glitches and little bugs, make it difficult to hold on to this game. Where is the prove that Skyrim does different?
Modern software should be different. And good software is not written in days, but years.

Thank you very much for reading, perhaps you found something interesting.

In terms of providing support and patches, I agree. I would have liked to have seen the game patched a few more times to fix bugs.

But I disagree with your disdain about Bethesda and Oblivion being prone to CTDs and such. I think you are confusing modded vs un-modded Oblivion.

Vanilla Oblivion has run just fine for me on three different computers with 3 versions of Windows. Most of the forum threads involving CTDs involve a list of mods a mile long or very complex overhauls. And most folks get these issues sorted out with tools like Wrye Bash and BOSS.

Sure, the CS is lacking and has a large list of frustrations, but we are lucky to have it at all. And I am very happy that will continue with Skyrim.

When I look at all the new mods that push Oblivion to functionality that Bethesda didn't even envision years ago and see that it still runs relatively well (with sensible and methodical modding), I tip my hat to Bethesda. Oblivion still plays and looks better than most games today even though it is half a decade old. It's clearly one of the best games I've owned and the only one I return to again and again when I get bored of the newer games.

all true, but the CS shouldn't be bugged. all the bugs that unclean mods cause would not exist if it wasn't for the CS being buggy.

as a result, we have to go through a long process of mod cleaning that could have easily been avoided.

don't even get me started on the fact that official bethesda DLCs are unclean as well. one of them made the mystic emporium unaccessible until the unofficial official mods patch solved it. even with that, KOTN was giving me land tears before I cleaned it.

the game should not REQUIRE this extensive amount of tinkering. it sure would BENEFIT from it, like morrowind does, but vanilla oblivion has many many flaws. it sure feels like a rushed product.

Good points,,,my apologies to Marshmallow if I somewhat misinterpreted the OP's intent. You're right..no excuse to have their own mods being dirty. Development needs to have the ability to tell the marketing department "NO...it's not ready yet".

But here they are: Locked in to an 11-11-11 release. I can only imagine the little squeals of delight from the marketing department when their cute release date idea got approved by management.

no apologies needed at all, although that should be marshmallow's call

I don't think it's going to be the same story all over again with Skyrim honestly. mainly because this time around they don't have to code for an hardware that's still nonexistant. so the issues we're going to have are probably going to be the inevitable bugs that will get patched soon, but nothing like "radiant AI is going to do this and that.... actually it won't" or "dynamic shadows... but let's not" . notice how they're being tight-lipped about stuff that they're still not 100% about, like mounts, spellmaking etc.

by the looks of it I'd say they've learned their lesson, but let's keep our feet firmly on the ground as this is still the same 5 years old hardware they're coding for so don't except miracles. although it seems like the game is going to set a new standard as usual.

one thing I'm particularly fond of is, it seems we're actually going to be able to have our own party of adventurers this time around. you'd get pretty damn lonely in morrowind and oblivion, and of course it opens up a whole new layer of game that was previosly absent, the kind of stuff that made D&D so popular after all. remember Baldur's gate and how lame it was to be limited to just a couple guys in NWN after that?

The game does not require any amount of tinkering, it's only when using modded content, which is not supported by the developers as they didn't create that content, that you need to start tinkering with things. And the CS was provided for free, they didn't sell it, so while it would be great if it were bug-free, it is unreasonable to seriously complain about it.

The opening post is just an open-letter rant, with assumptions rather than facts. "good software is not written in days, but years" - the date a new game is announced is not the date that work begins on a game, they didn't start creating TES 5 in December last year with intent to release November this year. You don't know how many years may or may not already have gone into TES 5's development. It is also untrue that good software has to take years to write, but presumably this rather general suggestion was aimed at large-scale software like games rather than any good software.
"Where is the prove that Skyrim does different? " - how can anyone make such a demand when the release date is still nearly 10 months away? It's still at beta stage at best right now.
"several CTD's in just one hour of gameplay, endless glitches and little bugs, make it difficult to hold on to this game." Someone has installed mods in their game! Try removing those mods, reinstall the game, and play it again as it was released by Bethesda, and miraculously, all those problems will go away except the usual small number of bugs found in most good software (just because software is "good" doesn't mean it is bug-free). The majority of the bugs remaining in the vanilla game are not game-breaking, and won't even show up usually.

Games have life-cycles, like all (good) software, and a point comes when support ends. This is necessary because if software developers continue to support every version of every program they release, they'll be spending all of their money employing people for this support, and won't be able to employ anyone to develop new software. This can only lead to a decline in sales as their software becomes outdated and new computer hardware and operating systems struggle to run old software, until the company goes bust and support ends anyway. Try listing every commercial game which was released more than six years ago (excluding online games) where support is still provided and official patches are still released today, I'd be highly surprised if this list rose above ten titles.

it's kinda lame to give someone a shiny toy and then go like "sure it's broken, but you got it for free so what are you complaining about?" though.

I'm sure it wouldn't have taken them much time to fix the issue with the CS that causes mods to be created unclean. also, it would have been nice to provide a fix for it after the problem had been identified. I don't want them to give me their firstborn child, but I feel like we've been neglected a little with oblivion and its CS.

It never ceases to amaze me the amount of complaining people can do in 2011 over a game that began development in 2003 and was released in 2006. Especially one that had been targeted toward a platform Microsoft didn't even let them have samples of until 6 months before the marketing scheduled release date that the developers did in fact call foul on because of all the last minute changes they had to make for that platform to support the game. The result being that the game missed it's November 2005 release date and slipped to April 2006. Five months is an eternity to marketing types. Nobody should be surprised that what was left had so many bugs.

The official patches for the game did fix pretty much everything that needed to be fixed in the product the originally sold. Play a game of vanilla Oblivion with the 1.2.0416 patch and you'll be able to sail through it without a lot of trouble. There are leftover quest bugs, yes, but nothing that will prevent you from finishing the game. It's been done countless times by countless people.

The reason there are so many CTD threads is because people today insist on pushing this game well past it's capabilities. It's not designed to deal with running 255 mods with 50 more merged into a bashed patch they didn't even conceive of. It isn't designed to handle 2048x2048 size graphics that exceed the abilities of the game's original hardware specs. Even with all your mods in pristine condition you're going to have to deal with the fallout from it. It's actually a testament to the game and the engine (despite how much we all [censored] about it) that you can even get away with what we're all doing to it.

Bethesda has also been extremely lenient in what they allow modders to do to the game. OBSE for one. That alone has performed miracles they didn't even plan for. They've allowed us to tear apart the data file formats to such a degree that tools like Wrye Bash, TES4Edit, and TESGecko exist and allow for things the game could never do without them.

As far as the CS itself, be glad it exists. I have seen the hell people go through in other moddable games with CS utilities that are difficult to work with, crash far more often than this one, and aren't anywhere near as powerful. It's also extremely small - compared to some with kits as large as a 1GB download. A few dirty edits are a small price to pay for having this much power and control over the game in such an easy to use utility.

So keep some perspective. After 5 years, Oblivion is still alive and kicking because of what Bethesda has allowed us to do. They're learning from it as they go. I have every confidence that they've paid attention and that Skyrim and the CK that goes with it will be nothing short of stellar.

And, btw, Bethesda still supports Oblvion. They may not be releasing any patches for it, but if you have a problem with the game, you can still contact tech support and they will try to help you - TODAY. Tell me how many other games released almost 5 years ago that you can still contact the tech support department and get a reply. Not many - I've tried. I don't even get an answer.

I contacted Beth last August about a weird running water noise I was getting. They responded and worked with me to find a solution. While they did ask if this happened in an un-modded game (and yes I was able to confirm it did), they did not demand that I remove all my mods. Between Beth and some help I got on the forums, we figured out what it was and I was finally able to enjoy the game without the weird noise popping up.

Are you aware that Microsoft has a written policy that they will only attempt to fix 80% of the bugs they find? And depending on the support agreement you have with them, you actually have to pay to report a bug? The unfortunate truth of the matter is that it's not financially feasible to fix every bug in a product, even if it was possible to find them all.

That's a shame, because they have offered up their http://bethblog.com/index.php/2007/07/20/download-arena/ child (available http://download.cnet.com/The-Elder-Scrolls-Arena-10th-anniversary-full-install/3000-7539_4-10281566.html). And their http://bethblog.com/index.php/2009/07/09/daggerfall-now-available-for-free/ (available http://download.cnet.com/The-Elder-Scrolls-Chapter-II-Daggerfall/3000-8023_4-10964310.html).

In a year...they will probably give out their 3rd child for free...it will be the 10th anniversary.

I don't know; Morrowind still sells and isn't hard to find, unlike Arena and Daggerfall. And Morrowind still runs fine natively on modern systems; Arena and DF have to be run through DOSBox IIRC.

But heck, you never know; they might.

Thats the point. They wont show up, but they are there. Like the broken values, the encumbrance bug, the graphical issues ( I see a light shining through the wall..err).
Ok, the graphical issues could be passed further to the optician. No need to start crying here.

But what about the numbers? Your stats, the skills, the attributes. Does it make you happy, when you are not sure what is going on in the background.
Ok, we could elaborate on the use of numbers in rpgs in general, but they are essential, since you cant really measure the stuff else in computer games (perhaps there is room for invention)
What I really disliked, was the fact that Oblivion didnt handle the values by function calls, giving you a proper return value, how the input was processed. Over/Underflows dont like constraints.
Oblivion staggers a bit, as soon as you open up your character sheet and see some weird negative values. Its your character, you cant mess him up with negative numbers...

Another example, I tripped over, were the General Game Settings (GMST). At first glance, really valuable in altering background mechanics fast and effective.
But it really did take me 4 months to notice, that these were global variables! What mess could be done, if you were able to use a local copy of them, if necessary?
what might be a full week of work for a programmer at Bethesda, from 09:00am to 05:00pm pst, is not to be done, unless the support continues.
A lot of ideas show their presence only after the game/software has been published and the reflux from feedback starts to increase dramatically. But they never really stop.


Point.

I missed the Morrowind boat and was really taken by NWN for a few years back ... 2003ish. I didn't see the glory of this franchise back then, but that is another story. Anyway as I understand it NWN got official patches that could be downloaded with it launcher up to 6 years after being released - even after NWN II was released. There were still patches long after I quit playing it and I played a lot of it.

So there is a difference between can't and won't.

On the other hand if there were updates to esp then with each update they could have invalidated compatibility with mods that depended on them (bugs and all) thereby gimping modding in another direction.

To some extent the official patches gimping modding did take place in the earlier days. The modding community recovered handily.

I still don't see anything that's broken to the point that the game won't function properly unless it's fixed. Light through the walls isn't a critical enough issue to worry about. Neither is the occasional hard to find negative stat bug.

Which brings up another point - some bugs are subtle and only show up under certain conditions. I'd wager there are bugs we've all seen that don't even exist if you stick to vanilla Oblivion. I'd also wager those were fixed in later iterations of their engine with FO3 and F:NV. Many of them are probably things that only existed due to the fact that they had to hack the thing to death prior to release.

Yes, they could have gone back to fix this stuff. The more egregious things WERE fixed in the official patches. They also had to spend time on DLC and SI, and as we now know, not long after SI was done and out the door attention turned toward Skyrim in a big way.

The fact remains that the game runs, runs well, and has only minor niggles as long as you're not modding it well past the design specs. It's a lot like a bridge that's rated to hold 500 cars but you're managing to squeeze 1500 cars onto it. Be glad it didn't simply collapse under the weight.

And do keep in mind, NWN getting patches 6 years later is an extremely rare thing to see in this industry.

I do think if that the UOP did not exist that these arguments would carry more weight.

Sometimes modders do it better.

Actually, on my end, Oblivion works like a bleedin' charm; it is fast, it is superiorily beautiful, it works like a well-oiled war machine and it is a monumental amount of fun too. I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't get any CtD's that I'm not responsible for myself. Right at the side of Civilization IV (that's FOUR, the fiver svcks) this is the best game I've ever played, it has provided me with massive value for my dosh, although I've bought several copies, and it has provided me with years of enjoyment and IS providing me with that enjoyment still, and will continue to do so. Now, that's good software for you.

The UOP isn't relevant to the point. I was speaking strictly of playing vanilla Oblivion with all of it's official patches in place. The game is perfectly playable like that. 1,000 floating rocks won't stop you from reaching the end of the game. Before I even knew there was a UOP, I'd completed the game once and was well on my way to a second run through. I never noticed things like floating rocks, seams in the graphics, and scripts that weren't quite right.

The UOP existing, IMO, is what's actually fueling many of the uninformed arguments about how terribly buggy the game is. People see "1,800 bugs" and assume every last one is a game breaker. That's not the case. Most of those are the aforementioned floating rocks, NPCs with not-quite-right AI, inconsistent weapon naming, typos, that sort of thing.

I'm hard pressed right now to think of something in the vanilla game so broken as to make it impossible to play. I can think of at least one thing that the UOP broke to the point of making the MQ impossible to complete properly if it hadn't been for the UOPS existing. Which amounts to fixing an error induced by a mod, not by the game itself.

well played Vorians

antiscamp2 is right btw. civ IV and tes IV are the best games out there. too bad civ V svcks

antiscamp, make sure you give Master of Mana a try, best mod for Civ IV

I used to have some of the same complaints as others here, but this thread contains some interesting history that has enabled me to get the proper perspective on what was achieved here. I had no idea Microsoft screwed with the OS and caused Oblivion to get pushed back, and then created a whole new set of bugs that couldn't be ironed out in time. I always just assumed some diabolical jerkwad in Marketing was slavering over the design team with comments like "Come on, guys, let's say it's all good and get'r out there, waddaya say? Who cares that it's broken?! The Modders will fix it inside of 6 months, easy! That's what you have the CS FOR!" and Todd was being pressured from that angle.

I can understand Bethesda situation entirely well now. It happened to me. I was attending the Art Institute of Seattle in 1996 and 1997 and almost had my degree when, 2 months prior to graduation, they upgraded 3DS Max to an entirely new version that was a revolution, and everything I knew about that software was lost in a day. I then had to start over to try to finish a project in just two months, and I couldn't do it. I didn't have any more money to continue to education there, and yet I failed and needed to extend another quarter, but there was nothing I could do. It was a total disaster for me. Sounds like this same thing happened to them with TES: IV. Man, I wish I had heard this then, I wouldn't have spent so many years complaining about their game development mentaliity, which I though was to pawn off the remaining bugs onto to Modders.

Thanks a bunch, guys!

Might be jumping in a bit late here, but this is absolutely not the case. Sure, some of the bugs wouldn't exist, but if you make a dirty mod then you make a dirty mod. That's got nothing to do with the bugs in the CS. I'd say very very very few (as in less than 10%) of unclean/dirty mods are caused by bugs in the CS, and the other 90% are caused by the mod creator. Which specific bugs in the CS do you think cause all of the dirty mods??

Compile All is the main one. There are a few other things that can cause a dirty mod, but we've had a hard time tracking down exactly what causes it. I know that when I was working on the Oblivion XP patch for A Brotherhood Renewed, the patch would be guaranteed dirty everytime I saved it. Basically ABR had a lot of dialog edits that would wind up in my patch despite the fact that all my patch had was a single script and quest to control it. I guess it was because there was a quest, the CS decided it needed to pull in all the dialog as well. Anyway, I just had to run it through a cleaning with TES4Edit and everything was fine. But it had cell edits in there too, iirc, and I didn't even touch the render or cell windows.

We're guessing that Compile All worked just fine when you were only working on the Oblivion master, but when Bethesda did the DLC's, they were pretty much doing a mod like we are. We suspect they used Compile All in that case and that's how the DLC's wound up being dirty.

They've continued to work on the CS since then and I don't think the GECK has as many problems as the CS. Hopefully the Creation Kit for Skyrim will be even better.

Actually you've got that the wrong way around. About 90% of the dirty edits found in mods is caused by the CS improperly adding unedited or causing unintentional edits to records not meant to be edited by the modder, and only around 10% are directly caused by modders themselves. When modding, the CS will happily add things here and there to your ESP which you never touched or even looked at. It will regularly redirect the Render window's focus to a completely different cell from the one you were looking at just as you're clicking on something, and cause edits in that cell instead of where you were expecting to be editing. Changing land height/textures or pathgrids in one cells tends to cause the land records or pathgrids from neighbouring cells to be added into your ESP. These are the specific CS bugs which cause all the dirty mods, if they weren't caused by CS bugs, there wouldn't be dirty edits in every single mod ever released (which hasn't then been cleaned using TES4Edit).

The CS is full of bugs, but the CS was given to us for free, and if the choice were between having the bugged CS we received, and NOT receiving the CS at all, which would we prefer?

Oblivion has never had any gamebreaking issues to me in the vanilla version except for the stat damage bug and the game CTD on quit it ran pretty much smooth and stable. It's only when adding tons of mods that it sometimes becomes unstable although I've had times where it's also been perfectly stable with tons of mods as well so really it just depends on what types of mods you use and the tools you use.

Overall Oblivion is definitely my favorite game despite the issues that pop up when you mod it but when you mod a game to the extent that people have modded Oblivion you got to expect issues.

No, if they'd used compile all, you'd know it. Every script in the game would have been duplicated in the DLC.

I suspect in the end that the same rush job Microsoft caused on the game ended up affecting the CS as well, and they focused their attention on getting the game into a working state and weren't as concerned about the CS being a bit unstable and full of quirky bugs. Some of that was probably also caused by paring it down for public consumption. Given all the problems they faced, we should consider ourselves damn lucky the CS came out at all.