Hey all, I saw forum member Khadaq take the initiative on answering Bethesda's call for clear, step-by-step descriptions of how, when, and why framerate problems develop. I thought I would do my part as well. I don't have time to sit down and run a timed, detailed test like Khadaq kindly did, but I thought I'd put my situation out there in as much detail as I can give right now.

Level: 20
Total Playtime: 23:55
Current Save Files: 1 file @ ~5800 KB
Owned Property: Whiterun "Breezehome", all decorations purchased, ~50 items added by myself
Inventory Size: Moderate (about 30-40 unique potion types, the same number of unique food items, 8 or 9 apparel pieces, a few books, 8 or 9 weapon items, about 15 different misc. items)

Framerate Observations:

The following observations are from BEFORE I turned all autosaves off. I now play without any autosaving.

I have been playing since the early hours of the 11th, and throughout that weekend, framerate drops were intermittent and manageable. Typically, they would occur briefly upon loading into a new area (such as, loading into Whiterun from a shop or into Skyrim from a cave, as well as fast traveling). After a few seconds, these would subside. In other gameplay moments, framerate drops would occur when there were either A) a variety of weather/atmospheric effects like smoke and wind, in Fort-type dungeons where putting candlelight on those green/brown bricks into my view would cause large drops, and C) certain areas of the wild - why exactly the framerate dropped in those outdoor circumstances, I can't exactly say.

I CAN say that framerate drops are more frequent and detrimental the longer period I've been playing, becoming more noticeable after about 3-4 hours and generally peaking at their worst around 5-6 (My longest play period was 7).

Yesterday, I turned off all autosaving. This has drastically reduced my load times, but more important, seems to stave off framerate drops for a period of time. They still occur, and still manifest more prominently a few hours into my play session, but even then they seem to be less noticeable after having turned off my autosaves. I also deleted the three autosaves that were being stored locally.

I hope this helps in any possible way. I would be happy to provide additional information, for either forum members or Bethesda staff. Not totally sure what information would be most helpful.

Thank you. There is no sense in cluttering up the forum with all the "f*** bethesda" threads. I understand and share your frustrations (at this otherwise perfect experience being ruined) and great job getting it out there in other forums but i think this forum should be focused on helping them fix this. Moderators, you should make a sticky of this or a similar post for sensible framerate issue feedback so people know where to turn and maybe another one for official statements and user comments.

I have a spanking new ps3 slim 320 gb bought purely to play skyrim so no other games installed (exept fifa 12 after the troubles started)

Level: 24
Total playtime: 56 hrs (taking my time, loving it)
Current Savefiles: 1 @ 8,5 mb + 3 autosaves
Properties: Whiterun and Markath (Every decoration purchased) and lots of stuff in containers (Sidenote: Love how the houses are actually more or less a neccesity in this game!)
Inventory Size: Very small (armour, weapon, pick-axe, random ore and 4 potion types.)

First noticed small dips in Whiterun at around the 25 hr mark, up untill that it was running perfectly. It got progressively worse, especially after prolonged sessions. Loading times are getting longer, there are big hick-ups whenever there is random pvssyr among the npcs in a city (like it loads each of the npcs personalitys seperately or something) and whenever you want to perform a context-sensitive action (talk, pick up etc). I get the lowest fps in and around the "open" towns (Falkreath, Dawnstar etc). Lately i have also noticed the fps bottoming out in combat. It is not quite unplayable yet but i dont want to rush through it under these conditions and therefore i will put it away for the moment and hope the fine folk of Bethesda will be able to sort it out.

Sidenote: Had a similar issue on Football Manager 2011 on the pc (Memory leak), it got fixed eventually. Should be easier to fix on ps3 though as you dont have to consider differences in hardware. Probably have to start over again but... that wont be a problem.

Have faith people

Pretty much this, instead of those F Bethesda threads we should start posting things like this, when did our lag start, number of items, save file size. I am honestly having a hard time trusting Beth, especially after what Pete said (That it was a small problem), Heck Gstaff posted here while he has not posted in any other forums, they are aware of it, and I have faith that it will be fixed this upcoming patched, the game came out last week, Yes I am extremely frustrated, but heck its better to help Beth pinpoint the solution by making threads like these than to just go "F YOU!!!".

Hmmmmm veeerry interesting. In my play by play post a few threads down, I think I stated in my test earlier today that I noticed a fair amount of lag starting to occur when I loaded Whiterun, and then throughout the rest of my test it persisted.


Considering Whiterun is visited by most players early on and then throughout the rest of the game, I'm willing to put on a tinfoil hat for now and start blaming Whiterun!

..... Probably not the issue, but maybe something about Whiterun triggers the issue... I'm not a programmer, but maybe being in Whiterun, since its in the middle of the map technically, maybe it loads everything in a sort of fan out fashion, or maybe there is something else about the city that we just don't know, or probably don't understand. Nonetheless, its a good correlation to observe, so keep note of that when looking in other threads trying to track down this problem. Oh and thank you guys for continuing the trend of my thread. I'm angry too, but I know it won't get fixed by yelling and screaming on a forum. I may be naive to think I am helping with these posts at all, maybe all we are wasting our time posting these things, as there could literally be no intent to fix this issue as some people think, or the feedback we give is virtually useless without an actual error report..... BUT, I think I'd rather submit these detailed, positive reports to show that we care and want some fixes sooner than later, than to be lazy and sit here doing nothing about it, whilst not threatening to behead Bethesda.

Exactly this. I gave you credit, the fact that forum users were taking Bethesda's call for detailed reports inspired me to do the same. I will play later tonight and append this post with my further thoughts, but really, it's a pretty consistent "starting off fine" (minus the expected drops with certain effects or environmental stuff) but slowly degrades and loading into / fast traveling to areas get progressively worse and worse over an extended play session. It seems pretty consistent regardless of what properties we own and what's in our inventory.

I don't know how Skyrim allocates resources and what sort of memory cache it uses, but there must be some information that Bethesda could avoid temporarily storing to help speed things up. While Oblivion did have its moments, they were few and far between (from my 120+ hours play GOTY edition). Something's up here, and I feel that everyone should continue posting their detailed reports either here or in separate threads to keep the CONSTRUCTIVE conversation going.

Does anyone have any queries about my play experience? Maybe we can find some similarities.

I'm going to try something that I read in another topic. When I enter a new area I'll sit there and let the game load that area,its going to be somewhat trouble some to find out the "cells", Think i'll try it first in Whiterun hold, I'll just stand there and go of to do something, and when I come back perhaps the area would have already loaded resulting in less lag? But then again when my memory file is small it runs perfectly, but I sometimes still see some textures loading.
Hmm, perhaps deleting the game date once the lag starts showing up will fix it? It also could be a heat issue, the back of my PS3 tends to get rather hot when I play Skyrim for a while, maybe I could put it over my air conditioner for a minute when it starts to heat up and lag:P. Hey....you never know xD , I'm just trying to find out how to make it lag less and make it playable.

Level 23 32 hours in

1 Save file @ 9100 kb but i did use autosave when i started

have barely any items just armor and a couple weapons

I have horrible framerate drops in towns usually when i walk by a npc and the game stutters constantly when in the open world but the thing that confuses me is its perfect in dungeons no stuttering or framerate drops at all

Hmm, my problem is kind of opposite of yours. My worst moments of framerate are in dungeons, but it's also quite sporadic. One moment it'll be fine, the other it'll TANK in one or two specific rooms. The framerate drops in the overworld and big cities technically happen more often, but are much less noticeable - the kind of thing that would happen in Oblivion, really.

Quick bump for constructive conversation.

As detailed as i can be but im sure everyone knows what im talking about by now. Hope you can use this Bethesda. Please try and fix! this is an awesome game you've created! my first pre-ordered game in a long time. i know you guys will figure this out soon. Congrats on the sales.

Lvl 20, 31 hours in, 1 save @ 7432kb
Inventory: Moderate
own the Breezehome not everything bought in it though.
Have Main quests, Companion quests, and College quests going.


Framerate issues started at about 6000kb but wasn't that bad. But has gotten progressively worse. I disabled auto save and sold inventory items and that seemed to help a little.
Now a little deeper in the game and framerate is bad. Riding a horse makes it worse. And it could just be me but Whiterun is where its really bad not sure whats up with that.

menu screens are fine and from my most recent Dungeon and battle in dungeon it was very smooth, its just when i exit to Skyrim it lags or climbing a mountain. Some interaction with Npcs are affected but nothing serious.

Fast Travel load times have considerably increased in length from when i started game.

My brother also wanted me to note that he played it last (his own system and game) night (4 hrs) lag got really bad so he turned it off. This morning he said it was pretty smooth but soon as he got to Whiterun it started stuttering again and worse when he left the town. Just thought id put that in if it helps at all.
Thnx.

Whiterun comes up again. I'm starting to wonder if something about the town hits a ton of resources. The ultimate test would be for someone having this Whiterun issue of that specific town being the catalyst, load the game with a save somewhere totally different and replicate their actions with a different city. then return to a save near Whiterun, do the same actions there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMu4Tzk2bdg epic